What's The Meaning Of Life, Anyway?
Astrophysics, True Detective, and This Is Water
A philosopher, a novelist, and a mathematician walk into a bar…
Well, they don’t actually walk into a bar. They walk up to a hatch, where they’re handed fresh, tasty, takeaway pints. Then, suddenly, an argument erupts. The philosopher wants to talk about the spiritual experience of waiting for the drinks. The novelist wants to discuss a potential TV series, where the bar is a hangout for serial killers. And the mathematician wants to explore about the 196,883 dimensions in which humans might, one day, consume takeaway pints.
Imagining that debate and writing this newsletter reminds me of something I consider frequently: The Dinner Party Question. If you could pick five guests to dine with, living or dead, who would they be?
Do you go for dinner with your heroes of today, or people you admire from the annals of history? Would you grill them at length, or engage in a debate? What about the atmosphere at the dinner - do you go for ambiance or attrition, chaos or cohesion?
Similarly, I find myself reflecting on that old Jim Rohn idea: “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. Conventionally, of course, these might be your friends, family, loved ones, co-workers, whatever.
But what about the minds you spend time with? If, instead of choosing five people to invite to dinner, you had to choose five people and try to truly understand their ideas and their thought processes? If you had to consume all of the content they have published - all their writing, art, interviews, TV appearances, podcasts, etc. - until you have a comprehensive understanding of their worldview, their creative process, their strategies for success and their secrets for happiness.
Who would those five people be?
Let me know if you enjoy the recs below, and if you know someone that would enjoy a few longform reading recs to alleviate the pandemic boredom, feel free to forward this mail.
Recommendations will be hyperlinked and in bold, and are listed at the end.
‘The Big Scary Ceremony’
David Foster Wallace was both a publishing phenomenon and a polarising figure in American literature, writing numerous short stories, essays, and three novels. His second novel, the 1,079 page tome Infinite Jest, was included in TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His third major work, The Pale King, was published after Wallace’s untimely death in 2008 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Wallace was also a university professor, and delivered one of the greatest commencement speeches ever written to the students of Kenyon College in 2005. This Is Water is a philosophical exploration of empathy, loneliness, and the true value of an education. It is also the only time that the extremely shy author, just 43 at the time, publicly outlined his outlook of life, referring to the commencement exclusively as ‘the big scary ceremony’ before he took the stage. I would highly recommend reading it here - there is also an audio version for those who would prefer to listen.
“But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider.”
Before True Detective: Two Great Short Stories
Ten years before he wrote the best show on television - the HBO smash hit True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson - Nic Pizzolatto was an ambitious young MFA student at the University of Arkansas.
One week, when Nic was obviously feeling pretty good about his output, he submitted two short stories to The Atlantic. Both had themes that would become trademarks of Pizzolatto’s work - brooding, philosophical protagonists, tainted landscapes, and a sparse sense of mystery. If you would like to take a break from your own head and dive into the mind of someone else, I would highly recommend reading both stories here - “Ghost-Birds” and “Between Here and the Yellow Sea”
What Do Astrophysicists Talk About At Lunch?
I did not think I would learn much from reading a random obituary about a mathematician I’d never heard of. I was incredibly, magnificently wrong.
Freeman Dyson was “one of a kind, a polymath with a kaleidoscopic line of inquiry,” who made groundbreaking discoveries about the interaction of light and matter and was considered for a Nobel Prize. However, above all else, he was a man that loved a good conversation during lunch - whether the topic was quantum electrodynamics, world history, or the time he was mistaken for a certain famous vacuum cleaner inventor.
“Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs,” he wrote. “Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time. I happen to be a frog, but many of my best friends are birds.”
His obituary revisited some of these discussions, after Dyson passed early last year at the age of 96. It might broaden your mind, spark thoughts about the greater designs of the universe, or maybe just give you something to chat about during your next meal.
Poem: ‘On Living’ by Nazim Hikmet
What does it mean to ‘feel truly alive’?
After four months in lockdown, I’m definitely not the authority on that. If you want to ‘feel truly defeated and sorta hungry’ or ‘feel truly exhausted no matter how much sleep you get’, I’m your guy. HOWEVER, if you’re looking for a better philosophy on existence, you could do worse than Nazim Hikmet, the ‘romantic revolutionary’ whose poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages. In ‘On Living’, composed from a Turkish prison cell, he writes with a droll elusiveness, asking us to consider living as though we will never die.
That’s all for April - let me know if you enjoyed the recs (you can tap the ‘like’ button, reply to this or comment below) and if you know someone who would enjoy, just forward this mail - it’s the best way for this newsletter to grow.
Links: ‘This Is Water’, ‘Ghost Birds’, ‘Between Here And The Yellow Sea’, Freeman Dyson obituary, ‘On Living’
Lovin this man. Keep up the great work
Quality content as ever