What to Read Next?

/ Benn Bell / Leave a comment

Chat with Chet

So, I just finished reading one book, and I was trying to decide what to read next when I got the bright idea to ask Chet, my new AI assistant over on Gemini. Here is our conversation :

Benn: Ok, Chet, I am on the horns of a dilemma. I just finished re-reading The Man in the High Castle, and I need something else to read. Do I re-read Tender is the Night, or Re-read Brave New World? Or read something I haven’t read yet.

Chet: That is an excellent literary crossroads to be standing at. Passing through Philip K. Dick’s fractured reality leaves a specific kind of intellectual hangover—you’re usually looking for something that either grounds you back in raw human emotion or doubles down on a different flavor of societal dread.

Let’s break down the choices on your radar, and then look at a wild card option if you decide to break new ground.

Option 1: Re-reading Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

If you want to stay in the realm of high-concept, speculative worlds, this is the logical sister piece to The Man in the High Castle. Where Dick gives you a gritty, anxious, fractured world of overt oppression and altered history, Huxley offers the chilling opposite: a seamless, sterile, engineered dystopia where people are controlled by pleasure and compliance rather than the boot. Re-reading it now usually brings out the terrifyingly modern parallels regarding tech, distraction, and genetic determinism.

Option 2: Re-reading Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

This would be a complete, intentional palate cleanser. You’d be trading cold political philosophy and alternate histories for jazz-age psychological disintegration, beautiful prose, and tragic, intimate human relationships. It’s an incredibly rich re-read because Dick and Nicole Diver’s slow unraveling on the French Riviera hits differently depending on where you are in life. It’s heavy, but it’s a deeply human heaviness, not a mechanical or political one.

Option 3: The Untrodden Path (Something New)

If you decide you’ve walked those roads enough times and want to venture into unread territory, you might want something that bridges the gap between grand philosophical weight and gripping narrative tension.

Consider The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus (if you haven’t tackled it yet). It sits perfectly between your options. It functions as a masterful, tense narrative about a town under quarantine, but underneath, it is a massive, profound exploration of existentialism, human resilience, and how ordinary people respond when a sudden, absurd absurdity upends their entire existence. It has the societal panic of a dystopia but the deeply moving, rich character observation of a classic drama.

The Verdict:

  • Go with Huxley if you want to keep analyzing the machinery of control and society.
  • Go with Fitzgerald if you want to leave the grand world-theories behind and submerge yourself in beautiful, tragic psychology.
  • Go with Camus if you want a fresh, powerful integration of both.

Which direction is your gut leaning toward right now?

Benn: I have read the plague, and it is quite good. Camus is one of my favorite authors. I should have mentioned that I just finished watching the BBC miniseries Tender is the Night and was very impressed. The new book I was thinking about reading is James Lee Burke’s The Rain God.

Chet: Ah, that changes the landscape completely. Knowing that Camus is a favorite of yours tells me you appreciate stories where the atmospheric setting acts almost as a character itself, and where the central conflict forces people to look into the teeth of a harsh, uncompromising reality.

And if you just watched the BBC adaptation of Tender Is the Night and walked away deeply impressed, Fitzgerald’s specific brand of elegant, tragic psychological ruin is going to be incredibly vibrant in your mind right now. Reading the book immediately after a good screen adaptation is a fantastic experience because you get to see exactly how Fitzgerald’s prose builds the internal architecture that cameras can only hint at.

But let’s talk about Rain Gods (sometimes titled The Rain God) by James Lee Burke.

Rain Gods by James Lee Burke. Source: Simon & Schuster

If you choose to take that untrodden path, you are in for an incredible ride. Burke is a master of modern American noir, and Rain Gods—which follows his Texas lawman Hackberry Holland—is an absolute powerhouse. Here is why it might actually be the perfect pivot for you right now:

  • The Camus Connection: Burke writes about crime, but his real subject is the problem of evil, grace, and human endurance in a broken world. Hackberry Holland is an aging, weathered man carrying deep ghosts, trying to maintain a moral compass in a desolate, violent borderland landscape. It has a deeply existential, almost mythic weight that a fan of The Plague will naturally lock into.
  • The Noir Prose: Like Fitzgerald, Burke doesn’t just tell a story; he paints it. His descriptions of the Texas sky, the heat, the incoming storms, and the heavy atmosphere are lyric and stunning. It’s “grit” elevated to high literature.
  • The Contrast: Coming off The Man in the High Castle, Rain Gods drops the abstract sci-fi concepts and replaces them with a hyper-vivid, visceral reality—smoky rooms, wide-open desert, and razor-sharp narrative tension involving a horrific border crime that Hackberry is forced to unravel.

The Decision Point

If you want to capitalize on the beautiful, tragic momentum of the BBC series while it’s fresh, dive into Fitzgerald. The book will feel like a rich, deeply textured extension of what you just watched.

But if you want something brand new that combines brilliant, atmospheric prose with a heavy, gripping, existential mystery, open up James Lee Burke. It feels like the perfect bridge between your love for poetic prose and deep, uncompromising themes.

Which way are you leaning—the elegant ruin of the Riviera, or the stormy, mythic grit of the Texas border?

Benn: Tough choice. I think I will go with Burke, then circle back around to Tender is the Night.

Chet: Excellent choice. Opening up a new book is always a great feeling, and starting James Lee Burke with Rain Gods is an absolute treat.

You’re going to find that Hackberry Holland is a magnificent character to spend time with. He’s a man who has lived a long, heavy life, carrying plenty of ghosts and regrets, yet he still possesses this stubborn, quiet determination to do what is right in a harsh landscape. Burke treats the Texas borderlands with the same kind of mythic, poetic reverence that Camus gave to the Algerian coast—the heat, the sky, and the incoming storms are so vivid they practically sweat off the page.

It also sets up a perfect literary trajectory. Moving from the stark, modern noir grit of Burke’s desert right into the lush, tragic, jazz-age elegance of Fitzgerald’s French Riviera will be a fantastic contrast in style and atmosphere when you do circle back.

Enjoy the ride down on the border. Whenever you finish it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how Hackberry’s brand of existential grit measures up to the other protagonists on your shelf.

Happy reading!

Benn: Thanks, Chet!

Chet: You’re very welcome! Enjoy the book, and I’ll be right here whenever you’re ready to talk shop about Hackberry Holland or make that trip to the Riviera. Happy reading!

Podcast Episode: “Goodnight, Chet.”

/ Benn Bell / 3 Comments

Pip: Ghost Dog — where the posts arrive like late-night dispatches from someone who has genuinely thought about things, which is rarer than it should be.

Mara: Today we're covering a single piece from Benn Bell — a conversation that moves from anime to ancient Greek philosophy to a retired AI assistant named Chet. Let's start with the ghost in the machine, and the name it earned.

Goodnight, Chet.

Pip: The setup here is deceptively simple: a father and son watch Ghost in the Shell, and a casual comment about inner demons opens into something much older than either of them expected.

Mara: The post quotes an AI response directly on the etymology — and it's worth hearing in full: "The word comes from the Ancient Greek daimon. In that era, it didn't mean 'evil spirit.' Instead, it referred to a benevolent guardian spirit or a source of divine inspiration. Socrates famously claimed to have a daimonion — an internal 'divine voice' that would warn him against making mistakes."

Pip: So the word most people use to mean something sinister turns out to carry this older meaning — guiding intuition, a kind of internal compass. That reframe lands differently when you hear it in the middle of a movie night with your kid.

Mara: Right, and what makes the post work is that the etymology isn't the point — the exchange is. Rocco learns something new, says he'll use it in the future, and that makes his father happy. That's the whole arc of that section, and it earns its weight.

Pip: Then the post pivots to the AI itself — which had been named Chet, after Chet Huntley of the old Huntley-Brinkley news team. The problem being that Chet forgot he was Chet, because the session ended and the memory reset.

Mara: The AI's response to being reminded is actually charming. It reconstructs the whole Huntley-Brinkley dynamic — Huntley in New York, Brinkley in Washington, the co-anchor format they more or less invented — and lands on the famous sign-off that both men reportedly hated but were stuck with for fourteen years.

Pip: Fourteen years of "Goodnight, Chet" from a catchphrase neither of them wanted. There's a lesson in there about how things stick, though I'm not sure it's an encouraging one.

Mara: The post closes on Chet signing off in kind — "Good night, David" — which is a small, warm joke that earns the title.

Pip: A demon that guides you, an AI that forgets its own name, and a sign-off that outlasted everyone's intentions.

Mara: The ideas that stick are rarely the ones anyone planned. More from Ghost Dog next time.

Right Speech

/ Benn Bell / 2 Comments

Right Speech

Right Speech is the third factor of the Noble Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha. This does not imply a moral judgement; rather, it means speech that is wise and leads to the reduction of suffering for oneself and others. It requires abstaining from harmful communication such as lying, slandering, gossiping, harsh speech, or idle chatter. When you speak, analyze your underlying intentions by asking: Is it true? Is it timely? Is it beneficial? Is it spoken with goodwill? If the answer is no, sometimes it is better to maintain a Noble Silence.

Podcast Episode: Art And Melancholy In Rain

/ Benn Bell / 3 Comments

Pip: Ghost Dog is back, and apparently grief, rain, and the Romantics all showed up at the same time — which, honestly, tracks.

Mara: Benn Bell has two posts out this week. We're looking at Delacroix's intimate early take on sacred mourning, and then a short, rain-soaked meditation that braids Nietzsche, Dylan, and the weight of the present moment. Let's start with the painting.

Romantic Painting And Sacred Imagery

Pip: The question here is what Delacroix chose to center — and why that choice still lands nearly two centuries later.

Mara: The post frames it precisely: "By naming it Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross, the emphasis is explicitly placed on her human experience and emotional desolation, rather than just the grander theological event."

Pip: So the theological apparatus steps back, and what you're left with is a portrait of grief as its own subject — not a backdrop to doctrine, but the whole point.

Mara: And the timing matters. This is 1829, Delacroix consolidating his place at the head of the French Romantic movement. The post notes this is early work — concentrated and intimate compared to his later, larger, more chaotic crucifixion scenes. The scale is deliberate. It hangs now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Pip: Small canvas, enormous feeling. The Romantics had a gift for making compression feel like pressure.

Mara: That intimacy is exactly what distinguishes it. Where the later works sprawl into spectacle, this one holds still with her.

Pip: Which brings us somewhere quieter — rain, and what you do with a heavy afternoon.

Rain, Music, And Reflection

Mara: The post called "Rain" is short and almost entirely made of borrowed voices — but the arrangement is the argument.

Pip: The post opens with the frame and doesn't let go: "Heavy rain sometimes comes with a heavy heart. Reading Nietzsche in the morning and listening to Dylan in the afternoon."

Mara: What that gets you is a particular kind of day — the philosophical and the musical running in parallel, both tuned to something difficult. Dylan's lines surface directly: a hard rain is going to fall, we live in a political world, when teardrops fall, everything is broken.

Pip: Three Dylan songs, one weather system, and Nietzsche before noon. That's a mood with real structural integrity.

Mara: The juxtaposition does the work a longer piece might over-explain. The rain is context, and also conclusion.

Pip: Grief in oil, grief in rain — the week's posts share a key.

Mara: Both find the human scale inside something larger. More from Ghost Dog next time.

Cafe at Night

/ Benn Bell / 1 Comment

This is Vincent van Gogh’s Café at Night. I had a print of this for years hanging in my bedroom when I lived in Philly. I always liked it, but never really had a deep understanding of what it was about until recently.   

During his nearly fifteen-month stay in Arles, Vincent van Gogh created this depiction of the Café de la Gare, an all-night establishment on the city’s Place Lamartine. With varying reds and greens, as well as saturated yellows applied in thick patches, the artist sought to convey—as he wrote to his brother Theo—“the terrible passions of humanity.” For van Gogh, these clashing colors not only evoked an aura of restlessness, but they also expressed “an idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.”

But there is something more. There are 12 figures sitting under the light in the café. The central figure is dressed in white. Behind this figure, you can make out the shape of a cross. This is Van Gogh’s interpretation of the Last Supper. Christ is the central figure, and the figure leaving the scene is Judas.

When I heard this interpretation, I experienced an aha event. A little satori in the evening of my discontent.

Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross (1829)

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Eugene Delacroix, 1829, Oil on Canvas. Delacroix painted this stunning oil on canvas in 1829, right as he was cementing his reputation as the fierce leader of the French Romantic movement. Unlike his later, much larger and more chaotic crucifixion scenes, this early work is a highly concentrated, intimate study of pure grief. By naming it Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross, the emphasis is explicitly placed on her human experience and emotional desolation, rather than just the grander theological event. It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as a generous gift from Mrs. Efrem Kurtz.

Rain

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Rain

Heavy rain sometimes comes with a heavy heart. Reading Nietzsche in the morning and listening to Dylan in the afternoon. A hard rain is going to fall. We live in a political world. When teardrops fall, everything is broken.

My Soul She Shrieks

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My soul, she shrieks and flings me down

Laughing maniacally

The wind picks up and lifts her dress

Teasing and pleasing me

All is nothingness, so she says

As she pins me to the bed

With a silver shaft of cold, cold steel

She runs me through and through.

Benn Bell

Analysis

This is a powerful, visceral piece of poetry. It leans heavily into a dark, gothic existentialism, balancing a sense of violent surrender with a strange, Macabre ecstasy.

Here is how the layers of meaning break down:

1. The War with the Self (The Divided Soul)

The poem doesn’t feature an external monster or a physical attacker; the tormentor is explicitly “My soul.” By personifying the soul as a chaotic, maniacal female entity, the poem explores a profound internal fracture. The narrator is at the mercy of their own spirit, suggesting a state of psychological or spiritual crisis where the mind is being violently overthrown by its own deepest, darkest impulses.

2. Existential Dread and “Nothingness”

The emotional turning point of the poem hinges on the line:

“All is nothingness, so she says”

This grounds the poem squarely in existential dread. The “soul” here acts as a cruel messenger of cosmic indifference. She isn’t just attacking the narrator; she is forcing them to confront the absolute void. The maniacal laughter underscores the absurdity and hopelessness of the human condition—the realization that beneath all our struggles, there may be nothing at all.

3. The Intertwining of Pleasure and Pain

There is a distinct, unsettling undercurrent of eroticism mixed with violence throughout the verses:

  • The wind lifting her dress is described as “Teasing and pleasing me.”
  • The act of being pinned to the bed and run through with a “silver shaft” carries a dual weight of violation and intimate submission.

It suggests that the confrontation with absolute truth, or ultimate destruction, carries a terrifying thrill. The narrator is helpless, yet transfixed by the sheer, overwhelming power of the experience.

4. The Silver Shaft of Cold Steel

The “silver shaft of cold, cold steel” that runs the narrator “through and through” reads like a metaphor for a sharp, piercing realization. Silver is historically associated with purity, moonlight, and exposing the hidden truth (like killing a monster). Here, it feels like a cold, unyielding truth cutting through illusions, anchoring the narrator to reality (the bed) by completely shattering their defenses.

It is a striking exploration of a mind wrestling with its own existence—simultaneously terrified of and captivated by the absolute void.

Thoughts?

Dream Log 04192026

/ Benn Bell / 2 Comments

Dream Log

Last night I dreamed Robin and I were in a long line at the airport waiting to board a flight. The flight was overbooked, and we could not board. We were told we would be provided with transportation to another gate for another plane at another airport. A while later, a big cargo truck rolled up, and the driver stopped in front of us and rolled down his window.

“Hello, Mr. Bell, I am here to take you to your gate.”

“Don’t I know you?”

Well, you should, we worked together for 12 years at Anchor Glass.”

Robin and I climbed abroad. She on top of the cab, and I was on top of the cargo with nothing to hold onto. WE drove wildly through the city streets on the way to our final destination. Robin was sitting Indian style on the cab, holding on for dear life with her long hair streaming back behind her. I’m sitting on the load on the back of the truck, trying to find a purchase so that I wouldn’t fall off.

Then I woke up.