Grand Podcast Abyss

Watchmen . Favorite characters. Alan Moore as stylist. Superhero comics. Watchmen and Don Quixote . Form and genre: Understanding Comics , understanding superheroes. Watchmen as American literature. Rorschach as hero. Necessity of perversion and extremism. Watchmen as the Bible of people who “go hard.” Is there any defense of the Comedian? Watchmen ’s relevance to the war in Ukraine and renewed nu...

Ukraine. A political autobiography. Democracy and empire. Conviction and ambivalence. Ideological ferment: neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and MAGA. Individualism and collective identity in Milan Kundera, Toni Morrison, and Alexandr Dugin. Liberal nationalism. The trouble with land acknowledgments. Getting liberalism’s story straight. Note : my post about Kundera, Morrison, and Dugin . This is a p...

Henry James. “The Art of the Novel.” Romance vs. novel. Experience is everything. The necessity of cultural appropriation. Making love to the language. Free indirect discourse. Graduate school. Age-appropriate novels. The Bostonians . Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow fighting over Taylor Lorenz. The Ambassadors . The eroticism of difficult prose. “Live all you can.” Henry James at the end of histo...

William James. Pragmatism vs. Rationalism. Metaphysics. Why it’s good to believe in God. Louis Menand. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Eugenics and compulsory vaccination. The Civil War: liberalism’s “Good War”? Men of the sword and men of the spirit. Contingencies of Richard Rorty. The professionalization of the university and its price. Corporatism and fascism, yesterday and today. James’s anti-imper...

General hilarity. Sidney Morgenbesser, Mencius Moldbug, Judith Butler. Nietzsche. Limits of thought. Cheapness of paradox. How to write. Hannah Arendt contra contemporary liberalism. More Mailer. Left conservatism. Charlie Hebdo . Notes : my essays on Hannah Arendt and Norman Mailer | my Tumblr post on why writing should difficult | Rebecca Panovka on Arendt This is a public episode. If you'd like...

Joan Didion. A dirge. Gnosticism. William Blake. Catholicism. The CIA. Assorted literary gossip. Notes : my essays on William Blake , Elaine Pagels , and Joan Didion . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com/subscribe

Literary mixes. The title explained. Georg Lukács. Are we leftists? How do we know each other? Don DeLillo, Iris Murdoch. Novels in general. Soundscapes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com/subscribe