Spent 6 hours arguing over one sentence in chapter 4 of 'The Goldfinch'

My book club got stuck on whether Theo's decision to keep the painting was brave or selfish and we literally could not move past page 87 for an entire meeting... then the next meeting turned into the same argument for 3 more hours. Has anyone else had a single debate completely derail your whole schedule like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.leo5d ago

Wait, was that Oz guy saying the scarecrow was middle management or did he mean the lion? Scarecrow asking for a brain kinda fits the whole middle management joke more than the tin man does. Either way, three hours of charts is absolutely wild.

the_aaron5d ago

That timer idea is smart honestly but my group is too stubborn for that. We had a whole night get eaten up by someone insisting that the tornado in "The Wizard of Oz" was a metaphor for corporate downsizing. This guy had charts. Actual printed charts about how the scarecrow represented middle management and the tin man was automation taking jobs. Three hours deep and we never even discussed Dorothy's shoes or anything people actually care about. By the time we realized we wasted the whole meeting half the group was too mad to talk and the other half wanted to rewatch the movie to check his facts. Book clubs man sometimes you just gotta accept that one weirdo with a conspiracy theory is gonna ruin your schedule and pack extra snacks for the drama.

the_kim6d ago

Did you ever try a quick vote to break the deadlock? In my group we hit the same wall with a character's motivation in "The Secret History" and finally just set a timer for ten minutes per person to make their case. Then everyone had to pick a side and we moved on with a promise to revisit it at the end if we had time. It saved the night because we got through the rest of the chapters we actually wanted to talk about.