Shows
Eminent AmericansRust Belt HeroMy guest on the show today is John Pistelli, proprietor of the Grand Hotel Abyss Substack newsletter and its affiliated lecture course, The Invisible College. John is also the author of the novel Major Arcana, which was originally serialized on Substack. It was then picked up and republished by Belt Publishing, an indie press (now under the auspices of Arcadia, a larger indie press) founded to promote voices from the Rust Belt. We talk a lot of about John’s novel, which I enjoyed immensely, but we talk more about what the novel represents, and has led to, in te...2025-08-071h 06
Eminent AmericansWanderers Above the Sea of Digital Fog: A state of the discourse episodeReading List:* The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms, by Ross Barkan* Notes Toward a New Romanticism, by Ted Gioia* The Invisible College: Modern British Literature, by John Pistelli* The Three Segments of American Culture, by Ross Barkan* Major Arcana: Preface, by John PistelliMy guests on the show today are writers Ross Barkan and John Pistelli, and they’re here to help me launch something new on the podcast, which is a series of shorter episodes that are dedicated to ta...2024-02-291h 05
Eminent AmericansThe Souls of Wesley YangReading list for episode:* “John Pistelli,” by Blake Smith* “The Souls of Yellow Folk, by Wesley Yang,” by John Pistelli* “The Souls of Yellow Folk—A Review,” by Daniel Oppenheimer* “Platonic Complex: Why Do the Intellectuals Rage?"“ by John Pistelli* “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho,” by Wesley YangCritic, novelist, and sorta-academic John Pistelliand I have two things on our agenda for this episode of the podcast. The first is Wesley Yang, the author of the 2018 essay collection The Souls of Yellow Folk and arguably the single most influential write...2023-07-131h 11
Eminent AmericansThe Fall of the White American GayEpisode Reading List:* From Queer to Gay to Queer, James Kirchick* How Hannah Arendt’s Zionism Helped Create American Gay Identity, Blake Smith* When the Pope Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie, That’s Ahmari, James Kirchick* Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Big Fat Nonbinary Mistake, Blake Smith* Are Conservatives the New Queers?, Blake Smith* Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk, John PistelliI have a working hypothesis that no one has suffered a more dramatic decline in a certain kind of social status...2023-05-311h 05