The Son | Philipp Meyer

This episode of Books for Men features The Son by Philipp Meyer. An epic historical fiction novel about the rise of a Texas oil dynasty that spans from 1836 to the 2010s. It's a story of power, family, self-discovery, and perhaps most importantly, the brutal past that birthed America. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week marks a first. It is the first ever historical fiction novel that I am sharing on the podcast. So it's a landmark episode and it came on recommendation from a buddy. He told me, you got to drop everything that you're reading if you haven't read this novel and read it today. So I didn't do that, but I did bump it up my TBR list and I'm happy that I pulled the trigger and read it. It's a long novel, it's an epic. It's close to 600 pages. And if I'm being honest, that's probably the thing that gave me a little pause or a little delay in reading it, right? It's a big commitment when you read a very long dense book. So not only is it long in page count, but there are a lot of words on each page, so it probably reads even longer.

(01:08)

Took me, I would think, maybe two and a half weeks to get through it, which is pretty rare, but I wanted to read it slowly and there's a lot to it. So, I had mentioned that it's historical fiction, or I should probably backtrack and tell you that it's called The Son by Philipp Meyer. I could tell you a little bit more about him shortly. But historical fiction, for any of you who don't know it, is basically just a novel that's set in real life in a certain time period. Obviously, it is fiction, so the story is not real, but with that being said, it's typically written as if it was real. So it uses real events, culturally relevant time periods, and things of that nature. It utilizes history, right? And one of the most interesting things about historical fiction is most novels for a long time to be considered historical fiction, for the most part, would start in the World War II timeframe or something of that nature.

(02:12)

And we're starting to see that push forward a little bit because as we get older, so do the events that happened in our life. And so I think one of the interesting things to think about, or at least I think about it from time to time, is how this genre is going to potentially cover things that happened in my life at a certain point. And although there'll be historical fiction, you'll be looking at it from the standpoint of I was there. Or even if it's around that time, right? I mean, if you look at things in the eighties or the nineties, it's only going to take another 20 years or so, and then all of a sudden that's going to be 40, 50 years in the rearview, and novels are going to be written in a historical fashion about it. So, I don’t know, I don't want to freak everybody out, but I think about that from time to time.

(03:04)

Anyway, let's pivot back to the novel. And this is the second novel from the author. The first novel was American Rust, and it came out five years previously. So this book was published in 2013, and it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. And for good reason because it is more than just a classic take on an iconic theme, which is Cowboys versus Indians. You can sort of boil it down to that. However, I would not simplify it to that level because this book is very expansive. It's probably the most expansive novel that I've read to date and some even consider it. And I'm using air quotes, the great American novel. And the reason why I use air quotes is that there are a lot of different ways you can put a spin on what the Great American novel could be. Books that seem to really encapsulate the ethos of America.

(04:04)

You know, what America boils down to? And this novel particularly kind of piggybacks off of what Cormac McCarthy started with all of his iconic westerns, most specifically Blood Meridian. And in both that novel as well as the one that I am sharing with you today, they depict the brutal past of how our country came to be. For me, this novel really excels because it shares three points of view. It's not told from just one person's perspective. And I understand that a lot of novels do that, but when you're telling a story over a hundred years because this novel starts in 1851 and it goes all the way up until the present day. So the three points of view are the son Eli McCullough, who started the McCullough oil dynasty in Texas. Then you have the perspective of his son or one of his sons, Peter, and they do that perspective through diary entries.

(05:13)

And then the final point of view is told from the third person, and it is of Peter's granddaughter. So I think that would make it Eli's granddaughter Jeannie, who ended up being basically the matriarch of the McCullough oil dynasty. So not only do these three points of view offer a distinctly different perspectives, but quite literally, they are all driven by their own internal conflict. And this is the thing that when taken in totality, really makes this book feel so expansive because Eli's conflict is really physical, right? He's the person who started this dynasty and he was the person who had the most interaction with the raw brutal nature of the history of our country, right? In that, his story, and I don't want to get too much into it, starts with him basically being abducted by the Comanche Indians, and his sister and mother being raped and murdered, and then his brother is murdered, and he's held captive and he survives this.

(06:30)

And then he lives a long time with this Indian tribe until he was sold off. And then his story just becomes so brutal and so honest and so raw that his conflict really is about survival throughout this whole story in a very physical and visceral way. And I think that the strength in his narrative comes from that. I mean, it starts with an audio passage from 1936, and so it's him at a hundred years old. So he lives all the way to be a hundred years old. And in it, he says something that's very telling about his journey and what that conflict is going to be throughout. And it's simple. He says, “The country was rich with life the way it is rotten with people today. The only problem was keeping your scalp attached.” And so you could tell that somebody who has this perspective is going to look at life much differently than somebody who wasn't exposed to that type of environment at a very, very young age and has to rely on survival in a very real physical way.

(07:47)

And the conflict of his son Peter is much, much different. He kind of is a dandy, so to speak, and he doesn't understand the family’s violence. His point of view is written through diary entries in which he's basically complaining constantly about some of the killing and the violence and just that brutal nature. I feel like I've been using the word brutal a lot, but it's such a good word to depict this story in a way. And Peter really has internal issues with all of that as he's seeing it happen right in front of his eyes. And he is much more of a lover. And I don't want to share his journey too much because I don't want to ruin the story, but he has a quote in the book that really I think gets at who he is. And he says, “There are those born to hunt and those born to be hunted. I have always known I was the latter.”

(08:49)

And then finally, you have Jeannie's perspective, which to me perhaps was the most interesting because it encapsulates the largest variety of conflicts. So she is the matriarch of this McCullough dynasty. I think I had already mentioned that, in the present day. And so she struggles a lot with being a woman in a position of power. She struggles with her marriage and how she's perceived by everybody else around her, including the other oil dynasties and ranchers who are all run by males. One of the most telling scenes, I think, in the entire novel, at least for her arc, is when she goes on a weekend retreat with all those ranchers and oil dynasty families, all led by men of course. And so it really puts her in the crosshair of some of her primary conflicts, at least as she grows in life.

(09:54)

And the other thing that really starts to weigh on her as the novel goes on is what she perceives to be the helpless nature of her children. And so there's just a lot that makes up Jeannie's story. And towards the end of the novel, I couldn't help but just take down quote after quote, there were so many good ones. And although there were many that could depict central conflict for her, I thought this excerpt was especially telling. And she said, “Eli McCullough had killed Indians. Eli McCullough had killed whites. He killed people, period. It depended on whether you saw things through his eyes or the eyes of his victim as he pulled the trigger. Dead people did not have voices, and this made them irrelevant. Perhaps he had sown the seeds of his own ruination, he'd provided for all of them, and they'd become soft. They'd become people he never would've respected. Of course, you wanted your children to have it better than you had, but at what point was it not better at all? People needed something to worry about or they would destroy themselves, and she thought of her grandchildren and all the grandchildren yet to come.”

(11:10)

Damn, that passage is so good. So you could see the conflict even in that short little passage. And she only builds off of that with another thing that she says about her children right after, she says, “Neither of her children had any confidence. They were both muddle-headed. Susan, in her addiction to gurus and therapists, Thomas, in his liberal politics, his insistence on coming out. They could not seem to grasp that what mattered was what you did, not what you said or thought about.” And so you see how she's struggling with the changing times, and it's just a really interesting dynamic, especially when you juxtapose it against the other two points of views that I had previously mentioned.

(11:56)

So for the sake of time here, I'm going to begin to wrap this up, but I did just want to give you a little bit about the author because I had mentioned earlier that I would, and his story is extremely interesting. So he is only written two novels. He's somebody who I've read a few interviews with at this point because I really jive with his take and his story on how he found writing and art in general and how he realized it was baked inside of him. And so he was in the finance industry when he had this realization. So he completely left banking and moved in with his folks, took a construction job, an EMT job, all in an effort to be able to pursue his writing career. And obviously, it goes without saying that it worked out because he's written two great novels that are both critically acclaimed, and I look forward to seeing what he writes next.

(12:53)

I mean, anyone who has that level of commitment and is willing to basically trade off one life for another life and with total commitment, pursue something, it's a very inspiring story. So I'll let you dive deeper into that. There's plenty of it online. If you want to go to Google and type in his name, I'm sure you will find it. All right, so that's it. I promise this episode is a wrap. I hope you enjoyed it. It's a great book. If you did enjoy this episode, then please share it with friends, family members, or other people who you think might enjoy it. Word of mouth is everything when you're trying to spread awareness. And with this podcast specifically, it's to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. I know I sound like a broken record, but sometimes you have to be repetitive to get something through.

(13:45)

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