May be an allusion to Mase's You Ain't So Smart, but straightforwardly a reference to the ending of "Good Country People."
Opening Quote
The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you're not careful, it's too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.
David and Tamler return to the Southern Gothic well and talk about Flannery O'Connor's short story masterpiece "Good Country People." A nihilistic atheist philosophy PhD named Joy or Helga (depending on who you ask) lives with her mother and some tenants on a farm in rural Georgia. One day 19-year-old aw-shucksy Bible salesman comes to the house and shakes up her philosophical convictions. Plus a case study of a sexsomniac who masturbates (and more) in his sleep.
Self-maturbation is a redundant term, since masturbation implies an act done to oneself. This may be a product of overly cautious writing or it may be the author's intent to imply the existence of masturbation not done to oneself.
Mutual Masturbation
There are at least three candidate meanings.
The Symmetrical Parallel Reading — two people each masturbating themselves, simultaneously, side by side. Grammatically the most literal: mutual as "each doing it to themselves, together."
The Reciprocal Reading — each person manually stimulating the other. This is probably the dominant colloquial usage.
The Metaphorical Reading — often used figuratively (empty flattery, etc.)
The Incoherence Argument and the Eliminativist Conclusion
The conversation gestures at but doesn't fully articulate: if "mutual masturbation" (in the reciprocal sense) is a coherent and accepted usage, then "masturbation" does not inherently require that the agent and patient be the same person. But if that's true, then "masturbation" just means manual genital stimulation by hand — and the "self" component is not definitionally built in.
Now you can run a reductio: if masturbation doesn't require self-application, and if "mutual masturbation" is just two people doing it to each other, then "masturbation" collapses into a subset of ordinary sexual touch, and the category loses its distinctiveness. You could argue from this that masturbation as a standalone coherent category doesn't really exist — it's either redundantly self-specified, or it bleeds into general manual stimulation.
Interlude
Main Segment
Transcript
Eliza Sommers(disclaimer)
"Very Bad Wizards" is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
Norm Macdonald
The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you're not careful, it's too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.
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Tamler Sommers
Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers. Dave, the listener response to last episode's tier ranking of academic fields was fierce. Did you know chemists were that sensitive?
Dave Pizarro
I did not. I didn't think they had emotions, to be honest.
Tamler Sommers
I know, right? Otherwise they wouldn't have gone into chemistry.
Dave Pizarro
No, I know. Like, should we just say, like, this— it was gonna be an intro. Like, it really does seem like people took us a little more seriously than we intended. Like, this was not, like, our, our definitive value, uh, judgments.
Tamler Sommers
If we do a slight peek behind the curtain. That discussion took an hour, and then the subsequent discussion, which will appear on this episode, uh, took a very long time as well on Flannery O'Connor's, uh, Good Country People, which everyone will hear. And I think it was a good discussion.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, but a long one. And, and so we just have like to sleep, you know, we have to sleep. That's true.
Tamler Sommers
But yes, they— we heard almost exclusively from chemists and the stray economist.
Dave Pizarro
But, and I heard from my philosophy of feminism teaching wife, as I predicted, that ranking gender studies so low is a personal insult to her. And then, and then I said, no, no, no, no, but you're a philosopher of feminism. And she was like, oh, okay, okay, maybe I'll—
Tamler Sommers
We made that distinction, you know.
Dave Pizarro
[CROSSTALK] It's not like she listened. It's not like she listened.
Tamler Sommers
She was just sobbing a tear. Yeah. —puts my job at risk, my family at risk.
Dave Pizarro
[CROSSTALK] Of all the shit we've said.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, it was surprising because I really think even though it carried over into a main episode, like, I felt like we were pretty upfront about our ignorance, like—
Dave Pizarro
And nobody wants to hear— nobody wants to hear that we rank their entire life a C. But we also made it just about majors too. Like, we were real measured.
Tamler Sommers
It's weird because it would never have occurred to me, like, if I was a fan of a podcast and they put philosophy low, like, to get really upset by that. So maybe it's your issues, listeners, and not our issues.
Dave Pizarro
6.022 times 10 to the 23rd.
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] piece of paper in the— to see if it's acidic or basic.
Dave Pizarro
We love chemistry.
Tamler Sommers
As many listeners pointed out, chemistry is where you get the drugs, and we all— we appreciate the drugs, and we appreciate the medicine, although, you know, some of it. So, uh, so yeah, we're gonna talk about a really great story, and I hope our discussion did it justice. Flannery O'Connor's Good Country People. I fucking love that story. I thought it was— it kind of blew me away, and in a specific way where, like, I thought it was great while I was reading it, and then the ending just also, like, uh, gobsmacked me. So yeah, um, but first, uh, we're gonna lay off the chemistry people and talk, uh, shit about the sexsomniax. Sex— sexsomnia. This is a paper that you— you know, I found, uh—
Dave Pizarro
Well, it was— it was our, our good friend Neuroskeptic on Blue Yes.
Tamler Sommers
And God bless that man, whoever he is, or woman, or—
Dave Pizarro
I think he's outed as a man.
Tamler Sommers
Left-hand sleep masturbation in a right-handed male patient with sexsomnia. Yeah, so this is, yeah, how would you describe it?
Dave Pizarro
This is the twist.
Tamler Sommers
This feels like a Law Order: SVU. Like, how do you know he always masturbates with his right hand when awake? You know?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Columbo's great, by the way. Like, that's one of the most fun things you can do is just plop yourself down and watch a Columbo.
Dave Pizarro
I only ever watched like a few episodes. It was like slightly before like, my maturity levels.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah.
Dave Pizarro
So, all right. So they describe this man in all of like the technical ways, like his weight and his sleepiness. Um, and they say that, look, like nothing seemed wrong. He didn't have to pee during the night, which is, you know, like a problem for some men. Um, he had some snoring, but for the last 6 years his partners would report nocturnal sexual behaviors. And yeah, the not funny part is that one of them was his girlfriend who reported to the police that she had been sexually assaulted. He sleep-talked, but he didn't sleepwalk. He didn't have sleep terrors. And so the thing that he has is basically not during dream sleep, so not during rapid eye movement sleep when we dream. Before that, we go through 3 stages of sleep before getting to REM. So stage 1, 2, and 3. During stages 2 and 3, he would have what's called these arousal— But some people, I've heard of this before, do these sexual behaviors when they have these wakeups. Um, you know, nobody donates to charity or anything when they have these. Nobody's like helping old ladies across the street. Like, they're not like engaging in any other like nice behaviors, you know? It's just like raping.
Tamler Sommers
They're not like going on to like, uh, 1-800-Flowers to like— exactly.
Dave Pizarro
It says something about you. Men are scum, you know? Yeah. [CROSSTALK] Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
I mean, I'm not saying he's lying about this, but I'm saying it's weird that they make such a big deal big deal about that.
Dave Pizarro
So, you know, maybe he's like, you know, like, just faking it completely to get out of the rap.
Tamler Sommers
Well, no, even if he's not, like, I just think, like, that's a normal thing. I don't want to get into any personal confessions, but I don't know. Like, I thought kind of—
Dave Pizarro
He's not even really masturbating.
Tamler Sommers
He's just kind of putting his hand in his pants, which we all do. It's just like the Al Bundy move, it looks like.
Dave Pizarro
But you know, like he might be He might be jostling it a little bit. Like, I can't— it's kind of dark.
Tamler Sommers
Can't tell. But he's not like jacking it.
Dave Pizarro
No, no, no, he's not. He didn't have to. It's all underneath the clothing. He's only like getting to second base with himself, basically.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. Which I feel like I'll do like during seminar, you know? [LAUGHTER] I hope. [LAUGHTER] No, but you know what I mean? Like, not during seminar, but if I'm watching a movie and like I have like a cover or whatever, you know, I mean, you put it in there just like, just for warmth and comfort.
Dave Pizarro
Fuck. You know, like I have like an infant child, man-child, and it's a behavior that starts very early.
Tamler Sommers
Let's just say.
Dave Pizarro
[CROSSTALK] So yeah, like they tried to treat this with gabapentin. They put him on Paxil. The Paxil apparently helped. And they report that the girlfriend dropped the charge, which seems like a little, like maybe not the scientific part of this case study. Also, they talk about self-masturbation in a way that's very confusing to me. Like, I would think that if you say masturbation, it's understood that you mean self, right?
Tamler Sommers
Like, this is actually a conceptual analysis question, but like, can there be like, uh, other masturbation?
Dave Pizarro
Or is— I feel like we could talk— yeah, we could talk about this for a lot, because when people talk about mutual masturbation— yeah, I think they mean fondling each other, they don't mean I'm sitting there jerking off and she's sitting there jerking off, right?
Tamler Sommers
Uh, okay, I'm not sure actually, because I think like, well, mutual masturbation is often used metaphorically, and then it does mean you were kind of jerking each other off. But I feel like in a— if I was gonna hear that in a porn or sexual context It would be— well, it would be two women masturbating.
Dave Pizarro
[LAUGHTER] Side by side.
Tamler Sommers
Yes.
Dave Pizarro
simultaneous masturbation.
Tamler Sommers
But do you remember in the article, like, if you— you could have like a card.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. If you have like a whatever.
Tamler Sommers
That means someone can just like reach around and like—
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Right. But then, so then I think mutual masturbation. So, oh, you're saying it's impossible. It's like incoherent.
Dave Pizarro
Or, or Yeah, I think people mean it in the incoherent way, because I feel like if they were talking about side by side, they would say it.
Tamler Sommers
That's right.
Dave Pizarro
That's right. All right, so you don't buy the, like, what this says about free will. Well, no, what—
Tamler Sommers
here's what I'm not sure I buy is the story. Like, so, like, what's your credence? What's your priors? What's— you know, you run it through your Bayesian formula. [CROSSTALK] Like, that this guy isn't— like, he got handsy with his girlfriend and then just kind of invented all this.
Dave Pizarro
I assumed this is a fake journal where you can pay to have, like, exonerating journal— scientific journal articles written about you.
Tamler Sommers
So you don't know about sleep medicine, this journal?
Dave Pizarro
I don't know about it. I'm sure it's fine. And I have heard of parasomnias. Like, I have— I mean, of sexsomnias. Like, that's true. This all just seems like— like, the left-handed thing just seemed too convenient to me. I mean, I believe if these are real scientists, like, they do— they did observe him, and they did record the wave function, like, while he's sleeping. And, you know, that's how we determine what stage of sleep sleep you're in, like, which waves. And he does appear to be touching himself during these, you know, stage 2 and 3 of sleep. So—
Tamler Sommers
But I just feel like you could take a video of me while I'm sleeping, and I might do what this guy's doing in the video. And like—
Dave Pizarro
Like, during these stages of sleep, you shouldn't be moving with, like, any kind of —like volition or whatever.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. Unless you have sexomnia.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Uh, I like that they tried a lot of different drugs too.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, like, he obviously had sleep apnea too, so you can— you don't want to give— it's like, apparently the gabapentin made the sleep apnea worse.
Tamler Sommers
So, uh, yeah, yeah, that sucks for the girlfriend also.
Dave Pizarro
Absolute worst combination. Like, I—
Tamler Sommers
is this a real thing? I guess, like, what's your credence, like, that everything is straight here? Like, gun to your head.
Dave Pizarro
What I don't know is, because, like, even if this is real, what we don't know is whether the assault is an instance of this, you know, because you can imagine he really has this, right? And yet—
Tamler Sommers
oh, the fucker. Yeah, like, he's just like, oh, I can just— is that what you think? If you had to guess?
Dave Pizarro
No, I'm inclined to believe it all, um, oh, but really only because I've heard of people attempting, like, and being— doing sexual assault while they were actually sleeping. But then, then again, it's not like I have a lot of evidence for that stuff. It's just what sleep researchers have said.
Tamler Sommers
Like, you know, they have typically more tolerance for sexually problematic behavior. I don't know.
Dave Pizarro
God, you guys should cut so much out of this.
Tamler Sommers
I don't know, there's something about this that strikes me as weird. I guess it's a real journal though, like given that they're from the Sorbonne, if that's real. Like, I wasn't sure if this was like a James Lindsay thing, like, or—
Dave Pizarro
I mean, it is, it is dated May 2026. So make of that what you—
Tamler Sommers
I, I, I, I'm say, gun to my head, there's something fucked about this. I don't know what. Well, literally.
Dave Pizarro
Um, sexsomnia behaviors, by the way, I wanted to say this before, include— this is the first, uh, the second sentence— include self-oriented behavior such as masturbation, spontaneous orgasm, sexual vocalization, genital touching, and coital-like pelvic movements.
Tamler Sommers
Like, in my day they called that wet dreams.
Dave Pizarro
But if you're— if you're thrusting your pelvis while you do it—
Tamler Sommers
yeah, well, nobody's like— yeah, nobody saw us when we were doing it. We were 12 years old.
Dave Pizarro
Those were the days.
Tamler Sommers
But I like when they— here we present a case of a right-handed man who masturbated in his using his left hand, as if that's just, like, unheard of. [LAUGHTER] That's the thing that raises the red flag for me.
Dave Pizarro
I mean, this is why I was interested in this especially, because it raises questions of identity, you know? And volition. This is— who is this man? Is he right-handed or is he left-handed? Is this— what does this say of his character when non-volitionally he's jerking off with his left hand?
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] Yeah, so—
Dave Pizarro
Well, we will—
Tamler Sommers
we will come back to this, I think. This is part 1 of a long series of sexomnia segments. All right, any last— any last things to say about this?
Dave Pizarro
No, other than maybe we've just given everybody an out for very bad behavior. Don't do—
Tamler Sommers
I don't think this is gonna work, like, especially not now.
Dave Pizarro
But, you know, I'm glad to know that men find every occasion to masturbate that they possibly can— buses, ballparks, and the middle of sleep.
Tamler Sommers
All right, we'll be right back to talk about Good Country People by Flannery [MUSIC] —this is kind of the capstone of your career. What is this short film about?
Eliza Sommers
The truck slams shut, they're in darkness, and it starts moving forward. We meet these two small-time crooks who think that they just robbed these people and stole a truck, but actually it's now a kidnapping, and Janie and Mason have to find a way to escape.
Tamler Sommers
because you're too scared?
Eliza Sommers
Yes, I do. And one of the great things about this whole production process is it's really helped me work through that trauma, so.
Tamler Sommers
link in the show notes for anyone who might want to do that. Any final words, Lye?
Eliza Sommers
No, it's not time for that.
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] And now let's get to Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People." So I trusted her, and you wanted to do it. I don't think you had read it by then either, right?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
—fantastic story. I agree with my daughter on this one. It's funny because, like, I read it for the first time this morning and was totally enjoying it. You know, it's kind of a satire at first of Flannery O'Connor country, like rural South. I guess it's Georgia, which didn't even come across to me. [CROSSTALK] Then we hear about this traveling salesman who is a 19-year-old kid named Manly Pointer, who is a Bible salesman, and he comes to their house. And at first they're trying to get rid of him, but in the end he stays for dinner and surprisingly arranges a date with Joy, or Helga, the next day. So they go out on a date and— and then it takes a turn that honestly, I don't know if this is true of you, I did not see coming at all, and I was kind of a little bit floored by it. Not like I had to put the book down or anything, but I was like, "Oh! Oh, okay." But before we talk about that, I do want to say, read the story, because part of the power of the story to me the first time was just really not expecting it to go where it goes. Like, there's not some M. Night Shyamalan twist, but it just went somewhere that I didn't expect, and that really makes the story extremely powerful. That's how I felt. What did you think?
Dave Pizarro
For some reason, that has made me keep thinking about it, because like you alluded to this, but like, what is Mrs. Freeman?
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, what's the point?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Should we talk of generally speaking before we go through it in more detail about what your kind of general thematic thoughts are?
Dave Pizarro
just dying to talk about what these themes are.
Tamler Sommers
What do you think?
Dave Pizarro
That's right.
Tamler Sommers
And also kind of oversimplifies the world, cuts the world up into different categories. Trash or good country people.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
And without really having any idea, like, what those things are. And, you know, it is a house of clichés. Like, they— [CROSSTALK] Well, yeah.
Dave Pizarro
So I'll wait to hear your second interpretation, because I do also agree with you that it goes deeper. And I think that it is a story that has optimism at its core. But you have to dig— at least I have to dig through to find it.
Tamler Sommers
And at first I was like, wait, what? But there's a lot in there. So just to put that in your mind, that this is a retelling of Odysseus going to the Cyclops, And just to give a tiny bit of plausibility before— think of what the Cyclops is. Someone who says, "Oh, I don't believe in the gods. I do what I want. All that stuff is bullshit." And then somebody comes and somebody takes advantage of their disability.
Dave Pizarro
Maybe even a complicated man.
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] Maybe a complicated man. So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Dave Pizarro
But yeah. Like, very interesting. Of course, not told at all from the perspective of the complicated man.
Tamler Sommers
—villainous character. So yeah.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, disabled with one eye, you know?
Tamler Sommers
He even says at the end that one of the things that he's stolen is a glass eye.
Dave Pizarro
That's right. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, because the Vulcan shout-out is in, like, Holga herself.
Tamler Sommers
—Yeah, it does. All right, so you want to dive into it? Do you have any other kind of general thoughts?
Dave Pizarro
—in a way that I found was just a really effective way of giving us insight into each of those— the internal life of each of those.
Tamler Sommers
—is, I think, a part of that. I didn't track that, but I definitely thought of that.
Dave Pizarro
—as grace or salvation. But as I was reading, I was like, how much of the Christian stuff for you, having not been raised— like, it's so—
Tamler Sommers
I'm reading it and I'm like, "Oh yeah, okay, Jesus said that." Oh yeah, I probably caught like a fraction of it, so definitely point them out to me. It seems very Catholic to me, and maybe that's influenced by— I know that she was a Catholic.
Dave Pizarro
It's funny because, yeah, she was Catholic, She's writing about Protestants, so she's kind of infusing Catholic ideas, but it is interesting that she's not writing about Catholics.
Tamler Sommers
Is it a Catholic critique of Protestant Christians?
Dave Pizarro
That's a good question. I didn't read it as that. I felt it to be her exploring themes of salvation and grace just by using these characters.
Tamler Sommers
Never.
Dave Pizarro
And you get the feeling that there's gonna be a story about Mrs. Freeman. And it's not really. So it switches.
Tamler Sommers
The whole first paragraph is about her.
Dave Pizarro
Like, I get it. I get the— like, I know what she's talking about. I don't know how to say it, but—
Tamler Sommers
You can picture her right away.
Dave Pizarro
And then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no longer there in spirit.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah.
Dave Pizarro
So Mrs. Hopewell, we learn, has the 32-year-old daughter named Joy. And we learned that she hired Mrs. Freeman to work on her farm. That she's divorced also. Which I don't know if it means anything. Like, we never learned why or what the divorce was. But Mrs.
Tamler Sommers
Hopewell—
Dave Pizarro
like, in the South, in whatever this was, the '40s or something, that would be weird. Like, head of household, divorced woman.
Tamler Sommers
So maybe it wasn't weird.
Dave Pizarro
I don't know. Like, maybe this was common. Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Especially the 15-year-old. [CROSSTALK] Who's already in the family way.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. Like Hopewell, Freeman, Manly.
Tamler Sommers
A Manly pointer. So the 18-year-old has many admirers. The 15-year-old is already married and pregnant and throwing up constantly.
Dave Pizarro
She loves gossiping, getting into things. And yet she has some sort of third eye, maybe.
Tamler Sommers
Dude, yeah.
Dave Pizarro
And like you were saying— yeah, like you were saying, the clichéd Hagrid phrases that they use, where they have, like, entire— they string together, like, 3 of them into, like, an utterly meaningless sentence.
Tamler Sommers
This is what it is at first, you know, before you even know anything about joy being beyond her thing. You learn about the daughters. It's kind of interesting that the daughter is already pregnant at 15. And yes, she's married, but you get the sense that that was not necessarily the plan. And maybe it didn't happen before the pregnancy.
Dave Pizarro
Who is the farmer.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. Manly pointer.
Dave Pizarro
It's almost a dick joke.
Tamler Sommers
Mrs. Hopewell would tell people that Gleneaze and Caramel were two of the finest girls she knew. Mrs. Hopewell is— if she decides somebody is good country people, then they're good country people.
Dave Pizarro
—stick to her guns.
Tamler Sommers
Right.
Dave Pizarro
And then it's just like this sort of superiority, like, hidden by, like, superficial kindness. "That woman, we can't stand her. Like, we can't have another minute with her. She's, like, always getting into everything." And so she's like, "Okay." She's gonna make it her personal project to be the kind of person who can actually turn "Turn this weakness into a strength, and here's how she's going to do it. She's going to make her in charge of it. If she wants to get into everything, like, let me make her in charge of everything." And so she really thinks that she's the puppet master, able to control— like, there's a sense of superiority that she has over the Freemans, that she's not just being charitable and nice, she's being superior.
Tamler Sommers
Exactly.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, totally. It's She's like, "Well, yeah, on the one hand, they were good country people.
Tamler Sommers
On the other hand, nobody else—" [CROSSTALK] And yeah, and then you see how they kind of speak in clichés, and then you get introduced introduced to Joy.
Dave Pizarro
And her parents, like, spoiled her. Like, they let her get away with everything. They bought her everything. And I think she might have died in her middle age, but it was way later than anybody thought. But it ended up that they did not do the kinds of things that you— like the tough love that you need to give a child to develop their character. She had a really bad character. And so when I was reading about this, I was like, yeah, that's the same vibe. She feels so bad about what happened when she was 10 and that she's going to die that she never really raised her in the way that you would.
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] She probably does spoil her, certainly puts up with her in the same way with the Freemans. It's like, I am going to take this charity case, and in this case, my daughter, and I'm going to make their life fulfilling. Right.
Dave Pizarro
But she's so proud of her patience with people. Yeah. Yes. That's like her— she's like, yeah, that's one thing I'm awesome at. I'm really patient.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. And then she's also quite deluded about it because she really thought she kind of pulled it off until Joy went and changed her name legally from Joy. [CROSSTALK] —to Helga.
Dave Pizarro
Yes.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, that was the point.
Dave Pizarro
That's so emo.
Tamler Sommers
Exactly. She considered the name her personal affair. She had arrived at it first purely on the basis of its ugly sound, and then the full genius of its fitness had struck her. She had a vision of the name working like the ugly, sweating Vulcan— that's Hephaestus— stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the goddess, who's Aphrodite, had to come when called. She saw it as the name of her highest creative act. One of her major triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into joy, but the greater one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Helga.
Dave Pizarro
So she's saying that she's Hephaestus? Or Vulcan?
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, like a— what do you call that? Ironworks or whatever. And he famously in The Iliad creates Achilles' shield, which gets his own book in The Iliad. So he's also a creative person.
Dave Pizarro
So she's saying basically, like, with this name, she's turned her crippled self into, like, a creative— creative, powerful, like, God.
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] Or she's created like one of his creations, you know? Like—
Dave Pizarro
That's what I wasn't sure. Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Like, what is the metaphor? I don't know. And how do you, like— one of her major triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy. Like, I don't totally understand what's being said there.
Dave Pizarro
And then taking on the name Holga, once again, like, names have power. Like, the self-determination She's identified herself as something ugly. And the world is ugly, and life is ugly for her.
Tamler Sommers
She crafted her name.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. She's a blacksmith who crafted the name in the depths of the furnace with her crippled body. She made this name. And this name is maybe like the shield, is like her amulet. This is her identity and her protection.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. And then there's an interesting touch where Helga is very, like, proud of having done that, proud of having changed the name. But then— and I don't know what to make of this— Mrs. Freeman started to call her Helga, we learn. And that was— she didn't like that.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, it's weird. And only when Mrs. Hopewell isn't around, because she wouldn't put up with it.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, which is all extra kind of eerie, you might think. Yeah. But it's interesting that that's something that actually gets to her. Like, she's figured out how to build enough of an arm humor around herself to deal with her mother and all her silliness. But there's something about Mrs. Freeman that just kind of picks at something, like picks at a scab that she thought had already healed, you know, pierces the shield.
Dave Pizarro
That's like a source of frustration for her.
Tamler Sommers
people she can't have.
Dave Pizarro
I just don't know what is making her upset, because it's not the thing that seems to work on everybody else in my life.
Tamler Sommers
Right.
Dave Pizarro
We didn't say, by the way, Helga is described as a very sort of homely person. She's, you know, described as large —like, you take it, overweight— and very plain, and purposefully dresses herself in, like, bad clothes. She wore the same shitty outfit all the time.
Tamler Sommers
Yes, but also you get the sense that she could be pretty, at least from the way Miss Hopewell—
Dave Pizarro
[CROSSTALK] I mean, Mrs. Hopewell is hoping.
Tamler Sommers
Exactly, which happens later, as she does have her glasses taken down. The other weird thing about Mrs. Freeman, just before we move away from that— and now we're getting it imperceptibly from Holga's perspective here. And that's why I think it's using the name Holga, I think, is to signal that. But I didn't get it. But it says, "Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman. And then one day, Holga realized it was the artificial light." Mrs. Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children.
Dave Pizarro
I love the next sentence too: Of diseases, she preferred the lingering or incurable. Yeah, actually, and then right before that, when she's still— she's talking about Miss Freeman creeping her out, she says, however, Mrs. Freeman's relish for using the name only irritated her. It was as if Mrs. Freeman's beef —steely pointed eyes had penetrated far enough behind her face to reach some secret fact.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, this is what I was saying, where she's pierced the shield.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. And there is something about Mrs. Freeman focusing on her leg that's making Holga vulnerable in the same way that I think Manly is gonna pick up on the same thing.
Tamler Sommers
And in the way that she thought wasn't possible. And I think that's the— you know, that's a kind of her own delusion. She thinks she has steeled herself with her just honest way of reckoning with the nothingness of the universe from these kinds of things. And it's such a kind of plain and ordinary thing to be a little vulnerable about, the fact that you have an artificial leg. So you could see why that would really dig at her, you know?
Dave Pizarro
Like, it might actually be impossible for her to walk around without—
Tamler Sommers
There's something you said that I hadn't thought about.
Dave Pizarro
I was saying that Miss Hopewell prides herself on her patience, and you said she's sort of deluded herself. You know, the other way that it's obvious that she's deluding herself was when she's talking about how the Freemans are good country people because she's had plenty of experience with trash. And so she's hired 4 different people in the last 4 years, and they were trash, so she had to get rid of them. Now that I think about it, there is no guarantee that she won't eventually come to the same conclusion about the Freemans. This is like— [CROSSTALK] She might have thought at the beginning of each of those things that they were good country people.
Tamler Sommers
Right. So this is a cycle.
Dave Pizarro
And then she actually loses her patience.
Tamler Sommers
Had no idea to this day what brought that on. It's just so funny.
Dave Pizarro
It's so funny. And, you know, it made me look up what Malebranche thought. And there is like a little bit of irony here, because Malebranche was like deeply theistic. He thought that like God pervaded everything. And, you know, talking about Spinoza's rock, like that's kind of what he thought about every action was just God acting. It wasn't really you moving your leg. It's God moving through you, which is just opposed to, like, the metaphysics of joy explicitly.
Tamler Sommers
Right. You get the sense she's— and I'm not a Malebranche scholar, but I knew that he was theistic and a big believer, at least on paper. And I believe that he might have said, "We are not our own light," but probably, if I had to guess, saying it's because God is our light, you know?
Dave Pizarro
That's how actually I —Yeah, but it's like very ambiguous.
Tamler Sommers
The girl had taken a PhD in philosophy, and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a schoolteacher," or even, "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans.
Dave Pizarro
It's so funny that, like, you would boil down, like, the most significant choice of, like, your daughter's career to your ability to talk to other people in a sentence and describe it.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, no, totally.
Dave Pizarro
I was wondering— interesting how much of this was an explicit statement on the ability of graduate school to stunt emotional growth. Because I feel like you can extend your adolescence or your early 20hood very easily by going to grad school.
Tamler Sommers
It says that these words worked on Mrs. Hopewell like an evil cantation in gibberish.
Dave Pizarro
I love that.
Tamler Sommers
And this is Heidegger. But apparently, if she's seeing this as kind of a perfect description of the nihilistic condition that we all live in, I think, again, it is a misreading of Heidegger according to what I read, but I don't know. But it would be interesting if she's just misreading all of these figures that she takes herself to be the only person who can understand.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, I read it as just the interesting metaphysical point that what nothing is is outside of the bounds of the discipline of science that can only be concerned with what is. Like, the question of nothing is terrifying and certainly not something science is equipped to or would like to deal with.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's that line, "How can it be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm?" It might seem like methodologically it's difficult to deal with nothing because science is about the physical universe. But, like, why does it have to be a horror and a phantasm for science?
Dave Pizarro
It's hard to conceive of the absence of everything. It can induce true terror in me to think too long about why is there something rather than nothing.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. —like, that's a big question.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, and it is in a non-cognitive way an evil incantation in gibberish.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, you know the Jewish joke about that where someone goes up to this famous rabbi and says, Rabbi, why is there— I don't understand, why is there something rather than nothing? And the rabbi says, if there was nothing, you'd probably still be complaining. That's good. What's interesting, just structurally is we now are having this fully from Mrs. Hopewell's perspective, talking about Joy. And this is where we're first introduced to Joy, Helga, and the details about her life and the hunting accident.
Dave Pizarro
It was blown clean off, and she was never unconscious. So, like, that she had to deal with the pain, I think, is scarring to Mrs. Hopewell, and another reason why she's so sort of protective or babying her.
Tamler Sommers
Dude, I just thought too, that blown clear off is nothing.
Dave Pizarro
That wooden leg— [CROSSTALK] —is a Band-Aid on nothing.
Tamler Sommers
That's right. Yeah. So there is where first she had a leg, she has nothing.
Dave Pizarro
not human.
Tamler Sommers
goes farm to farm selling Bibles. He just seems like kind of a hapless young kid trying to sell Bibles, and Mrs. Hopewell tries to kind of get rid of him.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
As one would a Bible salesman. Yeah, you're totally right.
Dave Pizarro
I— and, like, I feel like my subconscious picked up on that attitude, but I hadn't thought explicitly. But that's totally right. It's a tolerance that borders into relativism.
Tamler Sommers
But instead of saying, "I'm just a caveman," he says, "I'm just a country boy, and I— like, I understand. You don't want to fool with country people like me." Which is the perfect thing to say to Mrs. Hoagland.
Dave Pizarro
Exactly. Manipulative. And you wonder in retrospect, like, is he just very good at manipulating? I think that's— he picked up on that she has this, like, savior syndrome to the good country people.
Tamler Sommers
So then we find out that he's Manly Pointer. Yeah, it could be a dick joke.
Dave Pizarro
[LAUGHTER] And he says he's from out of the country near Willowhobie. Not even from a place, just from near a place.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, which is— so, I mean, we could throw this out right now. Is this a satanic figure?
Dave Pizarro
—by his actions, which was kind of what we were looking at last time when it's like, yeah, he's bad, but like, through him—
Tamler Sommers
He definitely feels like a—
Dave Pizarro
chaotic god, like a trickster, but more malicious maybe than a trickster, like a bad trickster.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. Joy says, "Let's get rid of salt of the earth and let's eat." But no, she's hooked now, Mrs. Hopewell, and so invites him to dinner, and they have dinner.
Dave Pizarro
Right?
Tamler Sommers
12 tribes of Israel.
Dave Pizarro
12 tribes of Israel. Like, these are definitely numbers with meaning that he's throwing out.
Tamler Sommers
So weird.
Dave Pizarro
He's a chiropractor that's dating her daughter? Daughter. And the way he cured her stye is by, like, adjusting her neck.
Tamler Sommers
Because you've used—
Dave Pizarro
you got Merlot Pointy in your head.
Tamler Sommers
That's right. That's exactly what it is.
Dave Pizarro
Think about it Stick. Manly pointer.
Tamler Sommers
She was rubbing one out, dude.
Dave Pizarro
She was totally like—
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, she's thinking she might have seduced him. She's thinking, like, "True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind." Yeah, she thinks she's toying with an inferior person.
Dave Pizarro
She's like, this is this innocent Bible salesman whose worldview is so misguided. And she essentially, by saying she wants to seduce him and have him come face to face with his transgression, that he acted against his own beliefs, she wants to use that to throw cold water on his face, wake him up from his dogmatic slumber. She wants to shake him up.
Tamler Sommers
She puts the Vapex on her collar. That's so kind of sad, but I think that shows that, oh no, this isn't about educating a young man about the truth, about the reality.
Dave Pizarro
For sure.
Tamler Sommers
Because when they kiss a little later on, even though it had this surge of adrenaline, She's like, "Oh, this is no big deal anyway. I'm so glad I was right about that." No.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, it's like it's all just a unwillingness to be vulnerable, or like a fear.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, and opposed— opposed to herself, like, because it's not even opposed to anybody else at this point.
Dave Pizarro
And her defense mechanisms, like, clearly intellectualizing. But the other thing that, that I just thought of is that this is, like you said, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Both Joy, Holga, and her mom use other people as projects. Like, they view other people as their personal projects.
Tamler Sommers
And she says in that bombshell, barn. So it's like he makes it so that she suggests that they go to the barn.
Dave Pizarro
Totally. Yeah. Because, you know, she's enacting her plan to seduce him.
Tamler Sommers
Totally.
Dave Pizarro
And there is some foreshadowing/insight that the narration provides that presumably Holga notices, but doesn't really put it together, where it says, "Nothing seemed to destroy the boy's look of admiration." He gazed at her now as if the fantastic animal at the zoo had put its paw through the bars and given him a loving poke.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, that's her perspective.
Dave Pizarro
That's her perspective. But what she doesn't realize is, yeah, she is the animal that he's in control over.
Tamler Sommers
He's the zookeeper. and in fact, they are not at all. So they go up to the barn.
Dave Pizarro
Exactly.
Tamler Sommers
[LAUGHTER] And he's just like, "You gotta say it.
Dave Pizarro
You gotta say it." Like, he's a sucker.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Pizarro
He says, "I don't care. I don't care about all you've done.
Tamler Sommers
I just want you to know if you love me or don't." And I—
Dave Pizarro
so I, on the second time, I just read it as like him insisting that she say that is again him sort of like manipulating the situation in such a way that she'll feel committed in some way to like going through with it.
Tamler Sommers
That hadn't even crossed my mind.
Dave Pizarro
I think you're right.
Tamler Sommers
That's true, but it's not him that's innocent. It's you.
Dave Pizarro
childish kind of thing, which is very different from the sort of lumbering, yelling, loud person that we've been told she is.
Tamler Sommers
The next line, "When after a minute she said in a hoarse, high voice, 'All right,' it was like surrendering to him completely. It was like losing her own life and finding it again miraculously in his. So very thing she thought she was going to do to him is happening to her right now there.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, flipped it.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, so now comes the twist. Even now, I wasn't expecting it. I thought there was something weird going on, but—
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, I thought, okay, he's just trying— now he's just trying to—
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] But then, so then he just kind of takes it off and he's like, you know, in the kind of boyish way, like, ooh, look, I can do it. I can put it back into the— it's like Legos. And then he takes out his— he opens up his kit case, and this is kind of funny, right? He has two Bibles. One of them is hollow, and in it is a whiskey, a pack of cards, and condoms. And the cards are like those, like, dirty cards. Yeah.
Dave Pizarro
That's right.
Tamler Sommers
It's great. And then she's like, "Aren't you just good country people?" [LAUGHTER] "Yeah, but it ain't held me back none. I'm as good as you any day of the week." And then she asks for her leg, She's like, "Nope." And then he says, and I think this is— it's almost a little bit on the nose where she's like, you know, yelling at him, "Give me my leg." And he says, "What's the matter with you all of a sudden? You just said a while ago you didn't believe in nothing. I thought you was some girl." I mean, yeah, like, we should back up. Like, what do you make of, like, what you said, "touch the truth about her"? What's the truth there?
Dave Pizarro
She gets to a real vulnerable place. And then he takes his leg, her leg, which is, again, her life, her identity, in a way, making her lose her life in a way that I think will help her actually find out who she is. Like, that act that he's doing, making her sacrifice herself in order to find herself, is what I think is going on.
Tamler Sommers
So that's the truth about her, is that—
Dave Pizarro
[CROSSTALK] That's what it's hard for me to put my finger on, because what is the truth? Because I think Mrs. Freeman has seen this truth too. That's what makes her so uncomfortable about Mrs. Freeman.
Tamler Sommers
Yes, right.
Dave Pizarro
And it's all about the leg. And what is it? Because it's just a stupid leg, but it is the thing that she has infused, like, all of what life means. Like, this absence, it's this nothingness that is represented by this artificial limb that's, like, patching up the nothingness. And it's like as if they're giving her the true sense of nothingness by taking it away, or by whatever it is. They— they both, the dumb, uneducated country folk, are aware aware very clearly of what she is.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah.
Dave Pizarro
Good. That desperation that she shows, like, when he takes it away—
Tamler Sommers
oh God, she's just—
Dave Pizarro
it's so, it's so visceral. Give me my leg! He pushed it farther away with his foot. Come on now, let's begin to have us a good time, he said coaxingly. We ain't got to know one another good yet. Give me my leg! she screamed and tried to lunge for it, but he pushed her down easily.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, you just said you didn't believe in nothing. Like, that's what's like— I think, yeah, if anything, is a little heavy-handed. It's, you know, maybe it's that. And then she says, "You're a Christian." She's so indignant. And then she tries to put it back into her categories. It's like, "Oh, of course, 'cause you're a Christian and you're a hypocrite." And you say one thing, you preach one thing and do another. And I love his response here. He says— and he's kind of actually pissed. He's like, "I hope you don't think I believe in that crap. I may sell Bibles, but I know which end is up and I wasn't born yesterday." 'And I know where I am going.' That seems like a reference to the opening line, you know, like, about Mrs. Freeman. They are.
Dave Pizarro
And I think this is, you know, also just a commentary on, like, your condescending doesn't, like, allow you to see— —what a complicated man he is.
Tamler Sommers
She saw him grab the leg, and then she saw it for an instant slanted forlornly inside of the suitcase with the Bible at either side of it. That's why he brought it, you know, like the—
Dave Pizarro
Yep, he brought that big case.
Tamler Sommers
Totally.
Dave Pizarro
But also, to get back to the Odysseus, like, yelling, talking shit as he's leaving the Cyclops and saying, "You know, I'm not no Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
You thought you could eat my men and do the thing. Yeah, no. Yeah. What he doesn't do is give his real name. He doesn't give his real name.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. He learned—
Tamler Sommers
he learned from the Odyssey. He learned from the Odyssey.
Dave Pizarro
So I remember in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction that glows, that, you know, it's just the MacGuffin. I remember early on people would have these theories about what was in the briefcase. And one of the theories was was that it was Marcellus Wallace's soul, and that's why he was so interested in getting it back. And they said, like, yeah, the Band-Aid that he has in the back of his neck is like where they—
Tamler Sommers
[CROSSTALK] They took out his soul.
Dave Pizarro
—removed his soul. Yeah. This strikes me as like him, like an evil, like whatever, Satan, demon, trickster, going around collecting souls, putting them in his briefcase. He got the glass eye, which is also, you know, like, the eye is the window to the soul. it's also an artificial appendage.
Tamler Sommers
Material, like not biology. It's not infused with spirit. It's just a— it's a marble, you know.
Dave Pizarro
It's a marble, and there's a hole when it's gone. And it's easy to believe that this was another person who thought that he was the naive one.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, totally.
Dave Pizarro
And I think this is just like the story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," when at the very end, you could argue that there's a moment of grace given, purely as a result of this horrible man's actions, right before he murders Grandma. She sort of, like, has this moment where she transcends what she was before. And here, I'm again struck by the— you got to lose your life before you find—
Tamler Sommers
Yeah. To die before you can rise again.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah.
Tamler Sommers
Mrs. Hopewell, in very Mrs. Hopewell fashion, says, "He was so simple, but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that Then she returned her attention to the evil-smelling—
Dave Pizarro
all one word— evil-smelling onion shoot she was lifting from the ground. "Some can't be that simple," she said. "I know I never could." It really is—
Tamler Sommers
they are two peas in a pod, Mrs. Hopewell and Holga. Like, they just don't get it, right? And Mrs. Freeman knows that's not right, you know?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, she saw that there was something there. And I wonder if Mrs. Freeman got a sense that something was going to happen like this, that this kid was actually not who he it seemed that he had the power of doing something bad to Holga, or at least doing something that she wouldn't expect. And maybe Mrs. Freeman sees that it's good for her. Maybe she sees that she will be freed.
Tamler Sommers
She will be a free man when— [CROSSTALK] After this, maybe. Yeah. Maybe she summoned him, you know?
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. All right.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah.
Dave Pizarro
You know, there's this, like, in one of the, like, Paul's letters in the New Testament, he has this passage where he says that, like, God's grace covers our, like, saves us from our sins. And, like, because of our sins, grace was necessary. And then he says, "Shall we sin that grace abound?" And his conclusion is no. Don't think that you should do bad things so that God's grace might infuse the world, because that would be like a misuse. But in both of the stories that we read of Flannery O'Connor, I feel like grace just came from— [CROSSTALK] Yeah, confronting evil.
Tamler Sommers
Yes.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah. And that's the only way that it could have happened to these people. People. Like, if these people were just surrounded by the good people, maybe the ones that conformed to their categories or whatever, or— or, um, they had figured out they could predict, it just wouldn't happen. They need to be existentially rocked to their core by the face of badness.
Tamler Sommers
Is to be confronted with this and to be be so thoroughly exposed and kind of undressed, basically, and literally, and, uh, in a way. So yeah, what a story. It's like even like greater just thinking about it. I mean, what a genius. I know, I know.
Dave Pizarro
Yeah, if her other stories are even close to these two, uh, we should just do that only. She's, she's in my like fucking Mount Rushmore of short story writers.
Tamler Sommers
Yeah, yeah. Oh, just, just great. All right, we should wrap up. Any final words? We should send the Grace Abound Yeah, we should see—
