Mind Over Midnight: A Book Club

For our next Mind Over Midnight gathering, we’ll be diving into Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, a work that confronts us with the raw contradictions of human nature.

The Underground Man forces us to question whether freedom is truly liberating or a trap that leads us into self-destruction. As we meet, we’ll explore how his bitterness, self-awareness, and rebellion against rationality mirror the struggles of modern existence. Does his voice expose universal truths about alienation and the futility of seeking meaning, or is he merely a grotesque exaggeration of human despair? Come ready to wrestle with the darkness and ask whether the Underground is a place we all inhabit, at least some of the time.

For our next Mind Over Midnight session, we’ll turn to Michel Houellebecq’s Whatever, a bleak yet razor-sharp meditation on loneliness, desire, and the modern condition. In this debut novel, Houellebecq dismantles the illusions of romance, careerism, and freedom in late-capitalist society, exposing a protagonist whose cynicism mirrors an age of disconnection.

As we meet, we’ll ask: does Houellebecq’s brutally honest voice illuminate truths we prefer to ignore, or is it simply nihilism dressed as philosophy? Come prepared to wrestle with questions of sexuality, alienation, and whether meaning is possible in a world that reduces everything to economics and impulse.