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 2024 syllabus can be found here . This episode—over two hours for paid subscribers, with a 15-minute preview for free subscribers—is the second in a three-week sequence on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick . First we d...

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, is the first in a three-week sequence on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick . First I make some general remarks about Moby-Dick , its multiple genres and influences (the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Milton), and how difficult it is to rea...

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, the fourth in a 16-week sequence on American literature, focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of American radicalism, American occultism, and American aestheticis...

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, the third in a 16-week sequence on American literature, focuses on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. With help from writers as diverse as Borges, Mallarmé, and Lovec...

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, the second in a 16-week sequence on American literature and the second of two on the Transcendentalist movement, focuses on essays by Henry David Thoreau and Margar...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This free episode, the first in a 16-week sequence on American literature and the first of two on the Transcendentalist movement, focuses on the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. First I review the origins of American intellectual culture in Puritanism and its historical...

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 lecture, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the fourth of four on George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2). We consider the status of Middlemarch in the 21st century amid...

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 lecture, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the third of four on George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2). We consider the representation of early democratic politics in...

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 lecture, of which the first 14 minutes are free, is the second of four on George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2). I discuss Middlemarch ’s indirect portrayal of history in the...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This lecture, free in its entirety, is the first of four on George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-2), sometimes called the greatest English novel. I discuss Eliot’s biography and her context in a secularizing intellectual milieu; compare her to Dickens among great Victorian...

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 lecture is the seventh in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. This one covers episodes 13 through 15 of Joyce’s Ulysses . First, I consider Ulysses as less a book than a...

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 lecture is the sixth in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. This one covers episodes 10 through 12 of Joyce’s Ulysses . First, we recapitulate Joyce’s writing so far 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 lecture is the fifth in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. This one covers episodes seven through nine of Joyce’s Ulysses . First, we hear James Joyce’s voice, reading f...

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 lecture is the fourth in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. This one covers episodes four through six of Joyce’s Ulysses . I begin by characterizing the lower-middle-cla...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This lecture, free in its entirety, is the third in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. Its topic is the first three chapters of Joyce’s Ulysses : “Telemachus,” “Nestor,” and “Proteus.” I first make some general remarks about the novel’s context, its structure and f...

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 lecture is the second in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. Its topic is Joyce’s first novel, the autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . I discuss th...

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 lecture is the first in an eight-week sequence on James Joyce. I begin with some advice for reading Ulysses , which we will begin in two weeks. Mainly, however, this episode...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This lecture is about the life and work of Samuel Beckett, with a focus on his play Waiting for Godot . We begin by considering Beckett’s place in literary history as an experimentalist trying to find a way to write after Joyce. Then I consider his biography in more de...

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 lecture is about the life and work of W. H. Auden. I consider the poet’s reputation as the third of the three great modern poets in British literature after Yeats and Eliot....

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 lecture is about the life and work of Virginia Woolf, with a focus on her novel To the Lighthouse . I open by considering Woolf as more poet than novelist. Then I discuss Wo...

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here . This lecture is free to all in its entirety as a preview of what paid subscribers enjoy every week: it’s about the life and work of D. H. Lawrence. I discuss Lawrence’s life as the first English working-class novelist, his travails as his sexually explicit and politica...

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 lecture is about the life and work of W. B. Yeats. I discuss Yeats’s biography as his art goes from late Romanticism to a high modernism amid the turbulence of Ireland’s lib...

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 lecture is about the life and work of Joseph Conrad, with a focus on his novel of anarchism and terrorism, The Secret Agent . I first discuss Conrad’s biography: his harrowi...

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 lecture is about the life and work of Oscar Wilde. I begin with a recitation of Wilde’s dramatic life story with its consciously shaped tragic arc—the tragedy he lived but c...

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 lecture is about the life and work of George Bernard Shaw. We begin by discussing Shaw’s 1930s position that unproductive members of complex societies should be culled and t...