Upper Middlebrow

Peter Greenaway’s film feels like an opera. It even features some operatic singing, but more to the point, its pleasures are more sensual than story driven. It’s not an easy film to watch, and may not inspire you to cook, but it is beautifully disturbing and meticulously crafted. Starring Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon in their primes, ˆThe Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,” will haunt yo...

Axel Gabriel’s 1986 Danish film deservingly makes many people’s Foodie Top 10s, and we can see why. We LOVE this film, which not only shows some high level delicious cooking, but tells a parable of destiny, thwarted desire, and the balance of simplicity and hedonism with a gentle and incisive eye. The UMBs discuss whether it’s a comedy, tragedy, or something else.

The UMBers sit down with Monica Eng, co-host of the podcast Chewing, to discuss our upcoming "Foodie Films" series. Monica and Jesse educate Chris about the Jibarito sandwich, and Monica impresses us by having seen 7 out of 7 of the works in this series.

We are almost one year old! Our first episode, on Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, launched almost exactly a year ago, and we are so excited to be heading into Season Two of Upper Middle Brow. This season we're kicking things off a little differently, with a tour of "Foodie Films," beginning with Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast, followed shortly thereafter by Peter Greenaway's harrowing The Cook, The...

The UMBs have ANOTHER thorough conversation about the novel’s sexual politics, and Mandella’s low key homophobia, asking whether the protagonist’s biases serve some narrative purposes, or simply reveal the author’s own biases. We marvel at the sparse internality, and Haldeman’s ability to poetically reveal just enough about Mandella’s emotional state. And, we decide that Larry Niven is good.

The Forever War is widely regarded as an analogy for America’s involvement in Vietnam, and an anti-war novel, but we’re not so sure it’s firmly anti-war. Perhaps more anti-military. But that said, Haldeman’s protagonist doesn’t consider the apparently antagonistic aliens, the Taurans, to be the real Enemy. The UMBs are blown away by the ideation and certain moments of prose, but raise doubts about...

Rick Deckard spends much of the second half pondering Rachael Rosen’s girlish legs, and his growing feelings of empathy to the Androids, before deciding to go after the remaining three. Does his empathy make it harder for him to do his appointed grisly task? Maybe? Both UMBs wonder if Dick’s ideas were too big for the scope of this book, even though it has its virtues.

Fill out our LISTENER SURVEY!! Dick’s famous novel begins… weird. And the weirdness continues. Dick orients his readers to a world in which fallout is everywhere, most animals have died, many humans have left Earth for colony planets,  and androids (or andys) do much of the manual labor. The UMBs are both blown away by Dick’s imagination, but wonder if some of the books mechanics are too clunky.

Chris and Jesse are in the same meatspace in Maine, but still talking about cyberspace in…space. As the two microphone jockeys wrap up William Gibson’s Neuromancer, we do TWO close readings (one for and one against Gibson’s chops), talk about how this book created something completely new, and discuss if that fact is why Neuromancer had shown longevity and resilience, despite some issues of craft.

Our friend Lindsay Lajoie saw that we were considering William Gibson’s Neuromancer on the podcast, and admitted on her Instagram that it’s one of the very few books she attempted and could get through. Lindsay joins us for a mini-sode, and we pick apart her reaction, and try to convince her it’s worth another go.

Dukes and Bagg return to William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 novel, that popularized the cyberpunk genre. The reviews are mixed. There are moments of brilliance, but does the young Gibson’s drive to “put a hook on every page” lead to more confusion than clarity?

As students, parents, and teachers happily (or wrenchingly) return to school, we invite our resident education specialist, Justin Reich, to talk about stories with teachers. We identify many examples of bad teachers and bad teaching in fiction, and while film and TV often present sympathetic teacher protagonists, we wonder if the Great American Teacher novel is yet to be written.

Whitehead’s neo-noir crashes to a climax, but does it stick the landing? In the end, the Dukes and Bagg wonder if the weight of the the author’s allegory overloads the elevator car laden with plot and character. The lads continue to marvel at Whitehead’s sentences, and sheer originality and ambition of this remarkable novel.

The lads are quite impressed with Colson Whitehead’s debut novel, which packs an allegory about race, class, and futurism into a unique take on hard-boiled noir. Bagg challenges Dukes to unpack exactly how the tone of irony is detected in the novel, and they both marvel over Whitehead’s delicious sentences.  Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files...

Jemisin weaves three major threads into one in the second half of The Fifth Season, but the lads take issue with some of the convenient plot wrapping. Dukes + Bagg remained blown away by the power of imagination on display, but Dukes raises the question of whether the book deals honestly with the moral dilemma at its heart.

The Fifth Season is… a lot. Fantasy? Sure. Sci-fi? Maybe. Allegory? Definitely. The first half introduces us to three apparently different protagonists, with action in an uncertain number of timelines, and the sense that this particular world is about the be transformed. But why? And how?

We hear from you! We share listener summer read recommendations in the form of voicemails and texts. Dukes + Bagg each share a summer reading recommendation, and somehow, the conversations keeps getting dragged back to baseball.

We’re joined by two journalists and avid readers, Susie An and Arionne Nettles, both former colleagues of Jesse’s from WBEZ in Chicago. Susie and Ari both like the IDEA of a beach read, and both say they use summer as a time to catch up on books they WANT to read, as opposed to books they’re SUPPOSED to read. Susie recommends The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, and Ari recommends You Made...

We’re joined by two veteran high school English teachers, each with a summer reading recommendation for a teenager. We talk about about how speculative fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, horror, alt. history) engages teenagers in different ways, and why magic gets a bad rap among “literary” readers.

Lauren Olamina leaves her ruined home in the second half of Octavia E. Butler's 1993 novel/theology document/allegory/philosophical text, heading for the mysterious utopia of Branscombe first and then...the stars? Bagg and Dukes try to locate the climax of this work, discuss the figurative vs. denotative nature of the novel, and close things out with some Muppets impersonations.

Parable of the Sower purports to be a work of speculative fiction, but Bagg points out that “speculative” is in the eye of the speculator. Dukes calls it the founding document of a theology that both UMBs find rather coherent and attractive. Whatever the book is, it is the work of a gifted writer, who was overlooked when she was alive, and died too young.

Dukes and Bagg’s challenge each other to recap the second half in three and a half sentences before diving into what makes Weir’s hard sci-fi novel about interstellar friendship so satisfying. Bagg unveils an elaborate beat map [link or insert here] based on insights from Robin D. Law’s Hamlet’s Hit Points, and Dukes wonders what is lost and gained by the mostly happy ending.

Many many many many writers take on “hard” science fiction, and get lost in the science, leaving behind such niceties as plot, character development, human insight, or deep emotional stakes. Somehow, Andy Weir imagines a thrilling and scientifically plausible adventure, that’s really just about friendship in space. Amidst the ammonia, burritos, and penis blood, sits a tale that brings both Dukes a...

Jonathan Lethem’s climax is fun, exciting, and surprises both Bagg and Dukes by not requiring much action from its already largely inactive protagonist, Journeyman. The UMBs once again consider the virtues and drawbacks of a hapless protagonist, and wonder if post-apocalyptic tales are replacing the western, as the dominant form of American mythmaking. 

Jonathan Lethem imagines not so much an apocalypse, but a kind of slow pause of most (but not all) advanced technologies, he calls “The Arrest”. Dukes and Bagg find the scenario fascinating and are not much troubled by the lack of a scientific explanation. Bagg IS troubled by the first sentence, (an important one) and Dukes wonders if our protagonist will manage to do a thing (anything!) in the bo...