books
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The History of Literature #174 – David Foster Wallace (A Mike Palindrome Special!)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL2844708445.mp3 Ask and ye shall receive! It’s an all-Mike episode devoted entirely to one of his literary heroes, David Foster Wallace. Enjoy! Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #173 – The Yellow Wallpaper (with Evie Lee)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL4750355007.mp3 Happy new year! Host Jacke Wilson is joined by special guest Evie Lee, a vice-president at the Literature Supporters Club, for a conversation about the classic short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) wrote nine novels and novellas, several plays, and over 180 short stories in her writing… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #171 – To Sleep, Perchance to Dream – On Writers and Death
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL1224092783.mp3 “To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…” In these immortal lines, Shakespeare’s Hamlet gives voice to one of the greatest of all human questions. What happens when we die? Should we be excited by the mystery?… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #170 – Toni Morrison
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL3474907449.mp3 TONI MORRISON (b. 1931) is one of the most successful and admired authors in the history of American literature. Her novels include The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), which is widely considered to be her masterpiece. After successful careers in both academia and publishing during the 1960s… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #169 – Dostoevsky
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL4056729298.mp3 FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) was, in the estimation of James Joyce, “the man more than any other who has created modern prose.” “Outside Shakespeare,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “there is no more exciting reading.” His influence is as impossible to understand as it is to overstate: he is widely credited as the forerunner of modern psychology,… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #168 – Jhumpa Lahiri (“The Third and Final Continent”)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL5314501983.mp3 What was it like to relocate from India to London to America in the early 1970s? And how can a daughter hope to recapture the experience of her father and convey it in fiction? In today’s episode of the History of Literature, Jacke and Mike look at a contemporary classic story, Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #164 – Karl Marx
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL7610977492.mp3 Karl Marx (1818-1883) turned his early interest in literature and philosophy into a lifelong study of the socioeconomic forces unleashed by the rise of capitalism. His works The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, among others, influenced the course of the twentieth century like few others. But who was Karl Marx? How did his ideas become so widespread?… Continue reading
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162 Ernest Hemingway
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL5052941823.mp3 Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most famous American writers of the twentieth century. His plain, economical prose style–inspired by journalism and the King James Bible, with an assist from the Cezannes he viewed in Gertrude Stein’s apartment–became a hallmark of modernism and changed the course of American literature. In this episode, Jacke… Continue reading
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161 Voltaire
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL9193713738.mp3 Voltaire was born Francois Marie Arouet in 1694 in Paris, France, the son of a respectable but not particularly eminent lawyer. By the time he died at the age of 83, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest French writers in history, a distinction he still holds today. Astoundingly prolific, he is… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #160 – Ray Bradbury (with Carolyn Cohagan)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL4719308449.mp3 Special guest Carolyn Cohagan, author of the Time Zero trilogy and founder of the creative writing workshop Girls with Pens, joins Jacke for a discussion of her writing process, her origins in standup comedy and theater, and her early love for the fiction of Ray Bradbury (and her special appreciation for his short story “All Summer… Continue reading
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