Literary Opinions
Literary Opinions
[Megan is walking with a finger raised toward Cueball, who is seated in a chair with a book.] Megan: Literary opinion: Megan: I firmly believe that William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Chuck Palahniuk, and David Foster Wallace are different names for the same person. Cueball: ...I see.
[Megan puts down her hand.] Megan: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fight Club ? Same book with different covers, I bet. Cueball: I have both. Want to open them and check? Megan: I do not.
[Cueball turns back to his book.] Megan: Moving on: my next opinion-- Cueball: You should start a book club for discussing the books you refuse to read. Megan: --is that E.B. White and T.H. White are the same person. Cueball: Ok, that I believe.

Megan is telling Cueball about some of her literary opinions: She believes that William S. Burroughs , Hunter S. Thompson , Chuck Palahniuk , and David Foster Wallace are different names for the same person. Many authors write under pen names for some of their works, or even several different pen names.  Sometimes people come to believe that different people are actually a same person, which is known as the Fregoli delusion ; the person is usually believed to change appearance.
She then says that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (by Thompson) and Fight Club (by Palahniuk) are the same book with different covers, probably because the title and promotional images for both hint at fighting taking place in a big city (i.e., she is literally judging the books by their covers ), when in reality the books are vastly different. Books sometimes have different covers and titles in different regions . That said, Fight Club does contain a plot twist where two "different" things turn out to be the same thing (see 109: Spoiler Alert for more information).
Cueball's attempt at a reality check (proposing to actually open the books she is talking about) is met with disinterest. It becomes clear that Megan just wants to share her weird beliefs and does not care if they can be proven false - a theme that previously appeared in 1717: Pyramid Honey .
As a last resort, Cueball humorously proposes she should start a book club to discuss the books she has not read. This may be to congregate all people who criticize books without reading them, or in hopes that it will be attended by people who have read the book and can prove to Megan her opinions are baseless.
Megan finishes telling him her opinion anyway, which is that E.B. White and T.H. White are the same person. This is apparently an opinion that Cueball can agree with, as he tells her that he believes it. This is likely a joke that the two names are hard to distinguish due to the having the same last name with only initials instead of a first name. In reality, the books they authored are very different, with E.B. White writing children's books ( Charlotte's Web , Stuart Little , etc.) and T.H. White writing adult books about King Arthur ( The Sword in the Stone and its sequels), although his works were adapted into a Disney movie so they could, to some degree, be considered children's books.
The title text continues with this, with Megan saying that she can distinguish between John Steinbeck and John Updike , or between Gore Vidal and Vidal Sassoon , but she can't do so simultaneously. Again this is likely due to the similarities in their names. However, John Steinbeck and John Updike are also easy to confuse because they are both giants of 20th century American literature, whereas Gore Vidal has almost nothing in common with Vidal Sassoon (see chart below).
Additionally, the mention of simultaneity could be a nod to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle , which states that there is a trade-off in precision when simultaneously measuring position and momentum. It could also be a nod to how the brain cannot simultaneously interpret two different things at once, similar to looking at the Rabbit-duck illusion ; at any moment, one can only see a duck or a rabbit in the image, but not both at exactly the same time.
[Megan is walking with a finger raised toward Cueball, who is seated in a chair with a book.] Megan: Literary opinion: Megan: I firmly believe that William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Chuck Palahniuk, and David Foster Wallace are different names for the same person. Cueball: ...I see.
[Megan puts down her hand.] Megan: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fight Club ? Same book with different covers, I bet. Cueball: I have both. Want to open them and check? Megan: I do not.
[Cueball turns back to his book.] Megan: Moving on: my next opinion-- Cueball: You should start a book club for discussing the books you refuse to read. Megan: --is that E.B. White and T.H. White are the same person. Cueball: Ok, that I believe.
