Hi Folks! The vote is in; Horseman Pass By by Larry McMurtry will be our May Book Club book.

Horseman was McMurtry’s debut, published in 1961. The description reads: In the dusty north Texas town of Thalia, young Lonnie Bannon quietly endures the pangs of maturity as a persistent rivalry between his grandfather and step-uncle, Hud, festers, and a deadly …

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Hi folks,

Our May book club vote is below! I’ve whittled it down a little from last month—just 4 options this time!

Take a look at the descriptions of the books to get an idea of the options, then cast your vote using the button below!

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If you want to watch back our call about Angels, you can do so here. It was fun! We’ll do the same with Libra by Don DeLillo at the end of April.

1. You don’t have to notice everything on the first read

Reading Angels helped me realize that I notice craft, but tend to skip things beyond that. I don’t think about what Johnson was trying to do, or interpret his intent, or the wider literary context of Angels. I just read it, noticed some stylistic quirks of Johnson’s, and brought those observations to the call.

For example, Denis Johnson packs a lot of scene direction into his dialogue. Not all the time, but sometimes, he’ll let the character say what they’re doing, rather than Johnson telling you what they’re doing. (directions bolded)

“Have a crib for you soon, and a string to tie on your music box with, and Mama and Miranda’ll come sing to you when it’s bedtime, and here’s your orange juice, thank goodness, there there there there there, little Baby Ellen, oh that a good orange juice, such a serious orange juice, such a serious look, oh, see the pretty sun? See the sun over there, Baby Ellen? That’s just a little bitty part of the sun, pretty soon Baby Ellen see the whole sun and then it’s morning time for Baby Ellen and Mama and Miranda Sue.” She wished she could smother the baby. Nobody would know. They were four days out of Oakland.

In those short sections, you infer the action based on the dialogue. It’s neat. A little stylistic flourish.

Another thing, his characters tend to repeat phrases… as people do in real life.

“Look at your hands,” Jamie said to him. “Look how yellow these two fingers are.” She took his hand. “You’re using up them Camels like you mean to die of smoking.”

and:

“I been in touch with some people in Phoenix,” he said.

“Phoenix? Like in Phoenix, Arizona?”

“Some bad people,” he said.

Her stomach grabbed. “Phoenix, Arizona, USA?” She took a puff from his cigaret herself. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. I just thought we’d go to Phoenix, is all”

This Month’s Book is…

Libra by Don DeLillo
We’re reading Libra together throughout April.
Weekly notes, discussion, and a live call at the end of the month.

Join the Discord community (gives you access to monthly live calls & community discussions):

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2. Denis Johnson as a “chameleon”

I’ve noticed Johnson’s general prose style and cinematic approach change a little depending on the novel.

Train Dreams (to me) is super accessible. It’s sparse. Scene descriptions are a bit reserved yet still beautiful. The shining aspect of Train Dreams is its dialogue. It’s funny, intense, and thoughtful. It’s got the ‘dog-shot man’ and Arne Peoples to carry certain scenes.

Angels is a little bit of a grit-lit character study + a road novel + a bit of crime. Several things are going on, and it reads differently from Train Dreams. Johnson fragments certain sections for effect. It felt like (mild spoilers here) in the bank-robbery scene, he treated it like a Jenga set: he pulled blocks out until it was the sparest version of the scene that could stand alone. And it was cool. Unique.

So far, Tree of Smoke, his magnum opus Vietnam War novel, has been a blend of the two. Dialogue leads, character leads. But it’s got a little of the intense introspection of Angels, and a little of the dry humor of Train Dreams.

We wondered if perhaps this switch-up book-to-book with Johnson was why he didn’t go fully mainstream. Faulkner was always Faulkner. Hemingway was recognizable a mile away. McCarthy started Faulknerian and then adjusted his approach to be a bit more palatable in All the Pretty Horses, and then things took off for him. But the voice of each of these writers stayed fairly consistent.

Johnson is consistent in his snappy dialogue and general character approach, but not all the novels read the same.

3. Writers don’t always know what their work means

Phil pointed out in our call that people would ask Denis’ wife what he meant by certain things in his letters or where his head was when he wrote x, y, or z. She always said she had no idea.

“People ask what he meant, and even his wife said she had no idea.”

Which reaffirmed for me that I just won’t mess with trying to understand authorial intent. its a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. So i’ll stick to finding craft elements I like, and pointing those out.

Become Disgustingly Literate
A monthly reading experience—one book, weekly notes, and a live discussion.

Just $5 a month, or one trip to Starbucks

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Each month, we read a book together and talk about it as a group.

The discussion happens in our Discord (paid members get access), and at the end of the month, we meet for a live Zoom conversation.

Last month, we read Angels by Denis Johnson.

In April, we’re reading Libra by Don DeLillo — one of his best and strangest novels.

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I was a little slow getting the March Book Club pick up and running, so I’m trying to be more proactive in getting things rolling for April. That said, here are a few books we can vote on to read in April!

We will vote today, March 17th, through March 23rd to give us time to spread the word and purchase or rent the book prior to April 1st!

Here are the books!

Fugitives of the Heart by William Gay

A dark, Southern Gothic tale of love, obsession, and violence, following a troubled man drawn into a dangerous relationship that spirals across the rural backroads of Tennessee.

Libra by Don DeLillo

A gripping, layered reimagining of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald that blends fact and fiction to explore conspiracy, identity, and the hidden machinery behind history’s most infamous assassination.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

A quiet, haunting story about friendship, memory, and what it means to be human, told through the lives of students at a mysterious English boarding school.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

A spare, powerful novella about a coal merchant in a small Irish town who uncovers a troubling truth—and must decide what kind of man he wants to be.

The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson

A lively, adventurous Viking saga packed with humor and action, following a resourceful Norseman as he journeys across seas, kingdoms, and cultures in search of fortune.

Tinkers by Paul Harding

A meditative, poetic novel that drifts through the memories of a dying man, weaving together generations, time, and the quiet beauty of ordinary life.

America’s Founding Son by Bob Crawford

A fresh, accessible biography of John Quincy Adams that focuses especially on his unexpected and consequential post-presidential years, tracing how he became a political maverick and a major antislavery voice in a turbulent era of American history.

You Never Forget Your First by Alexis Coe

A sharp, revisionist take on George Washington that challenges traditional hero narratives and offers a more nuanced, human portrait of America’s first president.

The April book is decided by the community.

Paid members vote below — if you’d like to take part (and read along with us), you can join here.

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If a book is the best of a collection of 20, 30, 40, or even 75+ books, there’s a pretty good chance it wasn’t just halfway decent. It was probably pretty darn good.

Train Dreams was the best book I read in 2025.

For whatever it is worth to you, the sample of also-rans includes Lonesome Dove, White Noise, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Gates of Fire.

But Train Dreams was the best.

Why?

It’s a little book, just over 100 pages, about a lumberjack and family man named Robert Granier in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.

The span of time is important because there’s a misguided notion amongst most readers that a book has to be big to contain a life. People are complicated; you can’t just convey their whole being in 200 pages. You need scenes that build on one another to tell their story. You need 600 pages, at least.

Denis Johnson proves the exception to the ‘rule’.

Here’s an example: one of the best characters I’ve ever read is Arn Peoples. Described as a gadabout from the southwest, an old man and frail, staying out of the way of work. You can visualize him as he tells tall tales about the Earp brothers, Jacob Warren, and his dodgy past.

He says at one point, “I worked on a peak outside Bisbee, Arizona, where we were only eleven or twelve miles from the sun. It was a hundred and sixteen degrees on the thermometer, and every degree was a foot long.”

He’s standing next to you, looking over your shoulder, inspecting whatever you’re doing, and offering an opinion. You grew up with an old man like Arn Peoples in your neighborhood, and he’d steal your bike if you rode it without a helmet.

Denis Johnson touches the sublime. Arn Peoples gets 4 pages in Train Dreams, and he’s instantly memorable. He’s real. The little book is populated by individuals like Arn Peoples who come and go throughout Grainer’s life, and they all leave some mark on him, and you and me.

Johnson’s ungodly ear for dialogue mixed with a canny way of crafting idiosyncratic prose that matches the history he’s writing about makes this one of the best books I’ve ever read, perhaps the best. This, again, in a year where I read some of the best novels I’ve ever picked up.

And let’s not forget that the book was adapted into the best film of 2025, which so perfectly expands on Johnson’s vision and captures everyday life.

It’s a tour de force; I have no notes. Train Dreams was the best book (and movie) I read (or watched) in 2025.

What’s Next?

I post recaps of the books we read in our ‘Disgustingly Literate’ book club for free here on Substack, but paid subscribers get access to our monthly chats about the books (or in this case, books & film adaptation).

Consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to the private Discord server and participate in our virtual calls about the reading!

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Also, I’d love to know which days work best for our calls. I’ve been planning them for the weekends, but I’d love to know if we should move our traditional Saturday evening window to a different day.

Last Thing

Vote on our January read-along!

Our call about A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Everything that Rises Must Converge is on December 6th!

25% off (This week only)

I’m breaking out A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything that Rises Must Converge into two posts, mostly because I really love Flannery O’Connor and slapping them together just doesn’t feel right.

Spoiler-y thoughts about A Good Man is Hard to Find ahead, read at your own risk.

Opening Thoughts

I think anyone who gets the most out of A Good Man is Hard to Find understands American history and is probably familiar with the American South.

O’Connor captures the essence of something in this simple story about a grandmother and her family traveling to Florida, and the escaped murderer they meet along the way.

It’s presumably the 1950s. Some back-of-the-hand math would put the grandmother (our POV) at 60-70 years old, which means she grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. In the South.

There are two versions of America in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. One is the northern version that moved on from the Civil War era as soon as possible, and the southern version that clung to what they lost, emphasized identity of place, and values like courage, honor, and heritage.1

To some, those values can only be recalled while at the same time reckoning with the evil that tainted all of those ideals.

But in this story, O’Connor is able to make a stew of it. We see a grandmother who pines for a time long gone, wishes for common values that have since faded. She wants good men to be easy to find, but they aren’t. And in the course of the story, we find that she never really exhibited the goodness she hoped to find in others. In fact, while she may not be the killer who provides the bloody exclamation to the story, she isn’t much better than he, either.

The Peculiar and Talented Woman

Here’s what works so well about O’Connor’s work, if you’ll allow me to evangelize for a moment. A Good Man is Hard to Find results in The Misfit (aforementioned escaped murderer) shooting and killing a family on the side of the road for no reason whatever. Just because he’s mean. Because he’s not got any good in him. Or because the system made him into the evil it thought he was.

But it works so well because it comes out of the pen of a devoutly religious southern woman. Each of those words is intentional, because if you were born in Georgia in 1925, no matter how catholic you were, your Georgian identity would be ranked as equally important as your affiliation with Rome.

Flannery O’Connor was catholic, and also southern. But rather than write faux-history, she explored all of these converging values in stories. “My subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the Devil,” she wrote.

The world is evil, in other words, but a better way of living is in there, somewhere, if we can pull it out.

The other profound thing about this little southern woman is that she didn’t much care what the literary establishment or her readers thought of the darkness in her words. As the saying goes, darkness merely makes light brighter. “Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics,” she wrote.

O’Connor didn’t presume her audience approached her work with the same lens she did, so she made it a point in her stories to be very clear about the themes she wished to explore. She often did this through shock.

In the end, the bad guy wins. But was he the bad guy all along? The Misfit is explainable. He was accused of killing his father, and then the state treated him like an animal who killed his father. So he became that animal.

What is far more shocking is that the grandmother who defined herself through her own good blood—the good stock in her that made good people— in the end finds that it’s not stock that makes people, but the life they live and the things they see.

Join the Discord here

We’ll meet again tomorrow, November 22, at 8 pm EST to talk about White Noise by Don DeLillo and The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington.

Excited to see you over in the Discord!

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Things move fast. Everything changes. I started this newsletter to write history and post podcasts, and somehow it’s become a place where we read books together and talk about them. Honestly, I should’ve seen it coming.

The response to the disgustingly literate read-along blew me away. So we’re making that a core focus moving forward. I’m always trying to figure out what to post—history? fiction? commentary? Do people follow for the 17-hour Vietnam War audio series or because we talk about books? I never really know.

What I do know is that this newsletter has doubled in the last two months, and many of you joined specifically to read and discuss books.

So here’s what you can expect going forward:

• Reading recaps & commentaries

• Book Recommendations (fiction & nonfiction alike)

• Writing updates (oh yes, I’ve got some things brewing).

• The occasional history post if I feel my contribution is worth something.1

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Let’s Talk Books: December

December is a crazy month. We’re running around doing things with our families, preparing, shopping…It’s chaos.

That being the case, I figured we could read a short book in December and talk about it in the new year.

Let’s read Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.

It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century―an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

Bonus points if you watch the new film adaptation on Netflix (releasing November 21st).

The plan: we’ll read the book (roughly 100 pages) with an expected finish date of December 19th. I'll release a summary on the 19th, and we’ll meet in the new year to discuss the book and movie!

For those keeping track, this will be our schedule through the end of the year:

• November 21st: The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

• November 22nd: Members-only Discord call - 8-9pm Eastern.

• [Break for Thanksgiving]

• December 5th: A Good Man is Hard to Find & Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor.

• December 6th: Members-only Discord call - 8-9pm Eastern.

• December 19th: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.

• January 2026: Members-only Discord call about the Train Dreams book & Film.

This experience is always best if you share your thoughts in the comments of these posts! If something struck you, share it. If you have questions, share them! If my take on the book differs from yours, share your thoughts!

2026

In the new year, I’d love to settle into a rhythm of one book per month. Below is a “competitor pool” of potential picks.

If you’re a paid subscriber, hop into the Discord (linked below) and drop a few favorites from the list.

If you’re a free subscriber, don’t worry—you’ll still get free written commentaries for each selection.

The competitors: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Mao II by Don DeLillo, The Gospel Singer by Harry Crews, The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry, Scar Lover by Harry Crews, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, Normal People by Sally Rooney, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, True Grit by Charles Portis, Sula by Toni Morrison, Vietnam-Perkasie by W.D. Ehrhart, In Pharoah’s Army by Tobias Wolff, and The Door by Magda Szabo.

For each book, I’ll share an 800–1200-word commentary on the chosen date, then we’ll meet on Discord to talk through it together.

If you’d like to nominate something not on the list, leave a comment!

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A Quick Note:

If you enjoy the read-alongs, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get:

• Live Discord calls for book discussions

• The community Discord server to chat throughout the reading process

It’s also an easy way to support the work I do on Instagram, TikTok, and with Compendium—and it gives you a seat at the table for these conversations. Consider a subscription!

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Vote in the poll above or drop a comment — I’d love to know if you’re in, and what books you think belong on the list. Thanks for reading, for caring about this weird corner of the internet, and for keeping the lights on around here.

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

• White Noise by Don DeLillo

• The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

• A Good Man is Hard to Find & Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor

If you’re interested, there’s still time left to join the read-along. We’re planning to finish The Stone Door by November 21st, so if you want to join, grab a copy!

Details can be found here:

Also, consider becoming a paid subscriber to join our members-only Zoom calls throughout.

This was my first journey with Don DeLillo, and this was the text I sent after reading the first page:

“Holy sh*t biscuit, my brain is lighting up like Christmas over here. Was this dude on otherworldly drugs when he wrote this, or is he just brilliant?”

Chris, of course, replied, “He’s just brilliant.”

Reflecting on this reading experience reminds me of a Joan Didion interview with Charlie Rose. She said that she taught herself how to write by typing Hemingway sentences over and over.

“What were you looking for?” Charlie Rose leans toward her.

“How they worked,” she says with baffled brevity. “They seemed so simple, but you would come away after reading a string of them feeling this overwhelming feeling that he wanted you to feel.”

That’s how DeLillo’s prose makes me feel.

White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and their family. It explores several different themes within the overall umbrella: Jack and Babette’s fear of death, the constant hum and thrum of media swirling around them, how families default to a base level of comfort, and probably a lot else.

There are two approaches one could take with White Noise:

1. Read it like a traditional novel, examine plot, character, and prose, and then carry on.

2. Think deeper about the themes; what is DeLillo saying? Is he saying anything, or are we reading between the lines?

In his essay “Why Oswald Missed: Don DeLillo’s ‘Libra,’” David T. Courtwright discuss­es how—unlike idiographic historians who attempt to understand historical events by reconstructing the choices made by individual actors—nomothetic historians “subordinate the individual to powerful physical, biological, economic, social, [and] psychological forces that they believe are the keys to understanding the human past.” If DeLillo’s characters are caught up in systems that subordinate their individualism or free will, they’re not responsible for their actions.

Therefore, one could argue the ‘point’ of White Noise is not so much the things the characters do, but the world in which they live, the circumstances they inhabit, the psychological forces of humanity.

Brand names and excerpts of radio or TV interrupt the prose; the pages drip with commentary on late-stage capitalism, consumerism, and vice.

At the soul of it, White Noise is a commentary on the human ability to cope. Death hangs in the background of the pages of White Noise: in the supermarket, at the mall, in Jack’s nightmares. DeLillo has cited Ernst Becker’s 1974 book The Denial of Death as an influence. Becker builds on the work of Sigmund Freud, Søren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, and other thinkers to argue that human civilization—everything we do in life to find meaning, or to escape through hedonistic pursuits—is an elaborate coping mechanism to help us forget about our mortality. Characters in the novel cope with their fear of death by immersing themselves in the “white noise” of the media-saturated world.

Despite the big themes and lurking commentaries, it’s a funny novel. While I’m sure I’d benefit from multiple readings, there are still passages that reward the first-timer.

“What is it camels store in their humps?” Babette said. “Food or water? I could never get that straight.”

“There are one-hump camels and two-hump camels,” Heinrich told her. “So it depends which kind you’re talking about.”

“Are you telling me a two-hump camel stores food in one hump and water in the other?”

“The important thing about camels,” he said, “is that camel meat is considered a delicacy.”

“I thought that was alligator meat,” Denise said.

“Who introduced the camel to America?” Babette said. “They had them out west for a while to carry supplies to coolies who were building the great railroads that met at Ogden, Utah. I remember my history exams.

“Are you sure you’re not talking about llamas?” Heinrich said.

“The llama stayed in Peru,” Denise said. “Peru has the llama, the vicuna and one other animal. Bolivia has tin. Chile has copper and iron.”

“I’ll give anyone in this car five dollars,” Heinrich said, “if they can name the population of Bolivia.”

“Bolivians,” my daughter said.

Keep the conversation going in the comments! What was White Noise to you? Is it DeLillo’s best work? Did you approach it as more of a casual reading experience, or did you sit with it like the Zach Galifianakis meme?

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This post is a commentary on Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling as part of the ‘disgustingly literate’ read-along we are doing here on the newsletter. Hard Rain Falling is the second of five books we are reading together.

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

• White Noise by Don DeLillo

• The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

• A Good…

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This post is a commentary on John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men as part of the ‘disgustingly literate’ read-along we are doing here on the newsletter. Of Mice and Men is the first of five books we are reading together.

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

• White Noise by Don DeLillo

• The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

• A Good Man…

Read more

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