Fiction
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History of Literature #134 – The Greatest Night of Franz Kafka’s Life
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL7590405383.mp3 Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More We use the term Kafkaesque to describe bureaucracies and other social institutions with nightmarishly complex, illogical, or bizarre qualities – and in most biographies of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) we find that his life often mirrored the strangeness in his fiction. In this episode, host Jacke Wilson examines the origins of Kafka’s particular sensibility,… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #133 – The Hidden Machinery – Discovering the Secrets of Fiction (with Margot Livesey)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL9154508206.mp3 Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Ever wonder how fiction works? Or what great literature can teach us about writing? Novelist Margot Livesey returns to the show for a discussion of her book The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. Learn more about the show at historyofliterature.com or facebook.com/historyofliterature. Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or @WriterJacke. Continue reading
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The History of Literature #132 – Top 10 Literary Villains
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL6947295812.mp3 Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Villains! Bad guys ! Femme fatales! We love them in movies – but what about literature? What makes villains so effective (and so essential)? What do they tell us about their authors – and what can they tell us about ourselves? In this episode, Jacke and Mike select the Top 10… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #129 – Great Sports Novels (Where Are They!?)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL6569270615.mp3 Every year, the Super Bowl draws over 100 million viewers in the U.S. alone, and the Olympics and World Cup will be watched by billions around the world. Movies and television shows about sports are too numerous to count. But where are the novels? Mike Palindrome and special guest Reagan Sova (author of… Continue reading
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History of Literature #127 – Gertrude Stein
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:37 — 47.4MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946) would be essential to the history of literature had she never written a word – but she did write words, lots of them, and they’ve led to her having an uneasy position in the canon of English literature. Avant-garde… Continue reading
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History of Literature #125 – Raymond Carver
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:18:35 — 54.2MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Raymond Carver (1938-1988) packed a lot of pain of suffering into his relatively brief life. He also experienced relief and even joy – and along the way, he became one of the most influential short story writers of the American twentieth century. How did… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #124 – James Joyce’s “The Dead” (Part 2)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23:20 — 57.5MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More In this second part of a two-part episode, we look at the resounding conclusion of James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead,” which contains some of the finest prose ever written in the English language. Be warned: this episode, which runs from Gabriel’s speech to the… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #123 – James Joyce’s The Dead (part 1)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:47 — 41.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Happy holidays! In this special two-part episode, host Jacke Wilson takes a look at a story that he can’t stop thinking about: James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead.” How does it work? Why is it so good? And why does it resonate so deeply with… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #122 – Young James Joyce
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:15 — 43.0MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More We often think of James Joyce as a man in his thirties and forties, a monkish, fanatical, eyepatch-wearing author, trapped in his hovel and his own mind, agonizing over his masterpieces, sentence by sentence, word by laborious word. But young James Joyce, the one… Continue reading
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History of Literature #119 – The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:18:39 — 54.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Very few works of art have had the cultural and literary impact of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. An immediate success upon its publication in 1951, and popular with teenagers (and adults) ever since, the book has sold over 65 million copies… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 