Erections of the Mind

The boys return already for another rollicking discussion. This time on Richard Rorty's seminal autobiographical essay "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids." Is it necessary to have a totalizing self-consistent philosophical system to undergird your political worldview and your childish enthusiasm for big trucks? Did the intellectual left abandon Stalin too quickly? Are we Samuel Moyn's biggest opp? All...

Join the boys in their discursive yet eminently lucid discussion of Pierre Bayard's 2007 classic "How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read" and their attempts to answer several intractable dilemmas like: Should you pretend to have read Foucault to seduce ethereal bisexuals? Why is there a dearth of whimsy in modern academic publishing? Was Franco Moretti unfairly MeToo'd? All this and more. Music...

The boys are joined by notable (notorious?) Vanity Fair contributor, Substack writer, and podcast veteran Vincenzo Barney for an exuberant conversation on Saul Bellow's masterpiece, Humboldt's Gift. We also talk about the pantheon of high stylists (Nabokov, Amis, Updike), the decline of said pantheon, the fallen world of the not past, what kind of light fixtures David Foster Wallace wrote under, M...

The boys dive into Jean Rhys' postcolonial (postmodern?) phantasmagoria "Wide Sargasso Sea" and commiserate on the travails of isolated women. Music is John Hiatt's "Book Lovers"

In a return to our usual erudite format, the boys discuss two essays by Andrea Long Chu: "Criticism in a Crisis" and "Authority." Join us as we explore how much dialectical materialism is too much (or too little), which one of us is a closeted liberal, and how close is too close for close reading. All this and more! Music is John Hiatt's "Book Lovers"

There was a gas leak in the podcasting studio. Luckily the boys have made a full recovery. Please enjoy what semblance of a coherent train of thought on Ben Lerner's oeuvre is discernible in this inchoate conversation. Music is John Hiatt's "Book Lovers"

The boys are back to discuss Tom McCarthy's "Remainder", Zadie Smith's "Two Paths for the Novel", the possibility (or impossibility) of authenticity, MFAs, the people who complain about MFAs, whether Jacob's beard augments his already conspicuously semitic features, and more. Music is John Hiatt's "Book Lovers"

Jeffrey Aspern didn't kill himself. Henry James was sexually frustrated. People who burn their writing are melodramatic. The kids can't read. "Lost Lambs" is a real book. Aseem encourages Jacob to commit suicide. Jacob encourages Liam to convert. All this and more! Music is John Hiatt's "Book Lovers"

One episode recorded near the end of January in a squalid Brooklyn apartment in which three gentlemen discuss, in a meandering fashion, the novel Satantango by Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai, the sloppy editorial oversight of New Directions Publishing, the distinctions between modernism and post-modernism, the superficialities and pseudo-seriousness of dense prose, the critical tendencies of...

How many semicolons are too many? Does an Empire State Building made of doughnuts countermand the innate beauty of the world? Is Warren Zevon's "The Envoy" an overlooked masterpiece? Join us and find out in our freewheeling discussion of Gustave Flaubert's timeless classic, "Sentimental Education". Music is John Hiatt's "Book Lovers"