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Great American NovelEpisode 35: Escaping War for Love in Ernest Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMSSend us a textErnest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms is probably the most famous war novel in American literary history. Inspired by his own wounding on the Italian front shortly before his nineteenth birthday, Hemingway tells the story of a disillusioned American serving in a foreign army, Frederic Henry, who falls in love with a Red Cross nurse, Catherine Barkley, shortly before the disastrous rout the Italians suffered at Caporetto in late 1917, which Frederic barely survives. In an epic tale that explores the tragedy of love amid combat, Hemingway offers a brutally naturalistic portrait of th...2025-08-101h 25Great American NovelEpisode 34: Riding the Rails with THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson WhiteheadSend us a textIn this, our 34th episode of the Great American Novel podcast, the hosts tackle Colson Whitehead’s intriguing, interesting, and in some surprising ways challenging award-winning 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad. This novel works with the premise that the antebellum freedom trail to the north for escaped slaves was not a series of safe houses and hiding spaces with the occasional guide, but instead an actual underground railway. How can something be in some plays completely and purposefully historically inaccurate yet also completely true at the same time? How does our knowledge of real life...2025-06-231h 14Great American NovelEpisode 33: Pulling Out the Mote in Flannery O'Connor's WISE BLOODSend us a textMore celebrated for her dark, satirical short stories, Flannery O'Connor nevertheless burst on the literary scene in 1952 in her mid-twenties with her debut novel, Wise Blood. The story of a would-be preacher resistant to God's grace, the plot features some of the most bizarre and twisted left turns in American literature: self-blindings with lye, underaged ingenues named Sabbath, stolen mummies and gorilla suits, and enough vehicular homicides and car wreckage to make one renew one's AAA membership. For most readers, Hazel Motes's struggle to reconcile divine providence with the desire for free will...2025-05-181h 17Great American NovelEpisode 32: Watching the Flames from Slaughterhouse-FiveSend us a textIn Episode 32 of the Great American Novel podcast, we slip through time with Billy Pilgrim as we shuffle between the character’s experiences as a prisoner of war and first hand witness to the Dresden firebombing in World War II and then trip the light fantastic to the far flung planet Tralfamadore. Or…do we? Yes, this episode has your intrepid explorers hiding in Kurt Vonnegut’s masterful 1969 post-modern novel SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. We ponder the author’s central questions: are all war novels doomed to sensationalize war? Can you capture such a horrific experience realistical...2025-02-241h 27
Reading McCarthyEpisode 57: The Wittliff with Lead Archivist Katie SalzmannThis past December your not-so-intrepid host was able to make a pilgrimage to San Marcos, Texas, to visit the Wittliff Collection in the Alkek Library at Texas State University and plumb its treasure trove of McCarthy archives. My guest in this episode is Katie Salzmann, who has been Lead Archivist at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State since 2004. Prior to that, she worked with literary and historical manuscript collections at Southern Illinois University and Howard University. She holds a BA in English from The College of Wooster in Ohio, and a Masters in Library and Information Science from the U...2025-02-1243 minGreat American NovelEpisode 31: Crossing the Country with Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROADSend us a textFew novels have had the cultural impact of Jack Kerouac's speed-fueled mad dash across the continent in search of kicks as On the Road. One doubts the 1960s ever would have happened had Kerouac's Beat Generation coterie not inspired a mass embrace (and mockery) of bohemian jazz culture rebelling against the conformity of Eisenhower-era conservatism and Atomic Age anxieties. This episodes explores the background of Kerouac's famous experiment in spontaneous prose, noting its affinities with both the picaresque and the roman a clef. We talk such pivotal influences as Allen Ginsberg and Neal...2025-01-121h 21Reading McCarthyEpisode 56: The Brothers Elmore Flip a Coin with No Country for Old MenThis episode has a history that winds like a West Texas border road. My guests are the Brothers Elmore, and we originally recorded it in April but one of the tracks went bad. So finally at the end of our collective academic semesters, we once again discussed No Country for Old Men, speculating about its origins, its commentary on neo-liberalism, the film adaptation, and how some critics tried to read the author through the novel. Twin brothers, the Elmores collaborate on their work on McCarthy. Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Louisiana Tech University and the...2025-01-0156 minGreat American NovelEpisode 30: Sailing on the SHIP OF FOOLSSend us a textA couple of weeks ago—after this episode was recorded, but before it was edited and posted—the famous author Stephen King posted online his top ten novels of all time—and among them was Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools. This 1962 book was the first novel by Porter, a great American writer who had mostly worked in the short story genre and as a journalist and editor. The novel tells of a German passenger liner traveling from Mexico to different ports of Europe in the 1930s. It presents a multinational, highly varied cast...2024-11-101h 09Reading McCarthyEpisode 54: Following McCarthy's Tracks with Austin SmithThis episode of READING MCCARTHY welcomes to the podcast for the first time Austin Smith. Austin studied history and literature at the University of Georgia. He has worked as a photographer and a professional adventure photographer, following the art into aviation, mountaineering, and motorcycle racing. He now leads a human resources consulting business in Denver, Colorado. A couple of years ago he hooked up an Airstream fifth wheel RV to his truck and, armed with a load of McCarthy novels, followed the books’ trails across the southwest. At one point things maybe even get a little Indiana Jones for Aust...2024-10-221h 02Great American NovelEpisode 29: Rallying Around the Flag in Stephen Crane's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGESend us a textThe Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a singularly unique war novel: whereas most depictions of the horrors of combat and the trauma of the battlefield are naturalistic, attempting to inflict upon the reader the violence the prose describes and terrifying us with the prospect that humans do not rise to heroic occasions, Stephen Crane's novel is impressionistic, blurring detail at the edges and giving scattershot glimpses of confusion, guilt, regret, and even envy and resentment. Through the story of Private Henry Fleming (aka "The Youth"), Red Badge is arguably the novel that best...2024-08-111h 35Reading McCarthyEpisode 53: Rambling Down THE ROAD with Bryan VescioThis 53rd episode of READING MCCARTHY takes a long ramble down THE ROAD, McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of a father and son enduring life in a harrowing, ashen landscape after some undisclosed apocalypse. For this discussion I’m glad to welcome back guest Dr. Bryan Vescio. Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina, Dr. Vescio has previously joined us for discussions on Suttree and Cities of the Plain, among others. He is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors incl...2024-08-021h 12Reading McCarthyEpisode 52: McCarthy and HemingwayEpisode 52 is a round table considering the impact of Ernest Hemingway’s writing on the works of Cormac McCarthy. Joining us for this discussion are Dr. Olivia Carr Edenfield, Professor of English at Georgia Southern University. She is a founding member of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story and Director of the American Literature Association. She has recently published a defense of the mother in The Road in the CMJ. Dr. Brent Cline is an associate professor of English at Hillsdale College. He has published articles and chapters involving disability on Walker Percy, James Agee...2024-06-241h 38Great American NovelEpisode 28: Falling off the Cliff with The Catcher in the RyeSend us a textThe Great American Novel Podcast episode 28 considers JD Salinger’s landmark 1951 classic, The Catcher in the Rye. Your hosts discuss Salinger’s famous reclusiveness, the book’s continuing appeal, and its influence on both the genre of so-called “young adult literature” and post-breakdown lit. We examine the novel in its role of the creation of the American teenager as a marketing sector and artistic project. We don’t dodge the thorny issues of Salinger’s life while separating artist from the art, and perhaps we even disagree, just a little, on where we place this novel...2024-05-301h 24Reading McCarthyEpisode 51: Teaching McCarthy Round TableAlthough the fact often goes unacknowledged, it is a truth that sometimes an author’s residence within and endurance in the canon is a result of how that author is perceived and taught in the academy. Most literary scholars are also professors and teachers. For this episode of Reading McCarthy I round up some of the usual suspects for a panel discussion upon teaching the works of McCarthy to students. The guests include Stacey Peebles, Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is...2024-05-041h 27Great American NovelEpisode 27: Filtering the Static in Don DeLillo's WHITE NOISESend us a textOften hailed as the quintessential exemplum of Reagan-era postmodernism, Don DeLillo's eighth novel, White Noise (1985), is part academic satire, part media excoriation, and part exploration of the "simulacrum" or simulated feel of everyday life. With its absurdist asides on the iconicity of both Elvis and Hitler, the unrelenting stress of consumer choices (the supermarket is the site of modern neuroses), and the pharmacopic management of anxiety, the novel can sometimes feel a little smirky, a little too self-consciously zany, in its treatment of 1980s' suburban life. But readers interested in what DeLillo has...2024-04-211h 14Reading McCarthyEpisode 50: Barreling through No Country for Old Men with Rick WallachThe guest for our 50th episode is the OG himself, the redoubtable RICK WALLACH, who joins us for a rousing discussion of No Country for Old Men. Somehow both Batman and Godzilla are referenced as we consider both the novel and the Coen Bros. film. Rick Wallach has recently retired from teaching English at the University of Miami. He is a founder of the Cormac McCarthy society, the senior and primary editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McC...2024-04-051h 10Great American NovelEpisode 26: Seekers of the Lonely Heart: Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely HunterSend us a textThe 26th episode of the Great American Novel Podcast delves into Carson McCullers’ 1940 debut novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Published when the author was only 23, the novel tells the tale of a variety of misfits who don’t seem to belong in their small milltown in depression-era, 1930s Georgia. Tackling race, disability, sexuality, classism, socialism, the novel catapulted McCullers to fame. It’s been an Oprah book and it’s been adapted to film. The Modern Library chose it for its list of 100 best novels in English of the 20th Century. But the ques...2024-03-071h 03Reading McCarthyEpisode 49: a Filibuster Panel on the BORDER TRILOGYIn this episode we head across the border one more time for a consideration of the Border Trilogy as a whole. How does knowing how the story begins and ends change how we read any of the different parts? My guests on this filibuster over the border include Dr. Nell Sullivan, a Kentuckian who earned her BA in English from Vanderbilt University and earned her PhD from Rice University. She is currently Professor of English at University of Houston-Downtown, where she teaches courses in American literature and the literature of the American South. A former editor of the Cormac McCa...2024-01-161h 16Great American NovelEpisode 25: Surmising the Motives in Henry James's THE PORTRAIT OF A LADYSend us a textPublished in 1881, The Portrait of a Lady was Henry James's seventh novel and marked his transition away from the novel of manners that only three years earlier had made his novella Daisy Miller a succès de scandale toward the more meticulous, inward study of individual perception, or what would come to be known as psychological realism. The story of an independence-minded young woman named Isabelle Archer who visits distant relatives in England, the novel broadens James's trademark theme of American innocents confronting the corrupt sophistication of European cosmopolitans to explore the sussing o...2024-01-131h 08Reading McCarthyEpisode 48: Tearing Down the Walls of THE STONEMASON with Nick MonkThe guest for this episode is Dr. Nick Monk, who joins me for a consideration of perhaps McCarthy’s most idiosyncratic work. The 90s were an exciting time for McCarthy fans. In 92 he published the award winning All the Pretty Horses, followed two years later by the next installment in the Border Trilogy, The Crossing. Before he would go on to close out the trilogy in 98, however, in 1995 he also published a strange and fascinating play, The Stonemason. The play is about the Telfairs, a family of Black stone masons in Louisville, Kentucky. The play examines the mystical and perha...2023-12-161h 03Reading McCarthyEpisode 47: McCarthy and Disability with Brent ClineEpisode 47 of READING MCCARTHY considers the author’s references to and uses of disability in its many forms. My guest DR BRENT CLINE. He has published articles and chapters involving disability on Walker Percy, James Agee, and Daniel Keyes. His review of The Passenger/Stella Maris was published with The University Bookman. He teaches a seminar on McCarthy every two years.As always, readers should beware: there be spoilers here.Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY. The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflec...2023-11-141h 09Great American NovelEpisode 24: Speeding Down the Highway with PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan DidionSend us a textGreat American Novel Podcast 24 considers Joan Didion’s 1970 novel Play It as It Lays, which shut the door on the 60s and sped down the freeway into the 70s, eyes on the rearview mirror all the while. In a wide-ranging discussion which touches not only upon Didion and her screenwriter husband but also John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, the Manson cult, the Mamas and the Papas and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, we drive down the interstate with Didion and her Corvette as we consider Hollywood, Las Vegas, the desert, Hippies and Hipsters, and the...2023-11-031h 16Great American NovelEpisode 23: Hearing Voices in William Faulkner's AS I LAY DYINGSend us a textWilliam Faulkner's fifth published novel, As I Lay Dying (1930), is a self-described tour de force that the author cranked out in roughly two months while working as the night manager at the University of Mississippi power plant in his hometown of Oxford. This dark tragicomedy about a family on a quest to bury its matriarch helped win the author his early reputation for sadistically heaping woe and misfortune upon his Southern grotesques but has more recently come to be seen as a complex artistic effort to empathize with the often marginalized rural population...2023-10-071h 25Reading McCarthyEpisode 46: Crossing the CITIES OF THE PLAIN with Bryan VescioIn this episode we ride to the end of the road in the last episode of the Border Trilogy, CITIES ON THE PLAIN. My guest for this foray is Dr. Bryan Vescio, Professor and Chair of English at High Point University in North Carolina. A guest on former episodes on faith and Suttree, Dr. Vescio is the author of the 2014 book Reconstruction in Literary Studies: An Informalist Approach, as well as numerous articles on American authors including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Nathanael West, and, of course, Cormac McCarthy. As always, listeners should beware: there be spo...2023-10-031h 05Reading McCarthyEpisode 45: Tribute to McCarthy Part 3This is our final of 3 tribute episodes in the wake of Cormac McCarthy's passing this past June. Guests on this final tribute episode include: Dr. Steven Frye, professor and chair of English at California State University in Bakersfield. Steve has just stepped down as President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He is the author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy (Univ. of South Carolina Press) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, and Cambridge UP’s Cormac McCarthy in Context. His book Unguessed Kinships: Naturalism and the Geography of Hope in Cormac McCarthy was released this past summe...2023-09-111h 33Great American NovelEpisode 22: Rambling Along the REVOLUTIONARY ROADSend us a textIn Great American Novel Podcast Episode 22, we wrestle with the old Thoreau quote "The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation" as we delve into the soul-sapping mid-century suburbs in Richard Yates' 1961 novel Revolutionary Road. Join the hosts for a conversation that considers other suburban chroniclers such as Updike and Cheever and other treatments from the film adaptation to Mad Men to Seinfeld. Ultimately the hosts have to confront this essential question: not whether they should move to France, but whether we can call Revolutionary Road a Great American Novel? Listeners are warne...2023-08-071h 12Reading McCarthyEpisode 43: Tribute to McCarthy, Part the FirstOn June 13, 2023, we lost a literary giant. Cormac McCarthy, the greatest writer of our time (in this podcast's completely unbiased opinion) passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his home these past couple of decades. E-mails and queries started pouring in, mostly asking, "are you going to do a special tribute podcast? And the answer to that, is yes. Episode 43 is the first of 3 planned tribute episodes to McCarthy. Joining us for this first panel is a roundup of some of the usual suspects: Dianne Luce, founding founding member and past president of the Cormac McCart...2023-07-291h 37Reading McCarthyEpisode 42: Fly them, Cormac. 16 Responses to "What is your favorite McCarthy novel, and why?"Like the rest of the world I learned this past Tuesday, June 13th, that Cormac McCarthy had passed away at the age of 89. This episode had already been recorded, but I thought it would still serve as an initial and quick response to the need to offer a tribute: it's a compilation of the responses to the question What's your favorite McCarthy novel, and why? from the podcast's first 16 guests. The guests responding to the "favorite book and why" question this episode are: Steven Frye, Dianne Luce, Bill Hardwig, Nell Sullivan, Brian Giemza, Dennis McCarthy, Stac...2023-06-191h 17Great American NovelDefining Dignity through Service in Ernest J. Gaines' A LESSON BEFORE DYINGSend us a textOnly thirty years old this year, Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying (1993) is a powerful testament to social justice and to the search for individual dignity in an oppressive legal system. Set in the late 1940s in a small Louisiana community, the book tells the story of two men, one a convicted murderer on death's row (Jefferson) and the other his reluctant tutor (Grant) who is asked to teach the doomed man how to face death and injustice with a sense of self-worth. Almost instantly canonized upon publication, A Lesson Before Dying is...2023-06-031h 06Reading McCarthyEpisode 41: Over the Border Again with the Bros. Elmore: Part 2 on THE CROSSINGEpisode 41 is our second excursion over the border as the Brothers Elmore and I finish our conversation about THE CROSSING. Returning as the guests are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore. That's right, twins. Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The Cor...2023-05-3138 minReading McCarthyEpisode 40: A rough ride into THE CROSSING with Jonathan and Rick Elmore PART IEpisode 40 is a long ride through rough country as we dig into The CROSSING, McCarthy's masterful middle volume in the Border Trilogy. My guests today are twin scholars Jonathan and Rick Elmore. That's right, twins. Jonathan Elmore is Associate Professor of English at Savannah State University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review.. He is the editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss (Lexington) and co-author of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution (ALG). His scholarship has been published in The...2023-05-121h 04Reading McCarthyEpisode 39: Riding into the Evening Reddit in the West with Joe ParslowCormac still types his novels on an Olivetti typewriter and your host can't figure out Facebook. So for Episode 39 we bring in some expert help in the form of a lively discussion with Redditor supreme Joe Parslow. He has moderated the Cormac McCarthy subreddit for over a decade and has seen it grow from its first post in April 2012 to its current position as the largest online community devoted to the works of Cormac McCarthy. In March 2023 the membership of the subreddit approached 12,000 members. He is a professional writer and the former Senior Editor of the online literary journal Hol...2023-04-271h 13Great American NovelEpisode 20: Cracking Through the Scrub with THE YEARLINGSend us a textIn Great American Novel Podcast Episode 20, your fearless (or is it feckless) hosts find themselves in the damp swamps and thick scrublands of north central Florida in the post-Reconstruction era as we struggle to survive with the settlers of the brush country in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' Pulitzer Prize winning 1938 novel, The Yearling. We discuss how this Maryland native came to work with the editor of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, and how she came to love the Florida brush country she wrote about. As always, these discussions are operating according to t...2023-04-121h 10Reading McCarthyEpisode 38: Covering the UK Book Beat: George Berridge of the Times Literary Supplement Today's guest is George Berridge. George began academic life as a journalist but like Hank Williams saw the light and also began digging deeply into American Literature. He's now the American Literature editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives and works in London. His exceptional review of THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS was published in October of last year. He joins me in a nice conversation about the role of the literary critic in modern journalism (with of course a focus on the works of McCarthy). Thanks to Thomas Frye, who composed, performed, and produced the music...2023-03-241h 11Great American NovelEpisode 19: Riding the Rocket with Thomas Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOWSend us a textSeason three kicks off with a fiftieth anniversary celebration of Thomas Pynchon's postmodernist whirl-a-gig Gravity's Rainbow. Originally published on February 28, 1973, this encyclopedic inquiry into the systematicity of existence, power, and technology was just this week described by Esquire as "one of the weirdest, richest, most frustrating, inscrutable, brilliant, gorgeous, exhilarating, inexplicable, disgusting, hilarious, remarkable, and goddamn frustrating again novels ever published in America"---a novel so discombobulating, in fact, that the Pulitzer board refused to award it the fiction prize it assuredly deserved for its sheer display of ambition and erudition. Ostensibly about a...2023-03-031h 03Reading McCarthyEpisode 37: Another Roundup of All the Pretty Horses, with Steven Frye and Stacey PeeblesFrequent guests Steven Frye and Stacey Peebles join me for another roundup of All the Pretty Horses, the National Book Award winning novel which finally forced the literary world to sit up and take notice of McCarthy. We climb on and hold tight for this ride through this incredible novel. Stacey Peebles is Chair of the English program, Director of Film Studies, and the Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Humanities at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is the author of Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq (Cornell Univ Press, 2011) and Corm...2023-02-261h 36Great American NovelEpisode 18: We Want to Fly Away with Chopin's THE AWAKENINGSend us a textIn Great American Novel Podcast Episode 18, our final Season 2 episode, we plunge ourselves into New Orleans of the fin de siècle in Kate Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening. Edna Pontellier wrestles with a life she never chose, beset by a bore of a husband, a flimsy excuse for a lover, and a patriarchal society which has tried to restrain her choices to almost nothing. One of the great early feminist novels, we discuss its slow but steady climb from obscurity to ubiquity.The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion a...2023-01-0352 minGreat American NovelEp 17: Pursuing the Picaro in Saul Bellow's THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCHSend us a textSaul Bellow's 1953 breakthrough novel The Adventures of Augie March is perhaps, of all the great American novels we've discussed, the one whose cultural imprint has faded the most. Even among Bellow fans this freewheeling exploration of American identity tends to take a backseat to subsequent classics such as Herzog (1964) and Humboldt’s Gift (1975). Yet for readers who recognize the Whitmanesque strain within Bellow's insistently intellectual worldview, Augie March offers a garrulous, propulsive portrait of the representative American as a picaro, the rogue hero who lives by his wits. In this epic novel in whi...2022-12-121h 03Reading McCarthyEpisode 34: Listening in on STELLA MARISSome six weeks or so after the publication of McCarthy's first novel in 16 years, The Passenger, we have its slim companion volume, the little sister, if you will, Stella Maris. In this brief review, I again forego the normal conversation format to offer a quick first-take review of the newest McCarthy novel, one that many presume will be the last book of his published in his lifetime. The novel is composed of the recording of 7 interviews conducted with Alicia Western, genius and sister to The Passenger's Bobby Western, at the Stella Maris psychiatric care facility in 1972. As alw...2022-12-0826 minReading McCarthyEpisode 33: McCarthy and the Animal Kingdom, with Wallis SanbornThis episode is a thorough discussion of McCarthy's use of the animal kingdom in his works. My guest in this episode is Wallis Sanborn, Chair of the Department of English, Mass Communication, and Drama, and Graduate Program Head of the Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice Program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Sanborn is the author of Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy (2006) and The American Novel of War: A Critical Analysis and Classification System (2012) and the editor of The Klondike Stampede (2017). 2022-11-221h 13Great American NovelEpisode 16: Classics of American NoirSend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. For this 16th episode we went a different route and discuss a smorgasbord of fine American Noir, novel...2022-11-021h 20Reading McCarthyEpisode 32: Riding Along with THE PASSENGERAfter a sixteen year wait, we finally have a new novel by Cormac McCarthy grasped in our greedy little podcasting clutches. In this episode of the podcast, we break with form a bit. There's no guest discussion this episode; instead we offer a quick review of THE PASSENGER. Is it completely correct to call it McCarthy's "new novel" since we know he's been working on it since at least the early 90s? Has the wait been worth it? Will this prove a worthy finale to a remarkable career? Do you have to be able to discuss string theory at length...2022-10-2530 minGreat American NovelSearching for the Ghost of Tom Joad in John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATHSend us a textJohn's Steinbeck's 1939 tale of an "Oakie" family who crosses Route 66 seeking to escape the Dust Bowl only to discover California isn't the paradise it's been advertised as is one of the most iconic Great American Novels in our literary history. Its impact was profound and immediate: rarely has a novel been so viciously denounced simply for promoting the belief that all Americans deserve to make a living. But the novel has also been celebrated as a testament to democratic protest, inspiring folks songs by Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen that have in turn...2022-09-011h 21Great American NovelEpisode 14: Ride into the sun--Cormac McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIANSend us a textThe 14th episode is a ride into the evening redness in the west as your hosts consider one of the more notorious books on our short list: Cormac McCarthy’s epic subversive western, BLOOD MERIDIAN, or, The Evening Redness in the West. This 1985 tome of McCarthy’s has engaged constant discussion and speculation due to the high poetry of its language and the stark horror of its violence. Saddle up and touch your heels to your horse to hear our wide-ranging discussion of this novel.The Great American Novel podcast is an ong...2022-07-111h 40Great American NovelHoming in on the Prairie with Willa Cather's My ÁntoniaSend us a textWilla Cather's most famous novel was published only two months before the Armistice ended the bloodshed of the Great War, and in its powerfully imagistic portrait of Midwestern homesteading, it offered readers an emotional connection to the nation's founding myth of pioneer fortitude. Yet My Ántonia wasn't just a story about pilgrims' progress across the prairies: it was a story of immigrants struggling to realize the American Dream that appeared in an era of extreme xenophobia that will feel painfully resonant to contemporary readers. In telling the story of the resilient Ántonia Shimerda an...2022-06-151h 04Great American NovelEpisode 12: Hitting the Road with LOLITASend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. In Episode 12 our intrepid profcasters lay into the most controversial novel of the 20th Century, Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLIT...2022-04-271h 28Great American NovelThe Everyday Ecstasy of Marilynne Robinsone's GILEADSend us a textOur eleventh episode explores the most recent novel on our list of celebrated Great American Novels, Marilynne Robinson's 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of Christian humanism, GILEAD. Set in a fictional small Iowa town in 1956, this deceptively lowkey narrative about a dying minister, John Ames, and the sudden reappearance of the town's prodigal son, Jack Boughton, raises intriguing questions about the intersection of the soul and society. Robinson is our most prominent representative of literary or philosophical Christianity today; in a marketplace in which the very notion of Christian fiction raises doctrinaire stereotypes of the...2022-03-141h 24Great American NovelEpisode 10: Finding the Lost Generation in Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISESSend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. In conversation with writer Gertrude Stein, a Parisian mechanic disparaged the young and dissolute men who’d survived...2022-01-171h 31Great American NovelEpisode 9: Adventures of Huckleberry FinnSend us a textIn this installment we look at another of the most iconic of GANs, Mark Twain's 1885 "bad boy" novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Written over an eight-year period, what began as a sequel to the mischievous "bad boy" book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) steepened into a caustic interrogation of racism in the United States. Twain's depiction of the relationship between the naive sprite Huck and the runaway slave Jim at once appeals to the American desire for harmonious race relations while probing blindspots in our national notions of equality. Twain employs several motifs a...2021-12-291h 22Great American NovelEpisode 8: Beloved and Ghosts of the Past, the Present, and Possibly the FutureSend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. Our 8th episode is a consideration of one of the most significant works of Nobel Prize-winning author Toni M...2021-11-241h 13Great American NovelEpisode 7–All that Jazz: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great GatsbySend us a textIn our seventh episode we explore a Great American Novel that's so ubiquitous it's almost hard to believe there was a time when the media wasn't full of contrast, random references to The Great Gatsby. The story of a mysterious millionaire who turns up on Long Island, throwing lavish parties and spinning fables as transparently invented as they are enthralling, captures something essential about the promise of America. We explore why the term used for that something---the American dream---falls flat in this day and age, and what exactly we can still learn about...2021-10-141h 35Great American NovelEpisode 6: Watching the Horizon in THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GODSend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. This episode focuses on Zora Neale Hurston’s classic, revered novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. We discuss t...2021-08-201h 08Great American NovelEpisode 5: Blending Black and White in ABSALOM, ABSALOM!Send us a textWilliam Faulkner's dizzyingly complex, Lost Cause-dismantling 1936 novel about the rise and fall of a Southern plantation owner who "outraged the land" amid the Civil War is perhaps the most formidable Great American Novel one can tackle: it has the distinction of making Moby-Dick look accessible! But Absalom, Absalom! is not only a tour-de-force of modernist experimentation with its long, incantatory sentences and seemingly endless convolutions; it's also an inquiry into the nature of knowledge, historical "facts," and storytelling. As speculation mounts about the motives driving Thomas Sutpen's all-consuming "design" to create a lineage...2021-07-231h 22Great American NovelEpisode 4: Returning to THE AGE OF INNOCENCESend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. This episode focuses on Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1920 novel The Age of Innocence. We consider this clas...2021-06-151h 07Great American NovelEpisode 3: Seeing Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN ClearlySend us a textOn the eve of its seventieth birthday, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) occupies a unique place in the American canon. On the one hand, it was instantly heralded as a Great American Novel---indeed, as Lawrence Buell notes in his study of GANs, it was the first novel by an African American to be universally admitted to the pantheon of important national fiction. At the same time, the book's subsequent reputation has ridden a rollercoaster of praise and complaint suggesting our uncertainty about what degree an epic novel about race relations should emphasize the political...2021-05-141h 24Great American NovelEpisode 2: Diving with MOBY DICKSend us a textThe Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter. This episode focuses on the novel branded more than any other as the Great American Epic Novel: Herman...2021-04-231h 19
Great American NovelDefinitions and Debates: What Exactly is a GAN?Send us a textEver since J. W. DeForest popularized the phrase "Great American Novel" in 1868 commentators have debated the limits of all three of its components. Does "great" necessarily mean a big "doorstop" book or is concision a worthy goal? Whose version America are we talking? And why the novel not a poem, play, or short story? In our inaugural episode we preview the challenges of defining a GAN and explore why so many writers have felt compelled to parody the concept as much as pursue it. Feel free to send us your thoughts on the p...2021-03-3143 min