Author: Torg

Writing Teacher at App State, Head Women's Basketball Coach at Watauga HS in Boone NC and podcaster at Torg Stories

Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary Podcast

Welcome to the Torg Stories Podcast. On this episode, Anne and I discuss the film Project Hail Mary. The film stars Ryan Gosling as Dr. Ryland Grace. He’s a molecular biologist who wakes up from a coma on a space ship.

Ryan Gosling in the movie Project Hail Mary Podcast Discussion

What grade do I give the film? Why? 

  1. I give the film a B+. I liked it! I recommend it!
  2. It’s touching. The moments between Dr. Grace and Rocky are touching. It’s amazing that the story got me to care about a rock / crab / spider. 
  3. It’s inspiring. Dr. Grace authentically learns to be a hero. 
  4. It’s funny. With Dr. Grace, Rocky and Carl are very funny. Dr. Grace says he and Rocky are clock bros. 
  5. Excellent structure / use of time. 
  6. Some really suspenseful moments: the delivery of the original message from Rocky, the collecting of the living organism to save the planet, is Rocky going to wake up? 
  7. Beautiful shots of space with colors evocative of a sunset. 
  8. I didn’t know how the film would end. 
  9. Downsides: pacing of beginning. Think length is only critique? Maybe some of the music choices jarred me out of the moment. 

My Expectations Leading Up seeing Project Hail Mary:

  • I remember a hard advertising push to launch. I’m a steady listener to the Bill Simmons podcast and they alluded to it during an episode. I remember Bill asking his son what he thought. So I wanted to see it and as is usually my way, I waited until I could see it at home. 
  • Gosling hosted SNL with Harry Styles in the audience. Styles’ song “Sign of the Times” figures into the plot. I expected more of an Armageddon action film, more like Deep Impact. 

I like that word “project” in a title. I considered The Family Basketball Project. 

The Author, The Screenwriters, and The Directors

  • Author Andy Weir: Dad was a physicist and mom an engineer. He’s your age Anne. He wrote the Martian bit by bit on his website. Sold as a 99 cent kindle. Afraid of flying. 
  • Screenwriter:  Drew Goddard, adapted Martian and this. 
  • Directors: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Which Spiderman movies?

Actors who have most pull on me to want to see a new movie when it comes out:

  1. Tom Cruise 
  2. Matt Damon 
  3. Ryan Gosling 
  4. Will Ferrell 
  5. Emily Blunt 
  6. Denzel Washington 
  7. Brad Pitt 
  8. Robert Downey Jr. 
  9. Ryan Reynolds 

List your most interesting and/or best moments of the film: 

  1. The mystery of “what’s going on” when he wakes up on the ship and the other two members of the crew are dead. 
  • On the second watch, to know he was involuntarily put in a coma and to know he had lost his memory hit me harder. 
  1. As Dr. Grace gets his memory back on the ship, we get flashbacks to what happened. The structure is really important to keeping the film interesting. What if it was in linear time? 
  2. The MORE ORIGINAL problem of the astrophage feeding off of the sun and CO2 on Jupiter. 
  3. The interactions between Dr. Grace (Gosling) and Carl, the security officer. Talking through what they are doing. 
  • Writing and thinking floats on a sea of conversation. I see that with Grace and Carl just talking it out. Maybe CO2 is fresh air for the dots. 
  1. Dr. Grace doesn’t have any courage. The events force him to develop it. 
  2. I like that Dr. Grace shows personality. Some basketball players can do that and many don’t. 
  3. Does Eva (the Director of project Mary) have a super dry sense of humor? I think she does. 
  4. When the ship turns off automatically when it reaches its destination and gravity is gone. 
  5. The interactions between “Rocky” the alien and Gosling. “Rocky” picks the voice to be used for him. 
  1. Big: Grace and Rocky save stars. Rocky builds a ball and comes in. He says, “Why room so messy? Question.” 
  2. One of the funniest moments was Rocky’s super hearing. 
  3. AI Mary learns Rocky’s name and they are all talking as they head to get the sample. 
  4. Do you believe in God? It beats the alternative. I thought Dr. Grace and Eva were going to kiss. 
  5. When Sandra Huller who is Eva Stratt sings Styles’ “Sign of the Times.” Click here for the lyrics. 
  • Welcome to the final show. They told me that the end is near. 
  • Have the time of your life. Breaking through the atmosphere. 
  1. Grace: I got to meet you. I got to do all of this amazing stuff. I’m good. I’ve made peace with it. BIG: Rocky couldn’t help his crew. He can help grace. Grace go home. (crying) 
  2. The ship blew up. That’s why Grace had to go. We don’t learn that until less than an hour to go. 
  3. I put the “naut” in astronaut. 
  4. The Beatles song when he sends the probes home. The probes are named after the Beatles and the book is dedicated to them. It’s a “We’re going home” song. 
  5. Eva receives the predator and the videos. 

What movies are keeping company with this one? This movie reminds you of what other movies? 

  1. Castaway – long stretches of no dialogue.
  2. The Martian – Any Weir wrote that book and he wrote this one. Drew Goddard wrote both screenplays. 
  3. Arrival – Amy Adams is a linguist called on to try and communicate with aliens who have landed.
  4. Deep Impact – Hail Mary does have that very suspenseful stretch where they are trying to capture the living organism that is feeding on the astrophage. 

At the end (SPOILER), Gosling’s character Dr. Grace has to decide if we will make the long journey back to earth (10 years?) or stay on Rocky’s planet. What do you think he will decide? What would you advise him to do?

  • Reasons for earth: be with other humans, he saved the world. Is that a reason to go back? Do science. 
  • Reasons to stay: real friend, enjoys teaching, don’t have to spend all that time going back. Who knows how long. 
  • He should go back to earth for the primary reason that he could tell people about his experiences on another planet and share with them what he learned.

Thanks for checking out this episode!

Richard Ford’s story “Rock Springs”

Welcome to the Torg Stories Podcast. On this episode, Anne and I discuss Richard Ford’s short story, “Rock Springs.” Anne, you went to Rock Springs, Wyoming with Earl, Edna, Cheryl, and Little Duke. What did you think? 

Torg Stories Discussion Richard Ford’s story “Rock Springs”

Things could always be worse. You could go to the electric chair tomorrow. -Edna in “Rock Springs”

Plot points: 

  1. Earl tells Enda, Let’s go to Tampa. Where are they? Where are they going? Earl lives with Edna but they aren’t married and don’t have kids together. Earl’s daughter is Cheryl. Edna doesn’t have custody of her kids. Earl’s in trouble for writing bad checks. Cheryl’s ex is coming by her place trying to steal her stuff. Earl suggests they take off for Tampa. I looked it up and it would be a 39 hour drive from Kalispell, Montana to Tampa. 
  1. Steal a Cadillac and drive to Rock Springs. The oil pressure light comes on. 
  2. Hide the car and Earl goes to the trailers. 
  3. Check in to the Ramada Inn. 
  4. Edna decides to leave Earl. 
  1. Earl is checking out stealing another car. 
  2. I like the questions at the end that we can answer together. 

Two Questions Before Golden Lines:

  1. What do you think of this couple? 
  2. What do you make of Earl’s parenting? 

Golden Lines from Richard Ford’s “Rock Springs”:

  1. (observation about love) I don’t know what was between Edna and me, just beached by the same tides when you got down to it. Though love has been built on frailer ground than that, as I well know. P. 2 
  2. (sunset description and point of view) The sunset that day I remember as being the prettiest I’d ever seen. Just as it touched the rim of the horizon, it all at once fired the air into jewels and red sequins the precise likes of which I had never seen before and haven’t seen since. P. 5.  (The POV is interesting; it’s a looking back story) 
  3. (Earl’s reaction to that terrible monkey story) Sometimes that’s all you can do, and you can’t worry about what somebody else thinks. P. 9
  4. Edna about and to Earl: You don’t think right, did you know that, Earl? You think the world’s stupid and you’re smart. 
  5. Also Edna: Things could always be worse. You could go to the electric chair tomorrow.
  6. It got to feeling very Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find” with the driving, the car broke down by the road, and the unsavoriness. Earl tells us, “The truth is meant to serve you if you’ll let it, and I wanted it to serve me.” 
  7. Good writing about trailers: I’ve lived in trailers, but they were just snailbacks with one room and no toilet, and they always felt cramped and unhappy though I’ve thought maybe it might’ve been me that was unhappy in them.” p. 14
  • Writing taking you to realizations, got me thinking about how what space I’m in seems more important than it used to.
  1. Earl is very negative about Rock Springs: She was good nature’s picture, and I was glad she could be, with her little brain-damaged boy, living in a place where no one in his right mind would want to live a minute.” p. 15
  2. Tough one from the black lady in the trailer: Children bring you grief the same way they bring you joy. P. 16
  3. A philosophy from the black woman in the trailer: Saving people is what we were all put on earth to do. P. 17
  4. Edna on her leaving: I’m thirty-two and I’m going to have to give up on motes. I can’t keep the fantasy going anymore. … And I’ve learned I need to give up on motels before some bad thing happens to me. 

What a terrible story about the death of the monkey. 

  • Probably not fair, but because of what I think I remember about Ford collecting newspaper articles and using them in stories I tend to make a little less of it. 

Other discussion questions: 

  • Edna says they are a couple of fools. If Edna tells you she doesn’t know what to do with her life, what do you tell her? If Earl says he’d like to meet someone to help him take care of Cheryl, what do you tell him? 
  • Holiday Inns and Travelodges are named as nice hotels the police won’t search. What’s a nice hotel to you? Marriott, Westin.   OR, what are you looking for in a hotel? Location, self park…
  • What car trouble stories do you have? Going to Indiana game as kids, car breakdown on the way to Olivet, zero degrees on the Merritt Parkway driving to Queens at 5:30 in the morning, signed our loan documents in our along the side of 421 

What are the rewards for reading this story? 

  1. The look at Earl and Edna and their relationship. 
  2. The bleakness of the terrain, the town, and the character’s lives. 
  3. The narrator’s observations and the lines of dialogue that say something that rings true and thought provoking about life. 
  4. Thought provoking in this way: we are a bad luck event or a few away from really having a much less joyful life. I do believe that there aren’t any guarantees that things work out fine. Edna and Earl aren’t currently increasing their odds in a good way. 

What details make this Rock Springs and not LA, Winamac, or Boone? 

  1. Coal followed by a gold mine. 
  2. The prostitution coming in after the money from the gold mine. 

We get a good look at that trailer. Can you think of a fav and/or least fav place you lived?

  1. My current home for the following reasons: sweeping view of a valley and the mountains beyond. Good office space. Place to workout. Like two creeks running close. 
  2. What we called Ruth’s house in CT: stone walls surrounding the property with a big view of rolling hills and trees
  3. New Cannan in town rental: walk to the library, walk to the park

Click here to read an entry about Rock Springs, Wyoming from a Wyoming history website. 

Thanks for checking out this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!  

The Art of the Music Playlist: Bill’s for a Mountain Run and Anne’s for a Los Angeles Walk

Welcome to the Torg Stories Podcast. On this episode, Anne and I share the principles that guide us as we make playlists for our respective runs and walks. We also hope to try and bring to life for y’all where it is that we run and walk. Anne, what walk did you choose for this assignment? 

Click above for The Art of the Playlist Podcast

Valle Crucis Community Park 45 Minute Run:  

  1. The park is 7.8 miles west of Boone, North Carolina where App State University is. This is the mountains of North Carolina. 
  2. The park is on the Watauga River. There are often people playing in the river and there are lots of people fishing for trout. 
  3. There are at least two streams feeding into the Watauga River that also run through the park. 
  4. It’s a rare flat valley surrounded by mountains. 
  5. The trail I run four times is over a mile long.
  6. Also discuss: the trail, who is there, it costs $5 sometimes, paved and grass, playgrounds, basketball
  7. Nearby: The Mast Farm Inn, Valle Tavern, Mast Store Annex, Original Mast Store (building constructed in 1882), Pearl’s Kitchen, Valle Crucis Farm, Taylor House Inn. 
  8. The park is 1.8 miles from my house. 

Torg’s 45 Minute Run Playlist 

What are some guiding principles of putting together this playlist? 

  1. I signed up for my first race in a long time on June 14th. I’m running the 4-mile version. There’s a 10 and 14 mile version too. It starts at The Rock, which is App State’s Football Stadium. 
  2. The move from podcasts where I might forget what I’m doing to music. I wanted music because I was trying to tap into the routine that would get my body read to run. 
  3. I’ve even added drive over to the park music: Weird Fishes by Radiohead and Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve. I pick these for the pace of the beat that I think could be my feet hitting the ground in rhythm. So for these, I’m getting ready to run. My body hears these songs and thinks, we’re going running. 
  4. “Theme from Hoosiers” by Jerry Goldsmith. I have a walk from the car to the starting line. I like having the start and finish line the same to help me remember lap times and see how I am doing. 
  5. More instrumentals to get started: 
  • “Gonna Fly Now,” the Rocky theme song by Bill Conti, “Training Montage” also from Rocky by Bill Conti. Imagine the Russion running indoors in Rocky IV while Rocky is out chopping wood in the Russian winter. 
  1. My list is always evolving according to my pace and how the songs are hitting. I just moved “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence and the Machine out. 
  2. Just keep it going songs: Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, It’s a Sin by Pet Shop Boys, Safe and Sound by Capital Cities, and “I Ran (So Far Away)” by A Flock of Seagulls. 
  3. Now we’re going to get more serious and try and turn it on. I bumped up Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” to kick off this section because it starts slow. If it was later in this section, there’s kind of a lull that breaks the flow. I also have Eminem’s “Till I Collapse” in here and it starts a little slow too and that’s a bit of a problem and I don’t feel like I want those two songs next to each other. 
  4. Cake’s “The Distance” works great in this section. 
  5. I like to finish, and my favorite song to run to, is the Beastie Boys “Sabotage.” I also like this song better on a run than at any other moment in my life. 
  6. If I happen to still be running after “Sabotage,” I have ACDC “Thunderstruck,” and Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train” ready to go.

Bill’s Mountain Run Playlist

Anne’s Los Angeles Walk Playlist

Thanks for checking out this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

Noah Kahan’s Album The Great Divide and our Favorite Musical Storytellers

Welcome to the Torg Stories Podcast. On this episode, Anne and I are going to talk about the new Noah Kahan album. It’s titled The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs. 

Noah Kahan The Great Divide Podcast

Noah Kahan’s album The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs was released during April of 2026.

Be sure to check out my favorite musical storytellers of all time at the bottom of the page.

Torg Family Updates: 

Mom: 

  • tries to call Dad on her phone, asks when she’s going home. She forgets anything I tell her, and I’d have to tell her again. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. 

Septic: 

  • it was the seal of the toilet flapper. $5 repair and the yard is showing improvement already! However, about $350 to try and repair the yard with dirt and sod. 

The prom: 

  • Our living room turned into Boone’s hottest restaurant serving 20 people Sat night. 

Noah Kahan’s album The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs

A few details about Noah Kahan: 

  1. 29 years old born in Strafford, Vermont. 
  2. Strafford is half the size of Winamac, population around 1000
  3. I watched his documentary on Netflix. It’s called Noah Kahan: Out of Body.  Click here to watch trailer. Quote from his mom: Noah makes our family’s dirty laundry just seem like being human. 
  4. His dad won Ironman contests when Noah was a kid and suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bike crash. His parents got divorced. 
  5. Two brothers and a sister who seem to figure largely into his songs. 
  6. Kahan family professions: 
  • Mom has written how parenting guides and taught English
  • Dad worked in IT and played the guitar 
  • Brother Richard is a firefighter. Documentary said the attention-deficit kids in their gym clothes is Richard. 
  • Sasha is a pediatric surgeon in Park City 
  • Simon works for a global consulting company based in New York 
  1. Wife Brenna: engaged 2023, married 2025. Known each other at least since 2014. 
  2. For April, 2026 article in Burlington Free Press, click here. 
  3. This is his fourth album and it’s coming after Stick Season. There’s 21 songs on this one, an hour and 36 mins long. 

Favorite or Most Interesting Songs on Noah Kahan’s album The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs

“The Great Divide” and click here for lyrics. 

Why this one? 

  • Driving beat about the trauma of a friend who went through something back then. 
  • Powerful images like fellow morons’ matching cigarette burns 

The title comes from “You inched yourself across the great divide.” 

Opening lyrics: 

I can’t recall the last time that we talked

About anything but looking out for cops

We got cigarette burns in the same side of our hands

We ain’t friends, we’re just morons

Who broke skin in the same spot

Who is the narrator thinking about all of the time? A friend, a romantic partner 

Important lyrics: 

I hope you’re scared of only ordinary shit

Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin

And not your soul and what He might do with it

This capital He…

Whatever happened was bad enough that it would be nice to just worry about run of the mill murderers and skin cancer. 

“Haircut” and click here for lyrics.  

Opening lyrics: 

Storm took the phone lines down and now your ride can’t call

And you’re bouncing off the walls

I stretched my arms real wide, tried to break your fall

But you got up, mad as hell, and told me that I had it all

A lyric that suggests saying Kahan is the narrator might not be a stretch: Just to say that some small fame ain’t made me someone else

Haircut seems to be a metaphor for more: I’m happy for your haircut, I’m glad you got your act clеan

I think there are two singers in this song. The narrator and someone who plays bass and says the songwriter read their mind. 

It’s a lonely and defeated song. Last line: We were fine without you, baby.  

“American Cars” click here for lyrics 

Interesting bit from Genius.com: 

  • “American Cars” is the third song from Noah Kahan’s fourth studio album, The Great Divide, and debuted on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert on April 21, 2026.”

Opening lines: 

I was workin’ on a plan to disappear completely

Gaslightin’ my friends into thinkin’ I was busy

‘Cause if drinkin’ was a day job, I’d be askin’ for more money

Hell, I never take a day off, and I’m always sellin’ somethin’

One of my favorite sounding songs. It sounds optimistic. Good driving song. 

I like the narrator’s plan to disappear. 

“Gaslightin’ my friends” as psychological manipulation trying to make someone else doubt their perceptions. 

The rhyme of…American cars and you are 

  • Didn’t know you drove American cars
  • Ray-Bans on your face
  • You’ve been driving all day
  • But you’re here and we’re grateful you are

My observation that Harry Styles sings American Girls and Noah Kahan sings American cars. 

Feels like friends or siblings who need bailed out pulled through struggles. 

“Willing and Able” lyrics click here 

The chorus: 

I’m willing and able

If you wanna kick this rock around

If you’ve got a bone to pick with me

If you’ve got a flag, plant it in the ground

Oh, I’ll stay here ’til morning

Oh, we can fight like we used to fight

Bony-limbed, red-faced, and teary-eyed

Under the glow of the TV light

I’d be willing and able

So it’s “willing and able” to fight, pick a bone, stay up all night. 

It’s a somber song about fighting. Does the fighting seem healthy? Or like there’s a special bond in it?

What do you make of this lyric?

  • And I’ll see you again in six months, when you need your next song.  

“Deny, Deny, Deny” click here for lyrics 

A more upbeat guitar rock and roll sounding song. 

The music launches when we get to this line, and the way this works is one of my favorite things about Kahan’s music: 

  • I’ll get your house paid off so the feds can’t touch it

The title comes from, When I ask about the past, you deny, deny, deny. 

Doors click here for lyrics

There’s a thumping energetic beat to open and a line, “I’d hurt anyone who got too close and anyone who wouldn’t look. 

Significant lyric: 

I was born into a one-hundred-year storm

Foot of ice across Vermont

And in that dark, and in that frost, a heart was formed

Malcontented and unwarm

You were unsuspectin’, not unwarned

We get a metaphor of opening up doors here. 

Seems like a challenge or even an instruction from Noah to someone else: you don’t want to get involved with me. You have been warned. I am a losing streak waiting to happen. 

  • I’m left staring at the ceiling listing reasons you should pack all your shit up. 

What do I make of it all? 

  1. Kahan touts the mental health issues. I see that in characters who take or don’t take their medication. I see it in lots of songs about drinking too much. People in the songs have wounds. 
  • Exhausted, guilty consciences 
  • An unwillingness of some of the characters to open up, talk about the past
  • The lyric, “I scream in my sleep.” 
  1. Feels like a lot of people feel what Kahan describes in the songs and his music is a balm for their suffering. I like this album as much as anything I have heard for the first time but I like studying it and I like to have it on working in the yard. 
  2. I heard Taylor Swift talk about this once: a song is just what I felt in that moment, and the song preserves that feeling. (Noah doesn’t have to feel this way all the time to put it in a song, and it’s something I think through and don’t put into the work because I’ve thought it through, and I think that can be a mistake). 
  3. Kahan’s use of the word “you” and all the people that might address. 
  4. Using you: Great Divide, Haircut, Willing and Able
  5. He has this really emotionally tangled relationships with friends and family that I feel like I never had. 

The rest of the songs: 

  1. End of August, the second part of the title comes from this one: Endin’ of August, the bugs are just starting to die. 
  • It’s a matter of time until everything dies
  1. Downfall: I hope it all goes terrible for you so you come back home. 
  2. Lighthouse
  3. Paid Time Off: feels like the good choice of the simple life in Sheffield working for paid time off, getting high, playing a round of golf on your day off
  4. Staying Still: think I’m going to like this one when I spend more time with it. I can’t keep starting over… Are you good at staying still? 
  5. Dashboard: it’s about running away from your problems (driving and the dashboard) only to find all the same problems, the person is still an asshole 
  • Kind of a funny song that tells someone they are an asshole. 
  1. 23: it’s about if he leaves someone at 23 then they will always be this good thing. If you leave someone then they can stay this perfect vision. 
  2. Porch Light: title comes from he tells whoever the song addresses he’ll leave the porch light on. Lyric: I choke on the Poison spreading to my lungs. 
  3. Headed North: wishing someone he knows was headed North, funny line about someone with a coexist sticker telling another to go to hell 
  4. We Go Way Back 
  5. Spoiled – so his children get spoiled 
  6. All them Horses 
  7. A Few of Your Own – I was high when I met you…
  8. Orbiter – 
  9. Dan – let’s talk about him. Where do we go when we die? He wouldn’t mind that spot where he’s camping. 

Favorite Musical Storytellers

  1. Jim Croce: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, Time in a Bottle, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, Roller Derby Queen, Operator, Workin at the Car Wash Blues 
  2. Everclear: Santa Monica, I Will Buy You a New Life, Everything to Everyone, Heroin Girl 
  3. Liz Phair: Divorce Song, Polyester Bride  
  4. Ben Folds: Brick, the couple’s trip to an abortion clinic, Annie Waits
  5. Billy Joel: Piano Man, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Captain Jack, The Entertainer 
  6. Paul Simon: Address about 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, America, Kodachrome 

Thanks for checking out this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

David Foster Wallace’s “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley”

Welcome to the Torg Stories Podcast. On this episode, Anne and I are discussing the David Foster Wallace essay titled, “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley.” Anne, if Wallace was a less creative writer, he could have called this “Playing Tennis in Central Illinois.” 

Click above to listen to episode on David Foster Wallace’s essay “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley”

Acceptance is its own verve -DFW

  • The graphic in the featured image was by Julianna Brion and appeared in a The New Yorker piece titled “David Foster Wallace’s Perfect Game” by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Click here to connect with that.

Breaking down the title:

  • I take that word “derivative” to be a math term and this essay is loaded up with math words and phrases and math metaphors. 
  • Something for a writer to consider: When I make choices about what words to use and what metaphors I will employ, from what world will I draw? For example, if I’m writing about an Indiana basketball player, then word choices and metaphors might come from those worlds: like a ball swishing through the net or his face was as red as a barn. 
  • Derivative sport speaks to tennis being a game of geometry, a game of angles. You have the boundary lines, you have the angle the ball is coming in and going out, and you have other variables such as wind. 
  • Here is the National Centers for Environmental Information on tornado alley: Tornado Alley is a nickname given to an area in the southern plains of the central United States that consistently experiences a high frequency of tornadoes each year. Tornadoes in this region typically happen in late spring and occasionally the early fall.
  • I hadn’t really thought of tornado alley as in Illinois but I did find this on WCIA out of Champaign, IL: The Insurance Information Institute said Illinois topped the list as the U.S. state with the most tornados in 2023, with 136 touching down. Alabama came in at second with 101 tornadoes.

Discussion questions: 

How would you describe David Foster Wallace to someone who has never heard of him? How would you tell someone about this piece? 

  • I came to him through his essay “The View from Planet Trillaphon as Seen in Relation to the Bad Thing.” I think he wrote it as a student at Amherst. Click here to read. Then I just went on a reading binge and especially liked his nonfiction such as “A Supposedly Fun Thing…” and “Ticket to the Fair.” 
  • I read a biography about him Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by DT Max. 
  • Also, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky (2010). 
  • That was also a movie in which Jason Segel plays Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg plays Lipsky. 

From the biography I read: 

  • There was a moment in many of his fellow students’ lives when they realized Wallace was not just smart but stunningly smart, as smart as anyone they had ever met. One friend remembers looking over his shoulder in a class on twentieth-century British poetry after the professor returned their essays on Philip Larkin and seeing on Wallace’s, “A+—One of the finest pieces of writing I have ever read.”
  • He did a double thesis at Amherst. One in philosophy and one in English. The bio on the English thesis: Wallace’s thesis panel gave Broom an A-plus, and Wallace matched Costello double summa for double summa. But he had also discovered something more important about himself—he knew now what he wanted to do. Fiction held him as no other effort had; it took him out of time and released him from some of the pain of being himself. He told his roommate that when he was writing, “I can’t feel my ass in the chair.”

What are the themes in this?

  • Childhood 
  • Acceptance as its own verve AND Stoic cheer 

Some Golden Lines from the piece:

  • P. 6 for this description of the town he lived in: Philo, Illinois, is a cockeyed grid: nine north-south streets against six northeast-southwest, fifty-one gorgeous slanted-cruciform corners (the east and west intersection-angles’ tangents could be evaluated integrally in terms of their secants!) around a three-intersection central town common with a tank whose nozzle pointed northwest at Urbana, plus a frozen native son, felled on the Salerno beachhead, whose bronze hand pointed true north.
  • P.7: The best planned, best hit ball often just blew out of bounds, was the basic unlyrical problem. 
  • P. 7 a question for Anne: I, who was affectionately known as Slug because I was such a lazy turd in practice, located my biggest tennis asset in a weird robotic detachment from whatever unfairnesses of wind and weather I couldn’t plan for. Question: Anne, would you say you were a lazy turd in practice? 
  • P. 7 Acceptance is its own verve, and it takes imagination for a player to like wind, and I liked wind; or rather I at least felt the wind had some basic right to be there, and found it sort of interesting, and was willing to expand my logistical territory to countenance the devastating effect a 15- to 30-mph stutter-breeze swirling southwest to east would have on my best calculations… 
  • P. 14: Houses blew not out but in. Brothels were spared while orphanages bought it. Dead cattle were found three miles from their silage without a scratch on them. Tornadoes are omnipotent and obey no law.

What do I appreciate about Wallace’s essay? 

One, the mind at work with the knowledge of math being applied to tennis with the ability to put all kinds of sentences together that I could never think of and balance sophisticated word choice with just an easy going funny voice. 

Makes me nostalgic for my own Midwestern days playing sports outside, in barns, on the golf course, running the wind for cross country. 

  • Those from IN/WI/Northern IL think of their own Midwest as agronomics and commodity futures and corn-detasseling and bean-walking and seed-company capps, apple-checked Nordic types, cider and slaughter and football games with white fogbanks of breath exiting helmets. 

Wallace is funny!

  • The Midwest as a person when it comes to weather and “our own personal unsheltered asses.” p. 3
  • Starts a paragraph this way: Still strangely eager to speak of weather, 

As a midwesterner who grew up playing sports, what do you connect with here? Does Wallace offer you anything new? 

  • Riding my bike to Twelve Mile, riding to Curt Kline’s house. 
  • Playing golf at Pond View in the wind, running back to school in the wind during cross country
  • Thinking of Jeremy Vogt and Scott Blum and Matt Painter

Vocab words I had to look up (definitions from Webster’s) 

  • Conferva as in conferva-choked ditches: any of various filamentous algae that form scums in still or sluggish fresh water
  • Detente as in the opponent smelled some breakdown in the odd detente I’d had with the elements: detente as in the relaxation of strained relations or tensions
  • Threnody as in the two sirens in Philo weave in and out of each other in a godawful threnody: a song of lamentation for the dead, as in an elegy 

Wallace writes about two things he is pretty good at: tennis and basketball. 

What would be my two things? 

  • I need a synonym for basketball as in his “derivative sport” and I need a second synonym for where I grew up as in his “tornado alley.” 
  • Blacktop Basketball in The Winamac Town Park 
  • Playing Fours in Basketball and Watching Out for Telephone Poles 
  • What adjective before basketball? Outdoor, Park, Rom Com
  • What phrase for Winamac, Indiana? 

What about the state of our games when we were in high school is gone now? What do players have today that we didn’t have then? In short, how have sports changed since we played in the 80s and early 90s? 

  • Back then: team shoes, knee sleeves, wristbands, short shorts, park and barn basketball
  • Now: travel basketball, trainers, social media, the full leg or arm sleeve, music during practice

Anything else you want to say about this? 

  • Philo, IL (about which Wallace writes) is 150 miles southwest of where we grew up in Winamac, Indiana. 
  • The 23 line second to last sentence that precedes the last sentence: Antitoi’s tennis continued to improve after that, but mine didn’t. 

Thanks for checking out the podcast episode!