Podcasts about Donald Barthelme

Trev Downey reads and then discusses Game by Donald Barthelme.

On this week's SELECTED SHORTS, we're going to hear stories about students and schools that abandon the usual rules to follow their own, unusual, codes of behavior.   In "Singin' in the Acid Rain," by Patricia Marx, performed by Katrina Lenk, it's recess at a post-apocalyptic school.  Marx talks with Meg Wolitzer about the story and her unique brand of humor after the read. The class in “The School,” by Donald Barthelme, performed by Laura Esterman, is facing a difficult test; and young love is framed by larger issues in "Melvin in the Sixth Grade," by Dana Johnson, performed by Nikki M. James.   We hear from James about this nuanced rite-of-passage story. 

In the spotlight is the late novelist Joseph Heller of Catch-22 fame, and one of his biographers, Tracy Daughtery, who is himself the author of six novels, a novella connection, six short story collections, a book of personal essays, and a collection of essays on literature and writing.  In addition, he has published biographies of Donald Barthelme, Larry McMurtry, Joan Didion, Billy Lee Brammer, etc.We discuss:  >> Catch-22's original title>> Heller's celebrity lifestyle>> His other novels>> Book editor Robert Gottlieb>> The Heller Cult>> Wartime novels>> Tracy Daugherty's latest books>> Etc.  Learn more about Tracy Daugherty and his books here: https://tracydaugherty.com Learn more about Joseph Heller here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Heller Novelist Spotlight is produced and hosted by Mike Consol. Check out his novels here: https://snip.ly/yz18no   Write to Mike Consol at novelistspotlight@gmail.com

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On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Emily Adrian interviews Justin Taylor.Justin Taylor's most recent book is the novel Reboot. He is also the author of the memoir Riding with the Ghost, the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, and two story collections: Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Oxford American, and the Sewanee Review.Emily Adrian is the author of several novels and the forthcoming memoir Daughterhood. Her work has appeared in Granta, Joyland, EPOCH, Alta Journal, and Los Angeles Review of Books. ____________Full conversation topics include:-- growing up as a child actor--  always wanting to be a writer-- a father who read and read into his work-- editing a couple Donald Barthelme anthologies-- the leadup to his first few books-- the new novel REBOOT-- the role, limits, and manipulation of realism in his work-- inviting the supernatural-- the show within the novel-- a bottle chapter-- The Hungry Tiger-- Dawson's Creek-- Judy Blume moments for middle aged men-- writing a short story again____________Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.

Episode: 3112 Donald Barthelme: Creative Editor.  Today, a sheriff of an editor.

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Lucy Corin & Deb Olin Unferth about their travels in the Sahara, ancient chickens, disappointments, true love, and why great books are so necessary. Our next episode will feature Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly, out December 22, 2023.   Links Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com https://www.lucycorin.com https://debolinunferth.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook   Transcript Annie Lito (00:00.118) Welcome to Lit Friends! Hey Lit Friends!   Lito: Welcome to the show.    Annie: Today we're speaking with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth, great writers, thinkers, and LitFriend besties.    Lito:  About chickens, the Sahara, and bad reviews.    Annie: So grab your bestie   Annie & Lito: And get ready to get lit!   Lito: You know those like stones that you can get when you're on like a trip to like Tennessee somewhere or something, they're like worry stones? Like people used to like worry them with their thumb or something whenever they had a problem and it would like supposedly calm you down. Well, it's not quite the same thing, but I love how Deb describes her and Lucy's relationship is like, “worry a problem with me.” Like let's, let's cut this gem from all the angles and really like rub it down to its essential context and meaning and understanding. And I think essentially that's what like writers, great writers, offer the world. They've worked through a problem and they have answers. There's not one answer, there's not a resolution to it, but the answers that lead to better, more better questions.    Annie: Yeah, and there's something so special about them because they're, worry tends to be something we do in isolation, almost kind of worrying ourselves into the ground.   Lito: Right. Annie: But they're doing it together in collaboration.    Lito: It's a collaborative worry. Yes, I love that.    Annie: A less lonely worrying.    Lito: It's a less lonely place to think through these things. And the intimacy between them is so special. The way I think they just weave in and out of their lives with each other, even though they're far away from each other.   I think there's a romantic notion that you're tuned into about Lucy and Deb's trip to the desert. Do you want to say something about that? There's a metaphor in it that you really love, right?    Annie: (1:52) Yeah. Well, so I remember when we first talked about doing this podcast and invited them, we were at a bar at AWP, the writer's conference. And they were like, oh, this is perfect. We just went to the Sahara together. And I was like, what? You writers just decided to take a trip together through the desert? And they said, yeah, it was perfect. And they have adorable photos, which we of course are going to share with the world. Um, but it felt like such a, I mean, the fact that they would go on that kind of adventure together and didn't really plan ahead, I think it was just Deb saying, I really want to go to the desert. And Lucy saying, sure, let's go. Which feels very much a kind of metonym of their friendship in some ways.    Lito: Absolutely.    Annie: (2:42) Yeah. That they wandered these spaces together. They come back to art, right? Art is a way for them to recreate themselves and recreate their friendship. And they're doing such different things on the page.    Lito:  Oh yeah, no, they're very different writers but they do share a curiosity that's unique I think in their friendship, then unique to them.    Annie: Yeah and a kind of rigorousness and a love for the word.    Lito: (3:10) Oh and a love for thinking and reading the world in every capacity.    Annie: Tell me about your friendship with Lucy because you're quite close.   Lito: I was at UC Davis before it was an MFA program. It was just a Master's. After undergrad, I went to the master's program because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be an academic or do the studio option and get an MFA. I loved how Lucy and the other professors there, Pam Houston, Yiyun Li, showed us the different ways to be a writer. They couldn't be more different, the three of them. And, I particularly was drawn to Lucy because of her sense of art and play and how those things interact.    Lito: (03:59) And here was someone that was extremely cerebral, extremely intelligent, thinking through every aspect of existence. And yet it was all done through the idea of play and experimentation, but not experimentation in that sort of like negative way that we think of experimentation, which is to say writing that doesn't work, but experimentation in the sense of innovation. And. Lucy brought out my sense of play. I got it right away, what she was going for, that there is an intellectual pleasure to the work of reading and writing that people in the world respond to, but don't often articulate. Lucy's able to articulate it, and I admire her forever for that.    Lito: (4:52) And perhaps I'm not speaking about our friendship, but it comes from a place of deep admiration for the work that she does and the way she approaches life. You have a special relationship with Deb. I would love to hear more about that.    Annie: (5:04) Yeah, I think I've been fangirling over Deb for years. Deb is such a special person. I mean, she's incredibly innovative and has this agility on the page, like almost no other writer I know. Also quite playful, but I love most her humanity. Deb is a vegan who, in Barn 8, brings such life to chickens in a way that we as humans rarely consider. There's an amazing scene which she's like with a chicken 2000 years into the future. Also, I know Deb through my work with Pen City, her writing workshop with incarcerated writers at the Connally Unit, a maximum security penitentiary in Southern Texas.   Lito: How does that work? Is it all by letter or do you go there?    Annie: (5:58) Well, the primary program, you know, the workshop that Deb teaches is on site, and it's certified. So students are getting, the incarcerated writers, are getting now college credit because it's an accredited program. So Deb will be on site and work with them directly. And those of us who volunteer as mentors, the program has evolved a little bit since then, (06:22) but it's kind of a pen pal situation. So I had a chance to work with a number of writers, some who had been there for years and years. And a lot of folks are writing auto-fiction or fiction that's deeply inspired by the places they've lived and their experiences. It's such a special program, it's such a special experience. And what I saw from Deb was just this absolute fierceness. You know, like Deb can appear to be fragile in some ways (06:53.216), and it's her humanity, but actually there's this solid steel core to Deb, and it's about fortitude and a kind of moral alignment that says, we need to do better.    Lito: We have this weird connotation with the word fragile that it's somehow bad, but actually, what it means is that someone's vulnerable. And to me, there is no greater superpower than vulnerability, especially with art, and especially in artwork that is like what she does at the penitentiary. But, can I ask a question?    Annie:  Sure.   Lito: Why is it so special working with incarcerated folks?    Annie: (7:27) Oh, that's a great question. I mean, we need its own podcast to answer it.   Lito: Of course, but just sort of the...    Annie:  I think my personal experience with it is that so many incarcerated writers have been disenfranchised on all levels of identity and experience. Voting rights, decent food, accommodations, mental health, physical, you know, physical well-being. And we can't solve all those problems necessarily, at least all at once, and it's an up, it's a constant battle. But nothing to me offers or recognizes a person's humanity like saying, "tell us your story. Tell us what's on your mind. We are here to hear you and listen."  And those stories and they do come out, you know, there have been other programs that have done this kind of work, they get out in the world and there's, we're bridging this gap of people we have almost entirely forgotten out of absolute choice.  (8:27) And Deb is doing that work, really, I mean she's been doing that work for a long time and finally got some recognition for it, but Deb does it because she's committed.   Lito: That is really powerful. Tell us your story. Tell us your story, Lit Fam. Tell us your story. Find us in all your social media @LitFriendsPodcast or email us at LitFriendsPodcast@gmail.com   Annie: We will read all your stories. We'll be right back with Lucy and   Deb.   Lito: (09:00) And now, our interview with Lucy Corrin and Deb. Lucy Corin is the author of two short story collections, 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses and The Entire Predicament, and two novels, Everyday Psychokillers and The Swank Hotel. In addition to winning the Rome Prize, Lucy was awarded a fellowship in literature from the NEA. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English in the MFA program at UC Davis.    Annie:  Deb Olin-Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8, and her memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Deb is an associate professor in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She founded and runs Pen City Writers, a two-year creative writing certificate program at Connally, a maximum security prison in southern Texas. For this work, she was awarded the 2017 Texas Governor's Criminal Justice Service Award.   Lito: (09:58) Annie and I thought this up a year ago, and we were talking about what is special about literary friendships and how writing gets made, not as we all think, totally solitary in our rooms alone, but we have conversations, at least I think this way. They're part of long conversations with our friends, our literary friends and living and dead, and you know, all times, in all times of history.   But the idea here is that we get to talk to our literary friends and people we admire and writers who are close friends with each other and friendships in which literature plays a large role.   Annie: (10:37) Yeah, and I'll just add that when we first floated the idea of this podcast, you know, your names came up immediately. We're so in awe of you as people and practitioners and literary citizens, and we love your literary friendship. I mean, I really hold it dear as one of the best that I know of personally.    Lucy, I think of you as, you know, this craftsperson of invention who's always trying to undo what's been done and who's such an amazing mentor to emerging writers. And Deb, you know, I'm always returning to your work to see the world in a new way, to see something I might have missed. And I just, I'm so moved by your generosity in your work and in your life's work with Penn City and elsewhere, which I'm sure we'll have a chance to talk more about.   Annie: (11:30) But I think I recall the first day I realized how close the two of you were when Deb told me that you all were taking a trip to the Sahara. And I was like, oh, of course, like, of course, they're going to have desert adventures together. Like, this makes so much sense. So I hope we'll, you know, we'll talk more about that too.    Annie (11:53) But we're so grateful to have you here and to have you in our lives. And we're going to ask you some questions to get to know a little bit more about you.    Deb:  Sounds great.    Lucy: Thanks.    Deb: It's great to be here. It's really great to see everybody.    Lito: Thank you so much for being here. Deb, will you tell us about Lucy?   Deb: (12:16) I mean, Lucy's just one of my very favorite people. And I feel like our friendship just started really slowly and just kind of grew over a period of many years. And some of the things that I love about Lucy is she is, well, of course, she's a brilliant genius writer. Like, I mean, no one writes weird like Lucy writes weird and no one writes like more emotionally, and more inventively and some of her books are some of my favorite books that have ever been written. Especially her last two books I think have just been such just major literary accomplishments and I just hold them so dear.    (13:05) And as a friend some things that I really love about her is that she will worry a problem with me that's just bugging me about like literary culture or about writing or about, you know, just it could be anything about aesthetics at all. And then she'll literally talk to me about it for like five or six days straight without stopping. Like we'll just constantly, dinner after dinner, like, you know, if we're on a trip together, just like all day, like I'll wake up in the morning and I'll be like, here's another piece of that pie. And then she'll say, oh, and I was thinking, and then we'll like go off and work and then we'll come back at lunch and be like, "and furthermore," you know? And by the end, I remember at one point we were doing this and she said, this is a very interesting essay you're writing. And of course, like it wasn't an essay at all, but it was just like a way of thinking about the way that we were talking.   (14:06) And then she is hilarious and delightful and just like so warm. I don't know, I just love her to pieces. She's just one of my favorite people in the whole world. I could say more, but I'll stop right there for a minute.    Annie: Lucy, tell us about Deb.    Lucy: (14:24) Yeah, I mean, Deb, I mean, the first thing, I mean, the first thing you'll notice is that Deb is sort of effortlessly enthusiastic about the things that she cares about. And that's at the core of the way that she moves through the world and the way that she encounters people and the way that she encounters books.   (14:44) I'm more reserved, so I'll just preface what I'm going to say by saying that like, my tone might not betray my true enthusiasms, but I'll try to list some of the things that I think are special and extraordinary about my friend Deb.   One is that there's this conversation that never stops between the way that she's thinking about her own work and the way that she's thinking about the state of the world and the way that she's thinking about the very specific encounters that she's having in daily life. And so like moving through a conversation with Deb or moving through a period of time with Deb in the world, those things are always in flux and in conversation. So it's a really wonderful mind space to be in, to be in her presence.   (15:35) The other thing is that she's like the most truly ethical person that I am close to and in the sense that like she thinks really hard about every move she makes.   The comparison I would make is like you know Deb is like at the core like, the first thing you might notice about Deb's work is that she's a stylist, that she works sentence by sentence and that she always does. But then the other thing she does is that she's always thinking hard about the world and the work, that it never stays purely a love of the sentence. The love of the sentence is part of the love of trying to understand the relationship between words and the world.    (16:15) And, and they're both an ethics. I think it's an ethics of aesthetics and an ethics of trying to be alive in as decent way as you can manage. And so those things feed into the friendship where she's one of the people who I know will tell me what she really thinks about something because we can have a baseline of trust where then you can talk about things that are either dangerous or you might have different ideas about things or you may have conflict.    (16:47) But because of my sense of who she is as a person, and also who she is with me, we can have challenging conversations about what's right about how to behave and what's right about how to write. And that also means that when the other parts of friendship, which are just like outside of literature, but always connected, which, you know, about your own, you know, your other friendships, your, the rest of your life, your job, your family, things like that, that you wanna talk about with your friends. Yeah, I don't know anybody better to sort through those things than Deb.    And it's in part because we're writers, and you can't separate out the questions that you're having about the other parts of your life from who you're trying to be as a writer. And that's always built into the conversation.   Annie: (17:40) I knew we asked you here for a reason.   Lito: We'll be right back.    Lito (17:58) Back to the show.    Annie: I'm hearing you, you know, you're both, you're sort of really seeing one another, which is really lovely. You know, you're, Deb, you're talking about Lucy wearing a problem with you, which I think conveys a kind of strength and... Of course, like I'm quite familiar with Deb's like strong moral anchors. I think we all are and truly respect, but I'm just wondering, what do you most admire about your friend? What do you think they give to the world in light of this portrait that you've given us?   Deb: (18:28) Lucy is a very careful thinker, and she's incredibly fair. And I've just seen her act, just behave that way and write that way for so many years and it just the quality of it always surprises me.  Like I mean, there was a writer, most recently there was a writer who's been cancelled, who we have spent an enormous amount of time talking about and trying to figure out just exactly what was going on there. And I felt like Lucy had insights into what had happened and what it was like on his end and what about his culture could have influenced what happened. Just all of these things that were.   (19:36.202) It was so insightful and I felt like there's no way that I could have moved that moved forward that many steps in my understanding of what had happened. And in my own like how I was going to approach what had happened. Like there's no way I could have done that without that just constant just really careful thought and really fair thought. Just like trying to deeply understand. Like Lucy has an emotional intelligence that is just completely unparalleled. That's one thing I really love about her.    Another thing is that she's like up for anything. Like when I asked her to go to the Sahara with me, I mean, she said yes in like, it was like not even 12 seconds. It was like 3 seconds, I think, that she was like, yeah.   Annie: You need a friend who is just gonna go to the Sahara.    Lucy: Deb, I don't even know if you actually invited me. The way I remember it is that you said something like, Lucy, no one will go to the Sahara with me. And I said, I would go to the Sahara with you.   Lito: That is lovely.   Lucy: (20:53) It's in Africa, right?    Lito:  Was there something specific about the Sahara that you need to go over for?   Deb:  Yeah, I mean, there was. It's a book I'm still working on, hopefully finishing soon. But it's mostly it's like...I just always wanted to go to the Sahara. My whole life, I wanted to go to Morocco, I wanted to go to the Sahara, I wanted to be surrounded by just sand and one line. You look in 360 degrees and you just see one line. I just wanted to see what that was like so badly, stripping everything out, coming down to just that one element of blue and beige. I just wanted that so much. And I wanted to know that it just went on and on and on and on.   (21:48) Yeah, and you know, people talk a big talk, but most people would not go. And so at one point I was just kind of rallying, asking everyone. And then Lucy happened to be in town and I just mentioned to her that this is happening. And then she said, yeah, and then we went for like a long time. Like we went to Morocco for like over three weeks. Like we went for like a month.    Lucy:  A month.    Deb: Yeah, crazy. But she's always like that. Like whatever I want to do, she's just up for it. I mean, and she called me up and she's like, hey, we want to come to Austin and like, go to this place that's two hours from Austin where you can see five million bats, right? Five million bats? Or was it more? Was it like 20 million?    Lucy:  That's right.    Deb: It was like 20 million bats and a lot of them are baby bats. It's like mama bats and baby bats.     Lucy: Yeah, like it's more when there's the babies.   Deb: (22:46) And yeah, and you were like, I want to come with them as the babies. Yeah, we like went and she just like came and Andrea came, and it was just absolutely beautiful.    Lucy: Well, you were just right for that adventure. I knew you would want to see some bats.    Lucy: Well, I could I could say a couple of more things about what Deb gives the world.    Annie: Sure. Love it.    Lucy: So some of the things that Deb gives the world and though when I listen to you talking about me, I realized why these things are so important to me, is that you have a very steady sense of who you are and a kind of confidence in your instincts. That I know that some of the ways that I worry things through are really productive and some of them are just an ability to see why I could be wrong all the time, and that can stymie me.    (23:48) And one of the things that I love about you and the model that you provide for me in my life is an ability to understand what your truth is and not be afraid to hold onto it while you're thinking about other people's perspectives, that you're able to really tell the difference between the way that other people think about things and the way that you do.   And it doesn't mean that you don't rethink things, you constantly are, but when you have a conviction, you don't have a problem with having a conviction. And I admire it enormously. And I think it allows you to have a kind of openness to the world and an openness to people who are various and different and will challenge you and will show you new things because you have that sense that you're not gonna lose yourself in the wind.    Deb: Mmm. That's really nice.   Lito: I am in awe of everything you've said about each other. And it makes me think about how you first met each other. Can you tell us that story? And why did you keep coming back? What was the person like when you first met? And why did you keep coming back to each other? Do you want to tell Lucy?     Lucy: Yeah, I'll start and you can add what I'm missing and... (25:06) tell a different origin story if you want. But I think that what we might've come to for our origin story is that it was one of the, one of the early &Now Festivals. And the &Now Festival is really great.   Lito: Could you say what that is? Yeah, say a little bit about what that is.   Luch: Oh, it's a literary conference that was started to focus on small press and more innovative—is the term that they used at the time anyhow—innovative writing as a kind of response to the market-driven culture of AWP and to try to get people who are working more experimentally or more like on the edge of literary culture less mainstream and give them a place to come together and have conversations about writing and share their work.   So it was one of the early ones of those. But I think it was, I think we figured out that there were like, yeah, there were three women. It was me, you, and Shelley Jackson. But it was, there were not that many women at this conference at the time. And we were, and I think we were noting, noting our solidarity. Yeah. And that, that's what. That's like some of the first images.   But I knew we were like aware of each other because in some ways we have tended to be up for the same jobs—Deb gets them—up for the same prizes—Deb gets them first, I'll get them later. And so I see her as somebody who's traveling through the literary world in ways that are... I mean, we're very different writers, but as people... You know what I mean? But I still... We still actually...come from a lot of the same literary roots. And so it makes sense that there's something of each other in the work that makes us appeal to overlapping parts of the literary world.   Deb: Yeah, I definitely think that there was in our origins, not only do we come from the same sort of influences, and just things that we admired and stuff, but I also feel like (27:28.018) a lot of our early work would have appealed more easily to the exact same people. As we've gotten older, our work isn't quite as similar. We're a little more different than we used to be. But there's still enough there that, you know, you can see a lot of the same people admiring or liking it.   But I was remembering that first time that we met, you playing pool. And we were, so we were like at a bar and you were like, and you were playing pool, and you had like just had a book out with FSG, I think, or something. I don't know if I even had—   Lucy: FC2. Very different.   Deb: FC2. That's right. FC2. And the FC2 editor was there. And I don't think I even had a book out. I don't remember what year this was. But I don't think I had any kind of book out. All I had was I had nothing, you know. And I was just so in awe of FC2 and the editor there, and you there, and like you could play pool, and I can't play pool at all. And it was just, it was—   Annie: Lucy's so cool. Yeah, she was cool. She was cool. And Shelly Jackson was cool. And it was like all the cool people were there and I got to be there, and it was great.   And then, yeah, and then I think how it continued, I don't know how it continued, we just kind of kept running into each other and just slowly it built up into a really deep friendship. Like at some point you would come through town and stay with me.   (29:25.782) And we moved, we both moved around a lot. So for a while there, so we kind of kept running into each other in different places. We've never lived in the same place.   Lucy: No, never.   Lito: How have you managed that then? Is it always phone or is it texting, phone calls?   Lucy: Well, we'll go through a spate of  texting.   Deb: Yeah, we do both. I think I like to talk on the phone.   Lucy: Yeah, I will talk on the phone for Deb.   Annie: The mark of a true friendship.   Lito: (30:01) Time for a break.   Annie Lito (30:12.43) We're talking with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth.   Lito: How has literature shaped your friendship then? Despite being cool. What kind of books, movies, art do you love to discuss? You can name names. What do you love talking about?   Deb: Well, I remember the moment with Donald Barthelme.   Lucy: That was what I was gonna say.   Deb: No, you go ahead.   Lucy: Well, why don't?   Deb: Oh, okay, you can tell it.   Lucy: I mean, I'll tell part and then you can tell part. It's not that elaborate, but we were, one of the things that Deb and I do is find a pretty place, rent a space, and go work together. And one time we were doing that in Mendocino and Deb was in the late stages of drafting Barn 8 and really thinking about the ancient chickens and the chickens in an ancient space. And we went for a walk in one of those very ferny forests, and Deb was thinking about the chickens and among the giant ferns. And I don't know how it happened, but Deb said something with a rhythm. And we both said to each other the exact line from Donald Barthelme's "The School" that has that rhythm.   (31:34) Is that how you remember it though? You have to tell me if that's how you remember it.   Deb: That's exactly how I remember it. Yeah. And then we like said a few more lines. Like we knew even...    Lito: You remember the line now?   Lucy: I mean, I don't... You do. If you said it, I could do it. I'm just... I was thinking before this, I'm like, oh God, I should go look up the line because I'm not going to get it right, like under pressure. It was just in the moment. It came so naturally.   Deb: It was one of those lines that goes... (32:03) Da da da-da da, da da da-da-da. There's a little parenthetical, it's not really in parentheses in the story, but it might be a little dash mark. But it has, it's something like, "I told them that they should not be afraid, although I am often afraid." I think it was that one.   Deb: I am often afraid. Yeah. And then it was like, we just both remembered a whole bunch of lines like from the end, because the ending of that story is so amazing. And it's, so the fact that we had both unconsciously memorized it and could just like.   And it was something about just like walking under those giant trees and having this weekend together. And like we're like marching along, like calling out lines from Donald Barthelme. And it just felt really like pure and deep.   Annie: It's I mean, I can't imagine anything sounding more like true love than spontaneously reciting a line in unison from Barthelme. And, you know, you both are talking about how your work really converged at the start and that there are some new divergences and I think of you both as so distinct you know on and off the page. There's like the ferociousness of the pros and an eye towards cultural criticism and I always think of you as writing ahead of your time. So I'm just wondering how would you describe your lit friends work to someone, and is there something even after all this time that surprises you about their writing or their voice?   Lucy: I mean, what surprised me recently about Deb's voice is its elasticity. I came to love the work through the short stories and the micros. And those have such a distinct, wry kind of distance. They sort of float a little separate from the world, and they float a little separate from the page.   (34:10) And they have a kind of, they have a very distinct attitude and tone, even if the pieces are different from each other, like as a unit. And that's just really different than the voice that you get in a book like Barn 8 that moves through a lot of different narrators, but that also has just a softer relationship with the world. Like it's a little more blends with the world as you know, it doesn't stay as distant. And I didn't know that until later.   Vacation is also really stark and sort of like has that distinctiveness from the world. And so watching Deb move into, you know, in some ways like just more realistic, more realistic writing that's still voice-centered and that still is music centered was a recent surprising thing for me.   But I'm also really excited about what I've read in the book that in the new book because I think that new book is sort of the pieces that the bits that I've read from it are they're marking a territory that's sort of right down the middle of the aesthetic poles that Deb's work has already hit I mean the other thing is that you know Deb does all the genres. All of the prose genres. Every book sort of is taking on it is taking on a genre And the next one is doing that too, but with content in a way that others have been taking on new genres and form. And so...    Lito: I love that. And I like that it's related to the music of the pros and sound. I feel like musicians do that a lot, right? There's some musicians that every album is a new genre or totally different sound. And then there's artists who do the same thing over and over again. We love both those things. Sorry, so Deb...   Deb: So I love how complicated Lucy can get with just an image or an idea. I just feel like no one can do it the way that she can do it. And my like her last in her last book, which I love so much, we're just brought through all these different places and each one is sort of (36:31.29) dragging behind it, everything that came before, so that you can just feel all of this like, pressure of like the past and of the situations and like even like a word will resonate. Like you'll bring like, there's like a word on maybe page like 82 that you encountered on like page 20 that like the word meant so much on page 20 that it like really, you can really feel its power when it comes on page 80.   And you feel the constant like shifting of meaning and just like the way that the prose is bringing so much more and like it's like reinterpreting that word again and again and again, just like the deeper that you go, like whatever the word is be it you know house or home or stair or um you know sex, whatever it is, it's like constantly shifting. (37:40.952) And that's just part of like who Lucy is, is this like worrying of a problem or worrying of a word and like carrying it forward. And so yeah, so like in that last book, it just was such a big accomplishment. And I felt like it was like her best work yet.   Lucy: So I will say, try and say something a little bit more specific, then. (38:09) Like I guess in the sort of 10 stories that I teach as often as possible in part because I get bored so easily that I need to teach stories that I can return to that often and still feel like I'm reading something that is new to me is the title story from Wait Till You See Me Dance and that story is a really amazing combination of methodical in its execution, which sounds really dull.   But what it does is sort of toss one ball in the air and then toss another ball in the air and then toss another ball in the air. And then, you know, the balls move, but you know, the balls are brightly colored and they're handled by a master juggler. So it's methodical, but it's joyful and hilarious. And then, and then, and you don't   And the other thing is that Deb's narrators are wicked and like they're wicked in the way that like… They are, they're willing to do and say the things that you secretly wish somebody would do and say. That's the same way that like, you know, in the great existential novels, you love and also worry about the protagonists, right? They're troubled, but their trouble allows them to speak truthfully because they can't help it. Or they can't help it when they're in the space of the short story. It's that like, you know, the stories are able to access—a story like this one and like many of Deb's—are able to access that really special space of narrator, of narration, where you get to speak, you get to speak in a whisper.   Annie: You get to speak in a whisper. That's beautiful, Lucy. You get to speak in a whisper.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Lito: (40:15) Welcome back.   Annie: I'm wondering about what this means, you know, how this crosses over to your own personal lives, right? Because of course, literary friendships, we're thinking about the work all of the time. But we're also, you know, when I think of my literary friendship with Lito, I think of him as like a compatriot and somebody who's really carrying me through the world sometimes. I'm wondering if there was for either of you, a hard time that you went through personally, professionally, you know, whether it's about publishing or just getting words on the page or something, you know, um, you know, family related or whatever, where you, um, you know, what it meant to have a literary friend nearby at that time.   Lucy: I mean that's the heart of it.   Deb: Yeah, I mean for sure.   Lucy: One happened last week and I'm sort of still in the middle of it where you know my literary mentor is aging and struggling and so that's painful for me and who gets that? Deb gets that.   The other one, the other big one for me was that the release of my last novel was really complicated. And it brought up a lot of, it intersected with a lot of the things going on in my family that are challenging and a lot of things that are going on in the literary world that are challenging. There were parts of that release that were really satisfying and joyful, and there were parts of it that were just devastatingly painful for me.   And, you know, Deb really helped me find my way through that. And it was a lot, like it was a lot of emotional contact and a lot of thinking through things really hard and a lot of being like, "wait, why do we do this? But remember, why do we do this?" And Deb was the person who could say, "no, you're a novelist." Like things that like I was doubting, Deb could tell me. And the other thing is that I would come closer to being able to believe those things because she could tell them to me.   Annie: Lucy, can you talk a little more about that? Like what did that? (42:27.126) What did that look like, right? Like you talked about resistance to phone calls, and you're not in the same place.   Lucy: It was phone. Right, it would be phone or it would be Zoom or it would be texting. And then, you know, when we would see each other that would be, we would reflect on those times in person even though that wasn't those immediate moments of support and coaching and, you know, wisdom.   Annie:  And that requires a kind of vulnerability, I think, that is hard to do in this industry, right? And I'm just wondering if that was new for you or if that was special to this friendship, right? Or like what allowed for that kind of openness on your part to be able to connect with Deb in that way?   Lucy: I mean, I think I was just really lucky that we've had, like even though we have really, I think, only noticed that we were close since that Morocco trip. Like that was a little bit of a leap of faith. Like, "oh my gosh, how well do I know this person and we're gonna travel together in like circumstances, and do we really know each other this way?" But the combination of the years that we've known each other in more of a warm acquaintance, occasional, great conversation kind of way towards being somebody that you, that you trust and believe and that you have that stuff built in.   And, you know, that over the years you've seen the choices that they've made in the literary world, the choices they've made in their career, when they, you know, everything from, you know, supporting, you know, being a small, being small press identified and championing certain kinds of books over other kinds of books. And like those, just like watching a person make choices for art that you think are in line with the writer that, watching her make choices in art that are in line with the writer that I wanna be in the world makes it so that when you come to something that is frightening, that's the kind of person you wanna talk to because she's done that thinking.   Deb: Yeah, I mean, I feel like there are like so many things that I could say about that. Like one thing is that the kind of time that I spend with Lucy is really different from the kind of time that I spend with most people. Like most people, (44:51) they come to town and I have dinner with them. Or I go to like AWP or whatever and we go out for dinner. Or maybe I spend like one night at their house like with their partner and kid or something, you know. But Lucy and I, we get together and we spend like four days or something all alone, just the two of us, you know, or a month or whatever. And we don't spend a ton of time with other people. And so there's, but then we also do that, but just like not very much.   And so there is something that just creates, like that's a really good mode for me. It's a, that's like the way that I make really deep friendships that are kind of like forever-people in my life. And I've always been like that. And so, but not a lot of people are willing to sort of do that with me. Like, I have so many acquaintances, I've got like a million, I feel like I could have dinner with someone just about any night, as long as it's only like once every few months or something, you know, but I don't have people who are willing to be this close to me, like spend that kind of time with me one-on-one. And the fact is like, they're not that many people that I really feel like doing that with.   And you know, every time Lucy and I do one of these, I just come away feeling like I thought about some really important things and I talked about some really important things and I saw some beautiful things because Lucy always makes sure that we're somewhere where we can see a lot of beauty. And so that just means so much to me. And it's like, and so for me it creates like a space where, Yeah, I can be honest and vulnerable, and I can also tell her, if I can tell her things that I don't tell other people, or I can be really honest with her if I feel like, if I'm giving her advice about something, I can just be honest about it. And so it's really, really nice.   (47:07) I mean, the other thing is like, we're so similar. Like we've made so many similar life choices. And we've talked about that. Lucy and I have talked about that. Like, you know, we both chose not to have kids. We live pretty, like we're both like kind of loners, even though we have partners. Like I think our partners are more like, they just kind of would, they would prefer that we.   I don't know, I shouldn't probably say anything, but I know that Matt would prefer if I was not quite as much of a loner as I am. Yeah, so I look at Lucy and I see the kind of person that I am, the kind of person I wanna be, so if I have a question, I mean, it happens.   Lucy mentioned a couple of things. I have... You know, she's had some pretty major, major things. I have like little things that happen all the time, and they just like bring me to tears.   Like there was this one moment during the pandemic when I was like driving across the country by myself. I was like in Marfa, and I was trying to get to California and I had like a toilet in the back seat. Remember when we were all doing that kind of thing?   Lucy: It was really amazing.   Deb: It was so crazy.   Lucy: But Deb, not everybody had a toilet in their back seat.   Annie: I know. I need that now.   Deb: It still comes in handy.   Annie: I'm sure.   Deb: (48:43) And I was in, and yeah, Lucy is amazing. She'll talk to me on the phone, but Lucy will do because I love to talk on the phone and I love to Zoom. Lucy does not. So she'll tell me in advance, okay, I will talk to you, but it's gonna be for like 20 minutes or I'm gonna have to get off like pretty soon.   But she Zoomed with me and Marfa and I just didn't realize how upset I was about this one rejection that I'd gotten. And it was a really small rejection, I don't know why it bothered me so much, but I just like started crying and like I was like way out in like so many miles from any so many hours from anyone I knew and you know the world was going to shit, and I'd gotten this like tiny rejection from a magazine like a little like I had it was the page was it was like a piece that was like a page long or something, and Lucy just like knew exactly why I I was so upset, and just was able to talk to me about what that meant to me. And just refocus me to like, "look, you don't have to write those. You don't have to be that writer. You don't have to do that." And it was so freeing to know that I didn't always have to be, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was meant a lot. And things like that happen all the time.   Annie: (50:15.265) That's such a wonderful model of mutual support.   Lucy: We'll be right back.   Annie: Hi Lit Fam. We hope you're enjoying our conversation with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth, and their love for the word, the world, and each other. If you love what we're doing here at LitFriends, please take a moment now  to follow, subscribe, rate, and review our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few minutes of your time will help us so much to continue to bring you great conversations like this week after week.  Thank you for listening. Back to a conversation with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth.     Annie: I'm also aware that we're working in an industry that's a zero-sum construct. And, you know, Lucy, you were sort of joking earlier about... Deb winning all of the awards that you later got. But I am curious, like, what about competition between literary friends when we're living in a world with basically shrinking resources?   Lucy: I feel competition, but I don't really feel it with my literary friends. Does that make sense? Like, I'll feel it with my idea of somebody that I don't really know except for their literary profile, right? But when someone like Deb gets something, it makes the world seem right and true, right? And so that's not hard to bear, right? That's just a sign of a good thing in a world that you're afraid isn't so good.   Deb: I guess I feel like if Lucy gets something, then that raises the chances that I'm gonna get something. I'm gonna get the same thing. Because if we're kind of in the same, like we both published with Grey Wolf, we both have the same editor, so we've multiple times that we've been on these trips, we've both been working on books that were supposed to come out with Graywolf with Ethan. (52:16.3) You know, so I feel like if Lucy gets something, then the chances go up.   Like there was just, something just happened recently where Lucy was telling me that she had a little, like a column coming out with The Believer. And I was like, "oh my God, I didn't even know that they were back." I'm like, "man, I really wanna be in The Believer. Like, I can't believe like, you know, they're back and I'm not in them. I gotta be in it. I said that to Lucy on the phone. And then, like the very next day, Rita wrote me and said, "Hey, do you want to write something?"   And so I wrote to Lucy immediately. I was like, did you write to Rita? And she was like, "no, I really didn't." So it's like, we're in the same— Did you, Lucy?   Lucy: No, I didn't! Rita did that all by herself.   Lito: You put it out into the universe, Deb.   Annie: Lucy did it. Hot cut, Lucy did it!   Deb:  So we're like, we're like in the same, I feel a lot of the time like we're kind of in the same lane and so that really helps because like, I do have writer friends who are not in the same lane as me and maybe. Like I'm not as close, but maybe that would be, but if I was as close, maybe that would cause me more confusion. Like I would be like, you know, "geez, how can I get that too? Or it's hopeless, I'll never get that, you know? So I just don't do that thing," or something. So that's really comforting.   Lito: What are your obsessions?   Lucy: Well, I mean-   Lito: How do they show up on the page?   Lucy: I feel like it's so obvious with Deb that like, you know, Deb got obsessed with chickens, and there was a whole bunch of stuff about chickens. First there was a really smart, brilliant Harper's essay where she learned her stuff. And then there was the novel where she, you know, imagined out the chickens (54:19) to touch on everything, right?   Annie: Then there was a chicken a thousand years in advance.   Lucy: Right, and then there's a beautiful chicken art in the house, and there's, you know. And I'm sure that she's gotten way more chicken gifts than she knows what to do with. But then the Sahara, like, you know, she was obsessed with the Sahara and you'll see it in the next book. It's gonna be— It's not gonna be in a literal way, right? But it'll be like, you'll feel the sand, you'll feel that landscape.   So I don't know, like I feel like the obsessions show up in the books. I mean, are there, I mean, this is a question like, Deb, do you think you have obsessions that don't show up in your work? We both have really cute little black dogs.   Deb: (55:07) Oh, not really. I mean, but I do get obsessed. Like I just get so, so like obsessed in an unhealthy way. And then I just have to wait it out. I just have to like wait until I'm not obsessed anymore. And it's like an ongoing just I'm like, OK, here it comes. It's like sleeping over me. Like how many years of my life is going to be are going to be gone as a result of this?   So I'm always like so relieved when I'm not in that space. Like Lucy's obsession comes down to that, with her language, that she's like exploring one idea, like she'll take an idea and she like worries that over the course of a whole book and that she'll just it's like almost like a cubist approach. She'll be like approaching it from so many different standpoints. And that is like, I mean, Lucy is so smart and the way that she does that is just so genius. And so I feel like that's the thing that really keeps drawing me to her obsessions, that keeps bringing me back to that page to read her work again and again. And yeah, and that's how she is in person too.   Lito: Why do you write? What does it do for the world, if anything?   Lucy: (56:37) I know I had a little tiny throat clear, but I think it was because I'm still trying to figure it out because I feel like the answer is different in this world order than it was in earlier world orders. Like when I first answered those questions for myself when I was deciding to make these big life choices and say, "you know, fuck everything except for writing," like I was answering, I was answering that question a different way than I would now, but I don't quite have it to spit out right now, except that I do think it has something to do with a place where the world can be saved. Like, writing now is a place of respite from the rest of the world where you can still have all of these things that I always assumed were widely valued, that feel more and more narrowly valued. And so I write to be able to have that in my life and to be able to connect with the other people who share those kinds of values that are about careful thinking, that are about the glory of the imagination, that are about the sanctity of people having made things.   Annie: Lucy, I need that on my wall. I just need to hear that every day.   Deb: I mean, I feel like if I can think about it in terms of my reading life, that like art changes my mind all the time. Like that's the thing that teaches me. Like I remember when I was a kid, and I lived right near the Art Institute of Chicago, and I remember going in, and they had the Jacob Lawrence immigration panels, migration panels up there that was like a traveling exhibition. And I had none of that information. I did not know about the Great Migration. I just didn't know any of that. So I just remember walking from panel to panel and reading and studying it, (58:47.952) reading it and studying it and just like getting like just getting just it was like a It was such a revelation and I just learned so much and like changed my mind about so many things just in that moment that it was like I'll never forget that.   And I feel like I, I totally agree with Lucy that the reasons that I write now and the reasons that I read now are very different than they were like before, say 2015, or something. But that, that maybe it has its roots in that sort of Jacob Lawrence moment where, you know, just I read these things and it's, I like, I love sinking deep into books that are really changing my mind and like teaching me about the world in ways that I never could have imagined, and I love that so much and I… I don't know if I have that to offer, but I really try hard, you know. Like I tried that with the chicken book. I'm kind of trying that, I hope, in this book that I'm trying to finish and— ha finish!—that I'm trying to get through. And so I think that that's why I think that art is so important.   I don't know if that's truly why I write though. I feel like why I write is that I've always written, and it's like I love it so much. Like I just, sometimes I hate it, sometimes I hate it for like a whole year or whatever, but it's just, it's so much a core of who I am. (01:00:39) And I just, I can't imagine my life any other way. It's just it's just absolutely urgent to me.   Annie: Yeah, urgent. Yeah. I think we all feel that in some way.   Annie:(01:01:04.374) Thank you both for talking to us a little bit about your friendship and getting to know a little bit more about how you started and where you're at now. We're going to move into the lightning round.   Lito: Ooooo Lightning round.   Annie: (01:01:16) Deb, who were you in seventh grade? Who was I in seventh grade? In one sentence, oh my God, the pressure is on. I was unpopular and looked, my hair was exactly the same as it is now. And I wore very similar clothes.   Lucy: (01:01:44) I was a peer counselor, and so I was like the Don who held everybody's secrets.   Lito: Beautiful. Lucy.   Lucy: It saved me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a place in that world.   Annie: Makes so much sense.   Lito: Wow. Who or what broke your heart first, deepest?   Lucy: I mean, I would just say my mom.   Deb: I guess, then I have to say my dad.   Annie: Okay, which book is a good lit friend to you?   Deb: Can I say two? The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein and The Known World by Edward P. Jones.   Annie: Excellent.   Lucy: My go-to is White Noise. Still. Sorry.   Lito: No need to apologize.   Lucy: Yep.   Annie Lito (01:02:27) Who would you want to be lit friends with from any point in history?   Lucy: For me it's Jane Bowles.   Deb: Oh, whoa. Good one. She would be maybe a little difficult. I was gonna say Gertrude Stein, then I was like, actually, she'd be a little difficult.   Lucy: What a jerk!   Deb: I think Zora Neale Hurston would be fun.   Lucy: Well, yeah, of course. For sure.   Annie: We were gonna ask who your lit frenemy from any time might be, but maybe you've already said.   Lucy: Oh, right. I accidentally said my lit frenemy instead of my lit friend.   Annie: Yeah.   Lucy: Mm-hmm.   Deb: (01:03:08) A frenemy from any time?   Annie: Any time. Yeah, it doesn't have to be Jonathan Franzen. I feel like most people will just be like Jonathan Franzen. But it could be any time in history.   Deb: I mean, if you're gonna go that route, then it would probably be, um, like...   Lito: Kierkegaard.   Deb: I don't know, maybe Nietzsche? If you're gonna go that route, if you're gonna go like, like existential philosophers.   Annie: (01:03:34) That's great.   Lito: That could be a podcast too.   Annie: Just like epic frenemy. The most epic frenemy.   Lito: (01:03:35)  Well, that's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Annie: We'll be back next week with our guests Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly.    Lito: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendspodcasts   Annie: And tell us about an adventure you've had with your Lit bestie. I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velazquez.   Annie: Thanks to our production squad. Our show was edited by Justin Hamilton.   Lito: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Annie: Lisette Saldaña is our Marketing Director.   Lito: Our theme song was written and produced by Roberto Moresca.   Annie: And special thanks to our show producer Toula Nuñez.   Lito: This was Lit Friends, Episode 2.

Se hai un problema con gli inizi, probabilmente daresti ragione allo scrittore Donald Barthelme quando dice: "I finali sfuggono, le parti centrali non si trovano mai, ma peggio di tutto è cominciare".Alessandro Barbaglia e Chiara Sgarbi hanno una routine speciale per gli inizi e non è da meno questo, che apre la seconda stagione di Shelf. Il posto dei libri.In questa puntata, Alessandro parla di: Canto di Natale di Charles Dickens, La parte inventata di Rodrigo Fresán (Liberaria) e La Divina Commedia di Dante e della novità della settimana, Aggiustare l'universo di Raffaella Romagnolo (Mondadori).Chiara, invece, consiglia Breakfast on Tour di Giacomo Alberto Vieri con le illustrazioni di Elisa Puglielli (Edizioni Clichy) e Le ricette della signora Tokue di Durian Sukegawa (Einaudi). L'ospite della puntata è Nicolò Lovat della Libreria Lovat di Villorba (TV).Inoltre, si può partecipare a Shelf, inviando un breve messaggio vocale tramite Whatsapp al numero 3489128916: raccontaci cosa stai leggendo e dove!***SHELF. IL POSTO DEI LIBRIdi Alessandro Barbaglia e Chiara SgarbiRealizzato da MONDADORI STUDIOSA cura di Miriam Spinnato, Michele Dalai, Danilo Di TerminiCoordinamento editoriale di Elena MarinelliProgetto grafico di Francesco PoroliMusiche di Gianluigi CarloneMontaggio e post produzione Indiehub studio***Con l'invio del tuo contributo audio dichiari di accettare le condizioni del servizio podcast disponibili al seguente link

Notes and Links to Ursula Villarreal-Moura's Work        For Episode 207, Pete welcomes Ursula Villarreal-Moura, and the two discuss, among other topics, her early San Antonio Spurs' education, her omnivorous reading habits, particularly in her childhood, a formative writing contest and reading event, her transitioning from poetry to short stories and flash fiction, and salient themes addressed in her collection, including mental health issues, trauma, delusion, ideas of identity and self-perception, and imagination and story.         Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, Washington Square, Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast. She contributed to Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, a flash anthology by writers of color, and in 2012, she won the CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015.     Ursula Villarreal-Moura's Website   Buy Math for the Self-Crippling   Interview in Tri-Quarterly     At about 2:20, Ursula shares her love of the Spurs and the ways in which the Spurs culture was infused in her schooling   At about 5:00, Ursula talks about the ways in which she became an omnivorous reader, and how a Judy Blume book really flipped the reading switch    At about 7:10, Ursula describes her first writing as “exotic,” including stories set in boarding schools   At about 10:00, Ursula describes being “receptive” and maybe not as “expressive” in Spanish, and ideas of representations, including as an “Ursula”    At about 13:30, Ursula talks about the “beautiful readings” she witnessed from Sandra Cisneros and the big impact    At about 15:30, Ursula talks about the beginnings of her writing and writing career, including a memorable writing contest that she placed well in at a young age    At about 20:55, Ursula responds to Pete's questions about genre and how Ursula sees her work in terms of flash fiction, short stories, poetry, etc.    At about 23:45, Ursula describes short stories, including from Denis Johnson, Roberto Bolaño, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sandra Cisneros, Donald Barthelme, Tobias Wolff, and Amy Bloom that inspired her   At about 26:00, Ursula   At about 27:00, Ursula speaks to the idea that her work, like that of many women, is more likely assumed to be autobiographical    At about 27:50, Ursula answers Pete's questions about the chronology of her book, and she describes how much of it was written in the library    At about 29:35, Pete cites the collection's first story in asking Ursula about ideas of truth in storytelling and imagination   At about 31:00, Ursula and Pete shout out past guest Oscar Hokeah's Calling for a Blanket Dance and an example of things being “true but unreal”   At about 32:35, Pete cites an example of a story having to do with self-discovery and personas, and Ursula expands upon these ideas   At about 33:55, The two reflect on the power of a story about mental health and Sophia Loren   At about 36:20, Ursula reflects on meanings for the book's title, and Pete cites a Cherry Valance example from The Outsiders in connection to ruminations on seemingly life-changing experiences   At about 39:30, Ursula reflects on the narrator's disappointment and despair after a nonchalant comment from a possible boyfriend    At about 41:50, Ursula describes the ways in which therapy is featured in the book and differing ways in which it can be delivered in the real world   At about 43:00, Ursula expands on items of “totems”   At about 45:00, Pete highlights an important quote about “the power of suggestion” and Ursula describes how real-life events and ideas of “delusion” inspired a story in her collection   At about 45:52-Ursula's cat makes an appearance!   At about 47:10, Ideas of trauma affecting adult experiences and relationships is discussed    At about 50:55, The two reflect on ideas of observers and how Ursula skillfully uses second and third-person   At about 52:25, Ursula shares exciting new projects   At about 54:50, Ursula gives out contact info and social media info and recommends Bookshop.org, Powell's, and McNally-Jackson as places to buy her book      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.    Please tune in for Episode 208 with Sowmya Krishnamurthy, a music journalist and pop culture expert whose work can be found in publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, XXL, and Time.  Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion comes out on October 10, which is the date the book will be published! Also, look out for a late October/early November print conversation with me and Sowmya that will be in Chicago Review of Books.     Again, this episode will air on October 10.

Wellness by Nathan Hill follows a marriage over decades through a variety of successes, challenges and surprises. Hill joins us to talk about how long it took him to write his novel, describing a realistic marriage, the power of algorithms and more. Ben Fountain's Devil Makes Three brings readers to Haiti in 1991 with a cast of characters ranging from divers looking for shipwrecked treasure to CIA agents navigating a country in the midst of political unrest. Fountain joins us to talk about his connection to Haiti and the research he has done, the unique historical events that provide the backdrop for the novel, his influences and more.  Listen in as these authors speak separately with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.   This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.            Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).           Featured Books (Episode):  Wellness by Nathan Hill  Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain  The Nix by Nathan Hill   A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders  Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme  Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme  Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf  Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain  Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain  Beautiful Country Burn Again by Ben Fountain  The Immaculate Invasion by Bob Shacochis 

Guest host Roxane Gay (no mean cook herself) presents three stories centered on food. In “Three Great Meals” the late New Yorker humor writer Donald Barthelme tells you how to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner from a terrifying medley of fast food and low-end canned goods. The story is read by Nate Corddry. In "Simple Recipes," author Madeleine Thien weaves together evocative memories of traditional meals prepared by her father, with more complex images of a family in conflict. The reader is Cindy Cheung. And finally, a Roald Dahl classic, “Lamb to the Slaughter.” This tale of a model housewife's response to a marital crisis will make you view your Sunday roast in a whole new light. She's embodied by Catherine O'Hara.

Episode 174 Notes and Links to Allegra Hyde's Work       On Episode 174 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes  Allegra Hyde, and the two discuss, among other things, her lifelong love of reading and love for librarians (like her mom!) and libraries, her varied reading and writing genres, inspirations for her dazzling and inventive worldbuilding, dark humor, the main throughline of her story collection, ideas of climate change, “global weirding,” action and inaction, encroaching technology, misogyny and patriarch with regard to climate issues, and why she has hope for our world.      Allegra Hyde is the author of ELEUTHERIA, which was named a "Best Book of 2022" by The New Yorker. She is also the author of the story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her second story collection, THE LAST CATASTROPHE, is out in the world as of today, March 28, published by Vintage.    A recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, Hyde's writing has also been anthologized in Best American Travel Writing, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her stories, essays, and humor pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, American Short Fiction, BOMB, and many other venues.    Hyde has received fellowships and grants from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, The Elizabeth George Foundation, the Lucas Artist Residency Program, the Jentel Foundation, the U.S. Fulbright Commission, and elsewhere.    She currently teaches at Oberlin College.     Buy The Last Catastrophe   Allegra Hyde's Webpage   Our Culture Mag Profile of Allegra Hyde and The Last Catastrophe     At about 7:10, Pete compliments The Last Catastrophe, referring to Allegra's work as “prophet[ic],” and Allegra talks about her mindset with her book now entering the world   At about 9:15, Allegra talks about her childhood relationships with the library, reading, and writing; she shouts out her love for The Chronicles of Narnia and audiobooks in general   At about 10:45, Pete wonders about any childhood experiences that may have steered Allegra to particular types of reading    At about 12:10, Pete highlights a particular story from the collection that is indicative of Allegra's skill with worldbuilding; she explains her approach to worldbuilding   At about 14:10, Allegra describes the “privilege” in doing authorial research and she and Pete shout out librarians and decry the recent spate of book banning   At about 15:40, Pete asks Allegra about who/what she is reading these days; she highlights Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon and Thornton Wilder   At about 17:15, Pete references the book's blurb as “dazzling and inventive” (Alexandra Kleeman) and Allegra describes her approach in writing one of those “dazzling” stories   At about 18:55, Allegra defines “retrofuturism,” and she describes how it was guiding her in these stories; she points out her story “Democracy in América” as an example   At about 20:15, Allegra characterizes the throughline of her short story connection, defining and expounding upon the term “Global Weirding”   At about 23:05, Pete cites an important and evocative opening line of the collection and asks Allegra about the line's larger meaning and if it served as a catalyst   At about 24:45, Pete and Allegra discuss the plot and significance of the story “Mobilization”   At about 27:55, Pete references a joke from Marc Maron and inaction on climate change/global weirdness; Allegra highlights the need to approach the crisis from a communal lens   At about 29:20, Pete refers to grass and drought issues and its connection to wealth and    At about 30:05, Pete quotes from the book and he and Allegra discuss ideas of optimism and pessimism regarding the future, particularly with regard to climate change/global weirdness   At about 32:35, Pete references the story “Zoo Suicides” and Allegra speaks to the story's intent and how it was “after” Donald Barthelme and Dana Diehl   At about 35:00, The two discuss the power of the dark humor in the book, and Allegra discusses the story “Afterglow” and its connections to global weirding and a more individual story of grief   At about 38:45, Allegra discusses the gender identity of the narrator of “Democracy in América” and talk about issues particular to America, especially as seen from outside the US   At about 40:55, Allegra describes the process of “Consignment,” which speaks to ideas of consumerism and an American obsession with youth and beauty, from the above story   At about 42:25, Commodification and issues of wealth inequality are discussed with regards to her story collection, especially with regards to how wealth and global weirding are so closely linked   At about 44:40, Pete highlights “The Future is a Click Away” as a standout story and he and Allegra discuss “The Algorithm” in the story as almost “mythical” and “god-like”   At about 47:30, “Cougar” is discussed as another story that deals with encroaching technology, and Allegra talks about “merg[ing] real pieces from her life with research and imagination   At about 49:40, “Endangered” and its statements on the state of art and artists, as well as captivity and endangerment in today's world, is discussed    At about 52:30, Misogyny and what Allegra calls “the mysterious nature of ‘Chevalier' ” are discussed, as well as ideas of invisibilia, both by the world at large and by the narrator of the story, who may be more directed by love than she would let on   At about 56:00, Allegra connects her stories to patriarchy and global weirding   At about 58:00, Pete and Allegra discuss legislative action and other ways in which women and other oppressed groups are being ignored and degraded    At about 58:55, Allegra explains why she “chafe[s]” against her writing being described as “satirical”    At about 59:30, Pete laugh over the absurd and awesome story involving a woman    At about 1:00:25, Allegra explains how she finds cause for optimism despite some often dark topics that populate the world and her work   At about 1:03:15, Allegra shouts out her upcoming tour dates, and shouts out Ben Franklin/Mindfair Books as one of many places to buy her book   At about 1:04:35, Allegra highlights her exciting upcoming project-there are caves involved!    You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.

Acclaimed fiction writer Ann Beattie joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss her recent LitHub essay about Donald Barthelme's short story “The Balloon” and the Chinese spy balloon. She also talks about her recently published first collection of essays, More to Say: Essays and Appreciations, in which she writes about the work of authors, photographers, and artists she admires, including Elmore Leonard, Sally Mann, John Loengard, and her own husband, visual artist Lincoln Perry. Beattie explains why as a nonfiction writer, she prefers close looking and reading; considers defamiliarization in the hands of Barthelme and Alice Munro; analyzes former visual artist John Updike's depiction of the natural world; and reflects on developing increased comfort with writing about visual art. She also reads excerpts from both her LitHub piece and the essay collection. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf. Selected Readings: Ann Beattie More to Say (Moon Palace Books) More to Say (Godine) The State We're In (Moon Palace Books) “Richard Rew's Sculpture,” by Ann Beattie | The New Yorker “John Updike's Sense of Wonder,” by Ann Beattie “Ann Beattie Wonders What Donald Barthelme Would Have Made of the Spy Balloon” | Literary Hub   Others: “The Balloon,” by Donald Barthelme | The New Yorker  “On Not Knowing,” Not-Knowing, by Donald Barthelme “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” by Alice Munro “Couples,” by John Updike “Spring Rain,” by John Updike | The New Yorker “As I See It,” by John Loengard (ThriftBooks) “The Runaways,” by Elizabeth Spencer | Narrative Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Jac Jemc (Empty Theatre) talks to us about the impetus for writing a novel about Empress Sisi and King Ludwig, trimming hundreds of pages as she drafted, using her time wisely, Donald Barthelme, what it feels like to bask in the buzz, and more!  Jac Jemc is the author of The Grip of It, My Only Wife, A Different Bed Every Time, and the story col- lection False Bingo, which won the Chicago Review of Books Award for fiction, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and was long-listed for the Story Prize. She teaches creative writing at the University of California San Diego.   The full title of Jac's new novel is: Empty Theatre. Or, the Lives of King Ludwig of Bavaria and Empress Sisi of Austria (Queen of Hungary), Cousins, in Their Pursuit of Connection and Beauty Despite the Expectations Placed on Them Because of the Exceptional Good Fortune of Their Status as Beloved National Figures. With Speculation into the Mysterious Nature of Their Deaths. Order it here! See Jac on tour! Special end song by Jared Larson! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's SELECTED SHORTS, we're going to hear stories about students and schools that abandon the usual rules to follow their own, unusual, codes of behavior.   In "Singin' in the Acid Rain," by Patricia Marx, performed by Katrina Lenk, it's recess at a post-apocalyptic school.  Marx talks with Meg Wolitzer about the story and her unique brand of humor after the read, and check your feed for our bonus segment featuring the full interview.  The class in “The School,” by Donald Barthelme, performed by Laura Esterman, is facing a difficult test; and young love is framed by larger issues in "Melvin in the Sixth Grade," by Dana Johnson, performed by Nikki M. James.   We hear from James about this nuanced rite-of-passage story.On this week's SELECTED SHORTS, we're going to hear stories about students and schools that abandon the usual rules to follow their own, unusual, codes of behavior.   In "Singin' in the Acid Rain," by Patricia Marx, performed by Katrina Lenk, it's recess at a post-apocalyptic school.  Marx talks with Meg Wolitzer about the story and her unique brand of humor after the read, and check your feed for our bonus segment featuring the full interview.  The class in “The School,” by Donald Barthelme, performed by Laura Esterman, is facing a difficult test; and young love is framed by larger issues in "Melvin in the Sixth Grade," by Dana Johnson, performed by Nikki M. James.   We hear from James about this nuanced rite-of-passage story.

Episode: 3112 Donald Barthelme: Creative Editor.  Today, a sheriff of an editor.

Phillip Gerard in his essay “An Architecture of Light” speaks of the idea of the Signature, a through-line that buttresses the ceiling of your novel so that it doesn't sink in the middle (or collapse altogether). But that through-line also needs to rise and escalate for the book to reach that transcendent place (or that ceiling) to begin with. Helping us think through these ideas is writer Nicole Vecchiotti.Nicole Vecchiotti has worked in the publishing since 1997—working at a large publishing house, with small boutique literary agents, booksellers, and even a book distribution company. In 2006, she founded Union Park Press, a Boston-based book publisher specializing in regional non-fiction. She sold the press in 2019, but her titles are still being published by Globe Pequot Press. Her Novel Incubator manuscript, Mommyland, is currently locked inside a drawer, screaming to get out while she finishes a second novel, The Weather Girl, a dark comedy featuring an ensemble of quirky characters, including a superhero trying to save the planet by stopping climate change, the meteorologist who leaves her family to join his cause, and the meteorologist's son, who vows revenge against his one-time idol.  Noted in this Podcast: “An Architecture of Light: Structuring the Novel and Story Collection” an essay by Philip Gerard in Creating Fiction edited by Julie Checkoway. Also, here's a link to George Saunders' essay on Escalations: https://paulsaxton.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/saunders-barthelme-a.pdfAnd here's Donald Barthelme's story “The School” that Saunders bases his essay on: https://electricliterature.com/the-school-donald-barthelme/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Daily Quote Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. (A.E. Houseman) Poem of the Day Mirabeau Bridge By Guillaume Apollinaire (translated by Donald Revell) Beauty of Words The School Donald Barthelme

On episode 218 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer Catherine Lacey. Calling in from the closet of her home, Catherine talks with Paul about her writing process and what she has been working on lately.Catherine's most recent book is Pew, published in January 2020. Catherine tells Paul about how her writing process for that book was drastically different from her usual method and they discuss its epigraph, from Ursula K. Le Guin's “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” They discuss Donald Barthelme's Not-Knowing and Catherine talks about her experience of finishing writing one novel without having another to work on for the first time in years.Catherine Lacey is the author of four works of fiction: Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Certain American States, and Pew. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellow, a Whiting Award, and twice being a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and published by The New Yorker, Harper's, The Believer, The New York Times, Playboy, and elsewhere. Her fifth book, Biography of X, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2023. Born in Mississippi, she is based in Chicago.Paul Holdengräber is an interviewer and curator of public curiosity. He is the Founder and Director of Onassis LA (OLA), a center for dialogue. Previously he was the Founder and Director of LIVE from the NYPL, a cultural series at the New York Public Library, where he hosted over 600 events, holding conversations with everyone from Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Ricky Jay to Jay-Z, Errol Morris to Jan Morris, Wes Anderson to Helen Mirren, Christopher Hitchens to Mike Tyson. He is the host of "A Phone Call From Paul," a podcast for The Literary Hub.

Donald Antrim joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Balloon,” by Donald Barthelme, which was published in The New Yorker in 1966. Antrim is the author of three novels and the story collection “The Emerald Light in the Air.” His memoir, “One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival,” will be published this month. “The Balloon” (c) 1966, by Donald Barthelme, performed with permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

This week the word is American, specifically the cheesy American version of things created elsewhere, including the American versions of The Office, Taskmaster, Iron Chef, and Ultraviolet. Digressions include the differences between American and English senses of humor, language differences, Doctor Who, and yet more discussions of Taskmaster. Next they discuss the last few stories in Donald Barthelme's Forty Stories, and then discuss what to read next. After the spoiler curtain, they talk about the third episode of the season of both Lower Decks and What If?.SPOILER WARNING: contains spoilers.

This week the word is speculation. The nerds talk about various What Ifs and alternate reality stories, culminating (at the end of the show) in their discussion of the first episode of the “What If?” series. Next they discuss Taskmaster again, which Keith told Andy about last week; now that Andy's gotten hooked on it as well, he had a lot to say about it. Next they discuss a few more of Donald Barthelme's Forty Stories, focusing mostly on “Porcupines at the University.” And the end, Keith shares his thoughts about Suicide Squad.SPOILER WARNING: contains spoilers.

This week the word is Taskmaster, and begins with the nerds talking about what it's like to be their own taskmasters. Then Keith tells Andy about the British telly program called Taskmaster, and Andy tells Keith about A Very Brady Renovation. Andy shares a few recent findings, and talks about the word findings. Specifically, Andy talks about finally starting to watch The Wire, and Keith shares some thoughts about the Olympics and Mythic Quest. Lastly they discuss another batch of Donald Barthelme stories.

Show Notes and Links to John Domini's Work and Allusions/Texts from Episode 70   On Episode 70, Pete welcomes John Domini, author of 2021's The Archaeology of a Good Ragú. The two talk about the structure of John's book, his precise and beautiful writing, his father in both his Neapolitan and American lives, Napoli as a character with a tumultuous and joyous history and fraught present, and Napoli and John's father and the ways in which they have shaped John.    John Domini  is an Italian-American author, translator and critic who has been widely published in literary and news magazines, including The Paris Review,The New York Times, Ploughshares,The Washington Post, and Literary Hub. He is the author of three short story collections, four novels, and a memoir, The Archeology of a Good Ragu: Discovering Naples, My Father and Myself, available now wherever you buy books. Domini has also published one book of criticism, one book of poetry, and a memoir translated from Italian. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Domini lives in Des Moines with his wife, the science fiction writer Lettie Prell. Domini has taught American Literature and Creative Writing at many places, including Harvard University and Northwestern University. His work has earned praise from Richard Ford and Salman Rushdie, among many others. Buy The Archaeology of a Good Ragú Through Amazon    Buy The Archaeology of a Good Ragú Through Bookshop   John Domini's “Cooking the Octopus” from Zone 3 Magazine, 2013-an excerpt from The Archaeology of a Good Ragú   John Domini's Website     At about 2:00, John talks about his mindset and the experience of releasing a book during the pandemic   At about 7:10, John talks about the great gifts bestowed by his father, and the ways in which he allowed his son John to carve his own path and find his own calling; also, John talks about his father and the ways in which he was and wasn't “Hollywood”   At about 9:50, Pete and John discuss John's book, and great literature in general, as being   At about 12:25-14:00, Pete and John discuss their own experience with Italian men, like John's father and Pete's grandfather, who buck the trope of the domineering Italian patriarch   At about 14:00, John talks about how Stanley Tucci and his CNN show as representative of the shift in understanding of Italian masculinity   At about 15:00, John talks about his childhood reading and relationship with the written word, including a huge interest in Roger Angell and Kafka and Hemingway and the magic that mythology held for him   At about 18:55, John talks about studying with the great Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Stanley Elkin, and Anne Sexton   At about 21:20, John explains the meaning of “dietrologia” and its connections to his life and his book; he also describes why and how he uses Neapolitan aphorisms as chapter titles, and the abundance of Italian dialect    At about 25:35, Pete and John talk about bilingualism and its helpful effect on the speaker's English vocabulary; the two focus on the etymology and contemporary usage of “mammone”   At about 28:40, Pete asks John the connections between bilingualism and one's writing in his primary language; John cites Nabakov and his views on the “flexibility” of bilingualism   At about 36:20, John talks about various times in which he discovered that his writing skills could make him a living and make for a fulfilling career    At about 39:30, John talks about working with the great Susan Orlean at The Boston Globe   At about 41:25, Pete and John talk about Naples itself and its vitality and energetic nature, including the tough time Naples has had with COVID-19   At about 46:00, John reads and discusses the beginning of the book, including the epigraph from W.S. DiPiero and the first chapter aphorism: “Mo Lo Facc' ”   At about 48:45, John reads from the first chapter   At about 51:25, Pete notes beautiful and compelling phrasing from John's reading and John's notes    At about 55:30, John shows and describes Pulcinella, a representative of Naples and its ethos   At about 56:30, John and Pete discuss the book's structure and the flashbacks and aphorisms and how they add to the greatness of the book   At about 57:55, John talks about “pulling a story out of a mass of material” in deciding that the book would be a memoir   At about 1:01:05, Pete and John laugh over an anecdote from the section on “love” in the book, and then talk about John's father and his view of romance    Pete links the book to the writing of Roberto Saviano, especially his epic Gomorrah   At about 1:07:35, John talks about an aphorism used in the book that concerns the octopus   At about 1:09:10, John describes the section of the book (the excerpt was published in LitHub) that relates to the aphorism about laughing and crying in relation to the Neapolitan Camorra    At about 1:10:20, John explains his interactions with the artistic side of Naples and his encounter with Paolo Sorrentino    At about 1:15:40, Pete talks about the cornuto being “lost in translation”   At about 1:17:00, John discusses the section of the book dealing with the quiet but pervasive reach of the Camorra, even within the lives of John's relatives   At about 1:22:00, John explains the section of the book that deals with the aphorism “Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi” and connects it to contemporary immigration to Italy and his father's own past and immigration story   At about 1:26:00, Pete and John connect the book's immigration section to the classic Italian movie Lamerica   At about 1:28:00, John reflects on what he sees as visits/messages from his father after his father's passing   At about 1:29:05, John discusses on Part V of the book   At about 1:30:35, John gives background on the Four Days, an uprising in Naples that left a huge impression on his father and on Naples as a whole; John talks about the experience of seeing the movie with his father, and recommends some good Rossellini post-war movies   At about 1:33:45, John connects Los Angeles and Naples and their immigrant histories in talking about his father, him, and his daughter   At about 1:35:00, John talks about his family's religious history, his last name, and the iteration it took on when his father immigrated   At about 1:39:00, John talks about future projects and his continuing work You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Spotify and on Amazon Music. Follow The Chills at Will Podcast on IG,, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can find this and other episodes on The Chills at Will Podcast YouTube Channel. Please subscribe while you're there. This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.

This week the word is Stakes. First they nerds discuss the importance of stakes in story-telling, and in games. Keith reports on the D&D game he's running on Patreon, then they discuss 7 more Donald Barthelme short stories. Lastly, after the spoiler they discuss the Loki season finale and The Tomorrow War.SPOILER WARNING: contains spoilers.

This week the word is epistolary. First, the nerds discuss their favorite letter-related works of literature, then they talk about the fine art of including inexplicable “enclosures” when mailing a letter. Next, Andy talks about traveling again for the first time since the pandemic started, and describes his family's recent trip to The House on the Rock. Keith talks about recent plumbing woes, and Andy talks about getting a new kitchen floor. Moving on to media, Keith talks about the first half of The Tomorrow War and Andy mentions an old movie called Idaho Transfer. They discuss 7 more Donald Barthelme short stories, including one they both really like called The Palace at 4 AM. After the spoiler curtain, they discuss the next-to-last episode of Loki.SPOILER WARNING: contains spoilers.

Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013), Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love,” and other novels, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. The interview was first aired August 18, 2011 following the publication of “Thoughts Without Cigarettes,” a memoir, and “Beautiful Maria of My Soul,” a sequel to “Mambo Kings.” Among his other novels were “A Simple Habana Melody (when the world was good)” and “Empress of the Splendid Season.” Born in Manhattan to Cuban immigrant parents, Oscar's family spoke only Spanish, but he became fluent in English during a childhood year in a convalescent hospital for nephritis. He studied writing under Donald Barthelme and Susan Sontag, and after a career in advertising, began writing short stories, and then novels. “The Mambo Kings” became a film and later a musical. Oscar Hijuelos died of a heart attack while playing tennis at the age of 62. The post Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013), 2011 appeared first on KPFA.

This week the word is Variants. First they nerds discuss media with various variants of the same character: mirror universe versions, evil twins, clones, multiverse crossovers, etc. Moving on to real life stuff, Keith talks about the visit by his mom during the heat wave, and Andy talks about trying to think of something to do with 7 extra cards on a card sheet. Next they begin their discussions of Donald Barthelme's Forty Stories, starting with the first four. Lastly, they discuss episode 4 of Loki.SPOILER WARNING: contains spoilers.

This week the word is Icebreaker. Starting with icebreakers in general, they then discuss Andy's videogame by that name and the newly released video about Andy that started with a fan's childhood obsession with Icebreaker. Keith talks about relocating his mother, and a new version of Beowulf he just started reading. Next they hatch a plan to read 100 short stories by Donald Barthelme. They also discuss the Kojak Board Game. Their media discussions include Shadow & Bone, Tenet, Quantum Leap, Rick & Morty, The Behavior Group, and, after the spoiler curtain, the first 3 episodes of Loki.SPOILER WARNING: contains spoilers.

A coup le doods discuss The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Balloon by Donald Barthelme, and The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains: A Tale of Travel and Darkness with Pictures of All Kinds by Neil Gaiman.

The puzzling murder of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery sets the scene for this fervent, hard-hitting novel about disillusionment in independent Kenya. A deceptively simple tale, Petals of Blood is on the surface a suspenseful investigation of a spectacular triple murder in upcountry Kenya. Yet as the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold, a devastating picture emerges of a modern third-world nation whose frustrated people feel their leaders have failed them time after time. First published in 1977, this novel was so explosive that its author was imprisoned without charges by the Kenyan government. His incarceration was so shocking that newspapers around the world called attention to the case, and protests were raised by human-rights groups, scholars, and writers, including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Donald Barthelme, Harold Pinter, and Margaret Drabble.First time in Penguin Classics --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/support

Joel takes over the hosting role for a freewheeling conversation with the ERB editors (Chris Smith, John Wilson and Erin Wasinger). We discuss content from the website, upcoming books we are looking forward to, and as always, what we are reading right now. Enjoy!Books and Writings mentioned in this episode:If you'd like to order any of the following books,we encourage you to do so from Hearts and Minds Books(An independent bookstore in Dallastown, PA, run by Byron and Beth Borger)Erin's Review of 'Outside, Inside' and 'Home is in Between'Home is In Between by Mitali PerkinsThe ERB Used Book SaleAlessandro Rovati's Review of In Conversation: Samuel Wells and Stanley HauerwasLectionary Poetry Series through LentAarik Danielsen's Review of "There is a Future"What is God Like by Rachel Held Evans and Matthew Paul TurnerWhen God Made the World by Matthew Paul TurnerA Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson by Winn CollierLiving Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First People's Poetry, ed. by Joy HarjoDonald Barthelme: Collected Stories (Library of America) Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme by Tracy DaughertyThe Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison BarrStamped (For Kids): Racism, Anti-Racism and You by Sonja Cherry-PaulReading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News by Jeffrey BilbroHow to Watch TV News by Neil PostmanAncestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids by Cynthia Leit SmithThe Book of Delights: Essays by Ross GayA Dark and Splendid Mass by Mari EvansContinuum: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition by Mari EvansCongregation in a Secular Age by Andrew RootThe Presence of the Word by Walter J. OngGlossolalia and the Problem of Language by Nicholas HarknessA Secular Age by Charles TaylorThe Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

TLS learns about the birds and the bees, and how they and everything else will eventually die in this short New Yorker story. [Aggregate score: 8] The post Literature: The School by Donald Barthelme appeared first on The Lost Signals.

Tamara Grosso y Guido Cervetti conversan sobre las novedades de marzo 2021 en el catálogo de Big-Sur: Sodio, de Jorge Consiglio (Eterna Cadencia Editora); Primera Luz, de Charles Baxter (Fiordo Editora); La Fantasma, de Nuri Abramowicz (Odelia Editora); El robo es visión, de Bob Nickas (Ripio Editora); Los accidentes geográficos, de Flor Canosa (Obloshka); Monéchka, de Marina Palei (Automática Editora); Las enseñanzas de don B., de Donald Barthelme; Algarabía, de Catalina Reggiani (Concreto Editorial), y nuevas ediciones de La abadesa de Crewe de Muriel Spark y Poco frecuente de Ana Montes.

T.C. Boyle on his selection: It was Donald Barthelme, along with Robert Coover, Samuel Beckett, Julio Cortázar and Flannery O’Conner who spurred me to be in writing myself. Barthelme is best known for his abstract stories, like “Indian Uprising,” a story I cherish, but I’ve chosen “The School” for this program because of its tight comedic narrative and its presentation as a dramatic monologue. It works by escalation, as much of our humor does. The line, “We weren’t even supposed to have a puppy” always brings down the house. Of course, at its core, the story questions what education--knowledge itself--can do to ease the souls of a species, burdened with the foreknowledge of its own death. Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

T.C. Boyle on his selection:  It was Donald Barthelme, along with Robert Coover, Samuel Beckett, Julio Cortázar and Flannery O’Conner who spurred me to be in writing myself. Barthelme is best known for his abstract stories, like “Indian Uprising,” a story I cherish, but I’ve chosen “The School” for this program because of its tight comedic narrative and its presentation as a dramatic monologue. It works by escalation, as much of our humor does. The line, “We weren’t even supposed to have a puppy” always brings down the house. Of course, at its core, the story questions what education--knowledge itself--can do to ease the souls of a species, burdened with the foreknowledge of its own death. Sixty Stories, by Donald Barthelme. Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

[EP 60] In this episode, I read just a little selection from a story by one of my favorite American short story writers! His delightful story-telling and and language are WEIRD and FUNNY, so I hope you will enjoy it! If you do, please follow on Spotify and instagram, and tell your friends! P.S. Is it Barth-el- may, or BART-el-may, or even Barth-Elm? Who knows?? *** [TRANSCRIPTION OF READING]*** My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby's almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog. My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I've had to be the one to tell her that she couldn't have it. But now, the baby wants a dog my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife, They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I asked the baby “Whose girl are you? Whose girl are you? Are you daddy's girl?” The baby says, “Mama.” And she doesn't just say it once, she says it repeatedly: “mama mama mama.” I don't see why I should buy $100 dog for that damn baby. *** Our baby is a pretty fine, baby. I told my wife for many years that she couldn't have a baby because it was too expensive. But they wear you down, you know? They're just wonderful wearing you down, even if it takes years, as it did in this case. Now I hang around the baby and hug her every chance I get. Her name is Joanna. She wears Oshkosh overalls and says, no, bottle, out, and mama. She looks most lovable when she's wet. And when she's just had a bath and her blonde hair is all wet, and she’s wrapped in a beige towel. Sometimes when she's watching television, she forgets that you're there. You can just look at her. When she's watching television, she looks dumb. I like her better when she's wet. *** This dog thing is getting to be a big issue. I said to my wife: “Well, you've got the baby. Do we have to have the damn dog too?” The dog will probably bite somebody or get lost. I can see myself walking all over our subdivision asking people: “Have you seen this brown dog?” “What's his name?” they'll say to me, and I'll stare at them coldly and say, “Michael.” That's what she wants to call it: Michael. That's a silly name for a dog. And I'll have to go looking for this possibly rabid animal and say to people: “Have you seen this brown dog, Michael?” It's enough to make you think about divorce. *** I looked at some dogs at “Pets o’ plenty,” which has birds, rodents, reptiles and dogs, all in top condition. They showed me the Cairn Terriers. The Cairn terriers ran about $295 per, with their papers. I started ask if they had any illegitimate children at lower prices, but I could see that it would be useless. And the woman already didn't like me. I could tell. *** What is wrong with me? Why am I not a more natural person, like my wife wants me to be? I worry that the baby may jam a kitchen knife into the electrical outlet when she's wet. I put those little plastic plugs into all the electrical outlets, but she's learned how to pop them out. I checked the Crayolas. They made Crayolas safe to eat. I called the head office in Pennsylvania. She can eat a whole box of crayons and nothing will happen to her. *** If I don't get the new tires for the car, I can buy the dog. *** This podcast has NO advertising: I do it for you, soI hope you will spread the word. Follow on Spotify and instagram, and tell your friends! Please? Why not leave a review on Apple podcasts too! Thanks!

This week we're reading one of Donald Barthelme's first published stories, "A Shower of Gold" which prompts a discussion of the relationship between postmodern absurdity and contemporary politics. Also: we check out recommended reading lists from Hallmark movie actor and producer Candace Cameron Bure and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. You might be surprised by what at least one of them is reading! If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.

In this episode, we discuss “The School” by Donald Barthelme. Can fiction just be fun? How do voice and rhythm help build humor? How deep into the weeds can we get talking about first and second person?

Sam Simone and Alexander Stene read Game, by Andy Boyd, adapted from the story by Donald Barthelme.

'I said that although hanging Colby was almost certainly against the law, we had a perfect moral right to do so because he was our friend, belonged to us in various important senses, and he had after all gone too far.'  Today I'm reading one of my favorite short stories by Donald Barthelme: Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby.  A book of his short stories, with this one included, can be found on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2G92Z4R    

Em que conversamos sobre James Gray & "Ad Astra", tergiversamos sobre Donald Barthelme e Roger Scruton, visitamos uma videolocadora interiorana, Salompas mia ao fundo e Fabrício chora copiosamente.

The 1947 British film Black Narcissus is many things: an allegory of the end of empire, a chilling ghost story with nary a spook in sight, a psychological romance, and a meditation on the nature of the divine. Its weirdness is as undeniable as it is difficult to locate. On the surface, the story is straightforward: five nuns are tasked with opening a convent in the former seraglio of a dead potentate in the Himalayas. But on a deeper level, there is a lot more going on, as Phil and JF discover in this conversation touching on the presence of the past, the monstrosity of God, the mystery of the singular, and the eroticism of prayer, among other strangenesses. REFERENCES Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburged (dirs.), Black Narcissus (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039192/) Rumer Godden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumer_Godden), author of the original novel Stanley Kubrick, The Shining (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/) Gilles Deleuze, [Difference and Repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DifferenceandRepetition) Tim Ingold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ingold), British anthropologist -- lecture: "One World Anthropology" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEWS89dd9nM) Jonathan Demme (dir.), The Silence of the Lambs (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/) Pierre Bourdieu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu), French sociologist Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-the-modern-cult-of-the-factish-gods) Don Barhelme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme), American short story writer Paul Ricoeur (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/), French philosopher Weird Studies episode 16 (https://www.weirdstudies.com/16): On Dogen Zenji's Genjokoan The King and the Beggar Maid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_the_Beggar-maid) Gillo Pontecorvo, [The Battle of Algiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheBattleofAlgiers)_ “Painting with Light,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuwU_f42dUk) featurette on the Criterion Collection DVD of Black Narcissus

In his short story "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel," contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti contrasts the chaotic monstrosity of dreams with the cold, indifferent, and no less monstrous purity of angels. It is the story of a boy whose vivid dream life is sapping his vital force, and who resorts to esoteric measures to rectify the situation. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the beauty and horror of dreams, the metaphysical signifiance of angels and demons, and the potential dangers of seeking the peace of absolute "purity" in the wondrous flux of lived experience. REFERENCES Thomas Ligotti, "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1iH6EIMAA)" (read by Jon Padgett) Roger Scruton, The Face of God (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-face-of-god-9781847065247/) Thomas Ligotti, [Songs of a Dead Dreamer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SongsofaDeadDreamer) Thomas Ligotti, "The Last Feast of Harlequin" in [Grimscribe: His Lives and Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimscribe:HisLivesandWorks) Robert Aickman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman), English author H. P. Lovecraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft), American author H. R. Giger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger), Swiss artist Jean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud), French comic book artist Donald Barthelme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme), American author Pierre Soulages (https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/Pierre-Soulages), French artist Bruno Schulz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz), Polish author Thomas Bernhard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bernhard), Austrian author Edgar Allan Poe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe), American author J. F. Martel, "The Beautiful Madness: Primacy of Wonder in the Works of Thomas Ligotti" (Forthcoming in James Curcio (ed.), Masks: Bowie and the Artists of Artifice (https://www.intellectbooks.com/masks) from Intellect Books) Algernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo" (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10897/10897-h/10897-h.htm) Thomas Ligotti, "The Dark Beauty of Unheard of Horrors" in The Thomas Ligotti Reader: Essays and Explorations (https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Ligotti-Reader-Darrell-Schweitzer/dp/1592241301) Dogen Zenji (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōgen), Zen master Manichaeism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism) Spencer Brown, [The Laws of Form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawsofForm) Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh: Information In Formation (https://www.amazon.com/Words-Made-Flesh-Information-Formation/dp/0904311112) Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/essays-critical-and-clinical) Thomas Ligotti, "Purity," in Teatro Grottesco (https://www.amazon.com/Teatro-Grottesco-Thomas-Ligotti/dp/0753513749) James Joyce, Ulysses (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm) Advaita Vedanta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta) Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (https://www.amazon.com/Hermetic-Deleuze-Philosophy-Spiritual-Religion/dp/082235229X) Lewis Carroll, [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27sAdventuresinWonderland)_ and [Through the Looking Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThroughtheLooking-Glass) James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld (https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Underworld-James-Hillman/dp/0060906820) P. J. O’Rourke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke), political satirist

In this episode of the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, taped live at the Unbound Book Festival in Columbia, Missouri, George and Paula Saunders talk to hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about writing, politics, class, and the contenders for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election. To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (make sure to include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Guests: ●      George Saunders ●      Paula Saunders Readings for the Episode: ●      10th of Decemberby George Saunders      ●      Lincoln in the Bardoby George Saunders      ●      Pastoralia by George Saunders ●      CivilWarLandin Bad Decline by George Saunders ●      The Distance Homeby Paula Saunders ●      War and Peaceby Leo Tolstoy  ●      “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” by Donald Barthelme ●      The Unpopular Mr. Lincolnby Larry Tagg ●      American Pastoral by Philip Roth ●      "Grief" by Anton Chekhov ●      Beto O'Rourke on Medium ●      Books by Curtis Sittenfeld ●      The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison  ●      Promise Me, Dad by Joe Biden      ●      “E Pluribus Unum?” by Stacey Abrams ●      Bob Hillman, "Carveresque," from the album Some of Us Are Free, Some of Us Are Lost  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'A dirty great poem' by Donald Barthelme read by Alex Frost. 'A dirty great poem' is a prose passage within Donald Barthelme's novel 'Snow White'. It was first published in 1967 by Atheneum Books. A transcript can be found at https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8t7APzmuRVEC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=%22A+dirty+great+poem%22+by+donald+barthelme&source=bl&ots=l59fbG6qZn&sig=ACfU3U3pJUS22eps6q6-EI6uvQJxseuknQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV17TD_MzgAhVhqnEKHZ1fAwoQ6AEwAXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22A%20dirty%20great%20poem%22%20by%20donald%20barthelme&f=false More from Alex Frost can be found at http://www.alexfrost.com

Donald Barthelme’s “The Balloon” (1966) is one of the strangest and most enduring short stories to come out of the second half of the twentieth century. Filled with Barthelme’s gift for observation and detail, his wild imagination, and his playful wit, “The Balloon” represents for many the work of a postmodern master at his postmodern peak. But who was Donald Barthelme? Why were “The Balloon” and his other stories so popular? And are these postmodern stories interesting merely as a reflection of their era, or do they still have meaning for us today? Mike Palindrome joins us for a discussion of Donald Barthelme and "The Balloon."  Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our second episode, we discuss “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme, which is available online here: “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme

Today on the podcast, I read Donald Barthelme's hilariously morbid short story “School” along with “Five Short Stories”, an unconventional collection of short shorts by Lydia Davis. Hopefully these tales and tidbits will delight and amuse you… and stay with you long after you've heard them. Winter is long and cold, dark and dreary, and I believe most of us need a little boost, a shot in the arm, if you will. These quirky works by two incredibly gifted writers definitely and very positively redirected me. Banish the winter blahs...tune in! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Caleb Johnson claims he could score nine points in an NBA Finals game. Other fictions he's spun include his fantastic debut novel, TREEBORNE, which is set in his native Alabama. He and James talk about staying true to the storytelling tradition, writing in dialect, giving characters autonomy, and reading the right book at the right time. Then, Justin Jannise, editor of GULF COAST: A JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND FINE ARTS.     Caleb Johnson: https://www.calebjohnsonauthor.com/  Caleb and James discuss:  Sewanee Writers' Conference  Robbie!  Alabama Booksmith  Jake Reiss  University of Wyoming  Hernando de Soto  Chilton Country, Alabama  University of Alabama  Rick Bragg  THE SELMA-TIMES JOURNAL DIRTY WORK by Larry Brown Barry Hannah  Cormac McCarthy  William Gay Daniel Woodrell  BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES  THE MARS ROOM by Rachel Kushner  Gabriel Garcia Marquez  William Faulkner  Lewis Nordan TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee   TRAIN DREAMS by Denis Johnson    - Justin Jannise of Gulf Coast: https://gulfcoastmag.org Justin and James discuss:  The University of Houston  "The Figure a Poem Makes" by Robert Frost  TREEBORNE by Caleb Johnson  Donald Barthelme  REDIVIDER  "The Bear" by William Faulkner  Phillip Lopate  NOON  - http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK Instagram: tkwithjs / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

Phil stops by JF's Canadian homestead for a raucous IRL conversation on the idea of presence. The range of topics includes objects of power, the magic of books, the mystery of the event, modernity's knack for making myths immanent, genius loci, the mad wonder of Blue Velvet, and the iron fist of the virtual. REFERENCES Gil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Bot Be Televised" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw) Louis CK on smart phones at the ballet recital (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3jbaeseT8) Henri Bergson, [Matter and Memory](http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/matterandmemory.pdf), Creative Evolution (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26163/26163-h/26163-h.htm) Gilles Deleuze (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze) on the virtual: see Bergsonism, Proust and Signs, The Logic of Sense, Difference and Repetition, Cinema II: The TIme Image Expanding Mind with Erik Davis, "Being Anarchist" (http://expandingmind.podbean.com/e/expanding-mind-being-anarchist-051018/) JF Martel, "Reality is Analog" (https://www.metapsychosis.com/reality-is-analog-philosophizing-with-stranger-things-part-one/) Jason A. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo26032843.html) (and Gyrus's review (https://dreamflesh.com/review/book/myth-disenchantment/)) Gyrus, North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos (https://polarcosmology.com/) William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Time-Falling-Bodies-Take-Light/dp/0312160623) Geoffrey O’Brien, Phantom Empire (https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Empire-Movies-Mind-Century/dp/0393312968/) David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head” (http://www.lynchnet.com/lh/lhpremiere.html) Donald Barthelme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme) David Lynch, Blue Velvet (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/) Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Meraphysics (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/cannibal-metaphysics)

In this second installment of the Short Corner, our biweekly series in which we read a short story instead of a novel, we look at Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard," as well as Barthelme's style more generally. At the 38 minute mark, we switch over to the Draft Lottery, which took place this week, and try and figure out who teams will select based on what they need most. Join us next week for our discussion of Claudia Rankine's Citizen and in two weeks when we read Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly, Too."

Does art have any political efficacy? What does it mean to have a "profound experience of art?" Are plots overrated in novels? Can the Spurs win without Kawhi? (Bear with us, we recorded this before Game 6.) These are just some of the questions raised in this installment of the Fan's Notes podcast. We discuss Ben Lerner's terrifically funny novel for the first 53 minutes, then switch over to check in on where some of the second round series stand. Next week we'll be reading Donald Barthelme's short story "Concerning The Bodyguard," and in two weeks we'll chat about Claudia Rankine's Citizen. Join us for those!

We're suffering the Round 2 doldrums, with a bunch of series that (at least at the time of recording) seem pretty uncompetitive. But before we get there (i.e. the 46 minute mark,) we pore over Alice Munro's story "Carried Away," which was originally published in The New Yorker. This is the first of our episodes in which we focus in on a single short story; we'll continue to do this every other week at least throughout the playoffs. Next week we're back with Ben Lerner's novel Leaving The Atocha Station, and the week after that we'll read Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard," which can be found online. Join us!

Hemmed in by what she 'should' be writing, Clare Beams turned a corner by freeing herself to write what would become the title story in her phenomenal collection WE SHOW WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED. James was fortunate enough to edit one of Clare's stories for ONE STORY, and they discuss that experience as well as putting her collection together, how she ignored advice to maintain a consistent level of weird, and exploring the limitlessness of short fiction. Plus Emily Smith, publisher at Lookout Books, describes the unique program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.  -  Clare Beams: http://www.clarebeams.com/ Clare and James discuss:  Columbia University  "The School" by Donald Barthelme  Kelly Link  Aimee Bender  Alice Munro  Hannah Tinti  Annie Hartnett  HAYDEN'S FERRY REVIEW ECOTONE  LOOKOUT BOOKS THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY THE NEW YORKER ONE STORY Beth Staples  Emily Smith  Erin Kottke  BINOCULAR VISION by Edith Pearlman  PEN: Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction  Young Lions Fiction Award  - Lookout Books: http://www.lookout.org/index.html Emily and James discuss: The Sewanee Writers' Conference  Michelle Brower  ECOTONE  National Endowment for the Arts Association of Writing Programs  David Gessner  Jeff Sharlet  The Publishing Laboratory  Stanley Colbert  THE BOTTLE CHAPEL AT AIRLIE GARDENS: A TRIBUTE TO MINNIE EVANS  BACKYARD CAROLINA by Andy Wood  THE HATTARASMAN by Ben Dixon MacNeill BINOCULAR VISION by Edith Pearlman GOD BLESS AMERICA by Steve Almond Beth Staples  Anna Lena Phillips Bell  Melissa Crowe BELOIT POETRY JOURNAL   HONEY FROM THE LION by Matthew Neill Null  South Arts  "Granna" by Clare Beams  "We Show What We Have Learned" by Clare Beams  Ben George  WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS OLD: POEMS by John Rybicki  RIVER BEND CHRONICLE by Ben Miller  MADRAS PRESS  Sumanth Prabhaker  Corinne Manning  THE JAMES FRANCO REVIEW PLOUGHSHARES  REDIVIDER  ONE STORY  INSURRECTIONS by Rion Amilcar Scott  - http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK Instagram: tkwithjs / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

A story that tells me to not take life and death too seriously. You can read the story yourself here.   https://archive.org/download/TheSchool_201706/TheSchool.mp3

"I say, let me be, please God, typical."-Donald Barthelme “How you do anything is how you do everything.” - Richard Rohr "I'm sorry." - Me LINKS: Buy Mary Ruefle's My Private Property here: http://www.wavepoetry.com/products/my-private-property Wave Books is on fire always: http://www.wavepoetry.com Me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robyn_oneil/?hl=en Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Robyn_ONeil?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Donald Barthelme discusses and reads a selection of stories touching on family life, city life, and authentic vs. synthetic experience.

Everyone always talks about the greatest openings in the history of literature – I’m looking at you, Call me Ishmael – but what about endings? Aren’t those just as important? What are the different ways to end short stories and novels? Which endings work well and why? In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at great literary endings, with some assistance from David Lodge, Charles Baxter, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Samuel Beckett, Iris Murdoch, Uncle Wiggily, The Third Man, Donald Barthelme, Alice Munro, Henry James, E.B. White, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley, David Foster Wallace, O. Henry, Ian McEwan, Thomas Mann, and Joseph Conrad.  Show Notes:  We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).  You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a short story a short story? What can a short story do that a novel can’t? Can a story ever be TOO short? The President of the Literature Supporters Club stops by to discuss the length of fiction, with some help from Lydia Davis, Donald Barthelme, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Munro, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Roberto Bolano, Georges Simenon, Alberto Moravia, Augusto Monterroso, Jonathan Franzen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and Franz Kafka. Show Notes:  Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Spy Glass,” “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Postmodernist author Donald Barthelme reads a selection of stories, touching on family life, city life, and authentic vs. synthetic experience.

With many thanks to all who entered, we have our winners! I wish I could have chosen all of you, but the contest winners are "Em" and "David Drury"! Congratulations to them both. I hope you enjoy my readings of these two magnificent entries. And while I did not do either of them justice, I had a goddamn BLAST with these pieces. Em's complex rendition of Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard" was truly mind-blowing. And David's tender understanding of Channing Tatum's inner difficulties was both touching and arousing. The words "chiseled confusion" sum it up nicely. Em has nothing to plug because she remains a mystery. David can be found on twitter @DavDrury (highly recommend following him) & also at @jeffbreakfast. Also, listen to Tennis Pro! You won't regret it!

Etgar Keret joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss Donald Barthelme’s “Chablis,” from a 1983 issue of the magazine.

This week on Summer of Shorts we're talking about Donald Barthelme's "Me and Miss Mandible" and also swim trunks. Tom is headed out on a beach vacation, despite pretty much hating the beach, whereas Mike grew up near the beach and thinks he needs to get over his irrational fears of the ocean. Also, the story is pretty good, and you should check it out, either in the collection Come Back, Dr. Caligari, or in the collected Sixty Stories.

T. C. Boyle reads two short stories by Donald Barthelme: “Game” and “The School.”

Lorin Stein is the guest.  He is the editor of The Paris Review and the co-editor (with Sadie Stein) of a new anthology called Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story, now available from Picador Paperback Originals.  From the Editors' Note: Some chose classics. Some chose stories that were new even to us. Our hope is that this collection will be useful to young writers, and to others interested in literary technique. Most of all, it is intended for readers who are not (or are no longer) in the habit of reading short stories. We hope these object lessons will remind them how varied the form can be, how vital it remains, and how much pleasure it can give. And Publishers Weekly says: A selection of fiction culled from the influential journal’s archive with a twist: writers often featured in the journal’s pages—Lorrie Moore, David Means, Ann Beattie, Wells Tower, Ali Smith, among others— offer brief critical analyses of their selections, elevating this book from a greatest hits anthology to a kind of mini-M.F.A. Sam Lipsyte’s take on Mary Robison’s “Likely Lake” is as much a demonstration of the economy of powerful writing as the story itself and Ben Marcus’s tribute to Donald Barthelme’s “magician... language” in “Several Garlic Tales” illustrates how learning can occur when one writer inhabits another writer’s mind to geek out over what they both love. Monologue topics:  certainty, uncertainty, strong thinkers, certainty about uncertainty, uncertainty about certainty, the articulation of confusion, a posture of cosmic ambivalence. Please remember to subscribe to the show over at iTunes, or at Stitcher. It's free. Or just push PLAY below. Like the podcast? Please take a moment to rate and review it on iTunes. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salman Rushdie reads Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "Concerning the Bodyguard" was published in the October 16, 1978, issue of The New Yorker, and was collected in "Forty Stories." Salman Rushdie's most recent book is "Luka and the Fire of Life."

I yanked tonight's story from The Best of American Short Stories 1980, a volume edited by the great Stanley Elkin. If you take one look at it, you'll see that 1980, while not considered a boon year for American fiction, perhaps should be. Donald Barthelme, Mavis Gallant, William H. Gass, Elizabeth Hardwick Grace Paley, Peter Taylor, and I'm thinking...

I yanked tonight's story from The Best of American Short Stories 1980, a volume edited by the great Stanley Elkin. If you take one look at it, you'll see that 1980, while not considered a boon year for American fiction, perhaps should be. Donald Barthelme, Mavis Gallant, William H. Gass, Elizabeth Hardwick Grace Paley, Peter Taylor, and I'm thinking...

If you've been listening for a while, you may know that I have an unfortunate habit of whining, incessantly and irrepressibly, in those months when the cold has rendered my extremities indistinguishable from assorted varieties of freezer section meats. It's a problem I've known about, it's one that those around me suffer in kind on behalf of all of you, and it's one that I'd love to kick, if only I inject some lock de-icer into these knees. Maybe anti-freeze would work?

If you've been listening for a while, you may know that I have an unfortunate habit of whining, incessantly and irrepressibly, in those months when the cold has rendered my extremities indistinguishable from assorted varieties of freezer section meats. It's a problem I've known about, it's one that those around me suffer in kind on behalf of all of you, and it's one that I'd love to kick, if only I inject some lock de-icer into these knees. Maybe anti-freeze would work?

A New York native, Michael Silverblatt graduated from the State University of New York in Buffalo and later took advanced courses at Johns Hopkins. He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, and in 1989 created the literary talk show “Bookworm” for KCRW-FM. The show continues to air today.Norman Mailer has called Michael Silverblatt “the best reader in America.” Susan Sontag called him “a national treasure.” Joyce Carol Oates once called him the “reader writers dream about,” and his podcasts are so popular that New York’s independent bookstores describe a “Silverblatt ripple effect” on book sales.As a student, he came under the influence of such cutting-edge author-teachers as Donald Barthelme and John Barth; as a radio talk-show host, he learned to appreciate a much wider range of writing—making him, he hopes, “a person of ferocious compassion instead of ferocious intellect.”Silverblatt gave a talk on October 26, 2010, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

Chris Adrian reads Donald Barthelme's "The Indian Uprising."

Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife, which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother, Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving some of America's most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century." We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother's death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.  

Donald Antrim reads Donald Barthelme's 1974 short story "I Bought a Little City" and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.

How We Are Hungry: Stories (McSweeney-s) Dave Eggers begins by describing his book as an object (it-s designed to look like a Moleskine Journal). From there, we jump to the idea of stories as entries, improvs, breaking the rules as they go. Then, of course, we go on to influences Monty Python, Donald Barthelme, and, and, and...