Jeselnik Book Club: ‘The Trees’ by Percival Everett Book Review + Q&A

Jeselnik Book Club’s review of ‘The Trees,’ written by Percival Everett. Anthony takes you through the novel’s bizarre string of murders in Money, Mississippi, and discusses how Everett blends mystery, horror, and dark comedy to confront America’s history of racial violence. After the recap, Anthony turns to the mailbag to answer questions from listeners. (00:00) - Open(00:40) - Book background and Emmett Till history(06:40) - Recap begins(33:30) - Mailbag!(1:04:10) - November’s book: ‘The Friend’ by Sigrid Nunez(1:06:40) - Next week: ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ with Mallory Rubin Email me your thoughts/questions about our next book club selection, ‘The Friend,’ by November 24 at [email protected] Join Jeselnik Book Club: anthonyjeselnik.com/the-jeselnik-book-club Host: Anthony JeselnikSupervising Producer: Magdalena MunaoCreative Producer: Daniel ComerTechnical Director: Trevor RaboneSet Design: Jonathan Ratliff and Gitu MehraEditor: Matt PevicAdditional Production Supervision: Jack Wilson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If high-interest credit card debt is keeping you up at night, you're not alone. Interest rates as high as 21% APR can do that to you. Rocket Mortgage can help. A home equity loan from Rocket Mortgage could cut your interest rate by more than half, so you could wipe out your high-interest credit card debt without touching your current mortgage rate. See how much you could save at rocketmortgage.com. Rocket Mortgage LLC, licensed in 50 states. NMLS Consumer Access.org, number 3030. Call 8004ROCKET for full program details.

• 0:36Anthony Jeselnik?

  Hey, everybody. Anthony Jocelynik here with the October recap of Jocelynik Book Club's pick of the month, The Trees by Percival Everett. You're about to sit down, relax, and watch a 47-year-old white man talk to you about racism and lynching. It's gonna be a blast.

• 1:06Anthony Jeselnik?

  Now, I'm not gonna be talking about the covers of the books anymore. I swear to God, the lawyers at Spotify told me that I had to describe the cover to hold it up. And I was like, I'm gonna make fun of you every time I do it. They said, you don't have to do that anymore. I kept doing it. It's been a month. I've been here at The Ringer. I'm sick of it. I'm not gonna do it. But we are gonna talk about The Trees. So I'm gonna do a little recap. I'm gonna give you some insight. I'm gonna read a couple passages that I really enjoyed. I hope by the end of this that you understand why I love this book so much and why I thought it was important for the book club fans to read it. Reading through the emails, people seemed really into this. There were a couple emails that were not, and I can tell you why they were not into it. Because they're racist to a man.

• 1:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  There were like four emails that were like, oh, this woke bullshit. You're racist. We'll get into that later. Look, The Trees. This came out in 2021. 2022, it got a lot of awards. It was up for plenty of awards. Got Percival Everett a lot of attention, even though he's written many, many books before this that were great. After this, he wrote James, which he won all kinds of awards for. He's got a new book coming out in a couple of months that I'm looking forward to. But The Trees was the first book I read of Percival Everett's. I was not familiar with his style. I was not familiar with his game. But he is an incredible writer. I would recommend reading anything that you can by him. His books are funny. They are smart. They cross genres.

• 2:34Anthony Jeselnik?

  This is a horror novel and a historical fiction novel. And again, most importantly, it is very, very funny. The chapters are short. I think it's 104 chapters in a 300-page book. I love that because you can just fly through them. It's always switching perspectives. It gets into different characters. Let's talk about what's real in this book. Most of this book is 100% fiction. There's not much that is historical. What is a fact? There is a town called Money, Mississippi. It sounds like a joke, but it is a real place. It exists today. There's like 300 people who live there. None of them are members of Jocelynik Book Club.

• 3:13Anthony Jeselnik?

  In 1955, a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till, he was not yet a man, was accused by a woman named Carolyn Bryant of whistling at her, flirting with her, touching her as she worked at a store. She accused him of these things. And her brother and her husband, a couple of days later, went and kidnapped Emmett Till, beat him, shot him, strangled him with barbed wire, and threw him in the river. He was pulled out a few days later. The brother and the husband were arrested. Emmett Till, his funeral was open casket. He was not done up. He was not made up to look the way he did in life.

• 3:57Anthony Jeselnik?

  He existed to the people who went to that funeral. And there were many, many people who went to that to pay their respects. He was shown to be beaten and bloated and bloody. And they wanted to show what they had done to him. At the trial, an all-white jury found the defendants not guilty. And because of double jeopardy laws, the husband and the brother went on to describe exactly how they killed and tortured Emmett Till in the press. This was a sore spot in the civil rights movement. This was a sticking point for a lot of people. It helped turn the tide on the civil rights movement. And later on, Carolyn Bryant, who died just a few years ago, didn't officially recant, but basically said, I kinda made all this up.

• 4:42Anthony Jeselnik?

  So that is all true. These are things that happened. We start this book, The Trees, in Money, Mississippi. There's a chapter of Grandma C., who is a stand-in for Carolyn Bryant. She is with her family. She is very, very old. She's on a little scooter. They are white trash to the hilt. The little grandkids are running around. The mother is kind of a piece of shit. She talks on a CB radio and flirts with truck drivers, which is a white trash thing to do. Not the worst thing to do, but certainly white trash. Her husband, Wheat, is described as losing the only job he ever had

• 5:22Anthony Jeselnik?

  because he was driving a truck, drinking and driving, crashed it off a bridge. And when they finally were able to get him out of the truck as the thing's hanging over the bridge, like 30 beer cans fall out. He's just like a piece of shit. Junior Junior, Grandma C.'s son, Wheat is also a son. They are hanging out. Junior Junior's a piece of shit. He's just talking about hogs. He wants to take an above-ground swimming pool and use it to store hogs. They're just having white trash conversations. Now, people have said, talking about this book, that first chapter, you don't know the race of these people. You know you're in Money, Mississippi, but you don't know if they're black or they're white until they start talking and they start being racist. I don't, maybe I'm giving myself too much credit.

• 6:06Anthony Jeselnik?

  I knew immediately that these people were white. Like, white trash Mississippi white. It didn't occur to me for a second that these were black characters. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm more woke than you. Maybe I'm the most woke person in the world. It's possible. Shortly after this happens, Junior Junior takes off with his family. Junior Junior gets killed. And Junior Junior is a ridiculous name. Everything about these people is ridiculous. All of the white characters in this book are ridiculous. They are racist. They are stupid. They are ignorant. And comically so. As comical as the name Junior Junior. All the white people have crazy names and seem stupid.

• 6:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  And when Percival Everett, the author, was asked why he made these Klansmen and these racist white people in Mississippi so buffoonish and clownish, he said he wanted to be historically accurate. So they are funny characters. You can laugh at them. You do not have to feel bad. And then they start getting killed. Junior Junior's body is found at home, strangled by barbed wire. And there is the corpse of a young black man, a small black man, who's like been long dead. It's like a zombified corpse sitting there, who you would think had nothing to do with the murder, except Junior Junior's testicles have been torn off. And they are in the hands of the corpse, just sitting there.

• 7:34Anthony Jeselnik?

  Junior Junior's family freaks out. Junior Junior's wife's name is Daisy. Daisy comes back over to the house where Grandma C. lives, where Wheat lives with Charlene. Charlene is Wheatley's wife. She's freaking out. Oh, my God, Junior Junior's dead. A black man killed him. He was found with the, the black man's corpse is there with the testicles in his hand. They call the police. Sheriff Jettie, who's an important character in this book, and his deputies Digby and Brady. Think Dukes of Hazzard. They are that kind of stupid. They are like comic relief, even though they have important jobs. And they are insanely racist. They use the N-word on the regular in this book. This book is chock full of the N-word.

• 8:18Anthony Jeselnik?

  Always used by white people. For the most part, I think maybe black people use it occasionally too, to make fun of the white people. The cops go over to Junior Junior's house. They cannot believe this crime scene. This looks insane. Both people are dead. Junior Junior's dead with his balls ripped off. The corpse is there with balls in his hand. They can't figure it out. They know they're both dead. They know one guy seems like he's way deader. He's been beaten to a pulp. It looks like they got into a fight. Only one corpse is fresh, one isn't. They go back to Wheatley's house. They're telling the story. They're like, oh, my God, what happened? They're trying to decide like, what could have caused this? They take the corpse away. They take both corpses away. And they're going to examine the corpse of the black man who was there.

• 9:00Anthony Jeselnik?

  And this corpse, by the way, they kind of reference it, but they don't get specific later on, looks like the corpse of Emmett Till. They, all of a sudden, the corpse of Emmett Till disappears from the morgue. And everyone is shocked. Reverend Fondle, who is the coroner in Money, Mississippi, who is an insane racist. He is the head of the Ku Klux Klan. He brags about his education because he had a year of junior college. He's not really a doctor. He is despised in this town. But he is shocked, as anyone, to find out that the corpse of the black man is missing, whereas Junior Junior is still there. Ball's missing.

• 9:39Anthony Jeselnik?

  Next, Wheatley is killed. Wheatley is found in his bathroom. Uh, the family is like, why is Wheatley taking so long to get out of the bathroom? They go and they push the door open. Wheatley is dead, strangled by barbed wire, practically decapitated, balls ripped out, corpse of a black man with the balls in his hands in the bathtub. In between this, in between the murder of Junior Junior and Wheatley, as soon as the corpse of what they think is Emmett Till disappears, they call in the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, a agency that does not exist in real life. It is like the FBI, but just for Mississippi. They bring in two people, that is Ed Morgan and Jim Davis. And these guys are hilarious. They are like a sitcom couple.

• 10:23Anthony Jeselnik?

  They are mismatched partners. Ed is a big guy, Jim is a little guy, Ed is married. Ed is driving the car to Money, Mississippi. They are described as, uh, working together because no one else can really stand them. It implied that they don't, they're not liked because they're both black. But they like each other, they get along and they trust each other. Ed is big, Ed drives his own car because he's comfortable. Jim is crushed up in the front seat because the seat doesn't fold back. They're bitching about that the whole way to Money. They get there, they go to see Sheriff Jettie and his deputies. They don't want these guys there. They don't like them because they're black. They don't like them because they're in the MBI, they're like a superior police force. Cops don't like people getting involved.

• 11:06Anthony Jeselnik?

  They want them to stay out of their business, but they do need to find this corpse. They find the corpse when Wheatley is killed. And, uh, the MBI, Ed and Jim get to go with them to see the body. They see Wheatley, they see this dead black person. And Ed and Jim immediately think like, this guy must not be dead. If the body disappeared, it's because he wasn't dead, you guys fucked this up. You hicks fucked this up. That is a plausible scenario. They go in, they take the pulse. He's definitely dead, he's been dead. They go to take him away. Grandma C, who lives in Wheatley's house, sees this corpse of the black man being wheeled out and freaks out. Has kind of a panic attack where she goes silent, thinking that she's seeing Emmett Till.

• 11:52Anthony Jeselnik?

  She's seeing the person that she accused and got lynched because of her accusation, a wrongful accusation, sees him coming out of the house like he's haunting her like a ghost. And she does not speak for days after this. On the way back to the morgue, with the body of Wheatley and, uh, this corpse, who was also a victim, they don't know how he died. The corpse disappears. Ed and Jim are questioning everyone, they questioned Reverend Fondle. He has no idea where this corpse is, they questioned Dill, who works the front desk, they don't know. There's no way out of this morgue, it's like a magical thing that this corpse has disappeared for now a second time.

• 12:31Anthony Jeselnik?

  After this, they're like, they're hanging out in this town. Ed and Jim are not going anywhere because this corpse keeps disappearing. The cops want them gone, the people around them are hostile to them, all the white people in Money, Mississippi want them gone. They go to a diner called The Dinah, D-I-N-A-H, to go eat. It's kind of like where all the town hangs out. It's where friends would have gotten coffee if they, if it was like the central perk of Money, Mississippi. They're there, they meet a woman named Gertrude, whose name tag reads Dixie. She is a very light-skinned black woman in that, uh, Ed and Jim think she's white at first. Gertrude and Jim start flirting, and Ed is like, be careful, you're gonna get fucked, you're gonna get yourself lynched if you keep flirting with this woman.

• 13:15Anthony Jeselnik?

  The woman is helpful, she likes them, she's flirting back with Jim. They kind of, they just like her. They're kind of using her to kind of figure out what's going on in the town. While this is happening, a guy in Chicago gets killed. A guy in Chicago gets killed in a very similar way with barbed wire around the neck. A, uh, corpse found there next to him, a different corpse, but a corpse nonetheless. They're like, are these murders connected in some way? The corpse of what they think is Emmett Till disappears again. This time they've done a DNA test and they find out that it is not, in fact, Emmett Till. Like, I think it's a third of the way through the book, where if anyone brings up, hey, does it strike anyone else as odd that this corpse looks just like fucking Emmett Till?

• 13:59Anthony Jeselnik?

  Like, they start to believe maybe it is Emmett Till. They do DNA test, it's not. The coroner, uh, the state coroner, a woman named, uh, Helvetica Quip, the state medical examiner, one of my favorite names in the book. Is like, he's been embalmed, this corpse can, there's no way this corpse is alive. Someone's picking him up and taking him around. Grandma C, uh, kind of comes out of her catatonic state, is freaking out. Jettie, Sheriff Jettie comes to talk to her, she's like feeling guilty, but she won't say what she feels guilty about. Two of her relatives have been killed. She then goes to sleep, wakes up, sees the corpse of Emmett Till, the corpse that they, that has been going around everywhere, in her bedroom, immediately has a heart attack and dies.

• 14:44Anthony Jeselnik?

  After this, the corpse stops disappearing. So four people have died now because of this corpse, because of this corpse or what's been going on. It's a murder mystery. And Ed and Jim are questioning people, they're not even trying to find, they don't even really want to punish the murders. They hate these people who have died. They hate all the people of Money, Mississippi, and rightly so. Uh, they talked, they talked to black people they interviewed, who were kind of like also rooting for the corpse of Emmett Till. And they hated Junior Junior, they hated Wheatley, they didn't respect him. No one knows the guy in Chicago, uh, no one really liked Grandma C. But they are just wondering what is happening. Is this a ghost story? What is going on?

• 15:29Anthony Jeselnik?

  While this is happening, Gertrude, who starts to become a more and more important figure in the story, gets in touch with an old friend named Damon, who is a scholar, living in Chicago, living somewhere, and she's like, hey, crazy things are happening here in Money, Mississippi, I need you to get down here. And this is where Grandma Z comes in, or Mama Z, where Ed and Jim are totally at a loss for what's happening. They're like, we need to talk to like the local witch doctor. I know you have someone here, every like small southern town has like a voodoo priest or a voodoo priestess. And they're like, we need to know what's going on. They go and talk to Mama Z. Mama Z is a hundred and five years old.

• 16:12Anthony Jeselnik?

  Gertrude introduces her as, uh, her grandmother, which is a lie. Uh, they talk to her a little bit, they're like, this woman's a hundred and five, she can't have anything to do with this, uh, with these murders. They leave her alone. They find out that she has file cabinets full of every lynching that has taken place since she was born in like 1917. Her father was lynched. And she's kept a record of that and every lynching that goes on after that. And she also says that if she sees a police murder, a police shooting, she also considers a lynching. Of black people, Asian people, any minority figures that are lynched by white people. And in Mississippi, that's a lot, she's got like thousands in here. Now the first murder happens, and so Damon gets brought into Mississippi,

• 16:57Anthony Jeselnik?

  uh, and Gertrude takes him to a, another restaurant called The Blue Gum Restaurant, where it's almost like a surreal, it's like everyone there is black and like cool black. They all seem woke, they're all smiling at them, everyone's happy, everyone's educated. People are like training for martial arts. Uh, it's a strange place, and you know it's going to come back into play. Now the first murder happens that's not part of those first four. And we eventually find out that those four people were all relatives of the people who murdered Emmett Till. Uh, Junior Junior was the son of a guy who murdered Emmett Till. Wheatley was the son of a guy who murdered Emmett Till. The guy in Chicago ended up being like a brother of the guy who murdered Emmett Till.

• 17:42Anthony Jeselnik?

  And then Grandma C, of course, which is not a murder, more of like, we scared her to death, uh, who obviously was involved in this murder. Then we get the first non, like Emmett Till murder where, uh, Reverend Fondle is getting ready to do a meeting. And they have like Klan meetings trying to figure out what's going on. And they are buffoonish as you could possibly imagine. Think like, um, Django Unchained, like the Klansmen in Django Unchained, just being idiots. Where they start to argue about why Reverend Fondle has always been the leader of the KKK. And they decide they demand to have a revote. And they just reelect Reverend Fondle right away, like they're idiots.

• 18:26Anthony Jeselnik?

  They're like reminiscing on cross burnings, why they don't do cross burnings anymore. They even have a cross burning, and it's so pathetic that Ed and Jim, the next day Sheriff Jettie is like, did you see the cross burning? And they're like, that was a cross? Like, we thought it was just like, something was on fire, maybe we'll be scared next time. That's one of my favorite things about Ed and Jim is that they're faced with all this racism and it never bothers them. They never break a sweat in this novel because they're so unbothered, they're so above these racist hicks. And I think they describe themselves as redneck hicks in this book. But Fondle is the first murder that you actually get to experience as a reader. He looks in the mirror and sees a black man standing behind him.

• 19:09Anthony Jeselnik?

  He feels the barbed wire go around his neck. He sees a dead black man in his bed, and then he sees a blade come out. And that's the end of Reverend Fondle. When they find Reverend Fondle later, his wife calls it in. He said his balls torn off, they're in the hands of a corpse. And the barbed wire, he's almost been beheaded. And I think the police say that even two guys standing on either side of him with barbed wire could not have done the damage they did, it is supernatural. And they, this is starting to snowball. After Reverend Fondle is killed, more people start getting killed around the country. They're finding different corpses, different racist people are, it's always white people, are being found murdered.

• 19:53Anthony Jeselnik?

  Uh, sometimes it's an Asian corpse in the room, sometimes it's a black corpse. But it's happening in California, it's happening like all over the country in different places where racism would have reared its ugly head, where lynchings would have taken place maybe a hundred years ago, maybe fifty years ago, maybe twenty years ago, maybe ten, maybe like five years ago. It's just happening everywhere, it's snowballing, and they don't really understand what's happening.

• 20:19Anthony Jeselnik?

  Ed and Jim keep saying to people as they're interviewing them, we just wanna know what happened. We're not even trying to punish anyone, we just wanna know what's going on. At a certain point, they bring in an agent from the actual FBI. A woman named Herbert Hine. Goes by Birdie. She hates fucking everybody. She is black. She hates the white people at the FBI, she hates the black people at the FBI. She hates everyone in Money, Mississippi. She's a badass. She is a cool character. She likes Ed and Jim eventually. They kind of have like a meet cute where they don't really understand what's going on, but then she eventually starts to trust them and like them. And they go to start investigating these deaths.

• 21:03Anthony Jeselnik?

  They at one point, Ed and Jim separate. One of them goes to, they go and they find one of the bodies and they identify the body. Helvetica Quip identifies a body as someone who died 20 years ago in prison and his body was donated to science. It was donated to the Acme Cadaver Company of Chicago. Ed and Jim split up. I think Ed goes to the Acme Cadaver Company. And he goes in there and it's fucking bonkers over there. There's a receptionist up front who doesn't understand, doesn't know anything that's going on, she's like, I never go in the back room. I just answer the phones, I don't know who my boss is. They go in the back room, people are using heads for soccer balls. They're throwing an eyeball around, like they don't respect these corpses at all.

• 21:49Anthony Jeselnik?

  One guy cleans the nipples. They're just like, we get these bodies in, we clean them up, we sell them to whoever. Nobody wants these bodies, no one cares. They find out that a truck with 21 bodies in it was hijacked months before. And hijacked by a guy named Chester Hobbsinger. And so that becomes their main suspect. As they're going to investigate, Ed and Jim meet back up, as they're going to meet, they stop by the Blue Gum Restaurant randomly. And they see Gertrude going into the restaurant. And Jim, who's like, that's kinda my girlfriend now. I trusted her, what is she doing here? He calls her on the phone. She's in the back of the restaurant, she answers, she's like, oh, I'm with Mama Z.

• 22:32Anthony Jeselnik?

  He knows she's lying, she becomes kind of a suspect, but he still likes her. While they're in the restaurant, it's like Helvetica Quip, Herbie, Ed and Jim, they're eating dinner. They're like, this place is a cool restaurant, they've got a good menu. A woman gets up, a woman with a mohawk gets up and just sings like the first verse of Strange Fruit. And then puts it down and goes away, and they're like, something is going on here. This is getting more surreal. As this is happening, the book is getting more surreal. More people are getting killed in these increasingly surreal ways. Whereas in mystery, you're like, are they going to solve this? What could possibly be the answer of why people around the country are being killed? Donald Trump gets his own chapter. Where you don't say it's Donald Trump, but it's clearly Donald Trump.

• 23:17Anthony Jeselnik?

  And he's talking about people in the government who were being killed. A White House Press Secretary or something is killed. Like people are, he has to go into lockdown. And, and they are actually getting into the government. It is truly becoming more of a horror novel now. These people are acting like zombies. On the highway, a truck driver pulls over and sees like a mob of black people. He's like, what's going on? He's killed. The deputies, Digby and Brady, who work for Sheriff Jettie, get a flat tire. See this mob come by, the next time they start screaming into the CB radio. Jettie and Ed and Jim go to see what's going on, they find them hanging from a tree. Their balls gone. Corpses next to the tree with the balls in the hand.

• 24:01Anthony Jeselnik?

  They're like, we don't, we don't know what the fuck is going on. Eventually, Ed and Jim realize that Gertrude is in on this. They go to Mama Z's house, Mama Z is like smarter than anyone thinks. She has like a security system where it's just crows in her front lawn. And you can't get close to the door without these birds being disturbed. They go to the door, they knock on the door. Mama Z knows everything. She doesn't trust the FBI, she doesn't trust these cops. She thinks of them as traitors. Because even though they're black, they are working for the law enforcement, she hates law enforcement. She loves Damon. When Damon comes over, he's interested in seeing the files.

• 24:41Anthony Jeselnik?

  At first, he starts writing out all of the names of the lynching victims in pencil, in a legal notepad. Mama Z is like, why are you doing this? And he's like, oh, I want to, the names are powerful. If I can write down the names, then I can erase them and set them all free. And Mama Z is like, continue, my child, you're on the right path. Okay, if you wanna write these names down and erase them, the names do have power. And there's a whole chapter of just names. It'll be, you know, it's Emmett Till. It's different people throughout history, it's unknown male, unknown male. It is, Trayvon Martin is in this, it's powerful when you go from all these crazy, wacky, white people names. To all of a sudden, real names of real lynching victims in the book.

• 25:25Anthony Jeselnik?

  It is powerful to have an entire chapter like that. Even unknown male has a certain amount of power to it as you're reading these. They eventually track down Chester Hobbsinger. They find, the truck has been abandoned near there. They go to the Blue Gum Restaurant. They follow Chester Hobbsinger inside. They get in and the woman with the mohawk who sang Strange Fruit lets them in. They go in the back and it's people practicing fucking karate. They're like, what is happening here? This looks like, almost like a woke militia. They chase Chester Hobbsinger out. They catch him outside. Ed and Jim separate, they catch him when he's coming out the door. They go to take him back inside and everyone is gone.

• 26:07Anthony Jeselnik?

  Like magically gone, all the people practicing karate and cooking food in the restaurant just disappear completely. Gertrude is gone. Ed and Jim separate, Ed and Birdie go off to talk to Chester Hobbsinger, try to find out what he knows who's in on this. Who were the killings? Jim goes to an address that Chester gives up. And he's like, I'm gonna find Gertrude here and find out what's really going on. This is almost like the final moments of the novel. He goes into this house, Gertrude's sitting there and she's like, you got me. I've been working with a, with a team, Mama Z is our leader. We wanted to kill four people, we wanted to kill three people.

• 26:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  Junior, Junior, we wanted to kill Wheatley for, because their parents were involved in the murder of Emmett Till. We wanted to kill the fucking guy in Chicago who had kinda ran away, who was also a descendant of the murder of Emmett Till. Grandma C, we didn't mean to kill her, we just wanted to scare her, but we're okay that she died. Every death after that, we don't know. We don't know what's been going on, there's just been a momentum to these killings, we're only responsible for those three or four. She's like, are you gonna arrest me? And Jim is like, no. Like he lies to his partner when his partner's like, what's going on? He likes Gertrude more than he likes any of these people who have died. And again, these people are all black.

• 27:32Anthony Jeselnik?

  Birdie's black, Jim's black, Ed's black, Gertrude's black, like they're kind of on their own side. They hear a freezer kind of kick up. And Jim's like, what's that? And she's like, it's our freezer. She takes him into the back of the house, opens up this big walk-in freezer. And there's all these corpses from the truck that Hobbsinger had stolen, they've been planting at crime scenes. They walk in, they're examining it, while they're examining, the door gets closed. They are locked in, and they're like, trying different ways to get out of this freezer, they're probably gonna die in this freezer. And then all of a sudden, Ed and Birdie open it up. They'd gotten the information out of Chester. They went to the address, he didn't hear from them, they open up the freezer. They're saved. They go to Mama Z.

• 28:16Anthony Jeselnik?

  And they're like, what the fuck is happening, Mama Z? How are zombies killing all of these people? And people are being wiped out, they keep going to different cities and showing where these mobs are popping up. It's practically a race war. White people are now terrified of black people, they're shooting at innocent black people. Anyone black is like getting, taking a shot if you're out in the streets. They're doing curfews. A lot of it is happening in Mississippi. These mobs are immune to bullets. They are just like mobs of zombies going around killing Klansmen, killing racist people, but it is insane. It's going on at the White House, the president is in lockdown at this point, like it is almost a countrywide pandemic.

• 28:58Anthony Jeselnik?

  They go to Mama Z, and now Damon is with Mama Z, and he is not writing down names anymore. He is now typing the names. And he is totally in a trance. And they're like, what's he doing? She's typing, he's typing the names of all these victims. And the more names he types, the more these zombie hordes are in power. The more people they are killing. And Ed and Jim and Birdie start to figure out that these are connected. And they're like, why are you doing this? And she's like, you know, these, these names are powerful, they're gaining more power. Do you want it to stop?

• 29:33Anthony Jeselnik?

  That's the final lines of the book, it's like, do you want it to stop? And they leave an open question to Jim, to Ed, to Birdie. Do you want Damon to stop typing these names? And stop these hordes of undead black people from taking revenge on white people? Or do you want them to keep going? And that is the end of the book. It's an open-ended, but I don't think it's actually open-ended. I think, we'll get into your questions, but I believe that it's not open-ended at all. And I'm gonna read you a couple passages before I get into your questions. Of my favorite passages from the book. Not a lot, but I think you'll understand why I like these so much. I think this is Mama Z saying this quote. Babies are smarter than us.

• 30:18Anthony Jeselnik?

  It seems they're always trying to kill themselves. That's why they have to watch them every second, so they don't swallow nickels or drink weed killer or eat Tylenol like candy. Then we get stupid and want to live. That's just a fun thing about babies that I took from this book. This is another highlight, less than 1% of lynchers were ever convicted of a crime. Only a fraction of those ever served a sentence. Teddy Roosevelt claimed the main cause of lynching was black men raping white women. And you know what? That didn't happen. I believe that. I believe that, I'm woke. This is one of my favorite, there's an agent named Hickory Split. Who the president calls in to try to help Birdie and try to help Jim and Ed solve these cases as they start to get insane. As it becomes like a nationwide pandemic, as people are getting killed ever.

• 31:03Anthony Jeselnik?

  This is how they describe Agent Hickory Split.

• 31:07Anthony Jeselnik?

  The agent from Dallas was a man named Hickory Split. Hickory Spit, a legend in the Bureau only because he was the oldest active agent in Justice Department history. Born in 1934, just shy of 85, he was the only man currently in the FBI who had actually worked with J. Edgar Hoover. A Texan by birth, he was famous for leading the FBI efforts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., having once penned a letter to King suggesting that he commit suicide. He was there with the others, wearing a Stetson cowboy boots and pearl handled sidearm because he was the only member of the force who had actually witnessed a lynching. He was there also because it had been so ordered by the President of the United States, who considered him an American hero.

• 31:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  Spit thought Hoover and Eisenhower were the same person, didn't like Kennedy's hair, hated Johnson's politics, loved Nixon, once claimed to have a bullet with Jimmy Carter's name on it, was suspicious of Reagan, didn't care for George H. W. Bush, unofficially investigated Clinton, considered George W. Bush an intellectual elite, near died of a stroke when Barack Obama was elected, and was in love with the current clown. He still had a badge and a gun but could barely wipe his own ass. He smelled of shit, Aqua Velva, and pimento cheese. He had one living relative, a son he had sexually abused and who now hated him from another country. Clint Eastwood had plans to make a biopic of his life and career.

• 32:33Anthony Jeselnik?

  That is, I think, one of my favorite descriptions of a character ever of Hickory Split. Last quote, this is Gertrude talking to Jim when he confronts her in the house. "Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over 100 years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life. If that Griffin book had been lynched like me, America might have looked up from dinner and baseball, whatever they do now." Twitter. That is, those are my quotes. Again, this book is hilarious. Everyone talks like a fucking sitcom character.

• 33:15Anthony Jeselnik?

  There's a scene where the wife of Junior Junior goes to have him buried, which is one of the funniest scenes in the whole book, where she goes back and forth with the funeral director. The scene where they're in the Klan trying to plan a cross burning is hilarious. Anytime Ed and Jim are confronted by racists, it's funny. They just have a funny back and forth banter. I highly recommend this book to anyone. Let's get into questions.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Your credit card company is hoping you don't hear this. They're charging you 21% APR interest, making it hard to pay down your balance. A home equity loan from Rocket Mortgage could cut your interest rate by more than half, so you could wipe out your high-interest credit card debt with the equity you've built in your home without touching your current mortgage rate. See how much you could save at rocketmortgage.com. Rocket Mortgage LLC, licensed in 50 states. MLS, consumeraccess.org, number 3030. Call 8004ROCKET for full program details.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites, but unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Search and compare travel deals with Kayak. Got that right.

• 34:31Anthony Jeselnik?

  Questions. We got a lot this week, we got a lot this month. A lot of them, again, were repeats. I've tried to pick the best version of it. We got some fun ones, and again, I think everyone really did like this book for the most part, and it's a banger. I chose it because it's a banger. "Anthony, your Red Rum updates were always super entertaining. I hope he's doing okay. Give us a status. Has he attacked anyone lately? Can he be groomed or medically cared for while still conscious? Have you woken up to find he diarrhea'd an entire room lately? Thanks for doing it. Jusselink Book Club saved the world." You can see a picture of Rummy behind me. Rummy is doing great. Rummy's had some, Rummy's in a house now. He enjoys the house. He doesn't let anyone else in the house.

• 35:14Anthony Jeselnik?

  He had to have surgery a few months ago. He had to have six teeth taken out. He had these little, kind of like, baby teeth sticking out that were kind of rotting that had to go. He was put down like, whoa, for that dental surgery, but handled it like a champ. We are able to get his claws trimmed once a month from a very nice Miss Rachel, I'm gonna go ahead and call her, who I paid double to put up with Rummy. Right now, I'm having some work done on my house, and Rummy had to go get in the Airbnb because he does not like the gardeners. He hates the pool guy with a passion. He doesn't like people in my driveway, but he's doing very well. He likes the new house, and he is about to turn seven years old, which in dog years

• 35:59Anthony Jeselnik?

  will make him older than me. So I'm very much looking forward to old man Rummy. And there is, anytime you want a Rummy update, just give me a shout. "Be honest, did you pick the trees just to weed out the types that would get offended by it?" Yeah. Yeah, I did. Listen, I like woke. I don't like whining. And when people talk about woke, usually they're talking about whining and complaining, and why don't we have this, and this isn't fair, and we should be more like this. The trees is not that. No one complains about fairness in the trees. No one's like even mad about the lynchings. They're mad about the lack of accountability for the lynchings, and they take it stoically.

• 36:43Anthony Jeselnik?

  They're just like badasses. Ed and Jim like joined the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation because they didn't want Whitey to be the only one in the room with a gun. Like, it's woke, but in like a badass way. It's the John Wick of woke. So if you're mad at this, you need to be super fucking racist. I would think if you're just like average racist, you can still enjoy this book. So I got a couple messages being like, "Ah, I don't think, it's not fair. Why are you like this?" Fuck off. Jusselink Book Club is awesome. "Hi, Anthony. Which killing in the book was the most satisfying for you? Cheers, Steven." Without a doubt, Reverend Fondle.

• 37:25Anthony Jeselnik?

  Reverend Fondle, again, it's like in a slasher movie where you don't really see what happens. It's like from the killer's point of view, and then you just see like a where they find a body. Reverend Fondle's the first one, and Reverend Fondle's a piece of shit. A total piece of shit, leads the Klan, uses his position as coroner to hide deaths. They talk about a black man who was shot in the back of a head, where Reverend Fondle calls it a suicide in his report. So him to actually experience his death through his eyes, I think, was satisfying. Feeling the barbed wire around the neck, seeing the black corpse behind him who will eventually be holding his balls, I thought was my favorite death.

• 38:07Anthony Jeselnik?

  I think it's the best death in the novel, and the only one you really get like a one-on-one for. So I think that would be everyone's favorite. Reverend Fondle, coroner, leader of the KKK, had a year of junior college. "Hello, Anthony. I'm loving the book club and really enjoyed the trees. I did have one question that needs answering, though. Why do you think 9/11 is never mentioned or alluded to? Thanks, Cam." Once again, I don't know. I don't know how Percival Everett, who was an amazing writer, who deserves all the awards he has, could leave out 9/11 or any kind of reference to 9/11 in a book that takes place almost solely in money Mississippi, in Chicago.

• 38:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  I gotta think it's an oversight, it's a mistake, that I believe that Percival Everett would apologize for. Maybe one day we can get him on the show and see why he would not bring 9/11 into this. Thank you, Cam. Next question. "History is a motherfucker." That's a quote. It's a great quote from this book. "Thinking back to Mother Night's, you are who you pretend to be quote. If events of this book were happening today, have you, Anthony Jusselink, done enough to be spared, or would your balls be in the mob's hands on day one? Mainly wondering if there are jokes you'd take back or subjects you were less flippin' about versus earlier in your career. Looking forward to next month's read. Best, Junior Junior Junior." I think I'm spared.

• 39:35Anthony Jeselnik?

  I think I am spared. I think that my jokes about race have been on the right side of things, and if they seem like they're not, I think that there is a tone I have taken to know that I am making fun of racism. Maybe I have failed at my attempt to do that. I have never thought of myself as a racist person, but again, I have blind spots like anybody else. I'm sure I have done things that could be seen as racist. I am not perfect by any means, and I have tried to get better as I get more educated, as I go through life.

• 40:12Anthony Jeselnik?

  My goal is not to keep my balls intact if a zombie swarm comes to take revenge for black people. If they were like, "Anthony, you gotta go," I would go willingly. Again, I'm not trying to get invited to the cookout. My dream is to be invited to be on Team Black if there ever is a race war. I will do anything they want. I will clean toilets for Team Black. Just let me on Team Black in the race war. I hope it doesn't happen, but I think I've done enough. I got interviewed by Taleb Qualee on his podcast. I opened for Chris Rock. I've got bona fides.

• 40:54Anthony Jeselnik?

  Why do you think Mama Z finally decides to act at 105 after spending her life documenting lynchings? I wonder if she's just fed up. She remembers what racial violence actually looked like while generations have passed, and that history has been softened, downplayed, or sometimes outright denied. Cole from Kentucky. Great question. Mama Z's been keeping these files for 105 years, or since like the beginning of her life. Why now? And I would think that it's timing. I would think that it's more of the public is on her side. All of the people at the Blue Gum Restaurant, who kind of seem like, not a cult, but seem like a group, like a militia, like a woke militia. Maybe she had to wait for them to get their shit together,

• 41:39Anthony Jeselnik?

  to use her as a resource. She seems like she's been trying to educate people her entire life. Entire life. She's looking for someone like Damon, who Gertrude brings her. Maybe it's the fact that it's getting more publicized. You know, Trayvon Martin is on that list of people. Maybe it took someone like Trayvon and the outrage over someone like Trayvon Martin to, uh, to get people to get up and start to act. Or maybe she's kind of getting towards the end of her life and realizes that, uh, now is the time. Uh, I don't know, but I think that rage builds. The rage that you would have felt in 1955 doesn't go anywhere. It just keeps on building. Truths are uncovered and they multiply.

• 42:21Anthony Jeselnik?

  But maybe it was just like the tipping point was, uh, was modern day. But maybe she's just been, has a sense of humor, and thought this would be a fun time to do it. I don't know, but it's a good question.

• 42:34Anthony Jeselnik?

  Who do you think locked Jim and Gertrude in the freezer? What was the point of that part of the book? Is there a non-literal interpretation of this event that I'm missing? Or is it just a suspenseful, high-stakes moment with no bigger picture? Thanks, Aaron. I have no fucking idea who locks them in. On a second reading, I was like, maybe I can figure it out. I looked it up online. There is no, I can't even think of who it could have been. It's not like a ghost. She's like, all, all the people on her team are out of that house. They're in the wind, as they say. I don't know why they'd want to lock them in there anyway. I think it was more like a convention that you would see in a movie, or in a mystery that he kind of just threw in there. Uh, but anyone who tells you they know who locked them in is lying.

• 43:19Anthony Jeselnik?

  I'm just glad they got out. Uh, it would be horrifying if that was the end of Jim and Gertrude. But luckily Bertie and Ed get to be the hero. They get to save their partner. I would think that it's Percival Everett just using a convention of the genre, and throwing it in there, so it's not just like very preachy. But I don't think there is a possible answer for who locks them in. It's like a plot device that locks them in. It's the story itself.

• 43:46Anthony Jeselnik?

  What do you think of Everett specifically using Trump in the novel? Do you think his addition added anything different that a generic or made-up president couldn't do? Why is the mob deceased killing off the offspring of the original killers? Why I'm definitely not sticking up for any of the racists. Do their kin really deserve that fate if they didn't have direct involvement? Hayes from Dallas. I'll say this, I don't hate the Trump stuff in the book. I don't think it's aged particularly well. But so what? Like, I think Percival Everett, when he writes this, knows it's not going to age particularly well, but threw it in there anyway as like a joke. I think it plays differently in 2020 than it does in 2026.

• 44:28Anthony Jeselnik?

  I don't think anyone thought he was getting back in after a four-year vacation. But he did. Uh, I think it's definitely played for laughs. Uh, I think, again, it's less funny now than it was at the time. But I'm okay with authors using something or making a joke that is not going to age well. One of my favorite books is Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis, where he has celebrities that are like, pass say, by the time the book, like, hit the printing press. And I think there is value in that as art. I think it's just showing that, uh, that things haven't changed so much since 1955. Uh, but if you don't like it, if you like roll your eyes at that, I think that's okay. I think it's like almost meant to roll your eyes at, and it's less fun the second time.

• 45:13Anthony Jeselnik?

  As for getting revenge on this offspring of people who committed the crimes, Deserve's got nothing to do with it. When it comes to revenge, Deserve has got nothing to do with it. That's a great Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven line. It's revenge. It's sending a message saying, "We have not been forgotten." That I think it's okay, like, did I feel bad for them because they're offspring and not the people who did the actual killing? Not really. I think that's what revenge is. It's a pointless act. It's to make you feel better. Uh, I did not feel bad for anyone who was murdered in this book at all.

• 45:51Anthony Jeselnik?

  If you, if you felt bad for them, okay, but you're wrong. Revenge is kind of a pointless act, and I'm okay with killing offspring. As in, as a general rule. If you wrong me in this world, I'm happy to take it out on your children.

• 46:07Anthony Jeselnik?

  Hey, Anthony. I thought the reveal that Sheriff Jettie's father was black added another layer to the story. It felt like Everett made Jettie a more complicit character, not entirely obstructing the investigation, but not fully helping either. His anger toward the deputies seemed to grow, but I got the sense that it wasn't just about their racism. It was also tied to their self-hatred and resentment he carried towards his own identity and past. What did you make of this reveal and how it shaped your understanding of Jettie's character and people in today's world? Nate, Las Vegas. I, again, for people who don't know, Sheriff Jettie at one point is looking at pictures of his family with his wife, and she notices that, uh, that his father is black, or partly black.

• 46:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  I think Sheriff Jettie even says, "Yes, my dad was black, I'm, I'm mixed race." Uh, Sheriff Jettie reveals that his father, Sheriff Jettie's father lynched his grandfather. Sheriff Jettie will have internal monologues about how much he hates the Klan. He thinks they're losers. I think his dad, uh, had left, or somebody's dad had left the Klan. He thinks the Klan are dorks. He thinks the cross burnings are pathetic. He thinks it's lame that everyone in town knows exactly who was in the Klan just because of like who the fucking losers are. And I think it shows how complicated hatred and racism can be, even in a place like Money, Mississippi. The better question, I think, is, was Sheriff Jettie spared by the mob? His deputies are both killed.

• 47:33Anthony Jeselnik?

  Is Sheriff Jettie spared by the mob because he's a mixed race? And like, there are definitely self-hating racists. That just because you're like mixed, just because you have black people in your family, just because some of your best friends are black, as people like to say, does not mean you're not a racist piece of shit. Like, Jettie's not a better person because he's a mixed race. I think it just makes him a more complicated character. And I think he hates his deputies, not just because they're racist, but because they are full-on buffoons, like Abbott and Costello-level morons. Next question. Percival hits you with "neshens" in the second sentence of the book. Are you stopping to look it up or just rolling with it? Again, the word is "neshens."

• 48:18Anthony Jeselnik?

  And again, I rolled with it. It's, he's describing the town of Money, Mississippi. He's describing like a, uh, I think, the, the suburb is Small Change. Uh, the suburb of Money, Mississippi. Uh, the word is "neshens," which means "a formal count that means a lack of knowledge, ignorance, or an absence of awareness." Which, again, I skipped over. I'm just reading the fucking book and enjoying it. But going back and reading that definition is perfect. A lack of knowledge, ignorance, or an absence of awareness in a big word at the beginning of the book. I think it's masterfully done. I think you couldn't use it anywhere else in the book and have it be so good. But I did look it up later, and only because of your question. But good job, Percival.

• 49:03Anthony Jeselnik?

  What's up, Anthony? My question for you is, as middle-aged white guys, how should a book like this make us feel? What do we do? Do we even have to, or is it just educating ourselves and learning how this part of American history makes black people feel enough? I feel a strong sense of purpose and anger after reading it, but I also don't want to be white-knighting and virtue signaling either. Sometimes I think it's okay to read about something, let it sit with you, then you can encourage others to do the same. I know you are no bullshit, so you can give it to me straight. John. John, congratulations, you are woke now. The Trees made you woke. It doesn't take a lot. You don't have to read a textbook to be woke.

• 49:45Anthony Jeselnik?

  You can read something like The Trees, and now you just carry this knowledge. You don't have to do anything. I would advise not talking about it to people. You know? Like, if you try to help black people and be like, "Hey, I read The Trees," it comes off weird. You will regret it. I would say recommend the book. Tell people, "I have read this great book, it's really funny. It's got some horror elements to it, check out The Trees." And that's the best you can do. But I think just knowing it helps. Knowing these names, there's a reason they will say, "Say these names." Say the names of the victims. The next time you see a police shooting, you will feel about it a little bit differently, and I think that is enough. If you have kids, teach your kids. But again, just read the book.

• 50:29Anthony Jeselnik?

  You don't have to do anything. Just experience wokeness. Maybe put up with a little less bullshit. Maybe the next time one of your friends makes a racist joke, you kind of give him a look and shake your head. But you don't have to do anything. I would recommend not doing anything. Uh, just let it be. Let it sit inside of you and fester. You're woke now. Welcome to the party.

• 50:53Anthony Jeselnik?

  What do you think Everett is suggesting about the relationship between historical injustice and present day violence? If the dead are demanding justice because the living have failed to deliver it, at what point does justice become revenge? Does Everett want us to be able to tell the difference? Great book. I think if the victims had gotten justice back then, they wouldn't need revenge now. It's too late for justice, it's never too late for revenge. Again, they're not mad so much about the lynching, it's the lynchings being buried. It's no one being punished at the time, it's the names being forgotten. It's being unknown male. It's just, it's just being erased or having your death ruled a suicide when it was a lynching. It's the country.

• 51:38Anthony Jeselnik?

  It's the world, it's the government bearing these things that is the deeper harm than even being hanged or being beaten. I think they don't like those things, but I think that is the point. Is the collective like attempting to forget and erase. You know, you can erase names out of, out of a journal and try to set them free. Or you can type them out and make people look at them and get your revenge in that way. It's not a literal mob of zombies, it's just like we are not going to be forgotten. We're not going to forget this part of history and our own past. I loved everything about The Trees. I'm curious if you think that Everett is advocating for retributive violence.

• 52:20Anthony Jeselnik?

  There is at least the implication here that just a few strategic killings could be the catalyst for revolution. But also the question of whether or not we, the reader, the country, really want that to happen. What do you think, Alex? No, he's not advocating for retributive violence. He's saying there's a lot of pain and anger in the world and it doesn't go away just because we don't talk about it. It festers. I don't think he's advocating for violence at all. He's just advocating to pay a fucking attention and not try to erase this from our history. Like it's too disrespectful, it doesn't let anything go away, like it's a powder keg and it's building if we try to erase it.

• 53:00Anthony Jeselnik?

  Hey Anthony. Have you ever done stand-up in a town like Money, Mississippi? I'm looking forward to November's book and just grab Brute as my next read. Thanks for the suggestion, be well, Robert. Uh, doing stand-up in a town like Money, Mississippi, yes, I have. I've spent time in Mississippi, my grandparents lived in Vicksburg for a lot of my childhood and we would visit there all the time. And I was constantly being told by people that I talk way too fast. That is my impression of everyone I've ever talked to in Mississippi. I did a show, uh, on my last tour in a town called Tunica, Mississippi. I was doing a run where I did, uh, two casinos. Tunica, Mississippi, and then I went to Biloxi the next night.

• 53:44Anthony Jeselnik?

  And Biloxi, you don't think of as like the New York City of Mississippi. But compared to Tunica, like I got to Biloxi and they were shocked to the Tunica, the Tunica casino still existed. And I remember the Tunica show going out on stage, it was in like, kind of like an airplane hangar type deal. I was like, what the fuck is this? Like I had to walk through the rain from the casino to get to like the venue. It was this giant hangar and everyone, and I mean fucking everyone in the audience was in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank on. My opener and I did our sets to complete and utter silence for 90 minutes.

• 54:25Anthony Jeselnik?

  And then I walked off stage and the person backstage said, that's the best anyone's ever done here.

• 54:32Anthony Jeselnik?

  And then we got to Biloxi as fast as we could. And again, Biloxi was shocked that the Tunica venue was still there. I don't know why they had me perform there, but it was, uh, just shy of terrifying. And I would not go back to Tunica. Biloxi, I love you. Vicksburg, I'm down. Jackson, Mississippi, I can hang. I will go eat some catfish in Jackson. My grandparents lived there, I dig it, but it's terrifying. Uh, it's a terrifying state. Not just education wise.

• 55:03Anthony Jeselnik?

  Hey Anthony, bang of a pick this month. Percival Everett is one of my favorite authors. My question is, did you notice that chapter 74 is missing? If so, what did you make of that? I took it to be symbolic of the loss and erasure that are central to the themes. I would love to hear your opinion on it. Thanks in advance, I can't wait for next month's pick and for your review. Chapter 74 is missing, uh, you were wrong about why. I did not notice 74 was missing. I went and looked into this after you told me, not only, and that's a great catch, but you're wrong about why. It's not just like, oh, we erased it. Not only is chapter 74 missing, but chapter 104 is missing as well. And, and it is a complete story.

• 55:46Anthony Jeselnik?

  They didn't just take out the whole chapter, it's not a grindhouse situation where they lost a reel on purpose. Number 74 and 104 combined is 74104, which is the zip code of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is where the Tulsa Race Massacre took place in 1921. Look that shit up. Good on Percival, leave that little Easter egg. Uh, yeah, 74 and 104, gone, missing from the text. And I did not notice. I just finished The Trees, I enjoyed the book. However, I was disappointed and confused by the ending. The killings just continued on, making them just as bad as The Clan? And who was doing the killings that Gertrude and her crew didn't know about? It was a great story, but I found too many loose ends.

• 56:31Anthony Jeselnik?

  I, I, I reject that they're just as bad as The Clan. The Clan started this shit. This is just revenge. That, that is the amount of pain that people in this country are in from all that shit that went down back then and goes on today. Revenge has a momentum to it. Once it starts, race riots have a momentum to them. But once these things start, they just kind of keep going and building. People see this and they think that sounds like a good idea. That's why like when, when there would be slave revolts back in the day during slavery, they had to put that shit down immediately and not let anyone find out about it. Because if you heard about a slave revolt, that made you want to revolt.

• 57:13Anthony Jeselnik?

  Uh, the crew just wanted to kill three people, the original crew, they ended up killing four. Everything after that is momentum. All the killings after Grandma C are from a supernatural force driven by anguish and anger, of which there is plenty. I would argue that loose ends are the point of this novel. Do you want it to stop? Those are the last lines of the novel, it's all about loose ends.

• 57:40Anthony Jeselnik?

  Anthony, don't you think this book would have been improved with a dose of realism? The black characters all had normal names and were normal people. The white characters had bizarre names and were bizarre people. It would have been more effective, I think, if there was more balance in the portrayal of both groups. Do you agree? Tim in Kentucky. Tim, I could not disagree with you more. That a dose of realism would have helped this book. This book is perfect the way it is. It's the perfect amount of absurdity where people, like every white person has a crazy name. So you don't feel bad when they get their balls ripped off and strangled by barbed wire. There's so many funny names in this book, almost like too funny. Like it's almost like wacky, kind of like Looney Tunes.

• 58:25Anthony Jeselnik?

  So I understand why you would even like question, should it be more realistic? But then you get the chapter where it's just names of people who have actually been lynched. And when you go from like goofy Looney Tunes names to real names listed one after another, interspersed with unknown man. I think that is so much more powerful. That if you gave them like more realistic names, that chapter would lose all resonance, I think. And I would not dare, Tim from Kentucky, to question Percival Everett. This, to be able to write a book about lynching that is entertaining and as funny as this is, is a tour de force, it is a masterpiece. This is one of the best books I've ever read in my fucking life.

• 59:07Anthony Jeselnik?

  Because he's able to talk about these insane subjects and have these brutal murders and still have it be hilarious. Like this book is great. Uh, you are wrong. You're everything, you should not have written it in a question. That's how wrong you are. Uh, this book is more powerful because of the lack of realism. And there's plenty of, there's enough realism in this book to make it a holdwater.

• 59:31Anthony Jeselnik?

  Okay, now we've got a couple of random questions. I'm just throwing in, these are kind of like mailbag-esque questions that I want to answer. Uh, but we're done talking about the trees. Do audiobooks count as reading? Or are they just a better alternative to not reading at all? Uh, people have been asking this a lot about audiobooks. I think you lose something reading an audiobook. There is something about staring at a page. Calming your mind by staring at a page and taking in words that you lose from an audiobook. But what's made me think more about audiobooks as like a legitimate art form, just on the same level of books, is there are a lot of books now that are written just as audiobooks. It's like an audio-only, where it's like a long-form podcast that I don't think makes it a lesser art form

• 1:00:16Anthony Jeselnik?

  just because it's an audiobook. I do think that if you want to get the most out of a book, it is nice to sit and stare at a page or stare at a Kindle and just look at those words and calmly let them go into your brain and do that work. I think audiobooks take a little bit of the workout, but I don't think that an audiobook is a lesser form of reading. Uh, I would recommend you don't do it. I've tried to read audiobooks in the car. Uh, nonfiction I can do sometimes. Fiction, impossible. I blank out immediately and I refuse to believe you get the same amount of story and the same amount of benefit, uh, from an audiobook. But if that's what you got, I'm not gonna knock it. And again, I always say, if you are insecure

• 1:00:58Anthony Jeselnik?

  about reading an audiobook versus reading a physical book or reading a Kindle, lie to people. Tell them you read the book. No one's going to question you. I think it's better to read an audiobook than nothing at all. Jussel and Book Club is competing with doom scrolling. If it's between doom scrolling and listening to an audiobook, do an audiobook. But if you're doom scrolling while you're listening to an audiobook, that's the problem I have with audiobooks, is you can do other things. But I wouldn't say they're a lesser art form than a book, only because now there are audio-only things that I think are just as legit. Last one. Anthony, why can I read The Trees in three days, but it takes me over three weeks to read Blood Meridian?

• 1:01:40Anthony Jeselnik?

  What makes a book so much easier to read than other of similar length within a hundred pages of each other? Thanks, Dave. Great question. The Trees as a momentum to it is propulsive. Short chapters make it a fucking page-turner. And a lot of it is dialogue. A lot of it is quippy back-and-forth dialogue where you're turning pages constantly in something like The Trees. Uh, Blood Meridian, people keep asking if we'll ever talk about it on this show. Probably not. It is way too dense. There is way too much going on on every page and every line of text. That it, I think three weeks is an impressive, uh, running time for Blood Meridian. There's just so much packed in. It is not a page-turner.

• 1:02:23Anthony Jeselnik?

  It is rewarding, but it is not a book you will fly through. Even page count doesn't always matter when it comes to how long it's gonna take you to read a book. Look at the pages. Look at the font. Look at how much dialogue versus how much description. The Trees almost reads like a screenplay. And I'm not saying that in a bad way. There's a reason I chose The Trees, uh, to be this book of the month, is it is a propulsive page-turner, whereas Blood Meridian, you can read it a hundred times and get something different each time. I've read Blood Meridian. I wouldn't be able to talk about it and feel like I knew what I was talking about. I had to read the kind of a study guide to understand a lot of it. It's beautiful, it's violent, it's incredible, but it is so dense.

• 1:03:06Anthony Jeselnik?

  There is so much there that you can't just go by page count when it comes to how long it's gonna take you to read a book. So I hope that answered your question. Every book is different. Uh, but I, Jussel and Book Club, we're choosing page-turners. So that was, uh, my recap. And question, answer about The Trees. I hope I did a good job. I hope I didn't do the book a disservice. I hope if Percival Everett saw this video, he would not be mad. I hope that if the race war ever comes, again, I am invited to be a part of Team Black. I'll do whatever. I'll take a brand for Team Black. I, we felt a sense of accomplishment finishing the book. And I hope you read more Percival Everett.

• 1:03:50Anthony Jeselnik?

  Everything he writes is hilarious. He is a great writer. James is a great book. Uh, I prefer The Trees. I mean, The Trees is just badass. It's, it's an incredible book. Uh, I enjoyed reading it a second time. I hope you felt a sense of accomplishment, uh, when you finished the book. I hope it made you think. I hope it made you go woke. I love that question about what do I do now? Like, it's just have that in your brain. Try to read more books like that. And I hope it was a good, like spooky season Halloween, uh, book. I'm choosing books for next year's Jussel and Book Club. And I'm trying to find like a proper, uh, Halloween book for you again. That's like Jussel and Book Club-esque. It's smart and it's scary. Now to announce next month's book.

• 1:04:32Anthony Jeselnik?

  I did an email blast a couple of weeks ago about my new tour dates. Go to anthonyjusselink.com. I've announced 2027 tour dates. Pre-sale's over, we're into the regular sale period. I'm adding shows in places like Boston, Minneapolis, Washington DC, Denver. We're adding a bunch of shows. I'm hoping to add like a hundred in Boston. I love Boston so much. Uh, but I've, I've got tour dates left this year. I got a couple of weekends left. I'm about to go to my, uh, 25th college reunion, uh, in New Orleans next week. Uh, come to that show on Thursday. Uh, I don't drink anymore, so it's gonna be an interesting reunion. We'll see how that goes. But next month's book, we are going, again, I wanted to go short.

• 1:05:17Anthony Jeselnik?

  I know it's Thanksgiving. I know people are starting their Christmas shopping. I don't want to give you guys too much homework. I wanted something shorter, easy to read. This next book is just over 200 pages. It is The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. This is a very popular book. Maybe a lot of you have already read it. I think it's worth reading a second time. It is about a woman who takes on a dog. One of her friends dies. Uh, his wife says, I can't take this dog. It's a giant-ass Great Dane. He'd adopted it a few months before he died. I need you to take this dog. It is not about a fucking dog. This is not Marley and Me, okay? It's not Old Yeller. This is a book about, uh, suicide

• 1:06:02Anthony Jeselnik?

  and the devastation that leaves behind and how to deal with mourning and how to deal with a person that you love very much in life, uh, ending it all and how you move on from that. Uh, it is so much deeper than just a woman and her dog, but it is a, I think, an easy read. It is an important book. I think it deserves all the accolades. Uh, it's gotten, it's a National Book Award winner. So you know it's good. And again, it's short. 209 pages. Get your emails in by November 24th. I think three weeks is more than enough time to come up with a question about this book. Email [email protected] by November 24th. I will record a video. I'm going home for Thanksgiving.

• 1:06:47Anthony Jeselnik?

  I'm going back to Pittsburgh, see my family. Uh, so we're gonna record this, uh, at the end of the month. It's probably gonna air on December 1st. We are doing these book clubs every Wednesday, except when we have like the book club and the book club, the end of the month isn't on a Wednesday. I think this video is coming out on a Saturday, uh, which is Halloween. Uh, so there will be no Wednesday book club. It's Wednesday right now and there's no new book club. But get your questions in to [email protected] by November 24th and we will answer them in a recap at the end of the month. And then we only have one more book for the year. And then we've got a surprise. I might have merch and I may have done some work and gotten some experts in

• 1:07:30Anthony Jeselnik?

  for you Jussel and Book Club completists. Uh, we're gonna have more stuff for you. So I hope you're enjoying the book club so far. We had a whole month of episodes. We had Greg Rosenthal, Patton Oswalt, Isaac Fitzgerald. I think those are all great episodes. Uh, we've got a good one next week. Next week, for people who, since I've started this book club, since before, when I was just doing New Book Tuesday, people have been in my comments telling me to read Dungeon Crawler Carl. I have got, teamed up with the incomparable Mallory Rubin, who I'm meeting for the first time on this show. And we have both read Dungeon Crawler Carl and we discuss it in depth.

• 1:08:13Anthony Jeselnik?

  Spoiler alert, we liked it more than you think we would. Uh, so tune in this Wednesday and see me talk Dungeon Crawler Carl, uh, with Mallory Rubin. Uh, until then, TV is bad, movies are bad, lynching is bad. Covering up lynching is bad. Revenge is good. I like revenge. I'm always gonna be on the side of revenge, even though it's pointless. Uh, revenge is good. Books are good. Books about revenge are great. Read your books. Enjoy your books. See you next time.