The Infinite Library

¡Hola, los amigos des libros! In the first episode of the Summer Season, the Book Banditos, Ben and John, head south of the border to chat about Roberto Bolaño's magnum opus: "2666". Is the tone of this description a meta commentary on Bolaño's portrayal of hapless literati facing the true horror at the heart of the world? You'll have to listen to find out!In this episode, the first of four, we discussed "The Part About the Critics" and "The Part About Amalfitano". Topics of conversation include Bolaño's use of genre elements to develop tone, a psychoanalytic reading of the behavior of bourgeoisie academics, and the magickal power of the Western Canon. As always, we hope that you enjoy our conversation!

Groovy Baby! We close out our Spring 2025 Season by discussing Samuel R. Delany's "Nova". We discuss Delany's place in the history of sci-fi, archetypes, and the role of time in writing. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation.

What a long, strange trip it's been...this week, the Book Boys finish up their read-through of the works of Michael Chabon with "Moonglow". Does the Baron of Berkley/Prince of Pittsburgh manage to redeem himself after the missteps of "Telegraph Avenue"? Tune in this week to find out!

John and Ben dive deep into Scam-erican literature this week with the help of friend of the pod and resident Melville expert: Chris Thomas. We discuss Melville's final novel: "The Confidence Man: His Masquerade". Topics of discussion include the trustworthiness of barbers, America's enduring interest in flim-flam artists of all sorts, and the long shadow of Don Quixote. As always, we hope that you enjoy the conversation.

This week, the Book Boys lib out and read Michael Chabon's Obama era glaze job: "Telegraph Avenue". Our unbroken streak of bangers comes to an end as we discuss the first book that we straight up just did not like. Still, we hope you enjoy our conversation as always!

This week, the Book Boys read "The Rise of the Novel" by Ian Watt. Topics of discussion include literature and the market, the nature of the 'reading public', and the lineage of the novel in English letters. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

This week, we're wandering through medieval Khazaria with good ol' Mikey C as we read "Gentlemen of the Road". Topics of conversation include Swords & Sorcery vs Historical Fiction, depictions of Jewish identity in Chabon's oeuvre, and serializiation of fiction. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation!You can follow the show on Bluesky at @infinitelibrarypod.bsky.social

Did you know that YOU can teach YOURSELF ANCIENT GREEK? In this week's episode of The Infinite Library, John and Ben are discussing "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt. Topics of conversation include autodidacticism, sleazy British men, and the value of the humanities in troubling times.

This week on The Infinite Library: John and Ben check-in and see how they're feeling about this whole Michael Chabon read-through project, then they continue along the primrose path and discuss "The Yiddish Policeman's Union". Topics of discussion include noir fiction, Filipino-style Chinese donuts, and Messiah.

Happy New Years, Book Heads! In this bonus epsiode, John and Ben sit down to ring in 2025 by talking about their favorite books of 2024. We hope you enjoy!

For our first episode of the New Year, John and Ben are discussing Ryan Ruby's poem about the history of poetry: "Context Collapse". Topics of discussion include jongleurs, Ezra Pound, and romanticism. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

Merry Christmas! John and Ben are flying solo again this week to discuss "The Final Solution" by Michael Chabon. We're officially halfway through our readthrough on Chabon's works, and in this episode, we discuss Sherlock Holmes, Chabon's development as a writer, and genre fiction more broadly. Special Bonus: We return to Movie Land to discuss "The Seven Per-Cent Solution", the 1979 Sherlock Holmes movie where the Great Detective teams up with Sigmund Freud.

Pow! We're back with part 2 of our discussion of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" with Nat of Collective Action Comics. As always, enjoy the conversation.

It's the big one, the book that won Michael Chabon the Pulitzer Prize, the 600-some page behemoth known as "The Adventures of Cavalier & Clay". The Book Boys knew that they were going to need some backup for this one, so they called in Nat of Collective Action Comics for a Two-Fisted Team-Up! We had so much fun talking about this one that it ended up being our first two-parter. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

Happy Thanksgiving, Bookheads! We're taking a week off for the holiday, but fear not, we have a special, John-free bonus episode to tide you over till the next regular ep. If you're a Big Ben fan, this one's for you, because he's sitting down with previous guest of the pod, Ana, to have a more casual chat about another banger from the Roberto Bolaño Fascism Extended Universe: "The Savage Detectives". Ben hopes you enjoy the conversation. John hopes you don't so that Ben doesn't try to fire them from the pod. Semper Books!

In this unfortunately timely episode of The Inifinite Library, the Book Boys return to the Roberto Bolaño Fascism Extended Universe to discuss "Distant Star". Topics of conversation include the place of the individual in history, Right Wing kitsch, and how there's a Cheeto in the frickin' White House. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation.

Surprise! It's a Halloween bonus episode! Friend of the show Molly Tanzer returns to the Infinite Library to discuss H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". We discuss our individual relationships with Lovecraft and Lovecraftiana, cosmic horror, and shoggoths. As always, we hope that you enjoy the conversation. Works Cited Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield From Beyond Providence by Alan Moore

On this very spooky Halloween episode of The Infinite Library, special sci-fi correspondent Sam Chirtel is back in the stacks to discuss "Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials" by Reza Negarestani. Topics of discussion include "theory fiction", the CCRU, and how dang spooky oil is. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation.

For our second episode of Chabon-a-mania, Ben and John had the rare pleasure of recording in-person, so this episode is a little more meandering than usual. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

John and Ben sit down with Filipino sword and sorcery author, Dariel Quiogue, about his upcoming novella, "The Walls of Shira Yulun", which will be coming out soon as part of the "Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery" collection from New Edge Sword & Sorcery. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation. You can support the campaign for the "Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery" here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/double-edge-sword-sorcery Works Mentioned Robert E. Howard, Conan Edgar Rice Burroughs, Barsoom Star Wars Herodouts, Histories The Odyssey of Homer Dariel Quiogue, Swords of the Four Winds Siege Weapons of the Far East Vol. 1 and 2, Stephen Turnbull (Author) , Wayne Reynolds (Illustrator) Babur the Tiger, Harold Lamb Khlit the Cossack Series, Harold Lamb How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card Tun Huang, Yasushi Inoue Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, Brian Murphy David Gemmel Poul Anderson, Technic History series Leigh Brackett Tanith Lee Celia S. Friedman Julia May, Saga of Pliocene Exile Gubat Banwa, Pendragon, Star Wars D6 Legends of Zu A Thousand and One Nights The Waters of Eternity, Howard Andrew Jones Volkhavaar, Tanith Lee Hanuvar, Howard Andrew Jones Track of the Snow Leopard, Dariel Quiogue Lorelei of the Red Mist, Leigh Brackett Queen of the Martian Catacombs, Leigh Brackett

This week, John and Ben finally get around to discussing patron saint of the pod: Jorge Luis Borges. We discuss a selection of short stories including: "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", and "The Library of Babel". As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation!

John and Ben are back from their summer vacation and ready to get back to work on a new project: reading the collected works of Michael Chabon! We discuss our favorite beach reads from the break, why we're interested in exploring Chabon as an author, and then dig in and talk about “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation.   Summer Books! Works Referenced Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon Fountain City by Michael Chabon

John and Ben are still luxuriating on their summer vacation, but a little while back they invited the illustrious Phil Ford of the Weird Studies podcast into the Library to discuss P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves". We discuss humor in literature, the idea of being "well-read", and the changing nature of genre fiction through history. We hope you enjoy the conversation! Works Referenced La Serva Padrone, by Giovanni Pergolesi SCTV George Orwell "Such, Such Were the Joys" The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling Casino Royale Carolyn Miller "Genre as Social Action" The Band Wagon Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino

This week, John and Ben are discussing "Telluria" by Vladimir Sorokin, translated by Max Lawton. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation! Works Referenced: The Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin The Norm by Vladimir Sorokin The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin The golden notebook by Doris Lessing Pervert's Guide to Cinema - Slavoj Zizek Twin Peaks the Return Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett The Wake - Paul Kingsnorth https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/interview-with-max-lawton-on-reading-russian-literature-translating-sorokin-books-in-need-of-translation-and-retranslation-learning-languages-and-ambitious-projects/

This week, John and Ben are joined by Ben's friend Sam to discuss one of the great works of scifi-horror: Peter Watts' "Blindsight"! Topics of discussion include "metal science fiction", AI, the nature of intelligence, and (of course) the Gothic. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Texts Mentioned this Episode Jane Austen - Persuasion  Adorno & Horkheimer - Dialectic of Enlightenment  Ian Banks - Culture series  Peter Watts - Rifters  Peter Watts - Echopraxia Arthur C Clarke - Rama series  James Gunn - The Listeners  Roger Zelazny - Creatures of Light and Darkness Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light  M. John Harrison - Light   Aase Berg - Dark Matter “Spar” - Kij Johnson Blake Butler - Aannex  Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination  AA Atanasio - Radix novels  Gene Wolf - Book of the New Sun series

This week, we're joined by fantasy/science fiction author Molly Tanzer to discuss the Jirel of Joiry stories by C.L. Moore. Topics of discussion include H.P. Lovecraft, Sword & Sorcery as a genre, and Molly's upcoming project: "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth"! We hope you enjoy our conversation! Links: - New Edge Sword & Sorcery: https://newedgeswordandsorcery.com/ - Preorder "120 Murders": https://houseofgamut.com/120-murders-pre-order/

Hey Bookheads, apologies for the unscheduled hiatus over the last couple of weeks. To make it up to you, we've got a frosty cool episode discussing "The Ice Palace" by Tarjei Vesaas with Kate Marshall. Topics of discussion include the novella as a form, the bewitching power of nature, and the social utility of magical thinking. As always, we hope you enjoy the discussion. You can check out Kate's excellent book, "Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century" here: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo206058572.html

Biff! Bang! Pow! In this week's thrilling installment of The Infinite Library, your Leading Lads of Literature enlist the aid of an Amazing Ally -- Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook podcast -- to discuss the first comic book: "City of Glass" by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli! As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation! Note: We apologize dearly for the episode being late. We hope you can forgive us!

In celebration of National Crime Fiction Month, John and Ben discuss one of the greatest fat guys in the history of literature: Nero Wolfe. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation.

On this week's episode of The Infinite Library, we're treading the old boards and discussing our first play: Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit". We talk about sex, death, and how movies aren't sending their best. We hope you enjoy our discussion as always.

John and Ben return to the historical novel on this week's episode of The Infinite Library. We tackle British-Palestinian novelist Isabella Hammad's 2019 debut: The Parisian: a book that, much like its protagonist and the country he hails from, is curiously divided. We discuss the novelist as national representative, the perils of tying your family history directly into your fiction, "MFA writing", and the tides of history. As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation. Disclaimer: Contrary to what we may appear to be, Ben and John are very dumb. If we mispronounced anything in French or Arabic over the course of this episode; please, please, please don't be mean to us.

Get in your big cars and pull out your old time-y type writers, because this week John and Ben are celebrating Easter by discussing “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams. Topics of conversation include democracy and art, Williams' concept of the “Imagination”, Williams' vision of art and how it contrasts with his contemporaries, and Walter Benjamin. This episode is a little different than our usual fare–we're chatting about a non-narrative piece of work for the first time on the show– so things are definitely a little looser and kookier than usual. We hope you enjoy our conversation!

It's the big one! It's the middle of March, and Ben decided to mark the occasion by making John read one of the great doorstops of English literature: George Eliot's "Middlemarch". The Book Boys enjoy a particularly long, winding conversation about the many marvellous characters inhabiting Eliot's pages, free will vs. determinism, science and religion, and doddering old uncles. We hope you enjoy!

After a heaping helping of guests for the last couple of episodes, we're back this week with an Infinite Library Classique episode. This week, John and Ben are discussing "Tun-Huang", Yasushi Inoue's sparse yet epic tale of war and religion set against the beautiful, barren plains and deserts of western China. Topics this week include the NYRB Classics imprint, historical fiction as a genre, and the deterministic forces of history. We hope you enjoy the episode!

I feel like White Kafka! Greetings, Bookheads: this week we've got a special off-week treat for you. We sat down with our friend Dan to discuss Franz Kafka's unfinished novel: The Castle. We hope you enjoy!

This week on the Infinite Library, we're talking about modern love (as in "modernism", get it?). John's girlfriend Ana joins the Book Boys to talk about Djuna Barnes' classic of lesbian literature. We talk about why this book isn't as well known as its peers, Freud and fascism, and whether or not books are supposed to teach us things. We hope you'll enjoy this discussion. Note: We had some audio issues with this episode. We apologize for the quality here and we're working hard to figure out how to solve these problems for future episodes. Show Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16laFsna0Lqe2NMHhJlGTdBzZ7VJrIAnM8JnZRAIFUmg/edit?usp=sharing

This week, John and Ben welcome Geoffrey Morrison, a novelist based in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss "By Night in Chile" by Roberto Bolano. The three of us had a fantastic discussion on Bolano's life and legacy, as well as this brilliant, terrifying little novel. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

This week, Ben and John are tackling their first work by the Queen of Literary Twitter: Joyce Carol Oates. Given this show's fascination with the gothic, we decided to start with the first installment of JCO's Gothic Quartet, "Bellefleur". We talk about the gothic (again), it's role in American culture, realism & supernaturalism in fiction, amongst many other topics. This is a wild and wooly episode about a wild and wooly book. We hope you enjoy!

On this week's episode of The Infinite Library, John and Ben are hopping in the Library's time machine and heading back to the 1860s with Zadie Smith's "The Fraud". We discuss historical fiction, the role art takes in shaping us, and hysterical realism.

Picture this: you, lowly listener, have managed to secure an invitation to the swankiest New Year's soiree known to man--hosted by the Infinite Library. Pressing shoulders with the great and good of the literary world, you stumble upon your humble hosts, John and Ben, in the midst of a private conversation. Being the humble, work-a-day podcast hosts they are, they engage you in conversation and regale you with their five favorite books of 2023. Thank you to all our guests and listeners for making 2023 a great first year for the show! We look forward to reading and talking with you all into this new year!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, Book-Heads! This week John and Ben are joined deep in the stacks by Eden of Death//Sentence, Heavy Blog is Heavy, and AnarchySF to discuss the "Velvet Underground of 80s Fantasy Novels": "The Dragon Waiting" by John M. Ford. Topics of conversation include the wild and wooly figure of John M. Ford himself, the curious nature of the Alternate History genre, and what can happen when a work of fantasy tries to do "too much". Eden is also kind enough to provide a true smorgasbord of recommendations for the starving Infinite Library public. Semper Books! We'll see you next year!

This week, the Book Boys are diving into the swamp and getting way out of their depth with Qiu Miaojin's “Notes of a Crocodile”. Despite very much not being Taiwanese lesbians, the Infinite Library is discussing one of the seminal works of Taiwanese lesbian fiction. Come for the riveting conversation on 90s Taiwan and the history of homosexuality in the Sinosphere, stay to hear John butcher the pronunciation of something in Mandarin.

Put on your Pomas and get ready to consult the Cone of Fate, because this week John and Ben are reading "Masters of Atlantis" by Charlie Portis. The Book Boys talk about cults, the unceasing march of time, and John's theory of the "Boomer Novel".

In aerodynamics, a “slipstream” is the region behind a moving object in which a wake of fluid (typically air or water) is moving at velocities comparable to that of the moving object, such as the the wake behind a speeding boat or jet plane. Most do not know though, that the term has another use: a genre of literature originally described by science fiction author Bruce Sterling in his 1989 essay of the same name. Sterling's own description of slipstream as a genre is slippery at best, but it can be summarized as a movement growing out of both science fiction and literary fiction, blending the qualities of both into a stranger amalgamation, unfamiliar to both of its parents. For Sterling, slipstream was the wake behind the accelerating body of mainstream literature at the turn of the millenium, where writers sought to describe the ever stranger conditions of modern existence by transcending the constraints of genre that commercial publishing demands they fit into. At least, that's what Sterling thought. The fact of the matter is that “slipstream” has never exactly caught on as a term and not many of authors have self-conciously associated themselves with it. Despite that fact, the idea of “slipstream” has remained in the substrata of literary criticism: a genre whose name hardly describes what it is and who has no conscious acolytes.  2006's “Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology” sought to bring the genre into wider circulation, providing a smorgasboard of authors (including luminaries like Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, and Michael Chabon) who the editors felt emodied in their words, “21st Century Schizoid Art”. Ben and I sat down to talk about the anthology, the stories therein, the concept of “slipstream” and the strange place the whole concept of genre finds itself in in 2023.  We hope you enjoy the conversation.

John and Ben knew that Halloween can be a dangerous time in the Infinite Library, what with all the ghosts and goblins around, so they knew they were going to need a bit of extra support for this very spooky episode. Luckily, Dylan and Robb from Hot for Creature were sucked into the Library when Robb's Blu-Ray collection officially got "out of hand" so the Frightening Foursome was able to sit down and talk about Koji Suzuki's classic horror novel "Ring" as well as the famous 1998 film adaptation directed by Hideo Nakata. That's right folks, it's a crossover episode.

TRIGGER WARNING: Racially charged language (Mediterranean) As a little pre-Halloween treat, John decided to sit down and do a narration of one of their favorite Lovecraft stories: Pickman's Model. This is our team's first time putting something like this together, so please forgive the minor audio issues. Enjoy!

Ghoul evening, ladies & gentle-creeps. John & Ben welcome you to another foray into the endless stacks of the Infinite Library, but this time...it's spooky. For our first Halloween themed episode of October 2023, we're descending into the ghost-haunted crypts of the Library to discuss the first ever Gothic novel: "The Castle of Otranto". We start off the episode with a discussion of what this thing called "The Gothic" even is. Then Ben, provides some historical context on the book and the life and times of its fancy-lad author, Horace Walpole. With the formalities out of the way, we then dig into the book itself, which dares to ask the most horrifying question of all: What if your father-in-law tried to start an age gap relationship with you? We close off with John & Ben departing from the world of books for a quick jaunt to the glitzy & glamour of Hollywood. We hope you enjoy!

John & Ben welcome you to the Infinite Library, a world where books are infinite, but we are not. We start off with a little table talk about the podcast and what we're doing here is. With the boring stuff out of the way, we dig into our first topic: "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco: a novel featuring a library that feels like it might go on for ever. We talk widely, with a topic list touching on semiotics, narrators (unreliable and otherwise), the apocalypse, and whether or not Christ laughed.