Grand Podcast Abyss

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . We discuss Proust’s biography, translation, and reception; his conceptions of memory, art, culture, and nature; his study of j...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the eighth in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Hen...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the seventh in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns three of Tolstoy’s short novels: The Deat...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the seventh in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns the second half of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Cr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the sixth in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns the first half of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the fourth in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary . I discu...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the third in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Heinrich von Kleist’s novella Michael Kohlh...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the second in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Faust, Part II by Goethe. I unravel crucia...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, the first in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Faust, Part I by Goethe. I explain Goethe’s...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, free in its entirety, concerns two ancient treatises on literature: Aristotle’s Poetics and Longinus’s On the Sublime . First, I rehearse the life and overall philosophical contribution of Aristotle; the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, of which the first 20 minutes are free, concerns Plato’s philosophical dialogues Ion , Symposium , and Phaedrus...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, of which the first 12 minutes is free, concerns Aristophanes’s comedy Lysistrata and Euripides’s tragedies Medea...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, of which the first 10 minutes is free, concerns Sophocles’s Theban plays. I discuss Sophocles’s biography and hi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, of which the first 10 minutes is free, concerns Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy, The Oresteia . I discuss the limited...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here . The 2024 archive is here . This episode, of which the first 20 minutes is free, concerns Homer’s Odyssey . Topics include translation controversies, hist...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome to 2024’s final episode of The Invisible College . It is about William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury . My exposition is almost as aleatory as the novel itself, but I discuss Harold Bloom and Hugh Kenner’s dissent on the novel’s reputation, the general shape of Faulkner’s career, the novel’s high...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 20 minutes are free, is about the poetry of Wallace Stevens. We begin with a contrast between Pound Stevens and its sequel in 20th-century litera...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 16 minutes are free, is about the poetry of Ezra Pound. We begin at the ending, with the tragedy of Pound’s later-life political dereliction and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 15 minutes are free, concerns F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . I discuss the novel’s ubiquity and whether or not it is overrated, as well...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 15 minutes are free, concerns Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises . I discuss the vicissitudes of Hemingway’s reputation, both sociopolitically...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, free in its entirety, concerns the poetry of Robert Frost. I discuss the paradox of Frost’s career as an immensely popular poet whose poetry is also puzzling, difficult, and dark beneath its surface, an oxymoronic populist modernism. Via a selection of so...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 15 minutes are free, concerns Henry James’s novel The Bostonians . First I make some impromptu comments on the Merchant Ivory film of the novel,...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, concerns the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I discuss Dickinson’s biography, with an emphasis on the shadow cast by Calvinism ov...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, concerns the poetry of Walt Whitman, particularly his epic-lyric Song of Myself . First I set the scene of 19th-century Amer...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode is the third in a three-week sequence on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick ; the first 25 minutes are available to all, the total two hours and 15 minutes reserved for pai...