books
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The History of Literature #199 – Jonathan Swift
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL1562299216.mp3 Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a man who loved ciphers and a cipher of a man, an Anglo-Irishman who claimed not to like Ireland but became one of its greatest champions. He was viewed as an oddity even by the friends who knew him well and admired him most. And yet, in spite of his… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #198 – Sylvia Plath
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL5250857199.mp3 Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was born in Boston in 1932, the daughter of a German-born professor, Otto Plath, and his student, Aurelia Schober. After her father died in 1940, Plath’s family moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where her mother taught secretarial studies at Boston University and Plath embarked on a path that she would follow the… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #197 – Margaret Atwood
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL3400481901.mp3 A week ago, Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) turned 80. A month ago, she was awarded the Booker Prize for her eighteenth novel, The Testaments. But how did the little girl who grew up in the forests of Canada turn into one of the most successful and celebrated authors of her day? And what do we… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #196 – One-Hit Wonders
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL9476362217.mp3 We all know how difficult it is to scale the mountain of success, whether you’re a musician or a novelist. But why do some artists reach the summit again and again, while others spend the rest of their careers stuck in the valley, gazing up and thinking about what might have been? In this… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #195 – Thomas Hardy
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL6803239613.mp3 He was born to a lower class family of tradesmen in 1840. Eighty eight years later, he died as one of the most celebrated writers in England. His name was Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), and he was at the same time the product of the Victorian era and one of its greatest critics. But how… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #194 – George Saunders
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL7565545543.mp3 Jacke and Mike take a look at contemporary author George Saunders, author of Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Lincoln at the Bardo, In spite of some inauspicious beginnings, Saunders somehow managed to ascend to literary greatness, setting aside a career in mining to become, in the words of poet Mary Karr, “the best short-story writer in English–not… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #191 – Chinua Achebe
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL6481062046.mp3 Chinua Achebe’s first novel Things Fall Apart (1959) ushered in a new era where African countries, which had recently achieved post-colonial independence, now achieved an independence of a different kind – the freedom of imagination and artistry, as African authors told the stories of their geography, their culture, and their experience from the point of view… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #190 – Blood and Sympathy in the 19th Century (with Professor Ann Kibbie)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL1450661738.mp3 “England may with justice claim to be the native land of transfusion,” wrote one European physician in 1877, acknowledging Great Britain’s role in developing and promoting human-to-human transfusion as treatment for life-threatening blood loss. But what did this scientific practice mean for literature? How did it excite the imagination of authors and readers? And… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #189 – Weeping for Gogol
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL8073950603.mp3 “Gogol was a strange creature,” said Nabokov, “but genius is always strange.” Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809 – 1852) rose from obscurity to a brilliant literary career that forever changed the course of Russian literature. Born in 1809, he and his contemporary Pushkin influenced the titans who followed, including Tolstoy and Doestoevsky and Chekhov. Best… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #188 – Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes (with Yuval Taylor)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL2710216578.mp3 They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Their names were Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960), the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967), the author of “the Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Let America Be… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 