Your Questions Answered, Part III 

just getting back into literature at 39 after a ~ 20 year break, and yours is probably my favourite book channel. thanks for the content.

Really genuine. I like this guy. Passion for great works without the smarmy, academic jargon

I was reminded of this quote by James Baldwin in an interview with Time magazine when you were answering "how has reading impacted your mental health?"... "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive."

Like somebody said here before: "Just found your channel and haven’t been able to stop watching". Loved your sessions of Q&A, the way you think, offering solid explanations for your choices. It's like we spoke the same language. I can hear you and understand you very well 🙂 I was born in 1985, working in IT, but living in Europe , loving Umberto Eco and Milan Kundera.

Great answer to my question, by the way. Thank you for that!

Totally addicted to your channel! Thanks for sharing your writing and thoughts!

Damn... that passage from your writing you shared... that scratched an itch I didnt even know I had. A marathon of extremely vivid but fleeding images.

I cant wait to hold a book bearing Chris Via on the cover! Also, you make a good point that often humans in general approach reading with a consumer's mindset; asking, "What can this book offer me?" Rather than, "What can I experience in these pages?" Good stuff!

Just found your channel and haven’t been able to stop watching. Keep doing what you’re doing man. Now learning you’re an AAL fan? You have my vote sir.

thanks for sharing some of your own writing.

I lost it when you said it's held in Thomas Pynchon's house. Hahahaha that would be the talk-over-drinks party of the century! I think that scenario would be grant manifest a spontenous miraculous rebuilding of The Library of Alexandria.

you're brilliant - love the videos. thanks. i hope when i'm your age i have a wealth of knowledge that somewhat approaches your own!

Loved that ending

I really like you idea for literature in schools. I'd like to listen in on the Buckely V Vidal table

Whoooooaaaa. DELIGHTFUL!!! What a treat to hear your writing. I was mentally cheering you on during that epic list. Holy hell. Great stuff! Can't wait to hold a Chris Via book in my hands. "I have no clue who in the world is going to publish it." I can definitely relate to that, having hit over 182K words with more than double to go. Interesting to hear your thoughts about talking about work, which for me is the opposite and only ever puts more of a fire to my ass and in the lion of my loins lol.

So great ... Really loved the answers to your wife's question 😁🍀😋👻😇

Found the channel yday. Fun. Nice chat re 2666, and love Bolaño, so thanks for those. It’d be interesting to look over his early works (Savage Detectives, By Night in Chile) and talk about his trajectory for kicks. Just a heads-up from a Wittgensteinian, the end is “-stine” Thanks. Good work.

The highlight for me was hearing you choose as I do Moby Dick. Anyway, great answers, wrong as several may have been, particularly the last one, that leaves out the Kafka/Vonnegut table which Agnes Smedley would crash. And impressive fictional pause.

really insightful stuff here, thanks very much. got watching after your gravity's rainbow review and can't stop! Some really beautiful bits in this too, i appreciate your integrity and dedication to praising, loving and promoting reading. Many people I know don't relate to wanting to put effort into big books and want to instagratification that comes with easier to read books. I don't value add to them and love them all the same but finding your channel has been like permission to be more myself and follow the pursuits i wish to follow & I appreciate that so much. If i ever feel alone or not seen in these ambitions, i shall ensure to come here. regardless i will come here to feel belonging and acceptance. thank you!:)

I love the idea of placing Bloom and Rowling on the same table - hopefully you’d serve slop for dinner?

Animals As Leaders is great. That breakdown riff in The Woven Web is one of the greatest guitar riffs of all time. Some other instrumental music to check out (if you haven't already): Tipper, Gogo Penguin, Kaki King, and Night Verses. Tipper is my favorite modern day composer (as an individual). It's best to look at electronic composers as the modern day analogues of classical composers, but now they don't need to hire tens of people to play their works, and they have a wider sonic palette to play with.

I didn't know you were a drummer. I want to have a drum battle now. But thank you for the excellent segment on your channel.

Buckley and Vidal at the same table? I think you'd need some sort of barrier set up between them :) Which is of course not a problem with current covid restrictions, just have to figure out a way to reanimate the people in question. And I enjoyed your ruminations about trying out different lives through literature. Just discovered your channel, it's nice to find a fellow appreciator (sp?) of Vollmann - recently started The Dying Grass and wishing I knew when WTV is finally coming out with the remaining Dreams volumes

My desert island book would probably have to be a book of poetry. Maybe Leaves of Grass. It's a lot of deep thinking but in digestible morsels. It could sustain for a long time. Otherwise maybe something dense and complicated like Moby Dick or Don Quixote. Dunno. Either one would get old after awhile.

I enjoy a lot what your own writing do with my imagination!! These associations are great and unique and like in poetry one can put intuition or feelings in first place as the analytical work can stop being the intelectual boss.This is my personal feeling about it, I am not trying to make asumptions about your work

Great Video as always. I support your point of separating the life of author from his work. Once a book comes to the public it is divorced from the author and becomes a public property. The author’s art is separate from his deeds i guess. P.S. I will ‘advance-order’ your book the day it shows on Amazon.

Quick question: where did you get that pen holder that attaches to your journal? That thing is awesome.

Where do you buy your books? You have the most gorgeous collection I've ever seen

You have exquisite taste in music

I was never forced to read Frankenstein in school. It shocked me in a profound way when I read it at 28. But Harry Potter shocked me in the same way as a child. I agree with your intuition about works “speaking to” children vs adults.

Love Animals as Leaders...ugh, how we all long to be Suprised by Joy, yes! Your words are great, brother! This was well worth the time. Dig your style

I write longhand first as well. I just need to do what Pat Conroy did and hire a typist to transcribe it all. ;)

Community of books, yes, reading is like having a conversation …

sorry to bother you 2 days in a row. I promise not to make it a habit please consider these for ur next Q and A 1) as a reader, what are ur feelings about audiobooks and e-readers vs physical books ? 2) staying comfortable ....how does one sit for hours on end, day in and day out, without ones ass wanting to drop off and run away from home ? (a personal struggle of mine ) 3) thoughts/opinions on the following Gormanghast by Peake Parallel Stories by Nadas The Deptford Trilogy by Davies Take Five by Mano Life as a Users manual by Perec Against the Day (my fav Pynchon)

What do u do for a living? I'm super curious haha. Greetings from Valencia, Spain

For Desert Island, I would select Ecclesiastes. It’s often misunderstood and holds some of a little Psalms and Proverbs. But it would compete with James for me.

What does L.S.P. at the end mean please? Google (I'm in France) is not helping. Thank you. Also I am not re-finding where this fits, but isn't the beginning of the maximalist novel better situated with Finnegans Wake than The Recognitions. please? Thank you.

Animals as Leaders are great, man! I've seen them live twice. Metal music is nearly on a par with reading in the entertainment spectrum for me. I've amassed some 2,000+ metal albums over the years. What other heavy music do you enjoy?

Not sure why but I got misty eyed while he was answering the final question by his wife.

Wow. You like animals as leaders, I never expected that. There really isn't another drummer like Matt, I love watching him play and I admire him for always pushing himself. Do you lister to any other progressive metal bands? I can suggest a few if you're interested

How's that book coming along?

As others have mentioned, it is often upsetting to see many readers experience with classics and literature as a whole be so deeply tainted by the experiences in school and by inadequate teaching. I'm so glad no teacher forced ridiculous assignments and stale opinions on me for a text like Moby Dick, which I first read senior year of high school l and through that freedom granted myself a moving experience. How generous of you to share your writing as well! And I can only imagine all of those writers' brains melting at the party from the discussion.

Proust and Joyce shared a cab ride. Didn't speak!! I prefer Proust. I LOVE his sentences, many of which could stand alone.

Legend has it that Chris is still thinking about which is the best book he hates and worst book he likes.

What guitars do you like? Strats? Teles? Gibson? etc.

Surely if we replace Joyce by Melville or Proust by Melville, then we have your answer, no, I mean your correct answer in terms of geography?

I don't get it. How are Marcel and James Augustine Aloysius from different continents? Please help me out here. Thank you.

Get into psychology. You’d love it .. forensic psychology, etc.

Do you believe in reading multiple books at the same time? Or do you prefer to savor one book and then move on?

The last answer was life. Just life

David Foster Wallace had major personality issues … interesting to look at through lense of psychology.

Harold Bloom apparently hated the fact that Stephen King was given a special (lifetime achievement) award at the National Book Awards in 2003. I know you have a couple of his non-fiction books about the art of writing. Suffice it to say SK is so much more than a horror writer. If you are loath to read him, just try Hearts In Atlantis. Talk about examining the human condition! He has written many coming of age stories, call it his forte, but IMO Low Men in Yellow Coats, is the best. Hearts in Atlantis is made up of a novel; Low Men in Yellow Coats, a couple of novellas Hearts in Atlantis and Blind Willie, and a couple of shorter stories Why We're in Vietnam and Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling. They are all interconnected. And yes the lead story does have a supernatural climax associated with his Dark Tower Series but that's just how Uncle Steve rolls. Check this book out and tell me it's not literature. I've read and listened to this book several times. Perhaps it's King's turn of phrase or perhaps it's his compassion for his subject, the knowing, the understanding, that gets me every time.

SO kinda all from the same continent.

Dostoevsky, Proust and Joyce were all from the same continent though.

I'm pretty sure that Joyce and Proust are from the same continent...

Dostoevsky lived in European Russia though.

So if someone wrote a book of the same quality as À la recherche du temps perdu or The Iliad (which I have no appreciation for, but André Weil, and I take his view as superseding mine in reliability until I read it again), or The Odyssey, or The King James English Bible, or Finnegans Wake, or Infinite Jest, or Gravity's Rainbow, or The Recognitions, or J.R., or 2666, or the complete works of Jorge Luis Borges, or Virgils Tod, or Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, or Die Blendung, or Doktor Faustus, or Der Zauberberg, or The Brothers Karamazov, or The Idiot, or The complete works of William Shakespeare, or The Divine Comedy, or Don Quijote de la Mancha, or the complete works of Mallarmé, or Moby Dick, or the quality of all of these combined, you would not read that book by x, if x had also to his name the accomplishments of a Hitler or a King Leopold of Belgium, or both. This seems not only false, but arguably immoral. Since in the long term, quite apart from the fact that the intrinsic of the work is immutably unbreakable, whatever the person has done, is doing or will do, but the evil they have done will be lessened by that work by however much use it is put to in committing the right action of reading it. What is amiss with my reasoning or my understanding of your value system's design here? Supposing someone even destroyed humanity but produced a work of the quality of the above, how and why is the value of the work changed. There are masterpieces of Nazi cinema. Ethics and aesthetics are not coextensive, though they at least share a border, if not substantially overlap. I am aware no less than Susan Sontag and Simone Weil, amongst many others, disagree with me, and make no mistake about it my favourite intellects of humanity are those who were also moral heroes for the most part, however I do not see a counter-argument sufficiently strong to refute what I'm saying. Take the innumerable great writers who were antisemites, religious zealots, state intellectuals, fascists, who owned slaves, who sold arms, who sold slaves, who owned shares in criminal companies, who were apologists, or are, or will be, for statism, neoliberalis, capitalism, militarism, nationalism, racism, colonialism, slavery, serfdom, imperialism, dogmatism, obscurantism, inequality, authoritarianism, monarchy, empire(s), tyrant(s) and/or tyranny, torture, discrimination, hatred, murder, mass murder, prejudice, folly, cruelty, rape, massacres and any manner of intellectual rubbish. Do we pretend they're not good writers? Shall we therefore get rid of the works, of Mill, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Brasillach, Blanchot, Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, Bardèche, Céline, Proudhon, Bakunin, Marx, Luther, Aristotle, Pound, Guitry, Riefenstahl, Griffith, Plato, Déon, Schopenhauer, as well as the Bible, the Qu'ran and Dianetics (which I do not claim is a masterpiece, but consider it is at least open to rational argument as to whether it might be, or an absolute masterpiece, what do I know)? I doubt it, and the list is thousands of time as long as that one. The same goes the other way round for people like Philip Roth, whose notions of the levels of antisemitism in circulation were totally paranoid. To subscribe to such propositions as the one in the first sentence is to elude this fact. This is my position. I am willing to change it if presented with persuasive arguments for another.

Never, ever, reveal what you currently happen to be working on. Until finished. Then, only then, talk about it. All. You. Want. ;)

But what if there is reincarnation?

Aren’t those guys all from Europe or eurasia

Thank you for saying this. I just read the stories for the sake of stories and the who the writers are always come afterwards. I knew nothing about Hemingway or Tolstoy before I read them and loved their stories. A good literature will show who the writer really is in the most realistic way in the story anyway. I learned about the authors way after reading their stories and it didn’t stop me from reading them again and again. I wonder if they were perfect people, would they have written those stories….

Harold Bloom and J.K. Rowling 😂 Would be interesting to see how she will react to his condescending words about her work...

How important is literature? I dunno. How important is our humanity? The one thing that truly sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is storytelling. That's it. Humans are storytelling apes and thus I feel that literature needs even more emphasis at an early age.

Heh. The Bible only presents a message of hope if you are a believer in such magic. Otherwise, the complete opposite, of course. ;)

Do you read People magazine?

Do you like Justin Bieber?

Do you believe in God?

You nailed the separation of author from art situation. It boils down to finances. JK Rowling is a trans-bigot, but her books are loved. HP Lovecraft was an everyone bigot, but man I love his works. Lovecraft doesn't make any money any more from the sale of his works. Rowling does. Does one reward her with your purchase? That's the question each of us have to answer for ourselves. When she's dead, that dilemma becomes less of a thing.