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It's another What Are We Reading episode! Books this time: Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushie; Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon; Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut; Ultramega, by James Harren; Batman: The Adventures Continue, by Alan Burnett and Paul Dini; Squadron Supreme, by Mark Gruenwald.
Is Thomas Pynchon's classic actually worth reading? Josh tries to demystify the opus and come down with an official verdict. In the process he nerds out and ranks all the Pynchon books.
What suits a long, meandering chapter of Atlas Shrugged better than a long, meandering podcast episode? As the book's off-putting nonsense starts to become really repetitive, Henrik and Sigfred become desperate to talk about anything else. Sadly, this episode of Fraggle Rock (“The Lost Treasure of the Fraggles”) doesn't have all that much going on either. Throw some French cider and some bad wine into the mix, and the conversation is bound to get off track. Along the way, they dip into the obviously related topics of Star Trek, the music of Carly Rae Jepsen and the bizarre novel Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Cook up some peach pie with garlic and strap in – this time we're going all over the place.
The Rise Of Superman (Book Review) Entering a flow state is been a topic of real interest to me lately. I've been reading a lot about flow state lately and this book basically started it all. Here is the book description, extracted from Amazon: "A razor-sharp analysis of how record-breaking exploits in extreme sport are redefining the limits of being human. Right now, more people are risking their lives for their sports then ever before in history. As Thomas Pynchon once put it in Gravity's Rainbow, 'it is not often that Death is told so clearly to f@%* off'. Over the past three decades, the bounds of the possible in action and adventure sports - from sky-diving to motocross to surfing and beyond - have been pushed farther and faster. A generation's worth of iconoclastic misfits have rewritten the rules of the feasible; not just raising the bar, but obliterating it altogether. Along the way, they have become a force pushing evolution relentlessly onward. In a thrilling narrative that draws on biology, psychology, and philosophy, Steven Kotler asks why, at the tail end of the 20th century and the early portion of the 21st, are we seeing such a multi-sport assault on reality? Did we somehow slip through a wormhole to another universe where gravity is optional and common sense obsolete? And where - if anywhere - do our actual limits lie?" The Rise Of Superman Book: https://simpleprogrammer.com/yt/theriseofsuperman
This week we discuss the work of Darius's favourite author, Thomas Pynchon. Darius has read Pynchon's entire output multiple times; Emma has read one and a bit of his books, and seen an excellent film adaptation, but has an alarming number of opinions anyway. We talk about the roles of paranoia and intertextuality in Pynchon's work, his life and creative output, and whether it's really fair for The Crying of Lot 49 to end the way it does. Emma cries laughing at the name of a character in Gravity's Rainbow, and Darius talks about the compassion, beauty and social justice underlying Pynchon's prose. Content warnings: fairly dark and extremely irreverent (but not detailed) discussion of suicide, and a brief mention of Naziism, both in relation to Pynchon's characters. This will be the last episode of the first season of Too Much Not Enough, because life happens (and sometimes it happens all at once), but we'll be back in December with a regular weekly schedule again. -- Too Much Not Enough This is a podcast about the obsessions of two very intense people. toomuchnotenough.site Emma: emmawinston.me @deer_ful Darius: tinysubversions.com @tinysubversions
What can be said about Thomas Pynchon's postmodern classic Gravity's Rainbow? Well, it's nearly a thousand pages long so what CAN'T be said, am I right??Join us for a slightly longer than normal conversation about sexual antics, post-war war machines, and the difficulty of Difficult Books About Difficult Men.
What can be said about Thomas Pynchon's postmodern classic Gravity's Rainbow? Well, it's nearly a thousand pages long so what CAN'T be said, am I right??Join us for a slightly longer than normal conversation about sexual antics, post-war war machines, and the difficulty of Difficult Books About Difficult Men.
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, pt. 3 –– MJ in the Iraqi Parliament, insh'allah –– for a minute there, even Joan Didion was sufficiently paranoid –– Slothrop as a one-man history of American contributions to Nazism –– looms, computers, cellphones, submarines –– the Nazis own your food now, by the way –– GR as spatiotemporal colloid suspension –– Walter Benjamin, who saw everything first and died of it
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, continued: precursors –– John Quincy Adams, the only president worth admiring as a human being –– America has always been, will always be, and must remain schizoid, and lemme tell you why, young gun –– Herman Melville, the first great American writer, possibly the first American (post-genocide class) –– Gravity's Rainbow as the antidote to V. –– Gravity's Rainbow, mutant novel of sentimental education
DEATH/CORNER is back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl). Now who the fuck in this club is ready for 66 minutes of an attempt at an approach to an effort to find a language in which to begin to talk about GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, part one of a series that may genuinely last until I die?
42 Minutes 297: Winter Book Club - The Crying Of Lot 49 - 01.20.2018 Tonight the 42 Minutes Seasonal Book Club regulars uncover, Thomas Pynchon's classic post-modern satire, which tells the wonderfully unusual story of Oedipa Maas, first published in 1965. Topics Include: High Brow, Prose, Gravity's Rainbow, Identity, Postal Service, David Foster Wallace, Sync, Conspiracy, Inherent Vice, Code, Time, Tragedy, Bones, Meaning, California, MK Ultra, 1960s Conspiracy, Alternate Mail System, Bleeding Edge, The Information, PKD, 1904, Crowley, Horus, Revelation, The Matrix, Farina, Mason, Beatles, Jesus, Miracle.
We try to unpack what little is known about this author, while providing a "succinct" description of the book. Along the way we discuss the publishing industry, book awards, obscenity, themes and the mythical reputation this tome has garnered over the years. Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store: Gravity's Rainbow Inherent Vice The Crying of Lot 49 V. American Flagg Divided States of Hysteria Casanova Satellite Sam Moby-Dick The Illuminatus! Trilogy The Kills Field Notes Additional Resources: George Plimpton on Thomas Pynchon's V. V. Squared Pynchon from A to V Duncan, J. (2013). Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Salem Press Encyclopedia Of Literature. Muste, J. M., & Weisenburger, S. C. (2014). Thomas Pynchon. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia. Herman, L., & Weisenburger, S. (2013). Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon Pulitzer.org Pulitzer People are no Prize Thomas Pynchon's letter to Bruce Allen L. McLaughlin, R., (2002). Unreadable Stares: Imperial Narratives and the Colonial Gaze in Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon Notes. (50-51), pp.83–96. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/pn.72 Thomas Pynchon shows us how white writers can avoid appropriation Pynchon’s Gravity's Rainbow: The V-2 Rocket Cartel as Multinational Corporate Conspiracy Rocket Power
Mariella Frostrup talks to celebrated American novelist Celeste Ng, whose new book Little Fires Everywhere explores what happens when a calm and ordinary suburb is disrupted by the arrival of a new residents - a teenage girl and her artistic mother. Ian Rankin shares his passion for Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow and we hear from the Sharjah Book Fair which has just closed its doors in the UEA. While the Icelandic crime writer novelist Lilja Sigurdardottir explains why the financial crash of 2008 inspired many authors to explore the society's underbelly.
Troubadours and Raconteurs, Happy October to you. We have for your listening pleasure Episode 239 of "Troubadours and Raconteurs with E.W. Conundrum Demure" crafted In North Eastern Pennsylvania... Heard All Over The World. This week's featured guest is long time contributor, artist, community activist, playwright Kitty Bell Burbank. Kitty Belle and I discuss Societal Shifts, Vietnam, Loss of Innocence, Freedom, Blind Patriotism, Black Lives Matter, Flaws of U.S. Media, "Fake" News, People Who Aren't As Important, Savage, Environmental Refugees, Her New Dystopian Play, How Art Helps with Anxiety... This week's sixty minutes includes an EW Essay titled "Nirvana." We share an excerpt from Thomas Pynchon's masterpiece novel "Gravity's Rainbow." We have a poem called "Fringe." Our music this week is provided by these wonderful artists: Django Reinhardt, Stephan Grapelli, the Del Vikings. Built to Spill, Beth Orton, the Band, Charles Bradley, Branford Marsalis, and Terrence Blanchard. Commercial Free, Community Radio at its Finest. Share this episode with whomever you choose. Tell your Friends and Neighbors... Become a friend via facebook - Freespeakandsome Withewconundrum. Follow us on Twitter @FreespeakWit.
Rad control to Major Tom... This week we sit down with comedian/Animorphs expert Brent Schmidt to talk about Sekret Machines, the new multimedia project by Blink-182's Tom Delonge. Brent read the books Chasing Shadows and Gods, both first parts in two separate trilogies of books in the series. Brent first walks us through Chasing Shadows, the 700+ page novel, and it is a sci-fi epic of the highest caliber. Kyle, who was never a Blink fan, is blown away simply by the sheer scope of the project. There are a few spoilers along the way, but we'd be hardpressed to think that after everything you hear you won't be at least a little curious to give it a read. After breaking down the novel, the gang is just getting started. They move over to talk about Gods, the non-fiction sister book to Chasing Shadows, and this where things get weird, folks. Kyle and Brent take Natalie and Burnside on a journey around the stars and into the deepest recesses of the human mind. Thrill at the idea of theories beyond the comprehension of modern science! Marvel at the weird places where magic and science merge! Kick back, get groovy and enjoy one of the weirdest, wildest and most lively chats we've ever had on This Is Rad! Come in with an open mind. We are not presenting hard fast facts, but we do break open some very interesting ideas that lead to some fun conversations. Plus, we get into a couple sweet riffs about lip piercings. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on, radsters! Weekly Rads: Not E3, Emmylou Harris, One Punch Man, Moreton Bay Fig Tree, Fetch Quest & Doctor DC, and our special guest John Ungaro! Raddendums: Coast to Coast; Chasing Shadows; Gods, Man, and War; Operation Paperclip; Gravity's Rainbow, Sightings, Anton Levay, Babylon 5, Jacques Vallée, Last Podcast on the Left, The Edgewood Arsenal, Necronomicon, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica
42 Minutes 249: Fall Book Club - The Recognitions - 11.18.2016 For the fourth installment of our seasonal book club, the program recognizes William Gaddis's first novel from 1955, The Recognitions, a masterwork about art and forgery, and the increasingly thin line between the counterfeit and the fake. Gaddis anticipates by almost half a century the crisis of reality that we currently face, where the real and the virtual are combining in alarming ways, and the sources of legitimacy and power are often obscure to us. Topics Include: Sensitive Boy, Postwar Fiction, Gravity's Rainbow, Catch 22, Forgery, Infinite Jest, Voice, Encyclopedic Novel, Jet Set, Realism, Arrival, Crypto-Kubrology, Imagination, Man In The High Castle, Art World, Painting, Sun Worship, Golden Bough, Westworld, Player Piano, Fake, Postmodern Noise. http://amzn.to/2glK2k3
This week Kyle, Matthew and Producer Natalie sit down with writer/director Terry Miles (from the TANIS and Black Tapes podcasts) to talk about his love of science fiction. Terry talks about getting introduced to the genre through Dune, and from there the gang is off to the races, sharing their favorite sci-fi properties across books, movies and TV. Other topics include whether any of them will ever finish Gravity's Rainbow, a rousing chat about The Planet of the Apes (the movie franchise, not the planet) and Burnside's defense of Bubble Boy. Weekly Rads: Burnside finally saw Radiohead!, Bad Santa 2 trailer, Rocksmith Raddendums: Dune, The Characters on Netflix, Battlestar Galactica, Robert A. Heinlein, Michael Moorcock, Neil Stephenson & Snowcrash, Ready Player One, Isaac Asimov, Cormac McCarthy, Our Lady Peace, Kurt Vonnegut & Slaughterhouse, Thomas Pynchon & Slow Learner & Gravity's Rainbow, Alien & Aliens, Spaceballs, Terminator, Soylent Green, Children of Men, Planet of the Apes, Black Hole, Black Science, Tarkovsky & Solaris, Ex Machina, The Coma by Alex Garland, James Cameron & The Abyss, Event Horizon, The Thing, It's Alive, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Alf, Permanent Midnight, Minority Report, Every Frame a Painting web series, Under the Skin, "When Life Was Good," Grant Morrison & Doom Patrol, Bioshock, No Man's Sky, Westworld, Jurassic Park, Gattaca, The Island, Moon, Code 46, A Boy and His Dog, Death Comes to Frogtown, 12 Monkeys or La Jetée, Donnie Darko, Bubble Boy
Rads...in...spaaaaace! This week Kyle, Matthew and Producer Natalie sit down with Atlanta comedian Dan Immke to explore the wild frontiers of modern space travel. They discuss the past, present and future of hurtling through space as well as life on Mars and the possibility of living on a Mars colony. Also, turns out space really freaks out Natalie. Will she be won over by the radness of space? Or will they all just watch Psych reruns instead? Weekly Rads: Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, 10 Thermidor by Shinobu Raddendums: Wild Wild West, USA Network, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Google Cardboard, Apollo 13, Project Paperclip, Gravity's Rainbow, terraforming, United Launch Alliance, New Space, Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Aerion Space, asteroid mining, the singularity
In February, Laurence Rickels stopped by Austin, Texas. Dr. Rickels, who is the Sigmund Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School as well as Professor of Art and Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany, was in town as part of the tour for his latest book: Germany: A Science Fiction. During his visit, he also swung by UT-Austin's Digital Writing and Research Lab and was generous enough to sit down for the following interview.In his new book, Rickels focuses on psychopathy as, quote, "the undeclared diagnosis implied in flunking the empathy test." He does so via an exploration of Germany's role in Cold War-era science fiction: from the Thomas Pynchon novel Gravity's Rainbow to B movies like 1962's The Day of the Triffids to the science fiction of Philip K. Dick. In addition to Germany, Dr. Rickels has written numerous works tracing connections between psychoanalysis, popular culture, critical theory, science fiction, and mourning. His books include The Case of California, The Vampire Lectures, a three-volume series entitled Nazi Psychoanalysis, and Spectre, in which Rickels turns his attention to Ian Fleming's James Bond. He's also the author of a recent article entitled "The Race to Fill in the Blanks: On (Animal) Testing in Science Fiction," which appeared in the 2014 issue of Philosophy & Rhetoric touched on in this podcast's premiere episode.In our conversation, I ask Dr. Rickels about his use of the term "psy-fi," the impetus behind his new book, the relationship between his work and that of the late media theorist Friedrich Kittler, as well as the puns and juxtapositions that punctuate his pages. This and all other Rhetoricity episodes are also available on iTunes and Stitcher.
You ever dream that PT Anderson made a movie based on a Thomas Pynchon novel? Me too Doc, me too. It's Inherent Vice. A story about private eyes, southern California, the 60's, the 70's, the difference, corruption, idealism, and drugs, a fair amount of drugs, and Can. We ramble for about an hour and then at the end talk about our friend Jason Chin who passed away. Thanks for listening. Our next show will be Boogie Nights. An Hour with Your Ex is a Chicago based podcast hosted by comedian Mel Evans and buffoon Mark Colomb. Paul Thomas Anderson or PT Anderson wrote and directed Inherent Vice. Thomas Pynchon published the book the movie is based on in 2009. This last bit is for SEO. Please listen to our friend's podcasts - Blurry Photos, Remake This, Bartoons, Panels on Channels, and Improvised Star Trek. Someday we should all read Gravity's Rainbow.