Saturday Show #96: Coming Sun.Mon.Tues. by Don DeLillo (+ Lecture on WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?)

Summary: Every Friday (more or less) a group of renegade writers gathers in Austin, Texas to drink alcohol, eat gluten-free snacks, and discuss literature, philosophy, and all manner of stimulating ideas. Listen in to the 96th episode of a Texas classic.<br> Saturday Show Literary Podcast is an MFA program in fiction writing disguised as a podcast. However, we are not accredited. By anyone.<br> Approximate time stamps and discussion topics are provide below.<br> 0:00 Excerpt from the podcast<br> 0:56 <a href="http://amzn.to/1RVyhvf" target="_blank">INFINITE ENDING </a>Advertisement<br> 1:33 Group discussion of Coming Sun.Mon.Tues. by Don DeLillo, including the rules of keeping the story anonymous for group members, the gimmick, Cory looking stuff up, explaining the game, F. Scott Fitzgerald, perfect length, style, time period, setting, Cloud Atlas, well-established tropes, meta-comments, plot summary, irony, comedy, comment on story itself, wall of words, evoking a time and a place, the Western world, Vietnam, 1960s, twirling, illegal activities, knowing the characters, demographics, minority experiences, insider knowledge, staccato sentences, Hemingway, meaningless details, the basic rules of stories, anti-stories, cleverness, postmodernism, picking up the baton, relay races, Spin The Bottle, Vladimir Nabokov, risky writers, Spring in Fialta, details, Lacan, theme, Ethiopians, Asia, Europe, Africa, details analysis, not latching onto any details, Junot Diaz, the fallacy of story as a way to gain meaning in our lives, the guessing game, Donald Barthelme, ee cummings, New Yorker stories, George Saunders, Bob Dylan, “Frank Fucking Marcopolos,” Robert Coover, Richard Ford, Don DeLillo as the author of the story, Don Rickles, fame and luck, David Foster Wallace, arguing over who selects the story, the hairbrush story, and literary shenanigans. <br> 43:50 Group discussion about Philosophy, including Zizek, Martin Buber, Thomas Aquinas, religious ways of knowing, Immanuel Kant, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Saint Anselm, art, science, philosophy, relationship with the divine, atheism, Freud, Texas State University, the baby Jesus, enlightened atheists, miracles, gratefulness, C.S. Lewis, tradition, pre-enlightenment, religion as guesswork, Ayn Rand, epistomology, empiricism, philosophy’s role in real writing, answering Ayn Rand’s four questions, epistomology, metaphysics, morality, politics, reason, Ambrose Bierce, experience, Hegel, cultural specifics, Buddhism, students of philosophy, Duck Dynasty, professional philosophers, Socrates, Fight Club, Nietzsche, believing in absolutes, absolute truths, the agora, the debate itself being the point, scientific theory, House M.D., the discussion that never ends, the Jewish faith, Rabbis, how many angels fit on the head of a pin, streams of religious thought, the philosophical orientation of our main characters, The Atheist, religion as obesity, everyone worships, worshipping anti-worshipping, over-thinking thinking, being too rational, going to the gym too much, drinking too much, non-commercialized art, quilt-making, bad art, the rules of art, and the rules for everything, quilting, Jackson Pollack, DeLillo’s technique, Andy Warhol, the urinal, and rules for religions.<br> 1:19:00 <a href="http://amzn.to/1RVyhvf" target="_blank">INFINITE ENDING</a> Promotion<br> Here is a clip from the show in handy video format:<br> <br>