• Ep. 8. Underground Men
    Mar 18 2022

    Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground. Russia and Orientalism. Extremisms of Russian and American literature. The holy fool. 2+2=4. Romanticism, nihilism, socialism. To see everything. Christianity vs. rationalism: "The Grand Inquisitor." Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Fecundity of narrative art. Journalism, propaganda, aesthetics. Trump/Russia and the pause of history. Free speech: Milton was right. A new progressive racism?

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    1 hr and 38 mins
  • Ep. 7. Super Powers
    Mar 10 2022

    Watchmen. Favorite characters. Alan Moore as stylist. Superhero comics. Watchmen and Don Quixote. Form and genre: Understanding Comics, understanding superheroes. Watchmen as American literature. Rorschach as hero. Necessity of perversion and extremism. Watchmen as the Bible of people who "go hard." Is there any defense of the Comedian? Watchmen's relevance to the war in Ukraine and renewed nuclear tensions. A debate about the merits of the American empire. Moore as closet conservative. The ambiguity of Ozymandias: ideological, ethnic, scientific, economic. The meaning (and pronunciation) of the vagina dentata. Gender in Moore's oeuvre. Allusions and epigraphs. A guest appearance from Sam's brother.

    Erratum: General Pinochet was the dictator of Chile, not Argentina.

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    1 hr and 39 mins
  • Ep. 6. Crossfire
    Mar 2 2022

    Ukraine. A political autobiography. Democracy and empire. Conviction and ambivalence. Ideological ferment: neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and MAGA. Individualism and collective identity in Milan Kundera, Toni Morrison, and Alexandr Dugin. Liberal nationalism. The trouble with land acknowledgments. Getting liberalism's story straight.

    Note: my post about Kundera, Morrison, and Dugin.

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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Ep. 5. The Art of the Novel
    Feb 22 2022

    Henry James. "The Art of the Novel." Romance vs. novel. Experience is everything. The necessity of cultural appropriation. Making love to the language. Free indirect discourse. Graduate school. Age-appropriate novels. The Bostonians. Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow fighting over Taylor Lorenz. The Ambassadors. The eroticism of difficult prose. "Live all you can." Henry James at the end of history. The 1990s as a Jamesian decade. A dramatic reading from John Pistelli's end-of-history '90s novel, The Class of 2000.

    Note: my essay on James's Ambassadors.

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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Ep. 4. Pragmatism Not Idealism
    Feb 15 2022
    William James. Pragmatism vs. Rationalism. Metaphysics. Why it's good to believe in God. Louis Menand. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Eugenics and compulsory vaccination. The Civil War: liberalism's "Good War"? Men of the sword and men of the spirit. Contingencies of Richard Rorty. The professionalization of the university and its price. Corporatism and fascism, yesterday and today. James's anti-imperialism. Against "big organizations" and "big successes."

    Notes: My essay on William James.

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    49 mins
  • Ep. 3. Performative
    Feb 7 2022

    General hilarity. Sidney Morgenbesser, Mencius Moldbug, Judith Butler. Nietzsche. Limits of thought. Cheapness of paradox. How to write. Hannah Arendt contra contemporary liberalism. More Mailer. Failures of the left. Charlie Hebdo.

    Notes: my essays on Hannah Arendt and Norman Mailer | my Tumblr post on why writing should difficult | Rebecca Panovka on Arendt

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    1 hr
  • Ep. 2. Gnostic & Anti-Gnostic
    Jan 29 2022
    Joan Didion. A dirge. Gnosticism. William Blake. Catholicism. The CIA. Assorted literary gossip.
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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Ep. 1. Overture
    Jan 29 2022

    Literary mixes. The title explained. Georg Lukács. Are we leftists? How do we know each other? Don DeLillo, Iris Murdoch. Novels in general. Soundscapes.

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    36 mins