When Do Authors Transition into Legends?

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hello, hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory. [00:00:10] Speaker B: And I'm your host, Michael. [00:00:11] Speaker A: And we're here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is. This episode is about literary legends, when authors become myths themselves. And speaking of myths, make sure you check out MallorySadventures.com where we highlight our favorite pieces of folklore and mythology and watch Weird World Adventures on Amazon Prime. And Roku. Season two will be dropping any day. As soon as the gods of distribution decide it's time, press that button. It's out of our hands now, but it will be available any day. And when it does, you'll be able to find some of our favorite myths and legends in fun video format on Amazon. I'm definitely fine right now. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah, you've recorded too many of these in a row. [00:01:03] Speaker A: I have. Okay, here's a question for you. When does a person stop being a person and start being a legend? [00:01:13] Speaker B: Is this like the man hero, legend, myth progression? Is that what you're asking me? [00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Or like the chicken and the egg. I'm just kidding. [00:01:24] Speaker B: I think that's a different thing. Although I have an opinion on that, too. Okay. [00:01:31] Speaker A: So [00:01:34] Speaker B: you can be a normal person, and then I think, obviously there's people that are heroes in their own lifetime. And then I think rarely, you can become legendary and you're, like, living legend. Right. You can become legendary in your own lifetime. Rarely. [00:01:50] Speaker A: I think it's rarely. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Most legends become legends well after they die. [00:01:55] Speaker B: Yeah. But I mean, living, like there's a term. Yeah. Anyways. And then I think myth is after. [00:02:01] Speaker A: Yes. [00:02:01] Speaker B: I don't think you can be a living myth. [00:02:04] Speaker A: That's fair. Well, you know, I had a textbook. I'll have to find the breakdown of this. That really did it. Well, like, what was considered folklore, verse myth. Verse legend. They actually had, like, very particular breakdowns for it. But this is like, when does a person stop being a person and start being a legend? Like, what happens that makes them move past it? [00:02:26] Speaker B: Move past? Move past person status. [00:02:28] Speaker A: Person status and become legend status. Like, I guess when Merlin. [00:02:35] Speaker B: When their antics takes on a life of its own and gets retold in popular culture. [00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Like culture, like, adapts them and they become more than who they were. [00:02:46] Speaker B: Maybe when they, like, kind of lose control to some degree of their own narrative. Right. [00:02:50] Speaker A: I like that. [00:02:51] Speaker B: When society has just, you know, is now just creating the stories around the legends around the person. [00:02:58] Speaker A: I like that. I like that. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Which I guess is why in my. In my Definitions of those things. It's very uncommon for someone to be a living legend. Not impossible, but uncommon. Because if they're still around, they're there to be like, I didn't. I didn't do that. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Once they're gone, just there's no one [00:03:20] Speaker A: to consider the narrative. [00:03:22] Speaker B: Make some BS up. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I think writers occupy this strange space in our cultural imagination. They create fictional worlds, but they themselves become fictionalized after they die. So a lot of times it is after they die. Right. Their real lives get embedded, embroidered with. Their personalities get exaggerated into caricatures, and the places they live get transformed into shrines. And somehow it's just this otherworldly thing now instead of being a human being. [00:03:49] Speaker B: Sure. Not just writers, though. [00:03:50] Speaker A: No, it's people, too. Like, we've done podcasts early on on Merlin, how it was probably a real person, and then through the centuries, it becomes this mythological being. [00:04:00] Speaker B: Merlin's an interesting one. And I won't be. I won't claim any expertise. I just. I like Arthurian lore, but I don't have any specific Merlin detailed knowledge. But my gestalt of that stuff is he probably was multiple. Real people. [00:04:14] Speaker A: Yes. There's two people they think were merged. [00:04:16] Speaker B: It's probably just a bunch of people that. Stories merged over time. I mean, this is my opinion on Jesus. There probably was a Jesus. There's probably a bunch of Jesuses or people, you know, that those legends get amalgamated over hundreds of years. Especially. Especially kind of prehistory or early history where how many books were there? Right. It's mostly oral tradition. Oral storytelling. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:42] Speaker B: And I mean, good luck getting the story right when it's being orally passed down. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:04:49] Speaker B: For 200 years. Hundreds of years. I mean, I can't remember what I watched on Netflix last night. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Right. I mean, Arthur Crowley's another one. Who's the philosopher? Nicholas Flamel is another one. He was a real person. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of them. And I think a good one to bring up here, since we live in Richmond, Virginia, is Edgar Allan Poe. [00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good one. [00:05:10] Speaker A: He's a good one. You can't walk 10ft here without encountering Edgar Allan Poe. There's the Poe Museum. There is the old Stone House. That's. It's. The Poe Museum is in which he never actually lived in, but it's the oldest building in Richmond, so it's pretty cool. There's the Edgar Allan Poe statue on Capitol Square. There's Poe themed bars. There's Poe ghost tours. There's Linden Row Inn, where he used to meet with his lover. [00:05:37] Speaker B: His footprint is the lover that. He used the same poem. He used the same love poem on a bunch of women. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Right? He used Annabel Lee on a bunch of women. On a bunch of. Elmyra was the girl, his young lover, that he used to meet with. And they were engaged. And she went off to, like, to school, Right? And he went off to school, and he would send her love letters. And her father was actually intercepting and destroying the letters. So she thought he moved on and forgot about her. And then he came back like, we're gonna get married. And she had moved on and married someone else because she thought he forgot him. Yeah. Wasn't getting the letter, so that was sad. And then they actually married at the end of his life. Like, they. They. She was divorced or not divorced. I think her husband died widowed. She was widowed, he was widowed multiple times. They came back together, they were engaged, and he died, like, a few days before their wedding. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's no good. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah. No good at all. Tragic all over. So Richmond has claimed Poe as its favorite son, despite the fact that Poe was actually born in Boston. He Boston lived most of his literary career in Baltimore and Philadelphia and had a pretty complicated relationship with Richmond. But he did grow up in Richmond, so he has that. The Poe myth has completely overwhelmed Poe, the person. Okay, so who we see Poe as today? This dark, brooding, whatever. I mean, his life was filled with tragedy, but it's become this crazy, immortalized dark person. [00:07:14] Speaker B: I think of him as the south park episode, the emos. [00:07:18] Speaker A: The emos, yes. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Versus the vamp kids. [00:07:20] Speaker A: Yes. [00:07:21] Speaker B: And then there's Poe. [00:07:21] Speaker A: There's Poe. That's ghost Poe. [00:07:23] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:23] Speaker A: That's the most accurate ghost Poe, definitely. He was born in 1809 in Boston to actor parents. His father abandoned the family. His mother died when he was 2. And he was taken in by John and Francis Allen of Richmond. And taken in. Never actually adopted, but his Edgar Allen Poe is because the Allens had taken him in. [00:07:44] Speaker B: Do you know why they didn't just adopt him? [00:07:45] Speaker A: I don't know. I'm not sure. But they. They gave him a good life. And he actually had a sister who was taken in by another family. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Got it. [00:07:54] Speaker A: And she was in, like, a boarding school with all girls. And he would, like, send love letters to all the girls in her boarding school through her. And he got in a lot of trouble with always same love letter. Yeah, [00:08:06] Speaker B: he just sent the same thing to a bunch of girls in the same building. [00:08:10] Speaker A: He didn't think Through a lot of things. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Yikes. I mean, I reused my marriage vows, but wow. [00:08:16] Speaker A: Michael's no longer with us. So he lived with the Allens in Richmond from 3 to 18 and then went to the University of Virginia for a year before debt forced him to leave. Okay, okay. So his relationship with his foster father was terrible. John Allen was wealthy, but refused to help Poe financially, leading to constant conflict. And Poe left Richmond, enlisted in the army, got into West Point, got himself court martialed deliberately to escape West Point, and then spent the rest of his life scraping by as a writer and editor in various cities and actually really never made it when he was alive. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's probably true of a lot of famous writers, artists, right? [00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. It was always the next, this is going to be my big, like, there's so many letters at the Poe Museum. This is going to be my next big break. This is going to be it. And he was published, but he wasn't making money off of it. Not enough to survive. And he, I think, eventually wanted to start his own publication, thinking that would, like, do it. And he returned to Richmond several times, including during the last month of months of his life in 1849. He gave lectures. He got engaged to Elmira, his childhood sweetheart. And then he left for Baltimore, where he died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 40. [00:09:38] Speaker B: God, he was only 40. [00:09:39] Speaker A: He's only 40. Oh, no, that's your year, Michael. [00:09:43] Speaker B: He just turned 40. Ugh. [00:09:45] Speaker A: So that's not going to be. [00:09:45] Speaker B: I don't really know. [00:09:46] Speaker A: I'm gonna be going to Baltimore maybe. Don't do that. I've heard bad stories of things that happened. [00:09:50] Speaker B: Yeah, 40. Yeah. Okay. [00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah. They might not even ever know what would happen to you. [00:09:54] Speaker B: I think it's the closest medieval times, though. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Oh, is it? [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna have to risk it. [00:10:00] Speaker A: There's some medieval times there. Well, we have to go. We have to go to Medieval times. So we'll go together though. Okay. So that's real Poe. [00:10:08] Speaker B: Okay. [00:10:08] Speaker A: Mythical Poe is this tortured romantic genius who wandered Richmond streets at night, communing with ravens, writing morbid poetry in graveyards. He was tragically in love with women who all died at young ages, inspiring his gothic masterpieces. So mythical Poe was addicted to opium and alcohol, riding in fever, drug fueled creative frenzies. And he's a ghost who haunts Richmond's all the time. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Was he not actually addicted to opium? [00:10:38] Speaker A: I don't think he was. He was an alcoholic. Most of this is not true. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Alcohol just seems like it was. I Mean, it still is, but maybe even more so than ubiquitous. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. What else are you gonna do? Fair. [00:10:53] Speaker A: He did drink, but he probably wasn't an alcoholic in modern times because his constitution was so low that he could have one drink, maybe two, and would just be like obliterated. [00:11:05] Speaker B: But I don't think the definition is amount. I think it's. If it is having like the. The definition of a substance use disorder. I don't think it's like you're. You're not a heroin addict based on like the number of shots of heroin. It's. If you're. If it's. I'd have to look up the real. I mean, there is an actual. There's actual criteria. I think it's more to do with. If it is persistently negatively impacting your. Well, I think it's function, relationships, jobs, that kind of thing, and physical dependence on it. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:41] Speaker B: You know, if you have withdrawal. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:44] Speaker B: Symptoms. [00:11:45] Speaker A: I will say that that is a good point. Maybe. I don't know. I think we were. [00:11:49] Speaker B: People can drink vastly different quantities of alcohol. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Right. I mean, but he did not use opium. [00:11:56] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:57] Speaker B: That's just totally made up. [00:11:58] Speaker A: Totally made up. His wife Virginia died of tuberculosis, which was tragically common in the time. And not in a romantic way. It was made into this. So sad. [00:12:07] Speaker B: Romantic historical characters. Doc Holliday. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Died of tuberculosis. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Did he now? [00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Come on. Wyatt Earps guy. [00:12:16] Speaker A: I know, I know. [00:12:18] Speaker B: The gentleman gambler. [00:12:19] Speaker A: The gentleman gambler. [00:12:20] Speaker B: The OK Corral. Consumption. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Consumption. And while he wrote dark literature, his personal letters reveal someone with a sharp sense of humor who like cats and like to discuss literary theory. [00:12:35] Speaker B: So he didn't like cats and he [00:12:36] Speaker A: was actually like you said? Yeah, well, no, he liked cats. He did like cats. [00:12:41] Speaker B: So this is real Poe or mythic po? [00:12:43] Speaker A: This is real po. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Real po. [00:12:44] Speaker A: Like cats. [00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah, mythic. [00:12:45] Speaker A: Poe did not like cats. No, he just. You think of him as this like romantic, I love all these women and they die. And he was definitely a player. But he sent the same letter to all the girls in the girls school. Right. So really he did not have games. [00:13:03] Speaker B: See, I don't feel like I have [00:13:04] Speaker A: him pictured as a player. [00:13:06] Speaker B: I have him pictured as an emo guy. [00:13:09] Speaker A: An emo guy. [00:13:10] Speaker B: He would want to be a player. But the girls are like, you look [00:13:13] Speaker A: a little desperate, but there's like a romanticism to it that definitely doesn't exist when you send all the girls the same letter. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah, well. [00:13:22] Speaker A: And you don't tell. You write this Beautiful piece of poetry, Annabel Lee. And then you don't tell everyone you wrote it for them. That ruins it. Right? Not a romantic, not kind of a loser. Okay, okay. And a lot. There was actually a critic, they talk about this at the Poe Museum. There was a critic that despised Poe, that would constantly contemporary. No, this was in his time. Yeah, yeah, in Poe's time. [00:13:51] Speaker B: Contemporary to hit. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, contemporary to Poe. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Okay. [00:13:53] Speaker A: This critic would write about Poe being deranged and a madman and would. Would tear him down and hated all of his work so much and would call him insane. Right. And that kind of started building Poe's legacy as this deranged, psychotic, death obsessed madman. But it only started like lighting a fire under his popularity near the end of his life because people wanted to read something written by an actual madman. Right. There's a fascination. [00:14:23] Speaker B: People like psychos. [00:14:24] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:14:24] Speaker B: It's good advertising. [00:14:25] Speaker A: Exactly. So a lot of this like dark morbid psychosis that has been painted to him is thanks to the critics shitting on him basically. And that actually helping his career. [00:14:40] Speaker B: I feel like, girl, this might be a little sexist. I feel like girls also specifically kind of like the psycho stuff. Not like they would want to be in a relationship with the psycho, but are like fascinated by psycho lore. Didn't we go to the. [00:14:53] Speaker A: At the Alcatrazis and they said. She said the men come for the wild west and gangsters. And the gangsters, the mob and the women come for the serial killers. Yeah, the serial killers, yeah. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't mean like women want to date. [00:15:06] Speaker A: No. But they're fascinated by. [00:15:07] Speaker B: Fascinated by it. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Total sidebar. I had. I mean, who doesn't like a good serial killer story, right, Doc? [00:15:20] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:21] Speaker B: I read a book back in college about serial killers and then my sister borrowed. Can I borrow that book? And I was like, sure. And I got it back maybe half a year, year later. And it. I keep very. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Oh, that's the book. Yeah. [00:15:39] Speaker B: On a side. I keep. I have all. I don't get rid of my books. I have them all stacked, you know, I keep them like they're trophies. I read my books in a way that it's hard to tell they've been read. I keep very meticulous about keeping care of my books. Anyways, she gives me this book back, whatever, six months, a year later, and it looked like she ran it over her car a dozen times. I mean, I've never seen a book in worse shape, maybe ever. Not one that still retains its shape as a book. And she just hands it back and is like, here you go. I'm like, what is this? She's like, oh, I took it. It got a little wet. I'm like, wet. It is just. This thing is falling apart. I was like, I don't know how you even did this. [00:16:24] Speaker A: Just buy a new book. [00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I made her buy a new book. I made her buy a new one. You can keep that one. You can order me a new one on Amazon. Anyways, she liked the serial killer stuff. [00:16:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And the myth is so much more marketable than the man. So you have this real person who enlisted in the army who had a rough life but was still, like, a person. Right. Struggling writer wanting to do something good, and he gets painted as this deranged madman who's on all these drugs who can't keep his life together. There's just. It becomes a caricature of a human being. [00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:58] Speaker A: At some point. Right. And Richmond's PO Industry is built on mythical po. I mean, every Poe tourism industry is built on mythical PO the ghost tours empathize, emphasize the darkness and the tragedy. And I'll say, like, Poe Museum, to its credit, does historically present it as accurate, albeit, like, fascinatingly dramatic, because Chris Sempter, their curator, pretends to be Poe at Halloween time. [00:17:26] Speaker B: He does a good Poe. [00:17:27] Speaker A: He does a great Poe. And it's interesting. The two women Poe was most connected to in Richmond were his foster mother, Frances Allen, who genuinely loved him, and he had a wonderful relationship with her, and Elmira Shelton, his last fiance and his. One of his first loves. And they barely appear in the mythology because they kind of complicate the doomed romance. Right. You hear about all of the Poe loves that died, but the healthy, strong female relationships in this life get kind of overwritten. That's part of, like, picking and choosing to build the mythology and the caricature of what you want. So instead, the Richmond Poe lore focuses on Virginia Clem, his wife, who died in New York and often conflates her with other women from Poe's life. And the myth needs the tragic dead beloved. It just does that. So it creates her even when the real story is more complicated. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. And, like, Poe's actual relationship with Richmond was kind of ambivalent at best. Like, he was from there, but it wasn't like he was just hopelessly in love with Richmond. But we love to paint that. He was. [00:18:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Well, it's not a great marketing ploy. He was lukewarm on Richmond. [00:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:48] Speaker B: Here's all his Stuff. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And the result is visitors coming to Richmond expecting this dark, gothic, mysterious Richmond. And the city delivers it, even though it requires sometimes misrepresenting Poe and the city's history. But, I mean, when. When does the legend become. I don't know. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I think if you're honest about it, you can say this is. These are the legend. Like, this is the guy and this is the legend, and then these are the legends. [00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. [00:19:17] Speaker B: I mean, in the same way, it's not, like, to me, it's not problematic if you're telling a folklore story, as long as you're being honest that it's folklore, you know? [00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:29] Speaker B: My favorite genre to read is fantasy. I'm just fully aware that it's fantasy. You know, it's only a problem when you try to paint it as fact. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Right. And without the critics, you wouldn't have this, like, famous, iconicized, crazy, dark, dramatic Poe. [00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:50] Speaker A: There's a weird story. I wish I remembered the guy's name, to be honest. But Chris told the story when I was at the Poe Museum, where this guy, you know, wanted to create Poe for being macabre and deranged and sane. But then the. The critic, when his wife died, was so devastated, he, like, spent some nights slaying with his wife after she died. So who's really macabre there, Right? Yikes. I think it's a deleted scene in Weird World because I don't think it's in there. But that was a fun story. [00:20:20] Speaker B: Oh, you deleted the best possible heart. [00:20:22] Speaker A: Don't worry, we'll have, like, a special deleted scene coming out on MallorySadventures.com. [00:20:28] Speaker B: the Krennic was banging the widow. [00:20:31] Speaker A: No, no, no. The dead wife. His dead wife. [00:20:34] Speaker B: He was bang. [00:20:35] Speaker A: His wife died. [00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And he was necrophilia style. [00:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah. For a little bit after she died. Because he was sad and lonely. [00:20:43] Speaker B: He was sad and lonely. That is. You say that like that's just a reasonable. Well, you know, he was banging that [00:20:50] Speaker A: corpse because he was just a little sad and lonely. [00:20:52] Speaker B: It's fine. Who of us haven't dabbled into the world of necrophilia in our sadder moments? [00:20:58] Speaker A: That's the point. [00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:00] Speaker A: That's insane. He's condemning Poe for being deranged and macabre. [00:21:05] Speaker B: That's gotta be one of the most deranged things you can do. [00:21:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. [00:21:11] Speaker A: You cast the first stone. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Yikes. All right, next, people. [00:21:18] Speaker A: Another one I would be, like, remiss to not bring up here is Shakespeare because there's legends that Shakespeare wasn't even a real person. Like, it's funny how people have come out and fought the idea that he was a person and saying it was a collective of people. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I am not a Shakespeare scholar or expert, but my quick overview on hearing a little bit of it from people that know what they're talking about is they're pretty sure there was a Shakespeare, and that the multiple people or someone writing under, like, a Shakespeare pseudonym is not the case. [00:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I can say I've been to Shakespeare's place of birth. Like, there are places. So if you go to Stratford Upon Ava, you can go to the house he was born in. And again, how much of it is, like, tourismized? I don't know. But you can visit the house he was born in. You can visit his grave. I visited his grave. You can visit his daughter's house, and I think his granddaughter's house and the Anne Hathaway house, because, weirdly enough, Shakespeare's wife, her name was Anne Hathaway. [00:22:29] Speaker B: That's funny you said that. I was like, what the hell does that have to do with this? [00:22:35] Speaker A: And I don't know. So we went to Stratford Upon Avon when I was studying abroad in England, and I was with these two other girls. Like, we could just break off into whatever groups we wanted and do whatever the hell. Because we were in college, Right? Just go explore and meet back here for a show at whatever time. And me and these two other girls. [00:22:53] Speaker B: No rules in the theater department here, [00:22:54] Speaker A: as long as we met back up at a certain time because we had to see a winner's tale that night at or no, we saw as yous Like It. We were supposed to see it. [00:23:02] Speaker B: I'll be honest. I don't even know what these are. I mean, I know a few famous Shakespeare lines, but I wouldn't be able to tell you what happen in any of these. Which one has the bear? [00:23:09] Speaker A: That's winner's tale. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Okay. [00:23:11] Speaker A: Exit, pursued by bear. It was. For some reason, I've always been a weirdo, right? And we started. We started at Shakespeare's birthplace. I'm like, okay, this is a good place to start in the city. We definitely have to see this. And then I was just, like, full mal obsessive, focused on, I want to see his grave. We have to go to that. We have to go to the graveyard. We have to go to the graveyard. [00:23:33] Speaker B: Got to dig him up. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Got to go there. Got to be there. And so him and aunt half away, you know? Yeah. [00:23:38] Speaker B: Do some famous Shakespeare with it. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Hamlet, to be or not to be. And so we beelined it after that to the church, because he's buried inside the church in the altar. The most important people are buried, like, in the altar of the church. Right. So him and Anne Hathaway are, like, in the altar of the church. So we beelined it there, and then it closed right after we left, so no one else got to see it. [00:24:03] Speaker B: Oh, nice. [00:24:04] Speaker A: And I was like, aren't you guys happy that I had this crazy obsession? Because how devastating would it be to be there and then you don't get let in? And then we went to. I think it was his granddaughter's house. It was one of the other houses. And the man that was giving the tours there was so fascinated by having these, like, three American girls come in. And he was like, this is my moment to be a total freak and tell them all the great stories that I know. [00:24:36] Speaker B: He was. He was that surprised to see Americans. It's just the UK he was. [00:24:41] Speaker A: We made his day. He. He told us that the tree outside the house was from Virginia. We were from Virginia. And they sent this tree from Virginia. He was so excited by it. And then he made us sit on the bench of repentance because they don't like us Americans, because we, you know, [00:25:01] Speaker B: maybe you had some stuff to repent for British. [00:25:05] Speaker A: And it was pretty great. [00:25:06] Speaker B: But thanks for the tea, asshole. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Right. But there is a Shakespeare birth house, and there is a grave for Shakespeare, so I feel like he was a person. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but you could certainly just say that about any grave. [00:25:23] Speaker A: I know, I know. [00:25:26] Speaker B: Like I said, I think the consensus by experts is that there was just a Shakespeare. There was a guy, and he just did that stuff. And you don't need all the conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories about it. Yeah, but. Yeah, I mean, the fact that there's a grave or something. Shakespeare's grave, doesn't add a whole lot [00:25:42] Speaker A: of credence to me, but from a church that's so old, and it's like, if there's. [00:25:49] Speaker B: If there's ledgers and documents going back, that's evidence. [00:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah, but. [00:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah, just a hole in the ground. [00:25:55] Speaker A: But I think he's so far removed from, like, nobody knows who. What William Shakespeare was like. Right. It was so long ago. It's not like Edgar Allan Poe, where we have documented. [00:26:06] Speaker B: Right, Right. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Who this person was and how he became such a caricature of himself. We don't have that with Shakespeare, because who knows what Shakespeare was really like. [00:26:17] Speaker B: Mm. [00:26:18] Speaker A: Mm. [00:26:18] Speaker B: But he was a freak. [00:26:20] Speaker A: I'M sure he was. Have you read some of Shakespeare? [00:26:23] Speaker B: Not really. It's hard to read. I mean, I like reading. [00:26:29] Speaker A: It's an iambic pentameter. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Stuff that's kind of like poetry or reads in poetry type formats I really have a tough time with. It's a thing. It's an area of art and reading that I've always wanted to really be able to appreciate. And I've tried, and I'm not. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Don't you like the Iliad, though? [00:26:56] Speaker B: Yeah. That's an epic. It's an epic. It doesn't read right. I mean, the closest one I can think that I like that is in. I don't remember what. Like, I pick whatever it's in. But the Divine Comedy is written in one consistent line, like. Or whatever. Whatever it's called. It's three books. Like, it's like six, seven hundred pages of uninterrupted, same poetry style, which is crazy to me. [00:27:27] Speaker A: It's. I will say I liked that. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Well, I liked Inferno. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Okay. [00:27:33] Speaker B: And then Purgatorio is like, all right. I mean, I think I get what you're saying, and it's interesting, but it's a little weird. And then Paradiso is, at least to me, uninterpretable. LSD trick. Just like. What are you talking about? [00:27:54] Speaker A: I will say we had to take full classes on interpreting Shakespeare. It is. It is like a. I'm not trying [00:28:02] Speaker B: to say I don't like. I have read some Shakespeare, and yes, it's very good. And I can, even, as a lay, you know, essentially lay person, appreciate how masterfully it's written. It's just. It really requires me to be in a certain headspace to read in that style. It's effort to me, at least. To read it. [00:28:23] Speaker A: Yes. And having to decipher. I remember this stuck with me forever. But, like, once you learn the. It's like intention behind it, it makes it easier to decipher. But I feel like seeing it is easier than reading it. Yeah. [00:28:34] Speaker B: It's almost its own language that you have to be trained to learn. You almost have to be able to read this language before you can start enjoying the language. It's not natural. Or to me, it doesn't read naturally. It's not like I'm picking up a book and just reading a book. It's effort to decipher, and then when you do, it's rewarding. But. Yeah, it's not natural. [00:28:56] Speaker A: It's not. It's definitely not. I love the. My. Desdemona. Oh, good. Iago what shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him. For by this light of heaven, I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel. If ever my will did trust count St. Love, either in discord of thought or actual deed, or that mine eyes, mine ears or any sense delighted them in any other form. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Man, just pulled that out of my ass. She's also doing the full. The full, like, theatrics to me, as if there's an audience. [00:29:29] Speaker A: It's like an intention. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Not to be or not to be. [00:29:34] Speaker A: That is the question. That is the question whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows. I don't actually know if that's right. [00:29:42] Speaker B: That's the extent of my knowledge. Well, that and the line I had inscribed on my ipod. [00:29:47] Speaker A: That's right. [00:29:48] Speaker B: As we discussed in the previous episode, we did My boy Shakespeare. What an ironic thing for you to put on there. Somebody was like, I don't even know Shakespeare. This line sounds really cool, though. [00:29:58] Speaker A: But you know, the two households, both alike in dignity. [00:30:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. There's a lot. There's a lot. [00:30:04] Speaker A: There's a lot that Verona. Where we lay our scenes. [00:30:06] Speaker B: There's a lot. Yeah, I agree. [00:30:09] Speaker A: It's good. Some classic stuff. Anyway, move on to the Bronte sisters and Hayworth. [00:30:14] Speaker B: This one I'm gonna have little to nothing to add. [00:30:17] Speaker A: I don't have that much to add either. [00:30:19] Speaker B: All I know is one of them wrote Jane Eyre. [00:30:22] Speaker A: Yep. [00:30:22] Speaker B: And the only reason I know that is because I was forced to read it junior year in high school and then write a report on it. And I honestly have no idea what the story is about other than I did not enjoy it. And then I have no idea what I wrote about other than the teacher liked it a lot and was like, this was really good. I'm giving you an A. She wasn't. She wasn't a touchy feely teacher. She's like, pretty, you know, so it was like it meant something to get good feedback. Thank you. And then as the reward for it being good, she's like, it's so good. I want you to present it to the class. And by the way, I hate it. I still don't like it, but I hated it in a way that, you know, is hard to describe. Public speaking. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:08] Speaker B: Worst. I would have rather done almost anything else. [00:31:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:10] Speaker B: And I was like, what? So I do a good job and now I'm the only asshole who has to read their paper to the class. [00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:21] Speaker B: I was up for Weeks worrying about it. And I have no memory of what I even wrote. [00:31:30] Speaker A: This teacher. [00:31:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I have a bad taste in my mouth for Jane Eyre and the Brontes because I had to publicly speak my paper in junior year and I have no idea what the story was about and I have no idea what I wrote about. I just remember the two weeks of being up all night sweating, having to public speak. Wow. That's. That's all I have. [00:31:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:48] Speaker B: Trauma. I have drama. Right. [00:31:50] Speaker A: So the Bronte Parsonage Museum attracts hundreds of visitors a year. Sorry? Hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. All coming to see where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte lived and wrote their revolutionary novels. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and the Tenet of Wildfill Hall. [00:32:09] Speaker B: I haven't heard of that. Last time. [00:32:10] Speaker A: I haven't heard of the last. [00:32:11] Speaker B: I have not read Wuthering Heights. [00:32:14] Speaker A: I have not. But my dad loves it because he loves everything girly and just. Like with Poe and Richmond, the mythology of the Brontes has become inseparable from their reality. The myth goes something like this. Three brilliant otherworldly sisters living in isolation on the widespread moors, communing with nature, creating their masterpieces in gothic solitude and dying tragically young before they could be properly recognized. [00:32:41] Speaker B: I think it's her own write up without laughing. [00:32:43] Speaker A: I know. [00:32:44] Speaker B: Otherworldly sisters. Why are they otherworldly? [00:32:48] Speaker A: Because they're legendary. [00:32:51] Speaker B: But what about those otherworldly mythological. [00:32:53] Speaker A: They connect with nature. They're like old hags. Except not old hags. [00:32:57] Speaker B: Was there stuff really nature? [00:32:58] Speaker A: Y. I'm just telling how people see them. They're like gods to women. Michael. The reality is considerably more mundane and also more interesting. The Brontes were a middle class clergy family. Their father was the parson of Haworth. [00:33:18] Speaker B: What is a parson? [00:33:20] Speaker A: That's a great question. [00:33:21] Speaker B: You know, I asked because we did the Christmas trivia, the Christmas trivia game. And I think three. My mom did it and reused the same question teacher for like three years in a row. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:40] Speaker B: And by the end I was like, well, I just know what these answers are because we've three times. But one of them was Parson Brown. I forget. [00:33:47] Speaker A: Oh yeah, Parson Brown. [00:33:48] Speaker B: Which song is that in? Yeah, whatever the answer to the question. Whatever the question was. [00:33:52] Speaker A: And I was like, in the meadow we can build snowman. [00:33:56] Speaker B: Yes. [00:33:56] Speaker A: And pretend that he is parson Brown. [00:34:00] Speaker B: And I. The first year I didn't know the answer. And then when she read the answer, like parson Brown. Like what are you talking? Like you can't just make Stuff up. And then she showed me the lyrics and I was like, I've definitely like hummed, you know, I was like, parson Brown. That's not a. [00:34:17] Speaker A: It has been changed. It was Parson Brown in the old days. Now they say and pretend that he's a circus clown. It has changed. They made it like no one knows a circus clown. Yes. Now he's a circus clown, but that's [00:34:28] Speaker B: also going to be not known. [00:34:29] Speaker A: Like that's fair. [00:34:30] Speaker B: There's no circuses. [00:34:31] Speaker A: That's fair. It's going to change again. Timothy Chamlet Parson is an ordained Christian minister, often a Protestant pastor. [00:34:43] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, I figured it was. Yeah, pretty much priest, but yeah. Anyways, I just never heard that phrase. [00:34:50] Speaker A: The father's a Protestant pastor. They were not wealthy, but they weren't poverty stricken. They had a servant. They received education. Charlotte attended boarding school and worked as a governess and teacher. Emily and Anne also worked as governesses. Okay, okay. So it wasn't an isolated moorland wilderness where they lived away from civilization. [00:35:14] Speaker B: But they were otherworldly. [00:35:16] Speaker A: They were otherworldly. It was an industrial village, very different, with a population of several thousand factories. I know the Bronte's house was on the main street next to the church and graveyard in the middle of the town. And they wrote because they were extraordinarily talented and not because they were extraordinarily talented, because they needed to make money. [00:35:40] Speaker B: Probably the reason most people do it. Right. [00:35:43] Speaker A: They published under male pseudonyms because women writers weren't taken seriously. Yep. When their true identity became known. [00:35:53] Speaker B: What's your male pseudonymous author pen name Dee Bachman. Alright. [00:36:00] Speaker A: It is. I already know. Like the girl that wrote Curse of. Not Curse of Strahd. I Strahd from Curse of Strahd. It was a woman and she put her initials as the first two so you wouldn't know. A woman wrote it. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Okay. [00:36:14] Speaker A: But then I read it and was like, a woman wrote this. When their true identities became known, Charlotte in particular became a celebrity in London literary circles. So they did die really young. Emily was 30, Ann was 29 and Charlotte was 38. But not from. Sorry. But from tuberculosis and complications of pregnancy. Not from romantic wasting away on the moor. [00:36:39] Speaker B: Wait, so the legend is they're just like farm girls pining romantic. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:45] Speaker B: I can't eat anymore. I just waste away. [00:36:49] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. [00:36:51] Speaker B: What kind of nonsense is that? [00:36:53] Speaker A: The myth started during Charlotte's lifetime when her first biography was published right after her death. The biographer Elizabeth Gaskell emphasized the isolation, tragedy and gothic atmosphere so their first. But her first biographer for Charlotte just made her martyr immediately. Yeah. [00:37:13] Speaker B: Okay. [00:37:14] Speaker A: So again, the critics, like, created fake Poe biographers create fake Charlotte. And that stuck. [00:37:22] Speaker B: This is a little bit of a sidebar here, but over the last few years, I've read a lot of, like, history, like, famous history. And we went. Some of the stuff I read went way, like, pretty far back. Yeah. And you just wonder, like, well, I mean, this is just. Who knows, right? Like, who? Especially a lot of this stuff, it's. It's got maybe one. Everything you know about X figure is based on one person's writing. Right. We only have one book. Right. Because it's 2,000 years ago. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:51] Speaker B: And it's like, well, who knows, Right. They could have said anything. And now it's the only thing that we have left. [00:37:58] Speaker A: And you can see that, like. [00:37:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Then it's like, this is, like, recent. She just made this completely up. [00:38:03] Speaker A: And they. They trace a lot of the Poe myth back to that single biographer. I mean, critic or whatever, that, like, was kind of deranged himself. By the early 20th century, Hayward had become a pilgrimage site for people that loved the Brontes. And people came expecting to find this wild, romantic landscape, like, in Wuthering Heights industrial city. And what they wrote to, like, wuthering Heights is like, you know, the wild nature filled, like, you know, running in the field. It's all romantic, and it's just. [00:38:35] Speaker B: I don't know. I haven't read it. [00:38:37] Speaker A: And instead, they want to see these moors that Emily walked in. And it's actually just like a city. Right. Here's a normal city, touristy village with tea shops and souvenir stores selling Bronte family things. [00:38:51] Speaker B: And here's your Bronte button from the souvenir store. Would you like some T shirts and hats? [00:38:56] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:38:57] Speaker B: Bronte swag. [00:38:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So their mythology demands this, like, romantic version because. And that's what the tourism industry wants to deliver. So they have guidebooks emphasizing isolation and wilderness. Gift shops sell Wuthering Heights tea towels and chain air tote bags. [00:39:16] Speaker B: Tote bags. [00:39:17] Speaker A: They can take photos on the moors. [00:39:20] Speaker B: All right. [00:39:22] Speaker A: What's lost in all of this is the actual radicalism of the Bronte's work. They were women writing about female desire, social injustice, economic precarity, domestic abuse. And people kind of overlook that. They want the romanticism. Jane Eyre was revolutionary for making its heroine poor and plain and angry. [00:39:46] Speaker B: It's funny you say that. I don't have any memories, really. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Wuthering Heights was shocking for its violence and moral ambiguity. It's like, pretty. [00:39:56] Speaker B: Have you read it? [00:39:58] Speaker A: No, but I've read a lot of things about the new film. Comparing it. Like, I read a lot of, like, deconstructions of it. [00:40:04] Speaker B: Got it. [00:40:04] Speaker A: I want to read it. I've read a lot of the deconstructions and it's pretty like savagely, like sexual. Right. Which is kind of crazy. Savagely sexual, but really. And like. And depicts like kind of toxically destructive relationships, like repeating cycles. [00:40:22] Speaker B: Doesn't sound too bad. [00:40:23] Speaker A: No. And it. And I mean, who wrote about that? [00:40:26] Speaker B: I'd read it for the savage sex scene. [00:40:29] Speaker A: And who wrote about that back? What women wrote about that. Right. Apparently the tenet of Wildfell hall addresses alcoholism and women's property. [00:40:37] Speaker B: I haven't heard of that book. [00:40:38] Speaker A: I haven't either. But the myth has transformed the Brontes into dreamy romantic figures, otherworldly and ethereal. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Wasting away tv. [00:40:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:55] Speaker B: By the way, is a wasting disease. It's called consumption. I mean, they used to call it consumption. Yeah. [00:41:01] Speaker A: You just waste your life. Yeah. Tb. [00:41:04] Speaker B: No good. [00:41:05] Speaker A: No good at all. I'm trying to think of other people too. I have Ernest Hemingway on here, but I feel like I'm missing out on like a good opportunity. [00:41:17] Speaker B: I've seen tuberculosis a few times in real life, by the way. [00:41:20] Speaker A: Still on tuberculosis. [00:41:21] Speaker B: Sorry, my mind went elsewhere. [00:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Is it horrifying? [00:41:27] Speaker B: I mean, the reason it's not like a huge problem usually is because we have drugs for it. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:41:33] Speaker B: But there are resistance strains. And if you get like a drug resistance strain, it can be super bad news. And you have to be in an isolation room, do all the masks and stuff if you go in there, because it is super contagious. [00:41:51] Speaker A: Oh, it's. What a weird thing to see. Like modern times. [00:41:55] Speaker B: You think of it as not relevant anymore. Right. At least in the USA right now. Yeah. [00:42:01] Speaker A: Yeah, weird. And the last is Ernest Hemingway and the Persona. He's the one that had the six toed cats. Right. That's what I know about it. [00:42:14] Speaker B: I don't even know that. [00:42:14] Speaker A: You don't know about the six toed cats. You can visit Ernest Hemingway's like, home. [00:42:20] Speaker B: Okay. [00:42:21] Speaker A: And there's just a colony. I want to say Florida. I could be very wrong. Hold on, hold on, hold on. [00:42:29] Speaker B: So he has a six. [00:42:30] Speaker A: Hemingway. [00:42:31] Speaker B: I haven't heard. [00:42:32] Speaker A: Yes, Hemingway. Hold on now. We're gonna look it up. Sorry, everybody. House and cats. Yeah, yeah. It's in Key West. The Key West. Yes, Florida. And it's home to nearly 60 polydactyl six toed cats. [00:42:50] Speaker B: Okay. There's 66 toed cats. [00:42:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:42:55] Speaker B: Why? [00:42:56] Speaker A: Ernest Hemingway was given a white six toed cat by a ship's captain. And some of the cats who live in the museum grounds are descendants of that cat named Snow White. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Did they? And they inherited the six toes. [00:43:10] Speaker A: I think. I think six toes. You have six toes. [00:43:13] Speaker B: That's not true. You can have a sixth toe as a person. I don't think it's a heritable trait. [00:43:19] Speaker A: Hold on. Let's see the cats. Let's see. There's more about the cats here. Now we're gonna go down the rabbit hole. [00:43:23] Speaker B: This is gone. [00:43:24] Speaker A: It's home to nearly 16. [00:43:26] Speaker B: This has gotten away from us. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Cats normally have five front toes and four back toes. About half of the cats in the museum have the physical polydactyl trait. But they all carry the polydactyl gene in their DNA. Which means that the ones that have four and five toes can still mother or father six toed kittens. [00:43:44] Speaker B: It's a recessive gene. [00:43:45] Speaker A: Yes. Most cats have extra toes in their front feet and sometimes on their back feet as well. Sometimes it as if they're wearing mittens because they appear to have a thumb on their paw. [00:43:53] Speaker B: Okay. So it's not uncommon in cats. [00:43:55] Speaker A: It's not uncommon in cats. Usually. There's certain breeds of cats. I think these might be Maine coons. I could be wrong. They just call them the Hemingway cats. Maine coons regularly have extra toes. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Okay. See I didn't know that because it's quite uncommon in humans. [00:44:11] Speaker A: Right. It's very common in cats. [00:44:12] Speaker B: Okay. I mean I honestly didn't even know that the normal number for the back is four. [00:44:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:17] Speaker B: I just figured they all had five. Five of everything. [00:44:19] Speaker A: It says Key west is a small island. And it's possible that many of the cats on the island are all related. So it's just inbred. [00:44:26] Speaker B: I've been to Key west once. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Really? [00:44:28] Speaker B: Friends. [00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:29] Speaker B: And on a cruise. And we went. This is nothing to do. [00:44:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:37] Speaker B: But we went to a clothing optional bar. [00:44:40] Speaker A: This is Michael. [00:44:42] Speaker B: This is when I. We went before. After I. We went the summer I finished med school. Before I started. Not. It wasn't for that reason. But that's just when it timed out. So just a bunch of. Just a bunch of young, you know, young 20 year old dudes out there. [00:44:58] Speaker A: But yeah. [00:44:58] Speaker B: We went to a clothing optional bar and none of us were like, we're not gonna like nude up here in front of my. My eight guy. My guy friends or will you? And then we did, but no, but we. We were like trying to. We were like egging each other on. Like someone, like, at least get in your box, you know, go to the bar. Like kind of naked. Not enough. I don't want to see your. Well, so it was pretty empty when we came in. It was just kind of like. Just like go up and order something in your boxer. It's like, oh, yeah, be a rebel. And one of my friends does. And then this like, clearly Key west native kind of, you know, just leather skin from the sun. You know, someone who's. You're out in. I mean, had to be in his 60s comes up, he's in his clothes, stands next to my friend who's in his box, has his pants down around his ankles in his boxers, and just like strikes up a conversation with him. And then mid conversation, just nudes up. And we were like, wow, that guy just whipped it out in front of you. We had. We were so shocked. We were like, we have to get out of here. We gotta get out of here. Get your drink. Get the hell out of here. [00:46:08] Speaker A: We're scared. [00:46:09] Speaker B: We were scared. [00:46:10] Speaker A: I will say there is a famous hike in. It's in California. It's kind of off the 15 and it's like Death Valley. Like, it's full on like California people [00:46:23] Speaker B: and just the 15. I don't know what that means. [00:46:25] Speaker A: It's the road we took to go to Vegas. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Sure, okay. [00:46:28] Speaker A: You were on. You were there with me. [00:46:29] Speaker B: I know, but I don't even know the road names around. Like the numbers are where I live. [00:46:34] Speaker A: And it was. Oh, gosh, I'm blanking on what it's called now. Ah. But anyway, it's this hike to a hot springs, like a natural hot springs. That's just Deep Creek. It's called Deep Creek Hot Springs. [00:46:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:46:47] Speaker A: And it's just like in the middle of the desert. And it's like kind of dangerous to do when it's too hot because it is like in the middle of the desert. Yeah. And it's apparently just a known like nudist hike. Like nudist welcome. Right. We had no idea. We were like, oh. And there were several times we went to this hike and we're walking through and there's just an old man fully naked, carrying a backpack. Like the full backpack hiking gear, just naked. And it was always like the creepy old men. Just like, oh, God, like unexpected every time. You know, you're just like. [00:47:24] Speaker B: But you did it nude too. [00:47:26] Speaker A: No, I did not. No, I did not. I did not. I did not. Anyway, Hemingway named all of his cats after famous people, so they do the same tradition today and name the cats after famous people. But anyway, we went down the rabbit [00:47:40] Speaker B: hole of the cats. [00:47:42] Speaker A: All right, let's talk about Hemingway. And first, Hemingway understood better than almost any writer before or since that a Persona can sell books. So he cultivated his own Persona. [00:47:57] Speaker B: So he's making his own. [00:47:58] Speaker A: I guess so. That's what it sounds like. Hemingway's the man's man, Hemingway the big game hunter. [00:48:05] Speaker B: I've been cultivating that Persona for a while now. [00:48:08] Speaker A: So, smoking jacket. [00:48:09] Speaker B: How's it working for me? [00:48:11] Speaker A: Great. You're such a man's man, Smoking jacket, big game hunter, deep sea fisherman, war correspondent, bare knuckle boxer. The man's man. [00:48:27] Speaker B: None of that is how. I mean, I don't know anything about [00:48:29] Speaker A: it, but think about, like, the early 1900s. [00:48:32] Speaker B: Right, I know, but I'm just saying, whatever legend I guess is around him, I don't associate any of that. I guess the fisher, the fisherman, I might associate with Hemingway. [00:48:42] Speaker A: I associate the cats. [00:48:44] Speaker B: I didn't know about the cats. [00:48:46] Speaker A: And it worked brilliantly. He became the most famous American writer of his generation. [00:48:51] Speaker B: He was a legend in his lifetime. [00:48:52] Speaker A: In his lifetime. He sold because of his legend. [00:48:55] Speaker B: Yeah. He made it up himself. Yeah. Okay. [00:48:58] Speaker A: His books sold, his lifestyle was endlessly photographed and reported on, and he became an icon. But the Persona consumed him. So Key West, Florida, is where the Hemingway mythology is the most concentrated. That's where he lived. Right. His home and museum is one of Key West's top tourist attractions. [00:49:19] Speaker B: We might have walked by it. Now that you're saying it, I do remember that. I do remember that. [00:49:23] Speaker A: You go for the cats. It's a beautiful Spanish colonial house where he lived in the 30s and wrote several of his major works. If I could speak, It'd be great Here. Several of his major works. The house is famous for its population of polydactyl cats. See, six toed cats descending from Hemingway's original cat, allegedly given to him by a ship captain. But now that we know that he controls his own narrative, who knows where the cat came from? [00:49:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:49:49] Speaker A: Visitors tour the house, see his writing studio, hear stories about his wildlife in Key West. The drinking, the fishing, the bar fights, his multiple marriages. He's a man. [00:50:00] Speaker B: This is my kind of guy. [00:50:01] Speaker A: And then you can then walk down to Sloppy Joe's bar where he supposedly drank, and order a Papa Doble cocktail drink. [00:50:12] Speaker B: Papa Doble. Is that his famous drink? [00:50:15] Speaker A: Guess so. And the entire Key West Hemingway experience is about the Persona. Tough, drinking, adventurous, masculine. The writing is kind of, like, lost to this, like, Persona. [00:50:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:50:29] Speaker A: And here's the irony. Hemingway helped create this Persona, but it also destroyed him, because once you become a legend, you have to keep performing it. So Hemingway felt enormous pressure to keep being Hemingway, to keep hunting, to keep drinking, to keep being tough, to keep having adventures worthy of myth. And his later books were criticized for being parodies of his earlier style. All the Hemingway mannerisms without the substance. Critics said he was becoming a caricature of himself, and they were right because it's exactly what he thought his mythology demanded. [00:51:06] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:51:06] Speaker A: Okay, so he struggled with depression, with multiple injuries from his adventurous lifestyle from alcoholism. [00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:14] Speaker A: And he died in 61. At 61. 61. Oh, by suicide. [00:51:20] Speaker B: I guess I knew that, too. [00:51:22] Speaker A: Yeah. The mythology demanded a version of himself that he just couldn't sustain. And he felt that his image, I guess, was more important than being alive a lot or true to himself. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:35] Speaker A: And now, more than way more than 60 years after his death, the Hemingway tourism industry is as strong as ever. Key West, Pamplona, Spain, where he attended bullfights. Havana, Cuba, where he lived and wrote Can. Ketchum, Idaho, where he died. They all market the connection to Hemingway, but what they're marketing is the mythical icon, not an actual person, but he became his. Yeah. [00:52:05] Speaker B: That's a weird one, though, because he, like, set out to make that Persona, but then he lived that Persona. So I don't know. At some point, you are that right. [00:52:16] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like he lost the revolutionary use of omission, his mastery of dialogue, his structural innovation. The writing became second to just. [00:52:26] Speaker B: Yeah, he lost sight of the. [00:52:28] Speaker A: He lost sight of the art to be the man's man. [00:52:33] Speaker B: Worth it. [00:52:33] Speaker A: Worth it. So, I mean, that's interesting, because that's a case of it becoming. He was famous in his lifetime. He was the reason. He was. He was the one telling the narrative that made it famous. And when do you stop becoming the person and start becoming the myth? If you're the one creating the myth. Yeah, it's interesting. [00:53:00] Speaker B: I've got a question for you. Can. Who. This is just a. Yeah. Just a hypothetical. What modern writer do you think is most likely to become a future legend? [00:53:15] Speaker A: Oh, that's A really. George R.R. martin. [00:53:19] Speaker B: Ooh. [00:53:19] Speaker A: Yeah. He's so popular. [00:53:21] Speaker B: That's pretty good. [00:53:22] Speaker A: He's. You could not have read any of the Song of Ice and Fire and know who he is. The other one, I think, is, like, teetering on becoming that popular, but maybe Isn't quite there that might transcend time. Is Brandon Sanderson. [00:53:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:39] Speaker A: But I think George R.R. martin is so impactful because he took something that was not quite popular, like the whole medieval. We were kind of past the medieval mythology stuff, and he just built this world that sucked everybody in. And there were people. I like the medieval stuff and the fantasy, so I'm like a sucker to get drawn in. But there are people that do not like that that got so drawn into it. [00:54:03] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:54:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:05] Speaker B: Tolkien would have been another one to discuss. [00:54:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a good point. He has a lot. We'll have to do a whole thing on Tolkien because he has, like, a whole interesting. [00:54:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know a ton about the real guy Tolkien, but I think he's pretty interesting. [00:54:19] Speaker A: But wasn't he, like, a teacher that wrote the Hobbit for his students? [00:54:22] Speaker B: I think. Or it might have been his kids. I forget. Yeah, it's something like that. [00:54:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And then he just, like, wrote, like, letters. Like, he. He wrote for, like, kids and fun. He wrote for fun. Yeah. [00:54:34] Speaker B: I have a book of his. I think his, like, great grandkid published it, but it's a. It's downstairs. It's a book of his letters that he wrote every year for decades to, I think, his kids and then their kids for Christmas. [00:54:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:49] Speaker B: Pretending to be Santa. And they get. They go from kind of normally, like, Santa and be good and. And then they just become, year after year, building on a story, like, creates these, like, I was battling my elves, were battling the snow bears, and then [00:55:06] Speaker A: his kids put it together and created the life and times of Santa Claus. [00:55:11] Speaker B: Yes. [00:55:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:55:12] Speaker B: That's what happened. [00:55:13] Speaker A: Exactly what happened. [00:55:15] Speaker B: It's fascinating because they're just letters to his kids and then grandkids, and he, like, can't help himself but create this totally unnecessary story that goes on for years. [00:55:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:55:29] Speaker B: He, like, hand drew little scribbles. Like, he hand draws the battle and stuff happening. [00:55:34] Speaker A: One of the next podcast episodes, we're gonna do a whole deconstruction of Tolkien now, because that could be a whole thing in itself. [00:55:41] Speaker B: He's got a very good Mallory's Adventures Weird World Adventures quote, too. [00:55:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not all those who wander are lost. [00:55:48] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a great. That is great. Right? [00:55:50] Speaker A: Really great. I mean, but think about, like, what people would make your legacy. Right? Like, I. Like, there's a person. [00:55:57] Speaker B: Well, I know I'm a man's man. [00:56:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:56:01] Speaker B: Smoking jacket, bar fights, deep sea, you know, fishing, gambling, all this stuff. [00:56:09] Speaker A: Right. [00:56:10] Speaker B: Stuff the man's man stuff, I would say that's what I would be remembered as. [00:56:14] Speaker A: I like to push the Explorers Club, the research, the, like, the exploration, the weird. The weird pain. If I could die, the weird penguin girl, I'd be happy. [00:56:25] Speaker B: Seems like a low bar. [00:56:30] Speaker A: I love my penguin. [00:56:31] Speaker B: She died as she lived, covered in penguin shit. [00:56:36] Speaker A: I will say before we wrap the. When we were in Africa, the way that you would get first shower must [00:56:45] Speaker B: be covered in the most penguin poop. [00:56:46] Speaker A: Whoever was covered in the most penguin poop got first shower. So it's kind of like, you know, you didn't want to be, but then you got for a shower if you were. So I made it a little. There was only. There was one shower and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of us and one shower. [00:57:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:04] Speaker A: And so it was like a. [00:57:07] Speaker B: So how often did you get for a shower? [00:57:09] Speaker A: I got it a couple times. It shifted on the day, but I definitely got it a couple of times. We only did. We only did baby days twice a week. So it wasn't like that was when you got poop on you, when you. Because the babies just don't have control over it. And you. We would need to get poop samples from them. [00:57:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:29] Speaker A: We've asked this many times. So you. You would lift them up and that's when you get pooped on. But, like, ideally, if the person you're working with was, like, on it, you'd, like, grab the bag and like, have it under them and. But that's just never how it worked out. Never. [00:57:44] Speaker B: Okay. [00:57:44] Speaker A: Yep. Anyway, this has been fun, so I hope we. We kind of had a fun time deconstructing, I guess, how an author becomes legendary. [00:57:56] Speaker B: My takeaway is just make up that you're a man's man. [00:58:00] Speaker A: But then he killed himself. [00:58:01] Speaker B: Worth it. [00:58:03] Speaker A: I don't know. When is it worth it? [00:58:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:08] Speaker A: But anyway, that was fun. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today. Keep following along. And one of these days, when you go to Amazon Prime, Weird World Adventures Season 2 will be there. And be sure to visit MallorySadventures.com for more. You'll see announcement there and also on Instagram @mallorysadventures or Facebook Weird World Adventures, where we will announce season two. So keep your eyes out. I'm your host, Mallory. [00:58:37] Speaker B: And I'm your host, Michael. [00:58:38] Speaker A: And until next time, everybody stay weird.