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Did you ever watch Frosty, the Grinch or Heat Miser and think "I'd do him"? Well, then Netflix—and the Kevin and Ces Annual Holiday Movie Quadruple Feature Podcast—bring you the perfect tepid mug of cocoa with this year's streaming smash, "Hot Frosty." Yes, when a young widow places a used scarf on a six-pack snowman, the sexy Faulknerian man-child of her dreams comes to life. Throw in seasonal shenanigans, holiday hi-jinks, part of the cast of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," and inadvertent simulated sex with—not in—a car, and you have the makings of a Christmas classic your family can listen to Kevin and Ces talk about year after year (but mostly this one). Here's hoping you all find your own Frosty this season. Enjoy!
What happens when a novelist reads, writes like his subject, and puts that subject in a novel?
Conversation with Christopher Kempf, author of What Though the Field Be Lost (LSU Press, 2021).
A talk with Kai Bird about his Shakespearean/Faulknerian biography of Jimmy Carter
Roy Scranton reading from his novel, I Heart Oklahoma, published by Soho. Suzie's seen it all, but now she's looking for something she lost: a sense of the future. So when the chance comes to work with a maverick video artist on his road movie about Donald Trump's America, she's pretty sure it's a bad idea but she signs up anyway, hoping for an outside shot at starting over. A provocative, genderqueer, shapeshifting musical romp through the brain-eating nightmare of contemporary America, I Heart Oklahoma! is a book about art, guns, cars, American landscapes, and American history. This kaleidoscopic novel moves from our bleeding-edge present to a furious Faulknerian retelling of the Charlie Starkweather killings in the 1950s, capturing in its fragmented, mesmerizing form the violence at the heart of the American dream. Roy Scranton is the author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (published by City Lights Books), and co-editor of Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. He grew up in Oregon, dropped out of college, and spent several years wandering the American West. In 2002, he enlisted in the US Army. He served from 2002 to 2006, including a fourteen-month deployment to Iraq. After leaving the Army he earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree at the New School for Social Research, then completed his PhD in English at Princeton.
On this podcast extra, we talk with Gina Caison, assistant professor of English at Georgia State University, about the famous podcast, S-Town, from the producers of Serial and This American Life. We discuss the tropes of southern literature present in S-Town, the relative shitty-ness of Woodstock, Alabama, and the complexity of characters in the show. Is S-Town just a recycled Faulknerian tragedy, or something deeper and more revealing?
The books of Samuel and Kings are the Bible's Groom Tragedies. In this episode, the Rev. Doug Estella presents a story of Faulknerian proportions.
Part two of my interview with my old runnin' partner, John T. Edge, delves into the genesis and development of his new book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of The Modern South. I thought I'd just give you a taste of what John T. has to say regarding misconceptions about Southern culture and the importance of the region's food; a few auditory breadcrumbs, if you will. "To speak of Southern culture, for the longest time people heard 'white Southern culture' when they heard that, or they heard 'Confederate-grounded Southern culture.' And the reality is that the South is as black as it is white. And, if anything, the imprint of black peoples on the region, and on its food and on its music, is actually primary, not secondary. And once you embrace that, a world of tolerance opens, a world of inclusivity opens, but we need to get there." "I mean food offered me a way to think through my belief in this place, my anger in this place, this place being the South. That's always been the issue for me, and for many Southerners. It's Faulknerian in its roots; like, you love this place, you loathe this place, how do you resolve?" "For the longest time people have tended to frame the South as a bunker of tradition. This place that was a stronghold against encroachment of new things, new peoples, new ideas. And that's just not true. It never has been true, and it's certainly not true today. So to apprehend Southern cuisine today is to travel to Houston, which I think of as kind of the twenty-first-century creole city of the South. If New Orleans was the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' creole city–small 'c' creole city of the South–Houston is the twenty-first-century creole city of the South. And to sit down at a place like Crawfish & Noodles or various other restaurants in Houston where they're Vietnamese-owned and they're doing Cajun-style crawfish." I hope these morsels entice you to take a listen, because you'll discover even tastier stuff. You'll be glad you did. I promise.
While at this year's Small Press Expo, Derek had the opportunity to talk with the great Bill Griffith, whose new book from Fantagraphics, Invisible Ink: My Mother's Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist, debuted at the event and will soon be available in stores everywhere. As the subtitle suggests, this is a different kind of book for Griffith, a radical departure from his syndicated Zippy strip. Not only is it a deeply personal and moving memoir, but it's his first long-form work in comics. It is a narrative of his mother's sixteen-year love affair with a prolific and recognizable cartoonist of the of the 1950s and 1960s. But even more than that, it's Bill's own story about the discover of his mother's hidden secret -- he learned about the affair in 1972, right after the death of his father -- and his ongoing attempts to undercover the details and understand the dynamics of a family life now long behind him. Indeed, Invisible Ink can be read as a detective narrative, with its autobiographic protagonist visiting aged relatives, investigating long-forgotten documents, and putting together the pieces of his parents' lives that may never render a complete picture. Perhaps most notable, Invisible Ink is a book about family and memory. Time itself stands as a central focus of the text, with Griffith juxtaposing past and present events in a very fluid and psychologically revealing manner. Dreams and fantasies become tangible. Reminiscences define current reality. In all, it is a narrative that is Faulknerian in scope. In his interview with Derek, Griffith discusses the circumstances surrounding Invisible Ink and the history of its gestation. But the conversation doesn't end with the new book. The two also discuss Bill's time in underground comix, his world-famous Zippy the Pinhead, the unlikely backstory of Zippy's syndication with King Features, and the eventual winding down of the strip's current Dingburg run (which began in 2007). Equal parts history, insights, and laughter, Derek's interview with Bill Griffith was perhaps the highlight of his time at SPX 2015. Yow!
sccccreeeeeeeeee Ka-buh-BLOOOOM!!!! Jaywalking is Back! Don't call it a come back though! Oo go ahead and call it that, it's fine either way, as long as you listen to part one of this epic two part return to form, wherein Jason and Walker discuss many things which are now past. Plans for summer trips, failed improv characters (wherein Jason fails to yes-and or no-but Walker's fiction but rather no-and-here's-why-not's it), and an amazing story of the Faulknerian reality of Grassy Valley some how escaping it's confines and inflicting itself on parts of the real universe! http://www.numberguru.com/530-205-9
Movie Meltdown - Episode 139 This week we go “off -the-rails” with ridiculous discussions that may or may not have anything to do with this week’s Sofa Theater feature: The Thing with Two Heads! Plus we wrap up with a truly heroic Marlena moment! And while we discuss the Faulknerian exercise of having two heads, we also mention…loving cake balls, Harold and Maude, Final Destination 5, Johnny Suede, Columbo or Mannix? Kill Bill Part 1, Scream, old-time strong man, Bunny and the Bull, Jason Bateman and Ryan Renolds, W. Earl Brown, Mel Brooks, missing fairy tales, deep-fried Derby Pie, MST3K-ing your own movie, THE Siamese twins, the cop from the Village People, Tangled, a two-headed gorilla, what do mashed potatoes not go with?, Sam Rockwell, Archie Bunker, bending stuff, Joey Lawrence, Hobo with a Shotgun, a Yoda backpack, curry burrito, Cillian Murphy, hatin’ on Monk, there are rules at a tractor pull!, pistachios and bananas, Black Dynamite, why not finish out the basement?, a sideshow, Young Frankenstein, The Electric Grandmother, necksploitation, Rest Stop, Peacock, Bea Arthur, where is Lolita now?, the Wes Anderson American Express commercial, Robby looked good, being obsessed with Beauty and the Beast, being proud of Jaime Pressly, old west douche bags, singing with The Golden Girls, you black bastard, an Amish jack, a really boring, long episode of Dukes of Hazard, too much information equals a lie, a clever circus dupe, my trans-gendered neighbor, being pre-goth, the mulatto character is the loneliest character, things in jars, everybody loved Robby, Light in August, the least impressive car chase - ever, a Halloween promo-based thing, Garrett Morris is awesome!, Honey…I’m trapped under the shed again, a new sophisticated blacksploitation and the kid from “Hair” with nipple rings. Spoiler Alert: I guess we kind of spoil “The Thing with Two Heads“…but then, the makers of the movie kind of spoiled it when they made it. “Which one was he?? The one with the two heads?”
A Way with Words — language, linguistics, and callers from all over
SUMMARYShadowdabbled. Moon-blanched. Augusttremulous. William Faulkner often used odd adjectives like these. But why? Grant and Martha discuss the poetic effects of compressed language. Also, African-American proverbs, classic children's books, pore vs. pour, and the double meaning of the word sanction.FULL DETAILSAmid the stacks of new titles at the library, Grant picks out The Wind in the Willows to read with his son. The hosts discuss the appeal of classic children's books. A bi-coastal listener wonders about the terms West Coast and Eastern Seaboard. Why don't we say Californians live on the Western Seaboard?Does an avid reader pore or pour over a book?There is always a person greater or lesser than yourself. Grant shares this and other African-American proverbs.Quiz Guy John Chaneski borrows a classic game from Joseph Shipley called Twin Ends. The expression that smarts, meaning "that hurts," dates back over a thousand years. Does sanction mean "a penalty" or "an approval"? Well, both. Martha explains the nature of contranyms, also known as Janus words. Here's an article about them in the periodical Verbatim.www.verbatimmag.com/27_2.pdfListeners share their suggestions for the game What Would You Serve? Hosting a golfer for dinner? Tea and greens should be lovely!William Faulkner used adjectives like shadowdabbled, Augusttremulous, and others that can only be described as, well, Faulknerian. Grant and Martha trade theories about why the great writer chose them. The University of Virginia has an online audio archive of Faulkner's during his tenure as that school's Writer-in-Residence.http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/Here's a 1956 interview with Faulkner about the art of writing. It ran in The Paris Review.http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulknerIn a previous episode, we wondered how U-turn might translate in different languages. One listener explains that in Hebrew, drivers make a horseshoe or a hoof-turn.The Century Dictionary contains a list of amended spellings from the late 1800s that only creates more of the confusion it set out to alleviate. Which is correct: We appreciate your asking or We appreciate you're asking? A new transplant to Dallas wants to assimilate into the Texan way of speaking without offending the locals or forcing any new vocabulary.Ever hear a broadcast where the announcer enunciates a little too precisely? Grant and Martha discuss the effect of softening syllables, such as "prolly" for "probably," and "wanna" for "want to."--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.