Fiction
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The History of Literature #239 – Henry David Thoreau | On Civil Disobedience
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7boUr4ST597q22FLFPbBq8?si=QWun84sOTrKe3_fnjrJ0Tg In July of 1846, Henry David Thoreau took a break from his two-year experiment of living in the woods to return to town, where he bumped into a tax collector who promptly had him arrested. For six years, Thoreau had refused to pay his poll tax, believing that the money was being used to… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #237 – Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (with Amanda Stern)
In the autumn of 1902, a young man attending a German military school wrote to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke to ask him for some advice. Rilke responded, and the two struck up a correspondence that has become one of the great moments in the history of literature. For more than a century, Rilke’s advice,… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #236 – Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman 3
What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to love and be loved? What sacrifices do we make in order to bring about happiness? And how can we do any of this if we’re uncertain about the nature of reality? In this episode, we conclude our look at Alice Munro’s classic novella,… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #235 – Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman 2
Think about your life: Have you always gotten what you wanted? Have you LET yourself be happy? Have you kept secrets – from others, or even yourself? In this episode, Jacke returns to the great Canadian writer Alice Munro for Part Two of her novella-length masterpiece, “The Love of a Good Woman.” Help support the… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #234 – Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman
“She is our Chekhov,” said Cynthia Ozick, “and she is going to outlast most of her contemporaries.” Ozick was talking about the great Alice Munro, the Canadian writer whose short stories about ordinary women and men have garnered every literary prize imaginable. In this episode, the first of three Alice Munro Week special episodes, Jacke… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #233 – CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was an Irish-born writer who spent most of his adult life in Oxford and Cambridge, studying, teaching, enjoying the company of friends (including J.R.R. Tolkien) – and also writing some of the most widely read and influential books of his era. He wrote some works of scholarship, as might be expected… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #232 – The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was a successful administrator and general man-about-town in Restoration London. As a devoted theatergoer, a capable bureaucrat, and a privileged witness of the King and his court, he saw firsthand many of the most important developments of the 1660s, including events like the Great Plague of London (1665) and the Great Fire… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #231 – James Baldwin | Going to Meet the Man
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a fearless artist, an uncompromising critic, a brilliant essayist, and an American who lived within his time and yet was decades ahead of it. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at Going To Meet the Man,” Baldwin’s provocative story of the power dynamics at play within a white Southern man… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #230 – William Faulkner – A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner (1897-1962) is one of the most celebrated and divisive figures in American literature. Widely recognized as one of the greatest novelists America has produced, his fiction and his life have become the stuff of legend. In this episode of The History of Literature, Jacke talks through our understanding of Faulkner and what he… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #229 – Baldwin v Faulkner
In the 1950s, William Faulkner (1897-1962) was one of most celebrated novelists in America, highly praised for this formal innovation, his prodigious storytelling gifts, and his sweeping, multigenerational portrait of Southern society. James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a writer on the rise, youthful and energetic, fearless and incisive, known for essays and commentary as brilliant as… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 