Subtext: Conversations about Classic Books and Films

W. H. Auden hated this poem. He called it the most dishonest he had ever written, and eventually had it excluded from collections of his poetry. And yet it quickly became one of his most popular poems. And after the attacks of September 11, it was published in several national newspapers and widely discussed. This might seem to be a strange result, given that the poem is not a call-to-arms, but an...

As war loomed in Europe, the poet W.H. Auden left Britain for the United States. One of the poems he wrote just before leaving is about the nature of human suffering—or as Auden puts it, the “human position” of suffering: for the most part, it happens invisibly, and the procession of ordinary life leaves it unacknowledged. Yet, the representation and transcendence of suffering are tasks important...

It’s a romance that begins with a divorce. Lucy and Jerry Warriner suspect each other of affairs, so they file suit, battle for custody of their dog, see other people, and generally go wild. Despite the spectre of infidelities— real or imagined— Lucy and Jerry learn a surprising truth: that the only person they enjoy “fooling around with” is their spouse. How are all relationships a kind of perfor...

Hedda Gabler is not a fan of specialization: not in the professor she has married, and his esoteric scholarly interests; not in domesticity, and the specialized affections required by marriage and motherhood; not in any lover’s infatuated specialization in her ; and perhaps not in the form of specialization arguably required by life itself, with its finite and confining possibilities. Is there any...

Bill Budd is a beautiful man. Not just good looking, but exquisitely good natured, something that costs him no effort and has required no instruction. And yet it is ultimately his beautiful soul and good nature that get Billy killed. Wes & Erin analyze Herman Melville’s final and unfinished work of fiction , and whether a good heart and good intentions are more important than obedience to auth...

John Cassavetes is known today as the father of American independent film, a pioneering writer, director, editor, actor who managed to make movies on his own terms, and has since inspired two generations of filmmakers. In his own day, however, he couldn’t catch a break–unappreciated and unseen by most of the public, lambasted by critics. But what contemporaries didn’t understand about Cassav...

Benjamin Braddock is a little worried about his future. He’s a recent college graduate who moves back in with his upper-middle-class parents and feels smothered by their vapid, materialistic lifestyle. But he begins an affair with a woman from his parents’ circle… And then he falls in love with her daughter. Like Benjamin, we wonder what the future can and should hold for us. Can it be free of the...

Wes and Erin continue their discussion of W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” In Part 1, they analyzed the first stanza of the poem, in particular Yeats’ use of “gyre”; the meaning of the phrases “things fall apart” and “the center cannot hold”; and the conflict between aristocratic and revolutionary values. In Part 2, they discuss — with a...

In 1919, the world seemed to have descended into anarchy. World War I had killed millions and profoundly altered the international order. Four empires, along with their aristocracies, had disintegrated. Russia was in a state of civil war, and Ireland was on the verge of its own. It’s these events that helped inspire William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” which famously tells us that “thin...

Do we owe parents our gratitude for our upbringing? What if they haven’t done such a great job? And anyway, perhaps we inevitably resent all the forces that have shaped the characters that confine and limit us. If so, the quest for filial gratitude is ultimately hopeless. It could even be a kind of madness: a foolish attempt to transcend the same formative forces that we resent in our parents, to...

L.B. Jefferies has the perfect girlfriend—beautiful, intelligent, wealthy—but too perfect, he insists, for marriage. And so he spends his time spying on the love lives of his neighbors, and ropes his girlfriend into this project as well. Which, strangely enough, turns out to be a really effective form of couples’ therapy. What’s the connection between voyeurism and what Jefferies calls “the intell...

In this third and final installment of our series on Keats’s odes, we’re looking at To Autumn , the poet’s last major work before his death at the age of 25. Keats’s elegiac meditation on the season also serves as a metaphor for his favorite subject matter, artistic creation itself. What parallels does Keats find between art-making and the bounty, harvest, and barrenness of autumn? And what can th...

Second in our series on the odes of John Keats is Ode to a Nightingale , in which Keats imagines a journey into the realm of negative capability, a concept introduced in our previous episode on Ode to a Grecian Urn . Keats hears a nightingale’s song and it inspires him to ponder such questions as, what makes an ideal artist? How might we access the world of artistic creation? How does art unite hu...

The poet John Keats is famous for the concept of “negative capability,” his description of the ability to tolerate the world’s uncertainty without resorting to easy answers. Literary minds in particular should be more attuned to beauty than facts and reason. In fact, truth in the highest sense is the same thing as beauty, he tells us at the end of his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn . What d...

When egotistical weatherman Phil Connors gets trapped in a time loop in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, he gets drunk, steals money, manipulates women, binges on breakfast food, plays God… and finally grows up. The story charts Phil’s development over the course of thousands of repeated February 2nds. Along the way, it raises questions about our own capacity for growth. How do we go about improving ou...

At the center of every courting ritual, there’s a great unknown. How do we know when we’ve met someone we can love? How do we know the other person is actually who they seem to be? In the beginning, all we have to go on is surface appearances, which amount to a kind of hearsay. The question is how to get beyond them. Wes and Erin analyze Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing , which seems to sugges...

How did it all begin? Where is it going? What’s the point of anything, anyway? With (post)script , get to know your quirky hosts, their existential doubts, and all the behind-the-scenes drama that’s concealed by their staid demeanors, not to mention an ample Patreon paywall . Actually, we’re giving you this debut episode of (post)script — and every fifth one thereafter &#82...

You know, it’s that old story of boy meets girl … girl is dating boy’s married boss … girl tries to commit suicide … boy saves girl’s life …. Okay, that sounds pretty dark. But somehow it’s the basis for a classic romantic comedy, Billy Wilder’s 1960 film, The Apartment . The film raises the question of how we distinguish authentic relationships from relationships of utility and convenience. What...

An advantageous marriage is Elizabeth Bennet’s only potential escape from a foolish mother, a disinterested father, three very silly sisters, and a house that’s entailed away to her idiotic cousin Mr. Collins. But she turns down fabulously wealthy Mr. Darcy because he’s prideful—and maybe a little prejudiced. But then, so is she. How do we know if two people are well-suited to each other? What mak...