The Infinite Library

For our second episode of Chabon-a-mania, Ben and John had the rare pleasure of recording in-person, so this episode is a little more meandering than usual. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

John and Ben sit down with Filipino sword and sorcery author, Dariel Quiogue, about his upcoming novella, "The Walls of Shira Yulun", which will be coming out soon as part of the "Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery" collection from New Edge Sword & Sorcery. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation. You can support the campaign for the "Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery" here: https://www.backe...

This week, John and Ben finally get around to discussing patron saint of the pod: Jorge Luis Borges. We discuss a selection of short stories including: "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", and "The Library of Babel". As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation!

John and Ben are back from their summer vacation and ready to get back to work on a new project: reading the collected works of Michael Chabon! We discuss our favorite beach reads from the break, why we’re interested in exploring Chabon as an author, and then dig in and talk about “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation.   Summer Books! Works Referenced Bartima...

John and Ben are still luxuriating on their summer vacation, but a little while back they invited the illustrious Phil Ford of the Weird Studies podcast into the Library to discuss P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves". We discuss humor in literature, the idea of being "well-read", and the changing nature of genre fiction through history. We hope you enjoy the conversation! W...

This week, John and Ben are discussing "Telluria" by Vladimir Sorokin, translated by Max Lawton. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation! Works Referenced: The Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin The Norm by Vladimir Sorokin The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin The golden notebook by Doris Lessing Pervert’s Guide to Cinema - Slavoj Zizek Twin Peaks the Return Waiting for Godot - Samuel Becket...

This week, John and Ben are joined by Ben's friend Sam to discuss one of the great works of scifi-horror: Peter Watts' "Blindsight"! Topics of discussion include "metal science fiction", AI, the nature of intelligence, and (of course) the Gothic. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Texts Mentioned this Episode Jane Austen - Persuasion  Adorno & Horkheimer - Dialecti...

This week, we're joined by fantasy/science fiction author Molly Tanzer to discuss the Jirel of Joiry stories by C.L. Moore. Topics of discussion include H.P. Lovecraft, Sword & Sorcery as a genre, and Molly's upcoming project: "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth"! We hope you enjoy our conversation! Links: - New Edge Sword & Sorcery: https://newedgeswordandsorcery.com/ - Preor...

Hey Bookheads, apologies for the unscheduled hiatus over the last couple of weeks. To make it up to you, we've got a frosty cool episode discussing "The Ice Palace" by Tarjei Vesaas with Kate Marshall. Topics of discussion include the novella as a form, the bewitching power of nature, and the social utility of magical thinking. As always, we hope you enjoy the discussion. You can che...

Biff! Bang! Pow! In this week's thrilling installment of The Infinite Library, your Leading Lads of Literature enlist the aid of an Amazing Ally -- Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook podcast -- to discuss the first comic book: "City of Glass" by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli! As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation! Note: We apologize dearly for the episode being late. W...

In celebration of National Crime Fiction Month, John and Ben discuss one of the greatest fat guys in the history of literature: Nero Wolfe. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation.

On this week's episode of The Infinite Library, we're treading the old boards and discussing our first play: Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit". We talk about sex, death, and how movies aren't sending their best. We hope you enjoy our discussion as always.

John and Ben return to the historical novel on this week's episode of The Infinite Library. We tackle British-Palestinian novelist Isabella Hammad's 2019 debut: The Parisian: a book that, much like its protagonist and the country he hails from, is curiously divided. We discuss the novelist as national representative, the perils of tying your family history directly into your fiction, &quot...

Get in your big cars and pull out your old time-y type writers, because this week John and Ben are celebrating Easter by discussing “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams. Topics of conversation include democracy and art, Williams’ concept of the “Imagination”, Williams’ vision of art and how it contrasts with his contemporaries, and Walter Benjamin. This episode is a little different than ou...

It's the big one! It's the middle of March, and Ben decided to mark the occasion by making John read one of the great doorstops of English literature: George Eliot's "Middlemarch". The Book Boys enjoy a particularly long, winding conversation about the many marvellous characters inhabiting Eliot's pages, free will vs. determinism, science and religion, and doddering old u...

After a heaping helping of guests for the last couple of episodes, we're back this week with an Infinite Library Classique episode. This week, John and Ben are discussing "Tun-Huang", Yasushi Inoue's sparse yet epic tale of war and religion set against the beautiful, barren plains and deserts of western China. Topics this week include the NYRB Classics imprint, historical fiction...

I feel like White Kafka! Greetings, Bookheads: this week we've got a special off-week treat for you. We sat down with our friend Dan to discuss Franz Kafka's unfinished novel: The Castle. We hope you enjoy!

This week on the Infinite Library, we're talking about modern love (as in "modernism", get it?). John's girlfriend Ana joins the Book Boys to talk about Djuna Barnes' classic of lesbian literature. We talk about why this book isn't as well known as its peers, Freud and fascism, and whether or not books are supposed to teach us things. We hope you'll enjoy this discuss...

This week, John and Ben welcome Geoffrey Morrison, a novelist based in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss "By Night in Chile" by Roberto Bolano. The three of us had a fantastic discussion on Bolano's life and legacy, as well as this brilliant, terrifying little novel. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

This week, Ben and John are tackling their first work by the Queen of Literary Twitter: Joyce Carol Oates. Given this show's fascination with the gothic, we decided to start with the first installment of JCO's Gothic Quartet, "Bellefleur". We talk about the gothic (again), it's role in American culture, realism & supernaturalism in fiction, amongst many other topics. This...

On this week's episode of The Infinite Library, John and Ben are hopping in the Library's time machine and heading back to the 1860s with Zadie Smith's "The Fraud". We discuss historical fiction, the role art takes in shaping us, and hysterical realism.

Picture this: you, lowly listener, have managed to secure an invitation to the swankiest New Year's soiree known to man--hosted by the Infinite Library. Pressing shoulders with the great and good of the literary world, you stumble upon your humble hosts, John and Ben, in the midst of a private conversation. Being the humble, work-a-day podcast hosts they are, they engage you in conversation an...

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, Book-Heads! This week John and Ben are joined deep in the stacks by Eden of Death//Sentence, Heavy Blog is Heavy, and AnarchySF to discuss the "Velvet Underground of 80s Fantasy Novels": "The Dragon Waiting" by John M. Ford. Topics of conversation include the wild and wooly figure of John M. Ford himself, the curious nature of the Alternate H...

This week, the Book Boys are diving into the swamp and getting way out of their depth with Qiu Miaojin’s “Notes of a Crocodile”. Despite very much not being Taiwanese lesbians, the Infinite Library is discussing one of the seminal works of Taiwanese lesbian fiction. Come for the riveting conversation on 90s Taiwan and the history of homosexuality in the Sinosphere, stay to hear John butcher the pr...