Hot Takes on the Classics

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda explore Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” a story in which the most important subject is never named. At a Spanish train station, an American man and a young woman called Jig wait for a train to Madrid while circling around a “simple operation” that will determine the future of their relationship. Tim and Emily discuss Hemingway’s iceberg theory, the story’s compressed setting and dialogue, the unequal pressure between the couple, and the way Jig sees possibility where the man sees a threat to freedom. They close with Tim’s Hot Take and a discussion of what the story reveals about the difficult passage from adolescence into adulthood.
Episode Outline
“Hills Like White Elephants” as a difficult bridge from adolescence into adulthood
Why the story is best encountered before the reader knows what the couple is discussing
Hemingway in Paris in 1927: rising fame, The Sun Also Rises, Hadley Richardson, and Pauline Pfeiffer
A radically compressed story: one train station, two central characters, and almost nothing but dialogue
The unnamed pregnancy and abortion and Hemingway’s iceberg theory of omission
Jig, “the girl,” and “the American”: naming, age, and the unequal pressure within the conversation
The white elephant image, the surrounding landscape, and Jig’s attentiveness to the world
The train station as a liminal setting and the approaching train to Madrid as a deadline for decision
The couple’s sticker covered suitcases and a life of travel, mobility, and limited responsibility
The child as possibility for Jig and as a threat to freedom for the man
Hemingway’s biography, the temptation to read the story autobiographically, and the likely future of the relationship
Key Topics & Takeaways
The Iceberg Theory and the Unspoken Center: The story never uses the words “baby,” “pregnant,” or “abortion.” Hemingway leaves the decisive reality beneath the surface, forcing the reader to infer it from pressure, repetition, gesture, and what the characters avoid saying.
Power and Persuasion: The conversation is not simply a balanced exchange between two people weighing options. The man repeatedly reassures, minimizes, and pushes, while Jig keeps asking whether doing what he wants will restore the relationship they once had. The imbalance becomes part of the story’s emotional force.
Liminal Space and a Closing Deadline: The train station holds the couple between places and between possible futures. Madrid is approaching with the train, so a story in which almost nothing physically happens nevertheless carries the pressure of an imminent decision.
Freedom, Responsibility, and Adulthood: The couple’s luggage records a mobile life of travel and relative freedom. The pregnancy introduces a responsibility that cannot be treated as another destination, and the episode uses that conflict to mark a harsh transition from youthful freedom toward adulthood.
Perception and Possibility: Jig notices hills, landscape, and possible futures; the man narrows his attention to one desired outcome. Their different ways of seeing expose how far apart they already are and why returning to the relationship “as it was” may no longer be possible.
Questions & Discussion
Why does Hemingway refuse to name the procedure directly?
Consider what the omission requires from the reader and how the story would change if the central subject were stated plainly.
How does the train station shape the drama?
Discuss the importance of waiting, transit, limited time, and the knowledge that the train to Madrid is carrying the couple toward a decision.
How much freedom does Jig actually have in the conversation?
Look closely at the man’s reassurances, repetitions, and promises. When does persuasion become pressure, and how does the story communicate that distinction without explaining it?
What do you think happens after the story ends?
Consider whether the couple proceeds with the operation, whether the relationship survives, and whether the story gives enough evidence to favor one future or deliberately leaves the choice unresolved.
Suggested Reading & Resources
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway: A Biography by Mary V. Dearborn
Hemingway: The Paris Years by Michael S. Reynolds
Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates
Short stories by Flannery O’Connor
The Christopher Perrin Show
My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
Devotchka
Substack 
Instagram

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda explore Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a story of young adulthood, race, pride, dependence, and painful moral awakening. Set largely on a city bus, the story brings Julian, a self-consciously progressive college graduate, into collision with his cheerful but deeply prejudiced mother as the changing South forces people who would rather remain separate into uncomfortable proximity. Along the way, Tim and Emily consider O’Connor’s grotesque humor, her idea of dark grace, the story’s title from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the devastating moment when Julian’s superiority gives way to guilt and sorrow.
Episode Outline
Young adulthood and the idea that adulthood begins when other people can depend on you
The bus as a confined social space where strangers, classes, and racial tensions are forced together
Flannery O’Connor’s Georgia upbringing, Iowa Writers’ Workshop years, illness, and return to Andalusia
O’Connor’s mastery of the short story, grotesque imagery, and moments of “dark grace”
Recurring O’Connor figures: dependent mothers, educated young adults, racial conflict, and moral self-deception
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the phrase “everything that rises must converge”
Julian as an educated, progressive, frustrated young writer who still depends on his mother
Julian’s mother as cheerful, sacrificial, socially proud, and deeply shaped by racist assumptions
The extravagant hat as a symbol of distinction that unexpectedly reveals common humanity
Julian’s performative solidarity on the integrated bus and his mother’s condescending friendliness
The matching hats, the penny, the blow from the purse, and the story’s violent moment of convergence
Julian’s final dark grace: the collapse of superiority and his entry into “the world of guilt and sorrow”
Key Topics & Takeaways
Adulthood as Dependability: Julian has graduated from college and thinks of himself as intellectually mature, yet he still lives with and depends upon the mother he treats with contempt. The episode’s opening definition of adulthood shifts attention from independence alone to becoming someone on whom others can depend.
Convergence and Common Humanity: The bus, the shared stop, and especially the identical hats repeatedly collapse the distinctions the characters try to preserve. O’Connor turns Teilhard de Chardin’s hopeful image of convergence into a painful encounter with the fact that human beings share a nature even when social habits, prejudice, and resentment keep them apart.
Prejudice and Performative Progressivism: Julian correctly recognizes the injustice of his mother’s racism, but his own moral posture is compromised by vanity and resentment. Sitting beside a Black passenger becomes partly a performance aimed at humiliating his mother rather than an act of genuine friendship or solidarity.
Dark Grace: O’Connor’s moments of grace are not soothing. They arrive through shock, humiliation, violence, or loss. Julian’s awakening comes only when his mother collapses and the categories through which he has judged her are overwhelmed by the reality that he may be losing her.
O’Connor’s Unsparing Moral Vision: The story refuses to let either the progressive son or the traditional mother hide behind the right ideas, social manners, or inherited identities. As Tim and Emily observe, O’Connor’s moral imagination subjects everyone to judgment, including positions and weaknesses she may have recognized in herself.
Questions & Discussion
Is Julian actually more mature than his mother?
Compare his education, political awareness, dependence, resentment, and treatment of his mother with the episode’s definition of adulthood as becoming someone others can depend upon.
Why is the bus such an effective setting for the story?
Consider how a bus removes control over who shares one’s space and forces racial, class, generational, and personal differences into physical proximity.
What does the matching hat reveal?
Discuss how the hat begins as the mother’s attempt to appear distinctive and becomes a visual sign that the people she places beneath herself are not as separate from her as she imagines.
How does O’Connor transform Teilhard de Chardin’s idea that “everything that rises must converge”?
Explore the difference between an uplifting vision of spiritual convergence and the painful, humiliating, even violent convergence that occurs in the story.
What is Julian’s moment of dark grace?
Consider whether the ending represents punishment, awakening, the beginning of repentance, or all three as Julian enters what O’Connor calls “the world of guilt and sorrow.”
Suggested Reading & Resources
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor
Parker’s Back by Flannery O’Connor
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
“Faith in Man,” in The Future of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor edited by Sally Fitzgerald
Iowa Writers’ Workshop - O’Connor’s graduate writing program
Andalusia Farm - Flannery O’Connor’s home in Milledgeville, Georgia
My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
Devotchka
Substack 
Instagram

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda explore T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem that captures the uncertainty and self-consciousness of adolescence and early adulthood. They consider Prufrock’s anxious journey through the modern city, his inability to act or speak decisively, and Eliot’s use of jarring images, near rhymes, and the dramatic monologue to make interior experience visible. Along the way, Tim and Emily discuss why modernist writers broke with inherited forms, how Eliot remained deeply engaged with the tradition he challenged, and why Prufrock’s fear of embarrassment, wasted possibility, and an ordinary adult life remains so recognizable.
Episode Outline
T. S. Eliot’s American origins, Anglophilia, move to Britain, and conversion to Anglicanism
“Prufrock” as a poem of adolescence, young adulthood, and the fear of never fully becoming young
Eliot’s argument that modern writers must force and dislocate language to represent modern experience
Modernism’s challenge to inherited artistic forms without necessarily abandoning the tradition behind them
The opening image of the evening sky as a patient “etherized upon a table”
Eliot’s unusual similes and the “objective correlative” as a way of making interior experience concrete
Prufrock’s journey into the city and the repeated frustration of expectations for romance, conversation, and possibility
The dramatic monologue tradition inherited from Robert Browning and Eliot’s reversal of its confident speaker
Equivocation, social anxiety, near rhyme, and Prufrock’s repeated inability to “dare”
The unanswered “you,” the unasked “overwhelming question,” and the poem’s atmosphere of paralysis
The poem’s three movements from invitation, to social paralysis, to longing for mythic grandeur
“Prufrock” as an early expression of modernism and the broader conflict between inherited form and a rapidly changing world
Key Topics & Takeaways
Young Adulthood and Social Paralysis: Prufrock embodies the acute self-consciousness of early adulthood, when social situations seem full of possibility but every word and action can also feel subject to judgment. His endless qualifications and hesitations turn ordinary social encounters into moments of existential anxiety.
Breaking Form from Within the Tradition: Eliot challenges conventional poetic language because inherited expressions seem inadequate to modern experience. Yet Tim and Emily emphasize that Eliot knows, values, and remains in conversation with the classical forms he disrupts rather than simply discarding the past.
Making the Interior World Visible: Images such as the etherized patient and the yellow fog translate Prufrock’s inward condition into physical images. The discussion of Eliot’s “objective correlative” centers on art’s ability to make an intangible emotional state present through concrete realities.
A Life of Deferral: Coffee spoons, drawing rooms, repeated questions, and Prufrock’s continual “Do I dare?” create the sense of a life measured out in small acts rather than decisive commitments. The poem’s tragedy lies not primarily in catastrophe but in possibility continually postponed.
Modernism and the Loss of Certainty: Eliot’s poem belongs to a larger cultural moment in which artistic forms, social hierarchies, and inherited ways of seeing were being unsettled. Modernist experimentation becomes not merely stylistic novelty but an attempt to find forms capable of expressing a fragmented modern world.
Questions & Discussion
Why is Prufrock unable to act decisively?
Consider whether his paralysis comes primarily from insecurity, fear of judgment, excessive self-awareness, dissatisfaction with his social world, or some combination of all four.
Who is the “you” in “Let us go then, you and I”?
Explore the possibilities raised in the episode: a romantic companion, a friend, the reader, or Prufrock speaking encouragingly to himself. How does each interpretation change the poem?
What is Prufrock’s “overwhelming question”?
Discuss why Eliot never states it directly and whether the unanswered question concerns love, meaning, purpose, identity, or the courage to participate fully in life.
Why does Eliot deliberately make some of the poem’s images and rhymes feel slightly “off”?
Consider how the etherized patient, the yellow fog, and near rhymes create beauty while also reproducing Prufrock’s discomfort and the dislocation of modern life.
Can breaking an inherited artistic form actually help preserve a tradition?
Reflect on Tim and Emily’s discussion of Eliot as a writer who disrupts conventional forms because he knows and values them. What distinguishes creative renewal from simply abandoning the past?
Suggested Reading & Resources
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
“Banquet Speech” by T. S. Eliot, Nobel Prize, 1948 Nobel Prize banquet speech by T. S. Eliot
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism by T. S. Eliot
The Book of Nature: Wordsworth's Poetry on Nature by William Wordsworth
Howards End by E. M. Forster
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Sold a Story podcast by Emily Hanford
My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
Devotchka
Substack 
Instagram

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda explore Jon Fosse’s Trilogy, the work of a Norwegian novelist and playwright whose spare, musical prose gives voice to experiences that resist ordinary explanation. Focusing primarily on “Wakefulness,” they follow the young lovers Asle and Alida as they wander through cold and rain searching for shelter before the birth of their child, while memories of music, love, rejection, and the past flow through the present. Along the way, Tim and Emily consider Fosse’s use of repetition and stream of consciousness, the story’s echoes of the Nativity, the self-giving character of young love, and the way his writing holds together harsh physical realities with a sense of mystery and transcendence.
Episode Outline
Jon Fosse’s international reputation as a novelist and playwright and his 2023 Nobel Prize
Fosse’s use of Nynorsk and the cultural and linguistic world of western Norway
Trilogy and its three parts: “Wakefulness,” “Olav’s Dreams,” and “Weariness”
Asle and Alida as young, unmarried lovers searching for shelter before the birth of their child
Biblical and Nativity echoes in the couple’s wandering, rejection, and need for a home
Fosse’s fluid treatment of memory, present experience, dreams, and indeterminate time
Music as the language through which Asle and Alida first recognize their love
Self-giving love and the couple’s devotion to the good of one another
The arrival of their son Sigvald and the temporary resolution at the end of “Wakefulness”
Repetition, limited punctuation, and the musical rhythm of Fosse’s prose
The fiddle as a symbol linking love, music, family, and generations across the trilogy
Fosse’s religious background, Catholic conversion, and combination of bleak reality with transcendence
Key Topics & Takeaways
Giving Voice to the Unsayable: Fosse’s prose attempts to express experiences that ordinary analytical language cannot fully capture. Music, love, memory, grief, and religious mystery are communicated through rhythm, repetition, and image rather than extensive explanation.
Love as Self-Gift: Asle and Alida’s relationship is presented as more than youthful attraction. Each recognizes love through an increasing concern for the other, and Asle explicitly understands his love through the fact that he thinks more about Alida than about himself.
Time, Memory, and Myth: Fosse allows present action, memory, and interior experience to move into one another without clear boundaries. The uncertain historical setting also gives the couple’s story a mythic quality, allowing their search for shelter to resonate with the story of the Holy Family without becoming a simple allegory.
Prose as Music: Repetition functions like a musical refrain, creating a continuous forward movement that Emily compares to the Baroque principle of Fortspinnung, or “spinning forth.” The effect is cumulative rather than episodic, with resolution arriving only after sustained rhythmic movement.
The Physical and the Transcendent: Fosse keeps his characters rooted in hunger, cold, exhaustion, pregnancy, shelter, and bodily need while simultaneously opening those experiences toward love, beauty, religious symbolism, and transcendence.
Questions & Discussion
Why does Fosse leave the time period of “Wakefulness” so difficult to determine?
Consider how the absence of precise historical markers changes the story from a realistic account of one young couple into something more universal or mythic.
What does music allow Asle and Alida to understand about one another?
Discuss why Fosse associates their discovery of love with the experience of hearing and creating music rather than with explanation or conversation.
How does Fosse’s repetition affect the experience of reading the story?
Consider Emily’s comparison to musical refrains and Fortspinnung. Does repetition slow the story down, propel it forward, or accomplish both at once?
In what sense does the story resemble the Nativity without functioning as a direct retelling?
Reflect on the young couple, the imminent birth, their exclusion from respectable society, and their inability to find shelter.
What makes Asle and Alida’s love different from simple romantic desire?
Consider the episode’s emphasis on self-offering, responsibility, suffering, and each character’s concern for the good of the other.
Suggested Reading & Resources
Trilogy by Jon Fosse
“Nobel Lecture” by Jon Fosse, Nobel Prize, 2023 Nobel Lecture by Jon Fosse
The Bible, the Nativity narrative, Luke 2:1-21 
Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach
Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
Devotchka
Substack 
Instagram
Visit TrueNorth.fm

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda enter the teen years with Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?,” a terrifying story in which almost nothing violent happens on the page. They follow fifteen-year-old Connie from a restless family life and flirtation at a drive-in to a long, increasingly threatening conversation with Arnold Friend at her screen door. Along the way, they discuss Bob Dylan’s influence on the story, Oates’s use of ordinary suburban details to create dread, the dynamics of grooming and seduction, and the ways Connie’s hunger for attention leaves her vulnerable to someone who seems to know far more about her than he should.
Episode Outline
Adolescence as a life stage caught between childhood and adulthood
Bob Dylan’s influence on the story and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
How Oates creates terror through an ordinary suburban setting rather than overt violence
Connie’s family life, restlessness, appearance, and desire for attention
The drive-in encounter with Arnold Friend and his first unsettling promise
Arnold’s arrival while Connie is home alone and the screen door as the story’s boundary
Arnold’s escalating manipulation, intimate knowledge, and insistence that Connie will leave with him
The uncanny appearance, movements, slang, and shifting voices of Arnold Friend and Ellie
The story as a realistic account of sexual predation and grooming
Cultural expectations, feminine vulnerability, and comparison with “Hills Like White Elephants”
Clues that Arnold Friend may represent something more than an ordinary human predator
Comparisons with Flannery O’Connor and closing questions about evil, family, and modern vulnerability
Key Topics & Takeaways
Adolescence Between Worlds: Connie is neither fully a child nor fully an adult, and Oates makes that instability central to both her longing for independence and her vulnerability to danger.
The Terror of the Ordinary: The story needs no explicit violence to become frightening; a driveway, a screen door, a family barbecue, and an ordinary summer afternoon become the setting for escalating dread.
Grooming Through Attention and Certainty: Arnold first approaches Connie in the language of flirtation and romance, then steadily replaces invitation with inevitability, using knowledge, confidence, and implied threats to narrow her sense of choice.
Desire and Vulnerability: Connie has learned to seek affirmation through appearance and male attention, and Arnold exploits desires that are real even when the cultural forces surrounding them are debated.
Human or Supernatural Evil: Arnold can be read as a terrifyingly ordinary predator, but his strange appearance, uncanny knowledge, incantatory speech, and refusal to cross the threshold also leave open a more supernatural interpretation.
Questions & Discussion
Why is the story so frightening when almost nothing violent happens on the page?
Consider how Oates uses ordinary details, implied threat, repetition, and the slow loss of Connie’s control to create fear.
How does Connie’s position between childhood and adulthood make her vulnerable?
Reflect on her desire to be seen as mature, her dependence on attention, and the moments when she still reacts like a child.
Is Arnold Friend best understood as an ordinary predator or as something supernatural?
Examine his uncanny knowledge, strange physical details, shifting voice, incantatory language, and reluctance to enter the house.
How much responsibility does Connie’s family bear for what happens?
Discuss the emotional distance of her father, the conflict with her mother, and whether greater parental attention could have protected Connie from Arnold’s manipulation.
Does the story feel more frightening or instructive in 1966 or today?
Consider how contemporary forms of impersonation, digital intimacy, and AI-mediated relationships might change the way a modern teenager reads Arnold Friend.
Suggested Reading & Resources
'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?': Joyce Carol Oates
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” by Bob Dylan
“Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan
“Man in the Long Black Coat” by Bob Dylan
Beat poetry and the Beat Generation edited by Ann Charters
“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor
“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
The Guardian interview on an AI-chatbot relationship and financial ruin
My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
Devotchka
Substack 
Instagram