Otherppl with Brad Listi | Books & Culture
Alle afleveringen
1.363 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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212. Jonathan Lethem
29 september 2013 · 54 min
Jonathan Lethem is the guest. His latest novel, Dissident Gardens, is now available from Doubleday. The Los Angeles Times raves "Lethem is as ambitious as Mailer, as funny as Philip Roth and as stinging as Bob Dylan...Dissident Gardens shows Lethem in full possession of his powers as a novelist, as he smoothly segues between historical periods and internal worlds...Erudite, beautifully written, wise, compassionate, heartbreaking and pretty much devoid of nostalgia." And Booklist, in a starred review, says "Lethem extends his stylistically diverse, loosely aligned, deeply inquiring saga of New York City (Motherless Brooklyn, 1999; The Fortress of Solitude, 2003; Chronic City, 2009) with a richly saturated, multigenerational novel about a fractured family of dissidents headquartered in Queens...Lethem is breathtaking in this torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, pop-culture allusions, and tragicomic complexities. He shreds the folk scene, eviscerates quiz shows, pays bizarre tribute to Archie Bunker, and offers unusual perspectives on societal debates and tragic injustices. A righteous, stupendously involving novel about the personal toll of failed political movements and the perplexing obstacles to doing good." Monologue topics: travel, the flu, walking, the homeless guy who asked me for my email address
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Episode 211 — Edwidge Danticat
25 september 2013 · 1 uur 11 min
Edwidge Danticat is the guest. Her new novel Claire of the Sea Light (Knopf), is the official September selection of The TNB Book Club. Kirkus says “Claire of the Sea Light reads like the work of a writer eager to create another world . . . A sense of the possibilities is tangible, where Danticat delves into parenting, revenge, reconciliation and remorse. Claire Limyè Lanmè is the daughter of a widower who is mulling whether or not to let someone else raise his daughter. In this small town, other mothers and fathers are working through reconciling their feelings about parenthood while readers experience a day in her life. Simultaneously, Danticat masterfully weaves in necessary parts of the past.” And Time Out New York calls it "Breathtaking." Monologue topics: mail, corrections, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lucille Ball.
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Episode 210 — Curtis Sittenfeld
22 september 2013 · 1 uur 18 min
Curtis Sittenfeld is the guest. She is the bestselling author of the novels Prep and American Wife, and her new book, Sisterland, is now available in hardcover and ebook from Random House. The paperback edition is due out in Spring 2014.
The Boston Globe raves Lees meer“The power of [Sittenfeld’s] writing and the force of her vision challenge the notion that great fiction must be hard to read. She is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines’ understanding of them...Her prose [is] a rich delight.”
And The New York Times calls it
“Psychologically vivid...Sittenfeld’s gifts for portraying the inner lives of her heroines [bring Sisterland] closer, in terms of emotional chiaroscuro, to two classics about pairs of sisters, The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett and The Easter Parade by Richard Yates...Sisterland is a testament to the author’s growing depth and assurance as a writer.”
Monologue topics: excerpts of my old journal entries, letters, my twenties, How to Fail.
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Episode 209 — Tom Perrotta
18 september 2013 · 1 uur 27 min
Tom Perrotta is the guest. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction, including Election, Little Children, The Abstinence Teacher, and The Leftovers. His new story collection, Nine Inches, is now available from St. Martin's.
Kirkus, in a starred review, says Lees meer"The acclaimed novelist displays perfect tonal pitch in this story collection, as nobody explores the darker sides of suburbia with a lighter touch."
And Publishers Weekly raves
"Told with wit and grace, Perrotta's story collection lays bare the shifting relationships we all suffer and seldom comprehend, presenting characters who are ambushed by the hidden intentions of people they thought they knew."
Monologue topics: mail, adderall, voicemail, sad and deranged listeners, Brad song, MFAs, student loans, the writing disease.
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Episode 208 — Mitchell S. Jackson
15 september 2013 · 1 uur 19 min
Mitchell S. Jackson is the guest. His debut novel, The Residue Years, is now available from Bloomsbury.
Jesmyn Ward says Lees meer"I know these characters well: Champ with his swagger and invincibility, doing all he can to protect his fiercely beating heart. Grace, held together with polish and a prayer, trying to make a way when there isn’t one. Both of them longing, for a better life, a clear path out of their predicaments. I know the language they speak: voices redolent of struggle and the South displaced to our country’s far northwestern corner: Portland, Oregon. A wrenchingly beautiful debut by a writer to be reckoned with, The Residue Years marks the beginning of a most promising career."
And Amy Hempel says
"In this raw heartwreck of a novel, every bit of personal wisdom is hard-won. Here is Grace, mother of Champ: 'Some people are latecomers to themselves, but who we are will soon enough surround us.' It's a searing claim and prophecy about lives severely tested. The author is entirely persuasive, such that Grace and her sons, given vivid voice, are one of the fictional families I have cared about most."
Monologue topics: my adderall experiment, writing, juicing, Dumbo's feather, mild paranoia.
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Episode 207 — Roy Kesey
11 september 2013 · 1 uur 22 min
Roy Kesey is the guest. His latest story collection, Any Deadly Thing, is now available from Dzanc Books.
Elizabeth Crane says Lees meer"Roy Kesey's stories in Any Deadly Thing are perfect, masterful portraits of an international cross-section of wise, broken souls—hopeful, brutal, funny as hell, and heart-crushing, every last one."
And San Diego City Beat raves
"Most short-story writers are like baseball pitchers. The really good ones have four or five different pitches, but most only have two or three that they've perfected and go to over and over again. Kesey is more like a five-tool outfielder: He can do it all. In Any Deadly Thing, he collects stories about lovable losers, tales of hardscrabble redemption, experimental fiction, Bosnian war stories and expat tales set in Beijing apartments and Peruvian jungles. There's no limit to the man's imagination."
Monologue topics: mail, focusing the podcast on writing, Molly Ringwald, digressions, fame, voicemail, rapping, blushing.
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Episode 206 — Cal Morgan
8 september 2013 · 1 uur 27 min
Cal Morgan is the guest. He is a senior vice president and executive editor at the Harper division of HarperCollins, where he is also the editorial director for Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks.
Monologue topics: voicemail, animal rights, vegetarianism, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miley Cyrus, the cultural conversation, the show's format.
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Episode 205 — Beth Lisick
4 september 2013 · 1 uur 25 min
Beth Lisick is the guest. Her new book, Yokohama Threeway and Other Small Shames, is due out from City Lights Publishers on September 24, 2013.
Kathleen Hanna raves Lees meer"This book is fucking great. There is a story in it called ‘PANDA AMBULANCE!!!’ How is Beth Lisick not as famous as David Sedaris?”
And Matthew Zapruder says
"These short pieces, which at first seem casually constructed and connected, are immediately funny, ironic, personable, embarrassing and oddly appealing. Yet quickly they accumulate into deep emotional resonance. Just a few pages in and I was totally involved with the struggles of this clearly talented, hilariously confused person to be better in her own weird antic backassward ways. Full of indelible phrases (Panda Ambulance!) and painfully irrefutable observations about art, crappy jobs, friendship, wealth, sex, hygiene, booze, motherhood, and so many other things, this book is basically the inverse of those sappy self-discovery memoirs that inevitably arc into hard earned wisdom and self-discovery. This writer has the courage to stay in difficult places, and therefore be truer to life. I laughed and cringed and cared more and more. Thank you, Beth Lisick, it was and continues to be worth all the struggles."
Monologue topics: voicemail, Felicity, funny books, Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner, beets, Gore Vidal.
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Episode 204 — Mark Leibovich
1 september 2013 · 1 uur 17 min
Mark Leibovich is the guest. His new book, This Town, is a #1 New York Times bestseller. It's available now from Blue Rider Press.
Politico says Lees meer“Not since Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers knocked New York society on its heels with its thinly fictionalized revelations of real players who had thought the author was their friend has a book so riled a city’s upper echelons.”
And The Financial Times says
“Like a modern-day Balzac to US capital power players….hilarious….perceptive.”
Monologue topics: mail, Max Millwood, voicemail, three-ways.
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Episode 203 — Peter Orner
28 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 19 min
Peter Orner is the guest. His new story collection, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, is now available from Little, Brown.
Tom Bissell says Lees meer“Peter Orner is a true writers’ writer, which is to say a writer writers complain to writers about readers not reading. His novel The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (a title, one senses, Orner had to fight hard to retain) ranks high among the best works of fiction about Africa ever written by an American, and his collection Esther Stories contains work to rival that of David Means and Tobias Wolff. Orner’s latest collection, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, is bundled into four sections and includes more than fifty pieces of fiction…Imagine Brief Interviews with Hideous Men written by Alice Munro.”
And Booklist says
"Orner is an undisputed master of the short short story."
Monologue topics: feedback, Max Millwood, Gregory Sherl, the show's format, my dullness and incompetence
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Episode 202 — Lindsay Hunter
25 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 28 min
Lindsay Hunter is the guest. Her new story collection, Don't Kiss Me, is now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Kirkus Reviews raves Lees meer“Don’t Kiss Me, Hunter’s second short story collection, is a bold, haunting, and beautiful observation of lives lived outside the scope of the mainstream . . . Hunter near-effortlessly captures the hopes, fears, realizations, regrets, and desires of the uglier, more taboo, and misunderstood side of humanity. Though their worlds may be sordid, Hunter manages to infuse her misfits with incredible amounts of empathy and humor. Instead of repulsed, we often find ourselves rooting from the sidelines. And it’s hard not to voraciously ingest all 26 stories in Don’t Kiss Me, given their breakneck pace, raw emotion, and Hunter’s own propensity for language that pops but never fizzles . . . [Don’t Kiss Me] is transgressive without being navel-gazing, confrontational without being aggressive. But above all, it contains a whole lot of Hunter’s bloody, beating heart.”
And Publishers Weekly says
“Overall these stories land with a wet slap—messy and confrontational. They demand your horrified attention, and they reward it with exaggerated and irresistible humanity.”
Monologue topics: voicemail, mail.
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Episode 201 — Gregory Sherl
21 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 23 min
Gregory Sherl is the guest. His new book Monogamy Songs is now available from Future Tense.
The Huffington Post raves Lees meer"The problem with post-confessionalism is that its most uninspired iterations have been sprinkled across America for the past quarter-century; that is, the problem with post-confessionalism isn't post-confessionalism, it's post-confessionalists. No longer: Gregory Sherl is the post-confessionalist we've been looking for, which is to say that there's nothing smarmy, self-important, or false about these poems or this poet. Sherl is that rare author who can speak earnestly about the vagaries, pleasures, and discouragements of living and still charm your pants off. You'll enjoy walking around his head a bit, I guarantee."
And Rain Taxi says
"...Sherl has written a book full of love and surprising emotional power."
Monologue topics: facial hair, signifiers, head scarves, hard-won truth, wisdom, messiah complexes, author photos.
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Episode 200 — Susan Orlean
18 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 37 min
Susan Orlean is the guest. A staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, she is also the bestselling author of several books, including The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin. The New York Times Book Review raves "The collecting mania that Susan Orlean has so painstakingly described is, like the orchid, a small thing of grandeur, a passion with a pedigree...Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy for a person you might not have thought about empathetically...The Orchid Thief shows her gifts in full bloom." And Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, says "I adored [Rin Tin Tin]. It weaves history, war, show business, humanity, wit, and grace into an incredible story about America, the human-animal bond, and the countless ways we would be lost without dogs by our sides, on our screens, and in our books. This is the story Susan Orlean was born to tell—it's filled with amazing characters, reporting, and writing." Monologue topics: Episode 200, spreading the word, thank you.
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Episode 199 — Peter Mattei
14 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 17 min
Peter Mattei is the guest. His new novel, The Deep Whatsis, is now available in the United States from Other Press, and in the UK from The Friday Project.
Kate Christensen raves Lees meer"With zingy, hilarious glee, Peter Mattei takes a sharp stick and pokes it at many deserving underbellies: the puffery of corporate America; hipsters, yoga dudes, and the general pretentiousness of north Brooklyn; and many more. The Deep Whatsis is a provocative, darkly subversive, deeply satisfying novel."
And Publishers Weekly calls it
"[A] morbidly satiric look at corporate culture at the crossroads of art and consumerism...Mattei serves up a rampant critique of haute New York society."
Monologue topics: screenwriting, when comedy is received as tragedy, film school, humiliation
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Episode 198 — Megan Abbott
11 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 16 min
Megan Abbott is the guest. Her latest novel, Dare Me, is due out in paperback from Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books on August 27, 2013.
The New York Times Book Review raves Lees meer"Megan Abbott has [written]...The Great American Cheerleading Novel, and—stop scowling—it's spectacular.... Subversive stuff... Heathers meets Fight Club good."
And Entertainment Weekly calls it
"A psychologically astute thriller...Abbott's latest is not only a page-turning mystery—it's also a close look at teen girls' ferocious rivalries and intense bonds."
Monologue topics: mail, feminism, Adelle Waldman, Episode 195.
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Episode 197 — Molly Ringwald
7 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 16 min
Molly Ringwald is the guest. Her debut novel, When It Happens to You, is now available in paperback from It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Arcadia, raves Lees meer"When It Happens to You is absolutely lovely, a smart, emotionally sophisticated, intricately dovetailed novel of stories. World, I'm telling you now: Molly Ringwald is the real deal."
And Kirkus calls it
"A beautiful exploration of how the heart's irrational responses to love and betrayal can stand in the way of forgiveness... Ringwald deftly weaves together the threads of these stories, creating a tapestry that captures the emotional landscape of both young and well-worn relationships."
Monologue topics: over-thinking things, Sixteen Candles, Anthony Michael Hall, Farmer Ted, near disasters.
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Episode 196 — Janice Clark
4 augustus 2013 · 1 uur 12 min
Janice Clark is the guest. Her debut novel, The Rathbones, is now available from Doubleday. It is the official August selection of The TNB Book Club.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says Lees meer“A teenager comes of age and grapples with the heavy burdens of family secrets against the backdrop of the 19th Century New England whaling industry in this beautifully written, playful and intricate debut novel. Clark creates evocative descriptions . . . making her images and encounters between people especially vivid.”
And The Millions says
"The Rathbones is the most sui generis debut you’re likely to encounter this year. Think Moby-Dick directed by David Lynch from a screenplay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez…with Charles Addams doing the set design and The Decembrists supplying the chanteys. Clark writes a beautiful prose line, and the story, like the ocean, gets deeper, richer, and stranger the farther out you go.”
Monologue topics: bikes, LA, tourist vans, celebrity sightings, mistakes.
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Episode 195 — Adelle Waldman
31 juli 2013 · 1 uur 20 min
Adelle Waldman is the guest. Her debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., is now available from Henry Holt.
Jess Walter calls it Lees meer“A smart, engaging 21st-century comedy of manners in which the debut novelist Adelle Waldman crawls convincingly around inside the head of one Nathaniel (Nate) Piven. [She shows] herself to be . . . a savvy observer of human nature . . . . terrific at describing the halting miscommunications of a relationship. Nate’s self-destructive moodiness and reverse-engineered justifications are especially well drawn; his shallow pick-a-fight thoughts may even be painfully familiar.”
And Katie Roiphe, writing for Slate, says
"We have lately heard ad infinitum the new sensitive literary man’s account of his life and times... what we haven’t yet heard enough of is the smart literary woman’s view of him. With Adelle Waldman’s funny, provocative satire, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., we have a valuable new anthropology of the type. In a debut novel told from his point of view, Waldman deftly skewers the new literary man... with his stylish torment, his self-seriousness, his dangerous admixture of grandiosity and insecurity, and old fashioned condescension toward women gussied up as sensitivity, his maddening irony, his very specific way of treating people badly while worrying about liberal politics.... [An] excellent funny novel."
Monologue topics: poem, Michael Earl Craig, Primitive Men.
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Episode 194 — Abigail Tarttelin
28 juli 2013 · 1 uur 21 min
Abigail Tarttelin is the guest. Her new novel, Golden Boy, has just been published in the United States by Atria Books.
Booklist, in a starred review, calls it Lees meer“A dramatic, thoroughgoing investigation of the complexities of sexuality and gender.... A warmly human coming-of-age story, thanks to the fact that Max is such an appealing character. And so his desperate search for identity is gripping, emotionally engaging, and genuinely unforgettable.”
And Emily St. John Mandel says“Abigail Tarttelin is a fearless writer. In Golden Boy, she balances a harrowing coming of age with a deeply compassionate portrait of a family in crisis, and the result is sometimes brutal, often tender, and always compelling. This is a gripping and fully-realized novel.”
Monologue topics: politics, media, money, Washington DC, power, This Town, dystopia, depression.
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Episode 193 — Nick Antosca
24 juli 2013 · 1 uur 21 min
Nick Antosca is the guest. A staff writer on the upcoming NBC show Believe, helmed by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón, he is also the author of several books, the most recent of which is a story collection called The Girlfriend Game, available now from Word Riot Press.
Peter Straub says Lees meer"These lovely stories float out to us from a long, dark alley-way where Franz Kafka and Bruno Schultz are mugging Ray Bradbury.... Nick Antosca has reached a level of blissful mastery."
And Publishers Weekly says
"Antosca's scalpel dissects love, family, and illusions of morality in this brutal and often uncomfortably sexual collection. Combining scathing horror and psychological realism, these 12 vivisections of the inhuman condition marry stinging social commentary with psychological horror... Horror's expected icons are replaced by neighbors and families, with relationships being the monsters... This literate, thoughtful horror will inspire long-lasting unease."
Monologue topics: addicition, moral ambiguity, the vastness of space, dark mystery.
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Episode 192 — Alissa Nutting
21 juli 2013 · 1 uur 19 min
Alissa Nutting is the guest. Her debut novel, Tampa, is now available from Ecco.
Time magazine calls it Lees meer"A gutsy attempt by a young, female author to embody a wholly unsympathetic female narrator and probe the question of whether society lets women essentially get away with crimes for which men are excoriated."
And Salon says
"It may be the summer’s best beach read — that is, if you ditch the disconcertingly woolly black velour dust jacket, and make sure your kids aren’t peeking over your shoulder. ...Beyond mere titillation, Tampa gets at fundamental questions: What are the limits of reader empathy? If an individual we’d view as an unrepentant criminal explains her twisted thought process, are we complicit if we keep reading? And is an adult woman seducing a young male student — with its air of 'hot for teacher' fantasy — meaningfully different from male pedophilia?"
Monologue topics: listener feedback, closing thoughts on the 'lovely and talented' debate.
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Episode 191 — Elliott Holt
17 juli 2013 · 1 uur 32 min
Elliott Holt is the guest. Her debut novel, You Are One of Them, is now available from Penguin.
The New York Times Book Review raves Lees meer"You Are One of Them is a hugely absorbing first novel from a writer with a fluid, vivid style and a rare knack for balancing the pleasure of entertainment with the deeper gratification of insight. More, please.”
And Darin Strauss says
“Elliott Holt is not just a promising writer, but a great writer. She’s young, and she’s a master. I was going to write that You Are One of Them could’ve been written by an Alice Munro or a Susan Minot, but that would be wrong. Because this book could only have been written by Elliott Holt, whose powerful new voice is her own.”
Also in this episode: a brief conversation with Alexander Maksik, whose new novel A Marker to Measure Drift is the official July selection of the TNB Book Club.
Monologue topics: lovely and talented, sexism, feminism, TNB Book Club.
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Episode 190 — Sean Carswell
14 juli 2013 · 1 uur 22 min
Sean Carswell is the guest. His new novel is called Madhouse Fog.
Patricia Geary says Lees meer“I’m a huge fan of Carswell’s fiction: he’s intelligent, hilarious, incisive, and his ear for dialogue is extraordinary. Nevertheless, I found Madhouse Fog to be a geometric progression of his talent—besides being compelling and wonderfully strange (I lost sleep over it; it’s a damn hard book to put down), it is the epitome of literary sophistication. I loved this novel!”
And Scott O'Connor says
“Sean Carswell is full of surprises. He’s funny, frightening, madcap, philosophical. His writing has a real warmth of spirit, and the kind of deft observation that changes the way you see things long after you leave the page.”
Monologue topics: Amazon, Apple, Big 5 publishers, the future of publishing, the business of publishing, paranoia.
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Episode 189 — Alina Simone
10 juli 2013 · 1 uur 18 min
Alina Simone is the guest. Her debut novel, Note to Self, is now available from Faber & Faber.
Sam Lipsyte says Lees meer“People as multi-talented and skilled as Alina Simone, who sings beautifully, writes essays, and now foists upon us a truly funny and poignant novel, need to be stopped. And maybe they will be, but in the meantime, there is no harm in falling into the soulful voice of Simone's narrator, Anna, as she struggles with the end of numb, cubicled youth and the awkward beginnings of new life.”
And Kirkus calls it
“A remarkably assured debut . . . Wicked, witty.”
Monologue topics: Fourth of July, the weird story of how my bad back was finally healed.
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Episode 188 — Lee Boudreaux
3 juli 2013 · 1 uur 24 min
Lee Boudreaux is the guest. She is the editorial director at Ecco Press and has worked with a long list of notable authors, including Stephen King, David Wroblewski, Alissa Nutting, Patrick DeWitt, and Ben Fountain.
Monologue topics: mail, strange mail, Whole Foods, marriage, parenthood, using your words.
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Episode 187 — Domenica Ruta
30 juni 2013 · 1 uur 23 min
Domenica Ruta is the guest. Her new memoir, With or Without You, is now available from Spiegel & Grau.
Entertainment Weekly calls it Lees meer“Stunning . . . comes across as a bleaker, funnier, R-rated version of The Glass Castle and marks the arrival of a blazing new voice in literature.”
And The New York Times Book Review calls it
“A luminous, layered accomplishment.”
Also this episode: a brief conversation with Jessica Anya Blau, whose new novel, The Wonder Bread Summer, is now available from Harper Perennial.
Monologue topics: the sun's lethal nature, worrying about people not being worried about me.
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Episode 186 — Erika Kleinman
26 juni 2013 · 1 uur 24 min
Erika Kleinman is the guest. Her new mini-memoir, My Life as a Dyke, is now available as an ebook exclusive from Thought Catalog.
From the publisher: Lees meer"Being a lesbian doesn’t come natural to everyone. That’s what Erika Kleinman learned during her sexual awakening in 1990s Seattle, when she began dating a host of butch women who were all too willing to show her the ropes. My Life as a Dyke recounts Kleinmans’ relationships with candor and humor while making one thing clear: no matter who you’re interested in, dating can be a nightmare."
Monologue topics: people smiling at me, cosmic energy, narcissism, walking meditation, Los Angeles.
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185. Maggie Nelson
23 juni 2013 · 1 uur 20 min
Maggie Nelson is the guest. She is the critically acclaimed author of books like The Red Parts, Bluets, and The Art of Cruelty. The New York Times Book Review calls The Art of Cruelty "An important and frequently surprising book . . . could be read as the foundation for a post-avant-garde aesthetics. . . . Nelson, who is also a poet, is such a graceful writer that I . . . just sat back and enjoyed the show.” And BOMB Magazine says of Bluets "From blue factoids like Benedict de Saussure’s 1789 invention of 'cyanometer, with which he hoped to measure the blue of the sky,' to her own struggles with depression, Nelson gifts us with what seems like a lifetime study of blue while somehow slyly avoiding any of the obvious 'blue' clichés. Maggie Nelson continues to raise the bar higher in what a reader can expect from a book. Bluets is smart yet intimate, quiet yet provocative, and a welcome addition to the poetic non-fiction discourse." Monologue topics: mortality, memory, writing, childhood, wiping, O.J. Simpson, major cultural moments.
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Episode 184 — Julie Sarkissian
19 juni 2013 · 1 uur 24 min
Julie Sarkissian is the guest. Her debut novel, Dear Lucy, is now available from Simon & Schuster.
Joyce Carol Oates says Lees meer"Dear Lucy introduces a young writer with a most original voice and a tenderly eccentric vision. Julie Sarkissian has created a boldly lyrical, suspenseful, and mysterious fictional world in this striking debut novel."
And Ron Rash raves
"In Dear Lucy, Julie Sarkissian has accomplished what many veteran novelists never achieve: a startlingly original work that is also profound and wise in the vagaries of the heart. What an amazing debut."
Monologue topics: mail, listener reactions to the Tao Lin episodes, Alt-Lit.
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Episode 183 — Matthew Savoca
16 juni 2013 · 1 uur 22 min
Matthew Savoca is the guest. His new novel is called I Don't Know I Said, and it's available now from Publishing Genius Press.
Michael Kimball says Lees meer"There’s a hell of a lot more charm in Savoca’s book than a novel about sad and smart twenty-somethings should ever have."
And Scott McClanahan says
“Man, this book gets in you. It’s like baby food. You could go to the store and buy a jar and eat it with your hands, but it’d be better to have someone who shares your last name spoon it out on your tongue. After reading it, you will say, ‘Give me more, Momma.’ I want more. MORE. MORE. GIVE US MORE MATTHEW.”
Monologue topics: writing, superstition, childhood, memory, punting the ball at the new girl, shooting my little sister with a slingshot.
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Episode 182 — Emily Gould
12 juni 2013 · 1 uur 19 min
Emily Gould is the guest. She is the author of the memoir And the Heart Says Whatever (Free Press, 2010), and her novel entitled Friendship is due out from FSG in 2014. A former co-editor at Gawker, she now runs her own publishing venture called Emily Books, with Ruth Curry.
Curtis Sittenfield says of And the Heart Says Whatever: Lees meer"These smart, poignant essays about being young and literary in New York City are like a twenty-first century version of The Bell Jar but with more pot, sex, technology, and (thank goodness) a different ending."
Monologue topics: moaning, humming, Starbucks, Miles Davis, elevators, neighbors, styrofoam, avoidance, existential pain.
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181. Tao Lin (Part 2)
9 juni 2013 · 1 uur 19 min
Tao Lin is the guest. His new novel, Taipei, is now available from Vintage Contemporaries. The New York Observer says "Tao Lin [is] an excellent writer of avant-garde fiction. His new novel is his most mature work, and follows a young New York writer to Taipei, where he must reconcile his family’s roots with the haze of MDMA, texts and tweets that he’s been living in. Mr. Lin has refined his deadpan prose style here into an icy, cynical, but ultimately thrilling and unique literary voice." And Blake Butler says “The insane level of scrutiny of everyday personal behavior in Taipei feels somewhere between that of Andy Warhol and a young, bored Patrick Bateman. All the strange modernity we’ve come to expect from Tao Lin—alienation, obsession, social confusion, drugs, the internet, sex, food, death—is rendered here with an calm intuition, somehow distant and metaphysical at once, brutally honest and avoidant, touching and monotonic, like getting sewn inside a mask of your own face. And as can also always be expected of the author, it is mesmerizing, sharp, singularly him, a work of vision so relentless it forces most any reader to respond.” Monologue topics: tweets, Denver, water, Matt Bell, TNB Book Club, In the House Upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods.
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180. Tao Lin (Part 1)
5 juni 2013 · 1 uur 6 min
Tao Lin is the guest. His new novel, Taipei, is now available in trade paperback from Vintage Contemporaries. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "For all its straightforwardness, Lin’s previous work—with its flat, Internet-inspired prose issued by small presses—has presented a stumbling stone for readers who fall outside his North Brooklyn contingent, for whom he is the standard bearer. This will change with the breakout Taipei, a novel about disaffection that’s oddly affecting. . . . Everything about Taipei appears to run contrary to the standard idea of what constitutes art. And yet, the documentary precision captures the sleepwalking malaise of Lin’s generation so completely, it’s scary. . . . Yet for all its emotional reality, Taipei is a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing, making the glacial Lin (Richard Yates) the perfect poster child for a generation facing—and failing to face—maturity.” And Bret Easton Ellis says “With Taipei Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation.” Monologue topics: Terence McKenna, telepathy, language, evolution, death, getting [your] act together.
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Episode 179 — Melanie Thorne
2 juni 2013 · 1 uur 21 min
Melanie Thorne is the guest. Her debut novel, Hand Me Down, is now available in paperback from Plume Books. It was named one of the Best Books of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews.
BookPage calls it Lees meer“Difficult to read, but impossible to put down—this is perhaps the best way to describe Melanie Thorne’s debut, Hand Me Down. Like Janet Finch’s 1999 bestseller White Oleander, this is a raw and all too realistic story about a California teen forced to move from house to house—and often from bad situation to worse—after her well-intentioned but self-centered mother makes a life-changing choice.”
And The Associated Press says
“Melanie Thorne's debut novel is raw with emotion as she describes Liz's often futile efforts to protect her sister and herself from the predator their mother has invited into their lives. It is often hard to remember that this is, in fact, a novel and not a memoir… Thorne's novel is an eye-opener… she leaves the reader haunted by a nagging question: What happens to the children who are not so lucky?”
Monologue topics: cynicism, Ancient Greece, guerilla theater, graffiti art, public sex.
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Episode 178 — Deb Olin Unferth
29 mei 2013 · 1 uur 33 min
Deb Olin Unferth is the guest. She's the author of three books, the most recent of which is a memoir called Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt). It was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Dave Eggers says Lees meer"This is a very funny, excoriatingly honest story of being young, semi-idealistic, stupid and in love. If you have ever been any of these things, you'll devour it."
And Bookslut calls it
“[O]ne of the best memoirs of the past several years. It's a difficult book to stop reading; Unferth is charming, charismatic, and breathtakingly smart… [Revolution is] more than enough to catapult Unferth into the ranks of America's great young writers.”
Monologue topics: Memorial Day weekend, Venice Beach, Katy Perry, celebrity sightings, Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, the gym, Paul Rudd.
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Episode 177 — Masha Hamilton
26 mei 2013 · 1 uur 11 min
Masha Hamilton is the guest. She is currently working in Afghanistan as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the US Embassy, and her new novel, What Changes Everything, is now available from Unbridled Books. Caroline Leavitt raves "As real and immediate as a racing pulse, Hamilton’s dark jewel of a novel turns the political into the personal with a blazing tapestry of characters, all grappling with the terrifying cost of war and the unbreakable bonds of love. Thrilling and magnificent." And Jillian Cantor says "Intensely gripping and beautifully written, What Changes Everything shows the lengths we will go to save each other and ourselves. A stunning collage of loss, grief, love, and most of all, survival, Hamilton’s characters—and their stories—are richly drawn and achingly real." Monologue topics: Memorial Day, Frances Ha, personal lives of celebrities intruding on the moviegoing experience.
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Episode 176 — Michael Reynolds
22 mei 2013 · 1 uur 16 min
Michael Reynolds is the guest. He is the editor-in-chief of Europa Editions.
Maureen Corrigan of NPR's Fresh Air says Lees meer"Europa Editions...has been doing the Lord's work in terms of introducing European literary novels, many of them in translation, to an American readership."
And the LA Weekly says
“You could consider Europa Editions...as a kind of book club for Americans who thirst after exciting foreign fiction.”
Monologue topics: blurbs, bullshit, Jim Carroll, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, The Pussy Posse, the grandeur of delusions.
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Episode 175 — Kendra Grant Malone
19 mei 2013 · 1 uur 16 min
Kendra Grant Malone is the guest. She is the author of two poetry collections, Everything is Quiet (Scrambler Books) and Morocco (Dark Sky Books), the second of which she co-wrote with Matthew Savoca.
Blake Butler says Lees meer"Kendra Grant Malone contains several hundred people. Likewise, her words seem to protect several hundred other words beneath their giddy, precise calm. Here is a mother and a voyeur and a pervert and a magick-making child, somewhere between them all your brand new old friend, teeming with such heat. Here is language more honest than I could ever be. I suggest you keep it close, warm. I suggest you keep an eye, as if this book had human hands beyond its gorgeous shoulders it would tickle you to death; it would hump your funny tired body, then eat your head for what you’ve seen."
And Ben Greenman says
"Any book that thanks ‘vodka, cocaine, and Citalopram, for making mood swings bearable and this book possible’ is likely to a strong sense of its own identity, or identities, and Kendra Grant Malone’s Everything is Quiet certainly does. Strong: her use of language, her voice, her commitment to getting it right, even as she’s describing how she frequently gets it wrong. Sense: a good ear, a good eye, an intimate acquaintance with bodies and what (and who) they do. These fifty sexy, thoughtful, and sometimes pained poems do right by sex, love, and sometimes pain, not to mention menstrual blood, greasy hair, funny faces, and watering eyes."
Monologue topics: bachelor parties, relief, contradiction, antisocial behavior, strip clubs, Wrangler jeans, fly-fishing.
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Episode 174 — Benjamin Percy
15 mei 2013 · 1 uur 12 min
Benjamin Percy is the guest. His new novel, Red Moon, is now available from Grand Central Publishing. It is the May selection of the TNB Book Club.
John Irving says Lees meer"Red Moon is a serious, politically symbolic novel—a literary novel about lycanthropes. If George Orwell had imagined a future where the werewolf population had grown to the degree that they were colonized and drugged, this terrifying novel might be it."
And Library Journal, in a starred review, raves
"This literary thriller by an award-winning young writer will excite fans of modern horror who enjoy a large canvas and a history to go with their bloody action. . . . Fans of Max Brooks's zombies and Justin Cronin's vampires will enjoy the dramatic breadth of Percy's tale of werewolves."
Monologue topics: the Internet, blackouts, addiction, meditation, masturbation, my mother.
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Episode 173 — Anna Stothard
12 mei 2013 · 1 uur 14 min
Anna Stothard is the guest. Her novel The Pink Hotel is now available in the United States from Picador. And her latest effort, a novel called The Art of Leaving, is just out in the UK from Alma Books.
The New York Times calls The Pink Hotel Lees meer“Stylish… captures an outsider’s gape at sun-drenched Los Angeles.”
And Davy Rothbart raves
"The Pink Hotel is mysterious, lyrical, and utterly absorbing, by turns funny and forlorn. [Stothard's] writing bristles with sexiness and suspense, love, loss, and longing. This is the best book I’ve read in years.”
Monologue topics: stopping, vistas, nature, personal space, park benches, eating on airplanes, Reese Witherspoon.
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Episode 172 — Ken Baumann
8 mei 2013 · 1 uur 21 min
Ken Baumann is the guest. He is an actor, writer, and publisher. His new novel, Solip, is now available from Tyrant Books. HTML Giant says: "There is nothing on the back cover. A wall of black staring at you. No pull quotes or blurbs, and by the second page you realize why: because the book speaks for itself....I read this tiny book in one sitting in a coffee shop amazed by its power and had to go indoors to drown out the outside world to reread it and devour it properly....Early frontrunner for best book I’ve read this year, certainly the most memorable. I can’t remember reading anything quite like Solip....Solip is a twitter account from hell, a deranged patient babbling on a shrink’s couch....Concise yet brimming with ideas and thoughts and lists and fragments and run-ons and then it’s over and you’re left wondering what the fuck happened." Monologue topics: fiction, nonfiction, my novel, paralysis, creative quandaries, Errol Morris, Baltimore, The Black Guerilla Family, prison corruption.
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Episode 171 — Matt Nelson
5 mei 2013 · 1 uur 22 min
Matt Nelson is the guest. Along with Jacob Perkins, he is the co-founder of the Mellow Pages Library in Brooklyn, New York.
The library was recently featured in the New York Times: Lees meer"Matt Nelson, a graduate student in creative writing at Queens College and one of the library’s two founders, explained the origins of the place, which is meant to serve as a reading room and gathering spot in addition to book lender. Mr. Nelson and Jacob Perkins, both 26, started the library in February, inspired in part by Pilot Books, a bookstore in Mr. Nelson’s hometown, Seattle, that carried volumes by independent publishers, and which closed in 2011.
"Mellow Pages also specializes in those more arcane titles. Without the advertising budgets of major houses, the smaller presses have more difficulty finding readers, Mr. Nelson said, and the idea behind the library was to form a community of people who could share books that were not easy to find elsewhere."Monologue topics: voicemails, Spencer Madsen, Skype, my voice, cheese, New York City.
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Episode 170 — Emily Rapp
1 mei 2013 · 1 uur 18 min
Emily Rapp is the guest. Her new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, is now available from Penguin.
Cheryl Strayed says Lees meer"The Still Point of the Turning World is about the smallest things and the biggest things, the ugliest things and the most beautiful things, the darkest things and the brightest things, but most of all it’s about one very important thing: the way a woman loves a boy who will soon die. Emily Rapp didn’t want to tell us this story. She had to. That necessity is evident in every word of this intelligent, ferocious, grace-filled, gritty, astonishing starlight of a book."
And Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it
"A beautiful, searing exploration of the landscape of grief and a profound meditation on the meaning of life."
Monologue topics: wedding, Chicago, sobriety, alcohol, 5-Hour Energy, Tay-Sachs, NTSAD.org
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Episode 169 — Fiona Maazel
28 april 2013 · 1 uur 13 min
Fiona Maazel is the guest. Her new novel, Woke Up Lonely, is now available from Graywolf Press.
The Daily Beast says Lees meer"[Maazel] has a real talent for taking these existential millstones of modern life—fear of death, failure, being alone, everything—and filtering them into morbidly funny, troublingly familiar forms. . . . Woke Up Lonely easily refutes the idea that the novel is a staid, obsolete form of writing. The stakes in Maazel's book are at least as real as any work of nonfiction, and it's a good deal more fun to read than any manifesto."
And Bookforum raves
"Woke Up Lonely is another wunderkammer, a deeply felt and wildly original novel that repays the attention it demands, and once read won't be soon forgotten."
Monologue topics: having nothing to say, saying something anyway, to-do lists, talking about writing, my dogs, dog baths.
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Episode 168 — Scott Nadelson
24 april 2013 · 1 uur 18 min
Scott Nadelson is the guest. His new memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, is now available from Hawthorne Books.
Kirkus calls it Lees meer"Eloquent and universal."
And The Portland Mercury says
"It’s unusual to read a memoir built of short stories, but it works—instead of forcing a narrative arc onto his own life, as so many memoir writers do, Nadelson simply places these stories next to one another, allowing their edges to overlap, tugging the reader forward and backward in time. The results are funny, quietly compelling, and unflinchingly frank. Nadelson has built a golem out of paper and typeface."
Monologue topics: my little sister's wedding, peer pressure, alcohol, the Cajun element.
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Episode 167 — Tupelo Hassman
21 april 2013 · 1 uur 20 min
Tupelo Hassman is the guest. Her debut novel, Girlchild, has just been published in paperback by Picador.
The New York Times raves Lees meer"A voice as fresh as hers is so rare that at times I caught myself cheering. . . .I’d go anywhere with this writer."
And The Boston Globe says
"So fresh, original, and funny you’ll be in awe… Tupelo Hassman has created a character you’ll never forget. Rory Dawn Hendrix of the Calle has as precocious and endearing a voice as Holden Caulfield of Central Park.”
Monologue topics: the Internet, Fiona Apple, going crazy, the world is bullshit.
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Episode 166 — Rob Roberge
17 april 2013 · 1 uur 25 min
Rob Roberge is the guest. His new novel, The Cost of Living, is now available from Other Voices Books. It is the April selection of the TNB Book Club.
Cheryl Strayed says Lees meer"Roberge’s writing is both drop-dead gorgeous and mindbendingly smart. The Cost of Living is an intimate, original, important novel that I’ll be recommending for years to come."
And Scott Shriner, bass player for Weezer, says
"This is a guy who clearly knows his way around a tour bus. And around a massive drug habit. A dark, funny, frightening, and above all authentic book about the toll the rock and roll lifestyle can take."
Monologue topics: Boston, terrorism, tragedy, talking about speechlessness, confusion, darkness, realism, pragmatism, idealism.
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Episode 165 — Michelle Orange
14 april 2013 · 1 uur 20 min
Michelle Orange is the guest. Her new essay collection, This is Running for Your Life, is now available from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. The Daily Beast calls it
"A brilliant collection of essays on modern life, and ways that technology and connectivity are changing how we interact with the world....As Orange brilliantly breaks down the state of modern life and how it stands in relation to technology and the commoditized image, she tells us much of what we already have intuited, but might have been afraid to admit to ourselves...."
And Publishers Weekly raves
"In this whip-smart, achingly funny collection, film critic Orange (The Sicily Papers) trains her lens on aging, self-image, and the ascendancy of the marketing demographic, among other puzzles of the Facebook generation....[this is] a collection whose voice feels at once fresh and inevitable."
Monologue topics: TNB Literary Experience, tweets.
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Episode 164 — Jennifer Spiegel
10 april 2013 · 1 uur 16 min
Jennifer Spiegel is the guest. In 2012, she published two books: The Freak Chronicles, a story collection, now available from Dzanc Books; and Love Slave, a novel out from Unbridled Books.
About The Freak Chronicles, bestselling author Lauren Groff says Lees meer"The Freak Chronicles is a miracle of a story collection: passionately political and a shout of ambivalence about political passion, intensely personal and furiously global. We readers are lucky to find Jennifer Spiegel, a writer who is self-satirizing and vulnerable and elegant as hell."
About Love Slave, Publishers Weekly says
"Spiegel's novel evokes the psychic angst of Manhattanites presumptuous enough to describe themselves as struggling artistes, yet entitled enough to melt down when they can't order breakfast in a diner after 11am...the writing is fresh and witty, and Sybil is a sympathetic character worthy of rooting for as she searches for something to believe in."
Monologue topics: the gym, stress, running, the woman with magazines, stopping, Lawn Day.
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Episode 163 — Owen King
7 april 2013 · 1 uur 17 min
Owen King is the guest. His new novel, Double Feature, is now available from Scribner.
Karen Russell raves Lees meer“What a kinetic, joyful, gonzo ride—Double Feature made me laugh so loudly on a plane that I had to describe the plot of Sam's Spruce Moose of a debut film (it stars a satyr) to my seatmate by way of explanation. Booth and Sam are an unforgettable Oedipal duo. A book that delivers walloping pleasures to its lucky readers.”
And Larry McMurtry says
“Double Feature is a beautiful, wrenching beginning, and Owen King is a young writer of immense promise.”
Monologue topics: listener feedback, overdoing gender politics, Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
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