Pro tip: that guy who argued about the ending of The Road for 20 minutes straight

I had a guy in my old book club in Portland who would not let go that the ending was supposed to be hopeful. He kept quoting that one line about the fire over and over until someone just got up and left. Has anyone else had a member derail a whole meeting on a single point like that?

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the_gray8d ago

This whole thing reminds me of a guy in a hiking group I used to go with. He got obsessed with the proper way to fold a tarp and would not shut up about it for an entire afternoon. We were standing in the rain listening to him explain the advantages of the "military fold" versus the "envelope method" for like 45 minutes. The fire metaphor guy at least had a literary angle, that's way more interesting than tarp folding. Sometimes people just latch onto one tiny thing and it becomes their whole personality for the night. You learn to spot them early after a few meetings and just steer clear until they burn out.