Literary Guise: A Book Club for Modern Men

We finish up our Listeners' Choice for 2022, "All Quiet on the Western Front," on a bright note as things are looking up for our German boys in the trenches... just kidding, this novel just gets unrelentingly bleak right up until the soul-voiding ending (probably one of the most memorable closing lines in literary history). Although it does say something about the nature of humanity...

What does it say about men that it took war, in many cases, for our emotional barriers to finally breakdown? Why did it take months in a foxhole being bombarded day and night before men could form true, meaningful friendships and even express platonic love for their fellow man? Why are the men who brag the most about patriotism and personal bravery also the men who never served during war? And wha...

Our listeners' choice for this season is one of the most famous novels of all time, the first true anti-war novel, the bleak, the unrelenting: All Quiet on the Western Front. Tune in for conversations about men in war --  a very different picture of masculinity than anything we've read before. Read along with us or watch the just released Netflix film. And if you pick up the e-reader ver...

We wrap up our month-long look into the career of a distinctly American author. His collected works are further summarized. Natural comparisons to another Literary Guise favorite, Chuck Palahniuk, are made. Drinks are consumed; business cards are exchanged. 

“I was never much of a fan of Literary Guise, at least not until the 31st episode of their 2nd season, a hyper-pop EDM new disco fantasia entitled, “Bret Easton Ellis: American Genius (Part 3: ‘American Psycho’)” Before that I had always found their sound a little too niche, a touch too twee. But on Part 3 they really hit their mainstream sensibility stride. The rich, sonorous baritone of Zac Kell...

Disappear here. (Into our podcast talking about one of the seminal works of the 1980s, Bret Easton Ellis's disaffected debut novel about an LA populated by narcissists and drug-induced zombies.) We will also touch a little bit on its sequel, 2010's "Imperial Bedrooms," where we learn the characters' futures are all far sadder than we ever could have imagined. Is this a nov...

We are dedicating an entire month to Bret Easton Ellis's work! Join us live from the Stardust Lounge in Seattle, WA as we discuss the author, his influences, and the zeitgeist defining bibliography he's produced over five decades. In this episode we'll be providing some insight into why we chose Ellis for this deep dive, exploring the author's background, and teasing out some o...

Who records a podcast 48 hours into a limo-chauffeured, bachelor party-fueled, drinking tour of Las Vegas? We do. Join us at some of our favorite off-Strip bars and literary haunts as we talk about Las Vegas, its innate masculine themes, and our deep, heretofore undisclosed, love of Tiki. Excuse the word salad and the janky edits, we really are on a Bachelor party and we really did lose a member o...

We wrap up one of our most listened to book discussions of the season with a bleak examination of the death of the American dream and a needless 2020-lensed exploration of a character's sexuality. Is this novella "pro-George" or "anti-Lenny," and other drunken debates to follow...

Get ready to coat the inside of your glove with vaseline, because we're going deep into... wait... let us rephrase. When it comes to this Steinbeck classic, we are going so far inside... nope. Okay, real talk, no one is 100% sure why Curly's glove is filled with petroleum jelly, but that's not going to stop us from speculating nor discussing it ad nauseam. We'll also touch on t...

We're going back to school this month! Specifically back to our collective High School curriculum as we explore some of the novels of our student days through the lens of adulthood. Up this season: Of Mice and Men, one of the all-time American classics. We'll analyze what it meant in the 1930s, and what it means today, all while unraveling its male characters' complicated masculinit...

We get blitzed on martinis and talk about our favorite books from this year so far... and we re-write the high school comparative literature curriculum while we're at it. Tune-in for a preview of what's to come this season and marvel at how fast our bartender delivers those martinis to us. 

A little sympathy for the devil in this one as we try to get into the core mechanics of this novel's horrible protagonist. What does this narrative have to say about our society as a whole and what impression did Nabokov really wish to leave us.  We promise we'll have some lighter episodes from here on out, but we're grateful to all of you for joining us on this exploration of one o...

We get more entangled in the uncomfortable themes of Lolita, while also uncovering more of the brilliant wordplay baked-in by Nabokov... which is, exactly what the author intended. We also stopped drinking "Pins" altogether because while we okay tackling challenging subject matter on this podcast, drinking terrible drinks is just not something we are willing to do. 

We take on one of the most controversial novels ever put to print this month, Nabokov's "Lolita." It's the novel you've always thought you should read, but for understandable reasons you've avoided it until now.  In this episode we go into detail on the author (who he was and why he wrote this) and touch on some of the literary craft on display. A work of genius or a...

Your co-hosts travel to a neighborhood used bookstore to supermarket sweep three must reads for the other person. This is our chance to get out of the dim, boozy, somehow still smokey (?) confines of the Stardust Lounge and share some books that fall outside of the typical Literary Guise fare. Join us for this experimental romp through bibilichor and organized chaos that is: the neighborhood books...

A sad ending to a sad novel, we talk about the way inaction and not living authentically can misshape the soul. How sometimes the greatest tragedy in a man's life, can be the truths left unspoken; the glory never sought. Yukio Mishima is one of the best authors of all-time, and his resounding effect on the co-hosts of this podcast is a testament to that.  Oh, also, there's a kamikaze por...

Over cocktails we go deep into psychoanalyzing our own sexuality (same old, same old with this podcast) all the while exploring in more detail some of the dynamic prose that has made Confessions of a Mask a timeless classic. Oh, and we talk about that time the author randomly tried to overthrow the Japanese government. 

Co-host Zachary Kellian introduces one of his favorite authors to Gordon Macallan who in turn lends even more personal insight into the text... just what book clubs are all about! Join us for a frank exploration of closeted sexuality in post-war Japan and learn a little bit about one of the world's most enigmatic, outrageous, and talented writers to ever put pen to paper.

Was this podcast just a long and needlessly complex excuse to eventually discuss H.P. Lovecraft? Maybe... we're big fans of the grandfather of horror's cosmic approach to terror (even if we cringe at some of his more heinous personal beliefs). Join us for a dramatic reading followed by an in-depth discussion of the story.

We wrap up this season's foray into the world of Stephen King with an in-depth discussion on "the coming of age tale" and the unique rites of passage (or lack thereof) within American culture past, present, and future. Or at least that's what we thought we were talking about... full disclosure, we discovered a very real liquor brand called "Redrum" and it was too perf...

We continue to drink some corpse revivers as we read one of the master of horror's non-horror novellas, "The Body." In this episode we share some tips about  how to talk your twelve-year-old friends into seeing a dead body and explore the reason why boys (and men) so often play "at war."

We're drinking Corpse Revivers and reading Stephen King all month! What's a literary podcast doing examining the master of horror? If you're asking yourself that, you've not read enough King. The Body is his exploration of 12 -year-old boys, a subject he approaches with enough humanity and empathy to rank among the best of literary fiction. We hope you'll join us, King-afi...

We take a field trip for our second remote recording session, this time to New York City, NY! We sip some drinks just barstools away from where Dylan Thomas drank his last pint and marvel at the building's plumbing mishap that put Jack Kerouac in jail. There's Bob Dylan graffiti in the bathroom and an overall air of bohemian artistic freedom to be had at The White Horse Tavern, one of th...

Lasers! Poison darts! Miss Gladys Stephens of Omaha, Nebraska! We talk about the climax of The Andromeda Strain as well as get a glimpse behind the scenes of the movie it later inspired.   Thanks for joining us on this journey back to our collective bookworm adolescence!