Books of Some Substance

George Salis, author of Sea Above, Sun Below joins David to discuss The Satanic Verses , the controversial, exuberant, magical, and magnificent novel by Sir Salman Rushdie. They discuss the poetry, the allusions, and the history of this "Everything" novel in their own labyrinthine and interconnected way.

Meet Alfred Brown IV, educator and vocalist of the LA hardcore punk band Dangers. He's into Amy Hempel. Like, really into Amy Hempel. Listen in for a deep conversation covering everything from the unintended emptiness of slogan-heavy lyrics to Hempel's short story rhythm to questioning the need to categorize any type of writing — fiction, non-fiction, memoir, et al. — as anything other than just p...

Dear World, Kōbō Abe sees your absurdity and raises you one box! A box to live in, specifically. And a box to meld with the psyche of the inhabitant. If it's not clear, we're talking about Abe's 1973 novel The Box Man , a how-to guide on how to construct your own box in which to dwell and/or a challenging narrative (or, perhaps, narratives?) on the nature of voyeurism and anonymity in modern socie...

Clarice Lispector's 1946 novel The Chandelier is the topic of fervent discussion for David, Nathan, and Nick in this latest episode. Not for the faint of heart (but perhaps for those near to wild ones), this modernist work probes a deep abyss of metaphysical questions including, but not limited to: What is anything? etc. etc. Forever dividing a single moment of time into increasingly smaller slice...

On this episode of the podcast, David is joined by author and translator João Reis, author of The Translator's Bride, to talk about lovable literary scamp, the warm and cuddly and optimistic Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard's Old Masters: A Comedy . They discuss the common aspects of Bernhard's style in general—a monologic riff rife with musical patterns of recursive invective as dark as it is humo...

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick chats with Alexis Marshall, vocalist of the noise rock band Daughters , about Jean Cocteau's 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles (or as it is known in its English translation: The Holy Terrors ). Topics of discussion include: Marshall's own approach to writing poetry and lyrics, how The Holy Terrors is a direct allegory of Cocteau's addicti...

Twenty years ago, Mark Z. Danielewski unleashed the labyrinthine horror novel House of Leaves, a work of fiction that would make both Daedalus and Derrida proud, a sprawling, convoluted, multi-narrative that pushes the bounds of reading and interpretation. But is there a minotaur of meaning lurking somewhere in the halls of the text? Or is it simply the narrative form of Nietzsche's maxim that "th...

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance Podcast, Nick chats with Brett Campbell of the Arkansas doom metal band Pallbearer about M. John Harrison's Viriconium . They talk through how the themes of Viriconium made it into the band's music, how Harrison's use of shifting time and memory and place subvert expectations of genre fiction, and how it is an endless challenge as a human to try not t...

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick chats with Alex Edkins of the Toronto punk band METZ on the day that their latest record, Atlas Vending, came out. Alex highlighted J.G. Ballard's High-Rise as a favorite, so we talk through the psychological, inner-space prophecies of the book and relate it back to our current technology-saturated landscape.  Spoiler alert: we are all a...

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick chats with Michael Berdan from the New York City noise-rock-slash-industrial-metal band Uniform about Hubert Selby Jr.'s The Room .  We talk about the importance of tone and aesthetic in both vocal delivery and fiction's prose, about Berdan's deeply personal connection to Selby Jr.'s writing, and, perhaps most importantly, about how art...

Hey you there, you listener of substance! All full of the choice whether to listen to this podcast and/or the choice to do good or evil. We get you. John Steinbeck gets you too, as proven in his 1952 masterwork East of Eden . One part character epic, one part soap opera, and one part philosophical tract on the merits and challenges of individual agency, this book undeniably occupies a special plac...

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick is joined by Steve Von Till of the seminal metal band Neurosis for a conversation about Ted Hughes' Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow . Von Till's prolific career now includes his latest solo record, No Wilderness Deep Enough , and his first published book of poems, Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics , both of whi...

In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick is joined by Dylan Desmond of the Seattle doom metal band Bell Witch for an in-depth discussion of Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Listen in as we discuss what exactly Desmond connects with in Tolstoy's writing, how this short novel was remarkably ahead of its time in documenting the emptiness of a materialist life, and how uniqu...

What's that you say? Didn't read Steinbeck in high school? Well then welcome to the safe space of Cannery Row , where one is not judged by achievements or accolades, but by the innate goodness found deep within.   Ahhhh, just kidding, this one's more about having a rollickin' good time gettin' into fights with fishermen, getting thrown into (and buying your way out of) jail, and sharing a snort he...

What do you call it when a cynical intellectual, a loyal party member, and a Moravian folklorist walk into a bar? A joke! Or rather, The Joke. Milan Kundera's 1968 debut novel, that is. Join Nathan, David, and Nick for a lengthy — and tricky — discussion on the individual vs. the collective, the tendency of history to turn into myth, and tips for the best way to unassumingly hide a bunch of laxati...

Good luck summarizing this one, nerds! Listen in as we examine William H. Gass' holy casket of hellfire and judgment, Omensetter's Luck , a wild stream of preacher prose, suicide and/or murder mystery, and small-town cat gossip. Seemingly intelligent points are made by the B.O.S.S. gang regarding the book's odd three-part structure, its allusions to original sin, and Gass' iterative writing proces...

Obsessions! Cacophony! Typography! Listen in as we dissect William H. Gass' post-modern cult classic, Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife , a bizarre kaleidoscope of killer sentences, 1960s design, and, of course, gratuitous nudity. David argues that the book's overtly sexual content actually maps to Gass' love of language. Nathan provides a breakdown of the typefaces and visual strategies at play. And...

They say that reading Albert Camus' The Plague in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic is trendy. Well, it's not so bad being trendy. Join us this month as David, Nathan, and Nick unpack Camus' classic work and ask all of the questions on everyone's minds: Is it logical to do good? Are pestilences real or mere abstractions? Is the philosophical novel genre fiction? For the sake of maintaining norma...

What do you get when you create a society with no fixed gender, a whole hell of a lot of snow, a shitload of shifgrethor , and a week off every month for carnal activities? You guessed it: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness . Listen in as Nathan, Stephanie, and Nick discuss the many flavors of science fiction , Le Guin's nuanced role as a prominent feminist writer, and how this book see...

Pragmatic non-hierarchical structures! Breaking the space time continuum! The sociopolitical and philosophical dualities that exist between two planets — but also inside us all! Join David, Eric, and Nick as they dissect Ursula K. Le Guin's often revered classic The Dispossessed. They wonder if the book is the left-wing equivalent of The Fountainhead , if the neon color scheme of the mass market p...

What's the deal with how choppy this Nabokov book is? Is the character of Pnin actually the target of a faculty conspiracy? Or is the real conspiracy the fact that David is secretly employed as a salesman for the word-a-day industry? Join Nick, Nathan, and David for another rousing discussion on Vladimir Nabokov, this time on the (sometimes) beloved Pnin . And don't worry, even if they may be a bi...

Drama! Comedy! Opacity! Turpitude! All are up for grabs in Vladimir Nabokov's holiday classic, Invitation to a Beheading . Listen in as Nathan, David, and Nick try to figure out just what exactly is going on in Nabokov's oft-overlooked gem that may or may not be about: personal exile, political exile, gnosticism, or the inability to get a good night's sleep. Just don't call it Kafka-esque (even th...

In this edition of The Substance of Influence Nick chats with Ross Farrar, vocalist of the Northern California punk band Ceremony, about the connections between the band's latest record In the Spirit World Now and the classic Saul Bellow novel Humboldt's Gift .   Listen in as we discuss the similarities between Bellow's blend of rough intellectualism and the literary underpinnings of punk music, w...

In this edition of The Substance of Influence, Nick chats with University of California-Berkeley English Professor Catherine Flynn about her new book, James Joyce and the Matter of Paris .   Listen in for  discussion on the (un)romantic Paris of yesteryear, the sources of all those cool modernist moves, and why Joyce's fiction is, um, a bit smelly.  In other news, members of the B.O.S.S. reading g...

In this installment of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick is joined by University of California-Berkeley English Professor Catherine Flynn to dissect the endless permutations of Samuel Beckett's oft-overlooked Watt .   Is there meaning behind Sam's lists upon lists upon lists?   Is this a reality more real than realism itself?   And will there be an opportunity for Nick to —most predictably...