Wrapping up Saul Bellow's Herzog, where the going gets tough and the tough take baths.

First up, the failed murder. Herzog gets his dad's old revolver, works himself into a state of total conviction that killing his ex-wife Madeleine and her lover is not just justified but righteous, and then loses his nerve at the last moment while watching the guy give his daughter a bath. A brothers K rerun?

Up next, potato love: Herzog's own dismissive term for humble, unglamorous sentimentality. The stuff he's spent the whole book mocking while secretly craving it. And Rich's new favorite concept handle.

Finally, the Nietzsche breakup. A final burst of letters, an uncalled for closing shot at semen reabsorption as the fuel of creativity, and the implication that Herzog doesn't resolve his arguments so much as simply stop needing to win them. Plus the book's real-life backstory.

Chapters

(00:00:00) intro, and loving Herzog more the second time around (00:01:44) the custody plot: Herzog gets his dad's gun (00:08:55) the Brothers Karamazov parallel: two men who couldn't pull the trigger (00:15:10) potato love: Herzog's word for humble, unglamorous love (00:22:46) the child-killing trial, and humanity's urge to bite and pity its food (00:30:35) Madeleine takes June, and an unreliable narrator's sob story (00:37:18) the final letters: making a clean break with Nietzsche (00:40:54) Ramona, and giving up the 'great man' act for good (00:47:15) Saul Bellow's real-life betrayal, and why he wrote a book instead of more letters

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"If I'm out of my mind, that's okay with me."

Part 1 of our dive into Moses Herzog's breakdown. Like all the best books, Herzog follows a manic academic, freshly dumped by his second wife for his own one-legged best friend, who processes the whole disaster by firing off unsent letters to everyone from his mother to Eisenhower to Spinoza.

We get a peak into the 1964 version of the suffering olympics, which Rich obviously tries to tie back to New Zealand MPs and Nietzschean slave morality.

Plus: how Christianity's meaning-making project curdled into Romanticism, then Hegelian historicism, then modern secular doomerism.

Full transcripts are available at doyouevenlit.com, where you can filter and search episodes by key ideas, authors, and themes.

(00:00:00) how would a wizard signal being gay? (00:04:11) announcing Herzog: Bellow's "bitch wife" genre and Jewish New York neuroticism (00:09:30) sampling Herzog's letters and the appeal of saying what you really think (00:14:22) the kaleidoscopic, disorienting structure of the opening chapters (00:18:09) is Herzog a reliable narrator of his own infidelities? (00:23:50) is Madeline really the schemer Herzog paints her as? (00:27:38) the suffering Olympics: how Gersbach out-victims the man he betrayed (00:36:56) Herzog's genius delusion, from Kanye West to Nietzsche (00:48:05) tracing modern doomerism back to Christianity, via Romanticism and Hegel (00:54:49) Bellow's own Marxist phase, and historicism's swing from hope to doom (01:00:06) misunderstood genius or deluded narcissist? plus predictions for part 2 (01:04:47) outro: Rich's new site and building an AI oracle from your back catalog

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"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts."

— Middlemarch

The DYEL boys finally finished George Eliot's Middlemarch and finally answered the question of what this thing is about. At least we think we did: A 900-page long cope on being mid.

Updated Website: We unveil the new Do You Even Lit website: doyouevenlit.com. It now has searchable tags by theme, book, and thinker and a breakdown of our most biggest obsessions: Christianity, David Foster Wallace, signalling, death, David Foster Wallace, and the sexual revolution.

Thwarted ambitions: Nobody seems to achieve what they set out to: Dorothea, Lydgate, Casaubon, even Bulstrode. We ask whether Eliot is simply describing reality or arguing against ambition.

Ordinary goodness: Related to the above, we unpack the famous final paragraph. Rich wonders if it's all just cope. And points out how it seems at odds with the real life of George Eliot, aka "Mary K", aka Mary-Ann Evans.

Full transcripts are available at doyouevenlit.com, where you can filter and search episodes by key ideas, authors, and themes.

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• Herzog by Saul Bellow