Book Fight

We welcome guest Asali Solomon, author of the new novel Disgruntled , to talk about Marlon James's 2009 The Book of Night Women . James's novel is about a Jamaican sugar plantation around the turn of the 18th century, and the lives of its enslaved people, particularly Lilith, a young woman who is sent to work in the slavemaster's house after fending off a would-be rapist. Solomon talks about why t...

Our final installment in the Spring of Spite, and we've got a story that is spiteful in two ways. The story's narrator is almost certainly motivated by spite, and it would seem that Poe himself was drawing on some spiteful feelings when writing it.  Also this week: Bobby Flay's spiteful divorce, Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, and why aren't there better contemporary lit feuds?  For more, includin...

Paul Beatty's latest book, The Sellout , has been getting great press, described as a game-changing satire on race in America. We talk about whether the novel lives up to that high praise, and debate how to categorize its humor. We also talk about the audience for satire, and whether satire can truly change a person's perspective. In the second half of the show we've got another installment of Fan...

This week's spiteful story is "A Poetics for Bullies," which Stanley Elkin has described as the best story he ever wrote. In it, Push the Bully comes up against his greatest challenge: a new kid beloved by his classmates and seemingly impervious to Push's efforts to take him down a peg. We've also got stories this week about Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, two grown men who did not particularly care...

This week's discussion centers on a genre-bending book by Maggie Nelson, an unconventional memoir and a treatise on perception, pain, love and loss, and the color blue. Bluets  came out in 2009 and has become a real touchstone for some writers of both creative nonfiction and poetry.  We also talk about Tom's recent trip to Italy, his hatred of Romans, and Mike's growing hatred of online user revie...

This week we're reading an essay by Harlan Ellison called " The Three Most Important Things in Life ," which was suggested to us by a listener who said we couldn't talk about spite without talking about Ellison. We talk about whether we buy the essay's details, whether Ellison is self-aware as a narrator, and whether it's a good or bad idea to tell dirty jokes on your first day at a new job. We al...

This week is another donor pick, Donald Antrim's first novel, which presents a kind of dystopic view of an American suburb, one where people build moats around their houses and a town mayor is drawn and quartered. We talk about the limits of irony, and whether this book, published in the mid-90s, should be considered prescient. We've also got another installment of Fan Fiction Corner, this one fea...

For this installment of the Spring of Spite we read a few selections from Bernhard's collection MY PRIZES, which includes essays about his experiences with prize ceremonies and some speeches he delivered at those ceremonies. There's plenty of Bernhardian spite to go around: for other writers, for his home country of Austria, for the idea of literary prizes in the first place. We've also got storie...

This week we're reading (part of) this famous work of natural history from the early 19th century. Alexander von Humboldt traveled extensively in Latin America and recorded all sorts of stuff: geology, plant life, animal life, interactions with the natives, water temperatures, and speculation abou tcontinental drift. The book, a donor pick from our winter fundraising, is sort of a departure from o...

Week two in our Spring of Spite, and we're reading a delightfully odd Flannery O'Connor story called "Enoch and the Gorilla," about a man who is very excited to insult a famous ape. Though things don't turn out how he planned! We also talk about spiteful wills and obituaries, spiteful paleontologists who basically made careers out of hating each other, and the long-running feud between H.G. Wells...

This week's book is an unconventional memoir: in 300 short, numbered sections, Waldie investigates the origins of his hometown, a suburb outside of Los Angeles considered the Levittown of Southern California, as well as his own life there and the lives of his parents. We talk about the book's unusual construction, and how it creates connections and meaning through surprising juxtapositions. Also t...

Welcome to your first installment in the Spring of Spite! This week we're reading a Richard Yates story, "Oh Joseph, I'm So Tired," which paints a pretty rough portrait of the author's mother and her failed attempts at artistic (and social) relevance. We also talk about the science of spite, and the phenomeon of "spite houses" and "spite fences." Finally, Tom gives Mike a spite-related quiz, thoug...

This week is a Tom pick, by a writer who is Mexico's greatest novelist, if the blurb on the front cover is true. The novel--Herrera's only, so far, to be translated into English--follows a young woman named Makina as she crosses the border into the United States in search of her brother. We talk about the book's attempt to thread the needle between realism and fabulism, as well as one of its trans...

It's our last Winter of Wayback episode before we have to finally admit that spring has sprung. This week we're traveling to 1916, where we read a P.G. Wodehouse story ("Jeeves Takes Charge"). We also talk about art manifestos, and speculate about why there aren't any these days. Other topics covered include: elephant executions, the most lopsided college football game of all time, terrorist acts,...

This week's book is an addiction and recovery memoir by celebrated journalist David Carr, who recently lost a battle with cancer (after surviving lymphoma, as detailed in the book). Carr takes an unusual vector through his own drug-fueled past, employing the skills he learned as a journalist to interview friends, family, colleagues and lovers, in an attempt to piece together an account of his own...

A bit of a reading detour this week as we take up two stories from pulp writer Robert E. Howard, who invented both Conan the Barbarian and Sailor Steve Costigan, the sailor who loved to fight. We also talk about the origins of both Goofy and Betty Boop, Australia's "emu war," and Olympian/professional golfer Babe Didrikson. Everything you ever wanted to know about 1932! For more, including video c...

We're joined this week by Dave Housley (author of the new story collection If I Knew The Way, I Would Take You Home ) to discuss Nathan Rabin's 2013 book investigating the cult followings of both Phish and Insane Clown Posse. The book tracks Rabin's experiences at several Phish shows and the annual Gathering of the Juggalos, as well as his near-breakdown during what sounds like a pretty rough year...

This week we're traveling back to 1944, reading a Raymond Chandler essay about what makes a good story, and talking about various events not related to D-Day, because we're pretty sure that's been covered at this point. Instead we'll tell you about the origins of the Chiquita Banana song, a racially motivated labor strike in Philadelphia, Paul McCartney's lesser-known musician brother, and Miss Am...

This week we're reading the breakout 2001 book by French writer Emmanuel Carrere, a true-crime story about a man who killed his wife, children, and parents after living a life of, as the book's subtitle has it, "monstrous deception." We talk about the line between drama and sensationalism, and speculate about what goes on in the heads of pathological liars. In the second half of the show we talk a...

This week we've set the Wayback Machine to 1894: We're reading a Kate Chopin story and talking about phonographs, anarchists, and shooting your guns into the air as if you didn't particularly care (about gun safety). For more, including links to some of what we talked about in the episode (including this week's story) visit us online at bookfightpod.com .  We're also still fundraising! So check ou...

This week we're reading a 1934 cult classic (subtitled "An Experiment in Biography") that sees its author on the hunt for information about one Baron Corvo, also known as Frederick Rolfe, writer of several novels and maker of many enemies. Symons, after reading, and loving, Corvo's Hadrian the Seventh, set out to learn as much as she could about the mysterious author. And his efforts were rewarded...

This week we're talking about Kay Boyle's story "Defeat," an O'Henry winner from 1941. We also talk about a number of interesting things that happened in 1941, including: alien sightings, the time-traveling hipster, the first televised Mummers parade, the "state" of Jefferson's attempt to secede from Oregon, and the longest-ever coma.  For more, including links to what we talked about on the show,...

We're back with another book episode, this one about the 1982 National Book Award winner for best debut novel. We talk about "quiet" novels, prickly female protagonists, portrayals of parental anxiety, and the relativity of literary celebrity. We've also got blurbs for a couple more donors to our annual fund drive, which you can contribute to here , if you're so inclined. You can read more, and ge...

Astute listeners might note that we're supposed to have a book episode this week. Unfortunately, we lost that episode in a technical snafu. Fortunately, we already had the next Winter of Wayback episode ready to go! This week we're reading a story from 1982, the year of Tom's birth. The story, "Dancing Ducks and Talking Anus," appeared in the 1982 Best American Short Stories anthology, selected by...

We're kicking off our next seasonal series, the Winter of Wayback, in which we'll read a prize story or essay from a given year and talk about that year's pop culture--movies, music, books, weird news, whatever might help provide some context for the story (or just entertain our listeners, and ourselves). This week we're traveling back to 1977, the year of Mike's birth, to read a story by Ella Lef...