Podcast appearances and mentions of Henry James

Victorian Opera brings Benjamin Britten's haunting chamber opera The Turn of the Screw to the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, with Kanen Breen performing the role of Peter Quint. Running from 29 September to 1 October, the production deepens the eerie tension of Henry James's novella through Stuart Maunder's direction and Roger Kirk's atmospheric design. Audiences can expect a taut, unsettling experience shaped by Britten's score and a cast led by Rachelle Durkin and Breen. https://tix.com.au/opera/the-turn-of-the-screw https://www.orchestravictoria.com.au/performances/the-turn-of-the-screw-victorian-opera The post Kanen Breen – September 27th, 2026 appeared first on Sunday Arts Magazine.

O que o isolamento, duas crianças e a dúvida entre a sanidade e a loucura podem fazer com uma governanta no século XIX? É isso que Andreia D’Oliveira e Gabi Idealli tentam descobrir neste episódio sobre a novela “A outra volta do parafuso” de Henry James e de sua adaptação “Os Inocentes”, dirigida por Jack Clayton em 1961. Então, junte-se a nós para descobrir que a repressão pode tornar a mente humana um dos lugares mais perigosos do mundo.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All the Episodes of the Heidelcast Subscribe to the Heidelcast! Browse the Heidelshop! On X @Heidelcast On Insta & Facebook @Heidelcast Subscribe in Apple Podcast Subscribe directly via RSS Call The Heidelphone via Voice Memo On Your Phone The Heidelcast is available wherever podcasts are found including Spotify. Call or text the Heidelphone anytime at (760) 618-1563. Leave a message or email us a voice memo from your phone and we may use it in a future podcast. Record it and email it to heidelcast@heidelblog.net. If you benefit from the Heidelcast please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts so that others can find it. Please do not forget to make the coffer clink (see the donate button below). SHOW NOTES How To Subscribe To Heidelmedia The Heidelblog Resource Page Heidelmedia Resources The Ecumenical Creeds The Reformed Confessions The Heidelberg Catechism The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical, Theological, and Pastoral Commentary (Lexham Academic) Recovering the Reformed Confession (P&R Publishing, 2008) Why I Am A Christian What Must A Christian Believe? Heidelblog Contributors Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to: Heidelberg Reformation Association 1637 E. Valley Parkway #391 Escondido CA 92027 USA The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization  

For our September 2026 Special Subject we read Susan Sontag's essay "Bergman's Persona" and applied its ideas to Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, mentioned in the essay, and Robert Altman's 3 Women, which owes a great deal to Persona. Following Sontag, we ask what it would mean to try to approach a narrative film without needing to know "what happens in the story" and what other modes of response are available for films that resist plot synopsis. And for those who are still trying to figure out the occult connection of Henry James to our podcast, there's lots of Sacred Fount talk (started by Sontag). But just like us with these movie plots, you will probably be no wiser.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 20s:    Sontag on narrative complexity/opacity 0h 07m 21s:    LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) [dir. Alain Resnais] 0h 33m 18s:    3 WOMEN (1977) [dir. Robert Altman] 1h 06m 25s:      So This is Sarris (Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema) – John Cromwell   Susan Sontag's essay "Bergman's Persona: An Essay on Tragedy," published in Styles of Radical Will (1969) +++ Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

"Sense of the Past" by Henry James explores the intricate relationship between memory, identity, and the passage of time. This novella delves into the complexities of how our past shapes our present, a theme that remains profoundly relevant today as individuals navigate their own histories in an ever-changing world. James's exploration of the psychological dimensions of nostalgia and the impact of personal history invites listeners to reflect on their own experiences and connections to the past. With its rich prose and insightful observations, this work underscores the timeless struggle to reconcile who we are with where we come from, making it a compelling listen for anyone interested in the enduring nature of human experience.

Philip Hensher and I discussed the history of the novel in Britain from Defoe to Hollinghurst. Philip is remarkably well-read and happy to share his real opinions. He can go from Swift to Fitzgerald on the turn of a pin, isn't shy about holding his ground, and has some very firm views. People who read novels are protected against becoming violent. Ideas are not important in most novels. Walter Scott isn't very good. Arnold Bennett is a top 20 novelist. Rachel Cusk has the best chance of being read in 100 years. That sort of thing. Here's one exchange where we disagreed about what a novel is.HENSHER: Oh, Henry, Henry, how can you kill a book like that? How can you—OLIVER: Look, you can't have Jane Austen without the Enlightenment, and you can't have George Eliot without the secularization of Jesus, and you can't have Tolstoy without all the slightly incredible things that he believed.HENSHER: No, let's not talk about Tolstoy.OLIVER: No, but the list goes on, right? Henry James even, who is often called a man of no ideas, he's an incredibly good liberal. He might be the best novelist about the liberal idea that one person should not be allowed to dominate over another, in private conditions rather than just government. These ideas are, in a way, they're the thing that distinguish those writers. Jane Austen knows how to observe and how to present because she's thinking about what it means underneath.HENSHER: I don't know. I don't know about that.OLIVER: I don't even think you can have Middlemarch without John Stuart Mill's political economy, in a way.HENSHER: Yes, that's probably true. But George Eliot's an unusual sort of novelist.Jane Austen, I mean, how do we know what did she—what did Jane Austen think about slavery in the boldest and most extreme form? I think we can deduce that she thought that people involved in the slave trade or who came near it, like Mrs. Elton, were not at all the sort of people that she would altogether like to hang out with. I think the same is true of Sir Thomas Bertram, and the weakness of his imagination is somehow tied in with the fact that he has a plantation where he doesn't really think about the people that it affects.But already we're into speculation. I don't know what we can really deduce about Jane Austen's idea, because she's such a polyphonic novelist that we don't find an idea being put forward without being able to find a character who's saying the exact opposite. And sometimes one side of the argument is eventually dismissed, but not always, I think.I said this at the conference we had a discussion with. I think that when you boil a novel down to its absolute irreducible essentials, I think what you have is not a proposal or a view of society or anything like that. It's Charles Pooter painting his bath red, or the moment in Ivy Compton-Burnett's Mother and Son when the son irrevocably falls out with his mother by telling her that he doesn't want to have sugar in his tea anymore.From the very beginning, novelists have said, “What I'm writing about, I'm writing about nothing, and this is the virtue of what I'm doing. I'm writing about the utter triviality of everyday life.” And that, for me, is the enchantment.OLIVER: Well, some novelists have said that.HENSHER: A lot.OLIVER: Samuel Richardson didn't say that. Samuel Richardson's quite an important exception.HENSHER: No, but people said it about Richardson.OLIVER: I don't think we—yes, but we can't believe it.HENSHER: People definitely said—no, I think we can.OLIVER: Pamela is a novel of ideas.HENSHER: Well, it's a novel that contains some ideas.OLIVER: Yes.TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to Philip Hensher. Philip is a British novelist. He's written books like The Northern Clemency, King of the Badgers, The Emperor Waltz, and now he's got a new book, A History of the Novel in Britain, and you can see it there. It looks very pretty with Alice in Wonderland on the front.Philip, hello.PHILIP HENSHER: Hello, Henry.Novels Are for EveryoneOLIVER: Now, to begin with, tell me about your grandmothers.HENSHER: Oh, okay. Yes, well, I finished the book because—I kept my story out of it, largely. I thought that I should go back to a time when everybody read novels. It wasn't a specialist interest as it seems to be turning into. And I thought I would talk about my two grandmothers, both of whom left school when they were 14. They worked in very ordinary and hard jobs in factories all their lives, and they were passionate readers of novels.My paternal grandmother loved Dickens. She had a complete set of Dickens, which, I've discovered after some research, was issued as an offer by the Daily Express sometime in the 1930s. I've still got it, actually. I'm going to go and get a sample volume. It's terribly cheaply produced.OLIVER: Oh, I've got that set. That's great, yes.HENSHER: Yes. The publisher is otherwise only noted as a printer. The typeface is absolutely tiny.OLIVER: It's painful.HENSHER: It's painful to read. But she had it. She loved Dickens.My maternal grandmother, I don't have any of her books, I'm afraid. I would say that she loved stories of family lives, of people interacting with each other. She loved Catherine Cookson, a now slightly forgotten popular novelist of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. But she read an enormous amount. I mean, she must have read one or two novels a week, every week of her life.I think that the thing that has disappeared since my grandmothers' generation is the idea that everybody can read novels. They speak to everybody. They explore every part of life, potentially.What seems to be happening now, and I greatly regret it, is that it's passing into the property of expensively educated people, people who have gone to private schools, perhaps, have certainly gone to university. And the sort of reader like my grandmother, who read Bleak House with a lot of pleasure, seems to be disappearing.So that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book, to make the case for how wonderfully enjoyable novels are. They're not a duty, or they shouldn't be a duty. They should just be founded in pleasure, however complex that pleasure might be. And I wanted to finish the book by citing my two grandmothers, who were such great readers.OLIVER: And as well as inheriting that reading culture from them, you got a lot of that at your school, didn't you?HENSHER: Yes, I suppose I did. I think that it's hard for me to say because I was in at the beginning of a sort of curriculum change, where there was an idea that we ought to give the kids things that are relevant or are going to appeal to their social concerns. So, I mean, this is going back to the very early 1980s. My set novel for A-level was The Grapes of Wrath, a classic tale of victimhood, really. Classic approved message.And the thing was, I think what started me off as a passionate reader of novels was a sort of rebellious turn away from that sort of thing. I read Jane Austen off my own bat. I read a lot of Dickens before I left school—things that we weren't taught at all. And that's always been the sort of reader that I am, saying, “Oh, we're not supposed to be reading this,” you know? “It's not on the curriculum.”Parliament and ThatcherOLIVER: What was it like working in the House of Commons?HENSHER: It was fine. [laughter] It was a very unusual experience. I don't think it was a job that most people would've known existed. When people said to me, “Well, what do you actually do?” I used to say, “Well, you know the guys with wigs who sit in front of the Speaker? They're my bosses.” And it was a strange, ritualistic experience, and you were physically in the middle of all these political dramas.When I started work, I started work in the House of Commons the beginning of September—this is September 1990. And six weeks later, there was all the drama of Mrs. Thatcher being thrown out, which I saw physically very close up. I didn't have anything to do with it. You weren't aware of what really was going on, but you were there. And Mrs. Thatcher swept past you at crisis moments.And that's a very seductive place to be as a baby novelist, because novels are very often told by people occupying minor positions about the lives of the great. There's a mid-20th-century novelist called Alfred Duggan who made a career out of writing historical novels of the lives of Roman emperors as told by their servants.And I think that, actually, the novel that I eventually wrote about the fall of Mrs. Thatcher, Kitchen Venom, which has just been rereleased 30 years later by an American publisher, McNally Editions, as a neglected classic—I think that was very much one of those books. Somebody who saw these vast and world-changing events physically close up without really being an insider at all.OLIVER: Do you think you're more conservative than most other novelists today? Small c conservative. Or big c.HENSHER: No, I don't—I think that I've never been someone who fits in with the on dit, as it were. I don't think that I'm particularly bothered about what people think of what I might think. One of the least effective arguments to change somebody's mind, it always seems to me, is to say, “But most people think . . .” Most people are wrong about things.So yes, I do think that actually having a close connection with political figures—after Mrs Thatcher, I did get to know some cabinet ministers, mostly, for one historical reason or another, Conservative cabinet ministers. And then coming out from spending the day with them and going to some book launch in the '90s and having to listen to some member of the lumpen intelligentsia say, “Oh, these people are so evil.” I'm just going, you know, “Save the word for someone else.”So yes, I think that I have a kind of interest in some things that most literary people just aren't interested in at all. And I think I've come to conclusions of my own about some burning contemporary issues. I don't think of myself as conservative. I think of myself as a 19th-century liberal. But then again, I also think of Mrs. Thatcher as a 19th-century liberal.OLIVER: I was going to say.HENSHER: [laughs] I don't know where that leaves you.OLIVER: I was very struck in, I think it's something you wrote or an interview you gave, where you said that you were at a comprehensive school in Sheffield. And contrary to what we think was going on at the time, actually you had teachers who were quite pleased about Mrs. Thatcher getting elected. And in the age of bell-bottoms, people were going to Mahler concerts all the time. On that front, you have a different view of the way England was, as it were.HENSHER: Yes. It's partly true that those people have been flattened out of history. Eight years before the miners' strike, for instance, when Mrs. Thatcher did come to lead the Conservative Party, it wasn't actually apparent to most people that she was the embodiment of all evil. And I think that people realized that something must be done.There's a lot of retrospective reimagining of these things. I think the absolutely classic example is Mrs. Thatcher taking free milk away from, I think, seven to elevens. And this is always presented as a gesture of sheer evil. But I can tell you, as one of the children who drank the official milk, it was absolutely disgusting. It was delivered at 7:00 a.m., and then it sat there in the sun for four hours in the summer, and it was absolutely undrinkable. Nobody drank it. Absolutely nobody drank it. It was a complete waste of money.There might have been some point in giving people free milk in the 1940s when there was rationing, but by the 1970s, what was the point in the government buying you milk? It was frankly the job of your parents to buy milk. But we're returning to that position. And people seem to be assuming it's the job of the government to buy your children breakfast these days, but what do I know?Things changed later on, I would say. The mood in the North certainly altered when people saw that the economic basis of subsidy was going to be taken away and that the coal mines would close down, the steel industry would close down, and it would take a long time for these things to turn round. And I understand why people feel that, but it's completely wrong to project that backwards into the 1970s.The 18th-Century BattlegroundOLIVER: Now, you did your PhD about the 18th century. Why do you think that century is so much less popular than the 19th century, which seems to get all the attention? But in fact, the 18th century is in a way a much richer, more diverse period, aesthetically.HENSHER: Well, I don't really know, actually, because I got to the end of my PhD and I got my PhD, and after that, I have to say it took me a while to get back to it. It is interesting because it is the battleground between what people used to think literature ought to be, which was firmly rooted in the classics, and a sort of vernacular, raucous, popular form that's based in shocking things like the lives of criminals, pornography even. Rather extraordinary books explaining how people ought to behave to get on in society, how they should write letters.So it's a battleground between Alexander Pope, who I must say I do love, but a very kind of classical, perfect, absolutely glass-like surface; and then, people like Defoe, whose sentences just run on in a kind of chaotic way. It can't have been very obvious which of them was going to triumph, really. Whether it was going to be the epic poem in rhyming couplets, after Virgil, or whether it was going to be a 300-page scandalous narrative about a prostitute in London today. Or rather, the answer would've been obvious, but it would've been obvious and wrong. So, there you go.So yes, it is interesting. It is interesting. I think for me, the 19th century is more interesting simply because of the sheer abundance of material. There are plenty of books in the 18th century, but not the kind of colossal tidal wave of thousands and thousands of novels coming out, sometimes nearly a thousand novels in a single year as the tide rolls on. And that, as anyone who reads my book will appreciate, is actually the thing that I really love: a lot of books turning up.OLIVER: Did you study with John Mullan for that PhD?HENSHER: No. I knew him a little bit. He was a fellow in the college where I did it, and I used to pass the time of day with him in the courtyard. But no, I had a succession of supervisors, but not him.Judging the BookerOLIVER: I see. Now, you also judged the Booker Prize. How did that change your understanding of the way the literary world really works, as it were?HENSHER: Well, I quite enjoyed judging the Booker Prize. It's a very unusual experience because it's the only experience you're ever going to have of reading a lot of novels that are published at the same time. Even as books are being published, all sorts of filtering mechanisms are usually taking place.With that, I think I read 140, 150 novels, all of which were published in 2001. And when you do that, you see all sorts of tendencies that you hadn't really suspected. I remember that year, the thing that was extraordinarily common, to the point of being maybe a third or even 40 percent of the books submitted, were novels with a dual time scheme, where in the present day a woman is working in a library and she finds a box, and it's the love letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, and then back to Mary, Queen of Scots. I'm making it up. I can't remember.And I think the novels that kicked that off are certainly some very good novels. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust in the 1970s, or later on, Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library and Antonia Byatt's Possession. But the sheer number that were imitating that structure was really extraordinary.The later insight that I had into a predominant obsession was when I judged the Giller Prize in Canada, and again, it was about 120, 130 novels. And this was about 10 years ago now. And it was predominantly tales by second-generation immigrants of historical stories of their parents' country of origin. There were a lot of those, and I think that's an admirable thing, so long as it doesn't overrun the rights of Bangladeshis, say, still living in Bangladesh to write their own stories which will be heard.It's an interesting thing, judging a big literary prize. I was very skeptical about the value of them. But that year, judging the Booker, I think we did a much better job than a lot of juries have done. We not only shortlisted Ian McEwan for his best novel, Peter Carey for his best novel, but Andrew Miller, excellent novel, Ali Smith's first novel, and who were the other two? Oh, David Mitchell's second novel, and Rachel Seiffert, a very talented novelist with a brilliant novel.Novels vs. SportOLIVER: How many novels do you read in an ordinary week?HENSHER: Oh, no idea. Three, four, five, something like that.OLIVER: So you're spending an awful lot of your time reading novels.HENSHER: Well, I don't know about that. [laughter] I'd say I'm probably reading a novel three or four hours a day, something like that. I am a pathologically fast reader. I don't want to go into it too much because it does sound insane.Remember that I've often wondered why someone like me manages to read so many books by most people's standards. And I've come to the conclusion it's because I have absolutely no interest in sport whatsoever. And it's surprising the number of people who—I mean, if you watch a football match, even if you watch it at home without the trouble of getting on a train and going there, a football match is 90 minutes, but there's half an hour in the middle; two hours.There's an hour of disquisition before; that's three hours. And there's an hour afterwards; that's four hours. Well, in four hours I can read a novel by Graham Greene. That's not a challenge. And I think that if you completely remove that from your life then, yes, you can get through a lot of novels, particularly if, like me, you absolutely love novels. It's never been anything but a sheer pleasure.Well, actually, I won't say never because there were one or two months, writing this book, when I knew I was going to have to get over a personal distaste and read a very prolific novelist in bulk who I knew I couldn't stand. I'm not going to say who they were; it's not fair. But I think you might be able to guess a couple of them.OLIVER: Did you know V.S. Naipaul?HENSHER: A little, yes.OLIVER: What was he like?HENSHER: If you said the right thing to him, he would respond intelligently and interestingly. If you weren't scared of him, that was better. I would guess that when he first met you, if he knew who you are by repute, as he happened to do with me because I was a book reviewer, he would say something borderline insulting. And if you absolutely didn't react to that, if you just kind of carried on talking to him in a respectful and interested way, then things were fine. Things were absolutely fine.Also, I think he was just a deeply interesting human being who had the knack, when he was bored, of saying something that would kick up a bit of a fuss. And I associate with that. I would say that many of my best friends are very much like that, just saying things to kick up a fuss. I wasn't any more than someone who just met him a handful of times. But I had the utmost respect for him, and I still do.OLIVER: Yes, he's one of the great writers in English, I think.HENSHER: Yes, I agree.Dominance of the NovelOLIVER: Why is the novel so dominant as a literary form?HENSHER: What, now? Is it?OLIVER: Well, there is no longer the same kind of reach or popularity for—there's no Addison, there's no poet, there's no . . . To me it seems like, for the common reader, as it were, it's all novels with a few other things. Whereas in the 18th century, it was lots of everything.HENSHER: Well, I don't know. I don't want to talk down my beloved form. It does seem to me that memoirs are very largely where it's at. Novels, to a very marked degree, get noticed much more if people can spin them as in some way memoiristic. And that's not a criticism at all.I was just thinking about this reading Rachel Cusk's new novel, Life of M. And I think Rachel is one of the authors with the best chance of being read in 50 or 100 years' time. I do think she's an absolutely marvelous novelist. But there's no question that there's more of a buzz around her when you can say, “Oh, well, this novel is based on her friendship with Emma Thompson,” or whoever the actress was—I've already forgotten—or “She's written a book about this and this. It's all based in her real life.”Those things have a tendency of fading away, but I think that it only seems to get through to people when we're talking about, “Is this real?” Like that guy that killed himself last week, is his memoir—I mean, if he'd written a novel to be published by Simon & Schuster, would we be talking about it to the same degree? It's not in the situation as the sonnet cycle. People are still reading novels, but I don't know that it's as dominant as all that.If it was, “Why was it dominant? Why was the novel form dominant?” I think actually it's to do with the omniscient voice. I think, from the beginning, the novel could go anywhere. It could take the reader by the hand, could lead them into places that they would never in a million years go. And from the invention of the railways—people commented about this a lot at the time—people were no longer limited to seeing their own class. They would be waiting on a railway station, and every class of society, it seemed, would be waiting there.But the challenges of a simple reader in finding out about the upper classes that they'd glimpse in these situations, or indeed a curious upper-class reader in finding out about the lives of the very poor carrying a chicken to market in a third-class carriage, in real life, that would be pretty limited. The novel could take you anywhere it wanted to go, and that, I think, is really never going to go away.I can see, even now, publishers are sharpening their claws, and they want to leap on any really talented novelist of, say, transgender lives now. They probably weren't very interested in that or hadn't thought about it until 20 years ago. Now it seems like a very current thing, and they're interested. They've been very interested for some time in Black British authors as well. They're not people who are trying to find a voice for those communities, necessarily, but probably just as powerfully finding an audience who wants to find out about the community without having to say, “Well, this is going to be our documentary discovery.” You can just imagine what it's like, and that's good enough.But who knows why things come into fashion, why they dominate, and why they disappear? The epic poem was the dominant form of the 17th century, and no one's really written one for about 300 years now.On Rachel CuskOLIVER: Who are the other best living British novelists?HENSHER: Oh, no, don't tempt me.OLIVER: No, you're not, no?HENSHER: No, I'm not going to be tempted.OLIVER: Can you give your argument for Rachel Cusk? Because I think she's dreadful.HENSHER: Do you?OLIVER: Yes, I think it's very boring. I find the Outline trilogy quite unreadable, actually.HENSHER: Oh, okay.OLIVER: On the first page, I thought, “Wow, this is so exciting. She's doing something really new.” And by halfway through the first book, I thought, “Well, it's over. She's done everything it can do. I can't take it anymore.”HENSHER: I think that what will keep her going is the unfailing beauty of her sentences. I think she has cadences like no other writer. That keeps people going. And what I really love about some of her books is that they are literally about nothing. I think The Country Life is an absolutely superb book, but what's it about, really? A girl goes to the country and falls out with her family. It's absolutely great.Yes, what is it? What are they about? I mean, but that's the thing. I don't think that you really find what's wonderful about novels by saying, “What are they about?” I thought the trilogy was just a wonderful bit of thread-spinning. And maybe it's just me, but those novels that consist of the gathering of one story after another, sometimes never coming to a conclusion, they work such a spell.And that's true about, not a novel, but One Thousand and One Nights; The Canterbury Tales; Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler; or in the same category, Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty, which I think is the great American novel of the last 50 years. And it's exactly that. It's a series of stories being told as one person tries to pitch a movie to another. It's absolutely glorious. And I think that the Cusk trilogy is very much like that.Long before Rachel's trilogy, I did have this plan to write a novel of storytelling, and it was going to be called Tales from the Pit. And actually, I signed a contract for it, and it was going to be stories told from one orchestral musician to another during the interminable performances of some long-running opera or other. But the thing that stopped me from writing it was that I discovered that Berlioz, the great composer and great writer, had written a book very similar, called Les soirées de l'orchestre. And I thought, “No, I'm not going to outdo Berlioz.”On Literary CriticsOLIVER: Who are the critics from whom you have learnt the most?HENSHER: Peter Garside, the great Regency critic. J. M. S. Tompkins, who wrote a superb book about 100 years ago about the popular novel after 1770 to about 1820. That's a superb book. John Sutherland I think is really good. I love his books solving problems in novels. George Saintsbury, end-of-the-19th-century critic who had the principle, “Read everything.” And I think that his books about the novel in particular are really—they can't be improved on. He was just so well read.OLIVER: Yes. What about more modern critics? That sort of ends a long time ago.HENSHER: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that there are any critics writing—I mean, I don't describe myself as a critic. I'm just a book reviewer.OLIVER: Leavis, Carey, Hermione Lee?HENSHER: Oh, yes. I think Hermione is really a great biographer, and her life of Virginia Woolf was very good. Her life of Penelope Fitzgerald was better, and her life of Anita Brookner is exemplary. It really is.OLIVER: But the Fitzgerald book has no religion.HENSHER: Yes. I probably didn't notice that.OLIVER: Penelope Fitzgerald, she never talks about it, but it's all about God. And the book is quite secular and feminist in a way that I felt was perhaps more Hermione Lee than Penelope Fitzgerald, you know?HENSHER: Yes, that's a very good point. It's not something that I really pay attention to. You could make the case that there are all sorts of private parts of people's lives that are just closed to the investigator. Very few literary biographers talk seriously about sexual relations or about money, for instance. I don't really see why religion shouldn't be different. I don't know. I haven't really thought about that.Critics—I can't stand Leavis. I think he's wrong about everything. I do think he's wrong about everything, and I don't know what he means when he says, “This is life-enhancing.” I was like, “What does that mean,” you know? What does it mean? And people in Cambridge were always saying, “What does that sentence mean?” Who knows? Boy. And I think they must have said it to Leavis about five times a day. Who else? Suggest some names to me.OLIVER: I thought John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses.HENSHER: Yes, John Carey. Yes, that is a proper—OLIVER: It's a great book.HENSHER: That's a proper game changer, actually. And I don't see how you could disprove it. He's wrong—OLIVER: And the Dickens book, The Violent Effigy.HENSHER: Yes, that's brilliant. He's occasionally just wrong, but he's wrong in interesting ways. The Thackeray book writes off some great novels, in my view. The Intellectuals and the Masses, he's just wrong about George Moore. But on the whole, yes, he's a very good thing.Of course, John Carey was the last generation of critics to have a proper training in textual bibliography. So his editions of Milton, and especially the brilliant edition of the James Hogg Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, they are a very good preparation for going through a work of literature and talking about every word of that work of literature.Two Thousand NovelsOLIVER: You read 2,000 novels in order to write your history of the novel.HENSHER: Oh, a lot more than that.OLIVER: Okay.HENSHER: A lot more than that. There's 2,000 novels that are talked about.OLIVER: In the bibliography.HENSHER: There are a lot more novels that I just didn't put in.OLIVER: Where did you get them all? You must have had trouble finding some of them.HENSHER: It's much easier now than it used to be. There's Gutenberg, of course. There's this wonderful publisher—I want to get to the bottom of it—an online publisher that will sell you the collected—what's it called? I don't know—will sell you the collected works of some very minor novelists for like 1.99. A couple weeks ago, I just bought all the novels of Rhoda Broughton for 1.99. So that was very useful.And there are various other online sources. There's the London Library, of course, for physical copies, which they still have a surprising number of things. They had a copy, for instance, of the very last three-volume novel to be published, which is a novel by George Gissing's brother, Algernon. I can't tell you how bad it is. Oh, god, it's absolutely atrocious. Anyway, they had a copy. So, yes, you sort of gather them here and there.I knew that a novel was seriously obscure when neither Gutenberg nor the HathiTrust websites or anybody else could come up with a copy. There's a novel from the 1790s that crops up in a lot of bibliographies and general surveys of 1790s novels by Charlotte Palmer. She's a woman called Charlotte Palmer. I don't know anything about her at all. And it's called It Is and It Is Not a Novel. It sounds fascinating, but I did notice that it's suddenly referred to for the first time in a study of 2013, and every single reference since then more or less repeats what that first commentator has said.I couldn't find a copy of it myself in any of the sources, and I did wonder. Jane Austen was a very keen reader of women writers of that period, and I did think, “Jane Austen couldn't possibly have heard of this writer and her book, because there's a character in Jane Austen called Charlotte Palmer.” She wouldn't have done that if she'd made that connection. It would be like giving a character the name Fanny Burney. So I'm sure that it does exist somewhere, but I couldn't track it down.OLIVER: And you excluded Ulysses.HENSHER: Yes. That was a really difficult one. I tormented myself over Ulysses, and I could justify including Joyce. Firstly, he always had a British passport. He never had an Irish passport or anything else, so you could base it on that.On the other hand, it was published in Paris. I do talk a little bit about Portrait of the Artist, which was published in London. It was published in Paris, and he never lived in Britain after leaving Ireland when it was still part of Britain. So, I mean, I couldn't not mention it at all.But I thought in the end, just from a literary politics sort of standpoint, I thought if I put Ulysses in, describing it as an example of the novel in Britain, that would kick off a fuss that I didn't feel passionate about defending. Oddly enough, I would've been more tempted to include Finnegans Wake, which I'm passionately fond of and which was, of course, published by Faber and Faber in 1939. But it made no sense to leave Ulysses out and include Finnegans Wake.Where the borders were drawn, who to include and who to leave out, it wasn't an easy decision. And on the whole, I did include people rather than exclude them. But Joyce is such a national figure in Ireland that I did think there would be a bit of a row if I started claiming him as a British novelist.On Penelope FitzgeraldOLIVER: You have a very nice suggestion in the back of the book for a Library of Britain, which would be a bit like the Library of America, but obviously we have a lot more to publish here.HENSHER: Yes, it would obviously be a lot better. [laughter]OLIVER: But I think you left Penelope Fitzgerald off your list of the people who should be first in line.HENSHER: Oh, did I? Oh, that wasn't deliberate. What a disaster.OLIVER: I wondered. I thought this must be—HENSHER: Oh, no, that was a cock-up.OLIVER: So you do want her in.HENSHER: Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. And the biographies as well.OLIVER: Because I think she's a great genius. Oh, the biographies are amazing, yes.HENSHER: Yes. Penelope was the last person in my life who I've been scared of. I'm not scared of many people, and probably in my adult life on the fingers of one hand, really. But Penelope, I was scared of, and I do not know why. I do not know why, because she was always unfailingly polite and civil. She just had a sort of level stare as though she was kind of assessing you, and she might at any point say something that you would carry with yourself for the rest of your life shuddering.And she never did. She never did. She was extremely nice, but I don't know. There was something very odd about Penelope. It was as if—do you know that description of the Greek Alexandrian poet Cavafy, that he was a gentleman that stood at right angles to the universe? She was like that. You met her at a party, and she'd stand there. She looked very much like the White Queen in Alice. She always had a kind of Sainsbury's plastic bag by the side of her, and she just seemed kind of detached from the party and from everyone.I think she liked solitude. I don't think the impression that she didn't quite want to be there was at all false. She was a one-off, Penelope, I think. And I know that people who worked with her—we shared an editor at one point, and she was one of those authors that inspired huge amounts of loyalty. I think the biographies are, in a way, even stranger than—The Knox Brothers, and the Charlotte Mew biography is incredible.OLIVER: It's crazy.HENSHER: It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. I wish she'd—there were a couple of biographies that she wanted to write and didn't. She was going to write a biography of L. P. Hartley and gave it up because she discovered too much about L. P. Hartley's sex life, and Leslie Hartley's sister was still alive. She dropped that.And I think there was talk of a biography of M. R. James. The very last thing that Penelope published, almost, I have a responsibility for because Penguin Classics—Penguin Modern Classics, probably—were going to bring out a selection of M. R. James's short stories. And they asked me to write the introduction to them, and I said, “I will write the introduction to them, but only if Penelope refuses to.” So they went to Penelope, and she said yes. And I'm very proud of that.OLIVER: Yes, that's a great piece of writing as well. Right, I'm going to read out a quote from your book.HENSHER: Oh, Lord.Novel-Reading and MoralityOLIVER: Here we go. Quote: “If you had read more than one novel with attention, it would be impossible to bring a machete down upon the face of another human being without guessing what it would be like to be behind that face as the blade fell upon it. You would not do it.” End quote. Now, we just know that that's not true, isn't it? A lot of awful people have read novels and continued to do their thing.HENSHER: Well, I think those people are celebrities in the world of psychology. Isn't it interesting that concentration camp guards read Hölderlin's poems? They're extreme cases. Overwhelmingly, there is not much overlap between habitual readers of novels and the sort of people who carry machetes in the streets of London. That's definitely the case. I think that's beyond arguing.It might be the case that it's not 100 percent cure. You can't guarantee that if somebody has read Great Expectations with attention and love, that they won't go out afterwards and say, “All right, I've done that. He gets off with Estelle”—or alternatively, “He doesn't get off with Estelle,” according to which ending you read—“Now I'm going to go and chop some bugger's head off with my machete.” Well, it's conceivable, I suppose, but it's very, very unlikely.And I don't know what better protection we have against the idea that the next generation is going to be more prone to violence. If we could persuade everybody to read and engage with novels, then that would be a very, very good protection against the spread of violence. I'm sure that's right.OLIVER: So you do think that the novel is causing the moral improvement somehow? It's not just that civilized people, as it were, enjoy novels. There is some mechanism of change there?HENSHER: Yes, and by moral improvement, I mean the simple act of imagining what it's like to be somebody else. Not necessarily to pass judgment on those people, but to imagine what it's like to live another life. And that's the beginning of the human imagination, I think.Effects of Patronage on the NovelOLIVER: One of the main arguments of the book is that patrons, as you call them, had too much control over the novel, how it was priced, what form it took, whether it could talk about naughty things, et cetera. But the thing I actually enjoyed most about your book was, you were very good at showing how diverse and innovative the form has been, and how quickly and how cleverly novelists have responded to every new set of conditions, set of constraints.Isn't the truth somewhere between these two, that the patrons are also responding to real-world conditions, what the public will and won't stick? The mothers have never wanted the daughters to read books, so the books have to get around that somehow. Isn't everyone reacting to the real world, as it were? And the cold, dead hand of the patron isn't gripping quite as tightly as that, maybe.HENSHER: Well, I think that the argument is not that patrons exert too much power, but where they do exert too much power, it has, on the whole, a bad influence on the contents of the book. And patrons always assume that the readership is a uniform thing, that because they and their—Mudie in the 19th century, his 30,000 subscribers—because they wanted to read heartwarming tales in which nobody ever committed adultery, that nobody did.Now, clearly that was completely wrong because when George Moore in the 1880s wrote a marvelous novel called A Mummer's Wife, about a woman who runs off with her lover and becomes an alcoholic among a lot of actors—glorious, and they priced it at sixpence—Mudie's turned it down flat, of course, because “No one's going to read this book. Oh, our people don't want to read it.”Well, he was completely wrong. It went into six editions in two years priced at sixpence. And that actually has gone on. In the 1950s, Kingsley Amis was persuaded by his editor to take a word—I don't know what it was, maybe it was the word bugger—out of a novel because they said, “The Boots Lending Library won't buy it.”Now, I suspect that 10 years later, Kingsley Amis would have said, “Well, stuff Boots Lending Library; I'm going to sell to people who do want to read it.” Because only five years after he was told that, Penguin published Lady Chatterley's Lover after a very useful—useful from the point of view of publicity—obscenity trial. I have no idea whether Boots Library took Lady Chatterley's Lover. I rather suspect not. But it sold hundreds of thousands within days, and quite right too.The thing is that there may be a readership that likes one sort of novel, but there's also a sort of readership that likes another sort of novel, and patrons never want to admit that.Your second point, about the way that novels reach out to new areas, it's absolutely true. And it's quite striking, the sort of novels that very effectively reach out to explore unfamiliar bits of society. For instance, the working-class novels of the 1890s, which are often horrifically violent—Arthur Morrison's A Child of the Jago, I think one of the great 19th-century novels, but there's no doubt there's bits in it that have to be read with great revulsion. That was against everything that people thought the novel ought to be doing.Even if something was a bit less specific, if it was about a new or unfamiliar minority, then it could go against the patron's power. There's a very good example of a novel by the Jewish novelist Julia Frankau called Dr. Phillips. And it was one of the most enjoyable discoveries of my reading. It's a story of murder and adultery in the upper-class Maida Vale Jewish Victorian life. I absolutely adored it. And the patrons wouldn't have touched it. They thought, “Oh, no one's going to read this.”But the novel is always going to give opportunities to people from communities that haven't had their voices heard. Women, from the start, could write and publish novels when they couldn't become doctors or lawyers or politicians. And people from ethnic minorities are heard surprisingly early in the history, and it's because readers wanted to hear about something new.And I think that's an absolutely thrilling development. And it's nothing to do with patrons either. It's invariably publishers who just think, “Well, let's try this thing out. Let's see whether we can find readership for what it's like to live on a remote farm in Africa.” Or going back to the 1880s, “Let's see if our readers want to find out what it's like to be a new immigrant off this boat called the Windrush.” One of the great novels of the 20th century emerged, Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners.It's always out of some sort of commercial desire just to try something out and see if there are readers there. It's a very effective mechanism for broadening participation in society, I think.The Role of IdeasOLIVER: What about the role of ideas? Isn't there an essential place for philosophy, theology, economics, all these other disciplines? The development of the novel is inseparable from these things. Not just people like George Eliot and Jane Austen, but there are ideas in every book, aren't there?HENSHER: Well, I think there are assumptions in every book. It depends what you mean by an idea, really. If you mean a philosophical proposition, then I would say no. There's also the problem that an idea, the justifiable quality of an idea, whether it's a good idea or whether it's a truthful idea, whether that has an impact on the quality of a novel. And it's quite hard to see that a novel that we agree with is necessarily going to be a better novel than a novel that's talking total nonsense from the ideas point of view.I think that there is a place for the proper Cambridge idea of a novel, a Cambridge idea of an idea in a novel. But I don't think it's essential. I've been thinking about this since we had this discussion at that conference. And I think that my main feeling about it is that we ought to admire novels for doing well what only the novel can do well. Those things are to sketch out lives, individual lives, however eccentric or idiosyncratic, to create the illusion of human beings, to listen to and convey the speech of individuals, and not necessarily to do what other forms of writing can do much better, which is to set out a case for one idea or another.Now, of course, that's oversimplifying the whole thing. But I must say that I can think of novels that I absolutely love, that no doubt have some kind of idea or assumption running through them. But I don't know that's really what I or anybody else reads a novel for. I mean, what are the ideas—I'm just looking at the shelf in front of me. What are the ideas in The Diary of a Nobody? Without a doubt, one of the greatest novels in British literature. What is the idea of The Diary of a Nobody?OLIVER: I think that novel is premised on a very clear and simple set of ideas about the British class system, and about what is acceptable to mock and what is acceptable to be the butt of satire. That novel now, in a way, isn't funny anymore because it's too mean. It's too cruel.HENSHER: Are you kidding me? Seriously?OLIVER: I find the first half funny, and by the end of it, I just think, “There's nothing actually wrong with this guy. Gosh.”HENSHER: No, there's nothing wrong with him at all.OLIVER: It's unbearable how mean they're being to him.HENSHER: It's absolutely adorable. Come on, Charles Pooter painting his bath red. [laughter] His son deciding that he's going to call himself Lupin.OLIVER: Yes, but it's not purely observational. It is what gives it its coherence and its organization. I mean, that is a very condensed novel. It's a remarkable achievement technically, to do so much in so little space. And that is because it is organized around a certain set of ideas about the British class system, which are largely no longer real.HENSHER: Oh, Henry, Henry, how can you kill a book like that? How can you—OLIVER: Look, you can't have Jane Austen without the Enlightenment, and you can't have George Eliot without the secularization of Jesus, and you can't have Tolstoy without all the slightly incredible things that he believed.HENSHER: No, let's not talk about Tolstoy.OLIVER: No, but the list goes on, right? Henry James even, who is often called a man of no ideas, he's an incredibly good liberal. He might be the best novelist about the liberal idea that one person should not be allowed to dominate over another, in private conditions rather than just government. These ideas are, in a way, they're the thing that distinguish those writers. Jane Austen knows how to observe and how to present because she's thinking about what it means underneath.HENSHER: I don't know. I don't know about that.OLIVER: I don't even think you can have Middlemarch without John Stuart Mill's political economy, in a way.HENSHER: Yes, that's probably true. But George Eliot's an unusual sort of novelist.Jane Austen, I mean, how do we know what did she—what did Jane Austen think about slavery in the boldest and most extreme form? I think we can deduce that she thought that people involved in the slave trade or who came near it, like Mrs. Elton, were not at all the sort of people that she would altogether like to hang out with. I think the same is true of Sir Thomas Bertram, and the weakness of his imagination is somehow tied in with the fact that he has a plantation where he doesn't really think about the people that it affects.But already we're into speculation. I don't know what we can really deduce about Jane Austen's idea, because she's such a polyphonic novelist that we don't find an idea being put forward without being able to find a character who's saying the exact opposite. And sometimes one side of the argument is eventually dismissed, but not always, I think.I said this at the conference we had a discussion with. I think that when you boil a novel down to its absolute irreducible essentials, I think what you have is not a proposal or a view of society or anything like that. It's Charles Pooter painting his bath red, or the moment in Ivy Compton-Burnett's Mother and Son when the son irrevocably falls out with his mother by telling her that he doesn't want to have sugar in his tea anymore.From the very beginning, novelists have said, “What I'm writing about, I'm writing about nothing, and this is the virtue of what I'm doing. I'm writing about the utter triviality of everyday life.” And that, for me, is the enchantment.OLIVER: Well, some novelists have said that.HENSHER: A lot.OLIVER: Samuel Richardson didn't say that. Samuel Richardson's quite an important exception.HENSHER: No, but people said it about Richardson.OLIVER: I don't think we—yes, but we can't believe it.HENSHER: People definitely said—no, I think we can.OLIVER: Pamela is a novel of ideas.HENSHER: Well, it's a novel that contains some ideas.OLIVER: Yes.HENSHER: Henry, I don't think we're going to agree on this. [laughter] I don't think we're going to agree on this. But if I want to read a book that sets out ideas, I do—I'm not a complete empty-headed flibbertigibbet. The other day I was reading one of my favorite books of ideas, which is The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.And I do think that books of ideas have their place. And it's tempting to think, “Oh, I could transfer the insights of Erving Goffman into a fictional drama.” But you couldn't. You absolutely couldn't. It would rely much more on peculiar objects and observations that aren't laden with propositions.The Best English Novels for BeginnersOLIVER: One of the questions I get asked most often is from people who have not been bookish people. They're more on the science or practical side. They haven't read great novels since they were at school, and they want a list of five great English novels to get started. What's your list?HENSHER: Vanity Fair never failed. The Old Wives' Tale never failed. An Evelyn Waugh. Which Evelyn Waugh? I think Put Out More Flags, actually, because it's such a brilliantly funny novel. It's a very strange novel. But it's about a particular historical situation, which is often a kind of temptation.What else? I'm only recommending novels by men because I think it's men who have this problem, and I think that asking them straight off to read a particular feminine take on the world, sometimes you do hit just a blank wall. But I do think that they will get round to Mansfield Park or Daniel Deronda, my favorite Eliot.I think I would also suggest The Lonely Londoners, the Sam Selvon. I do think it's the most enchanting exercise in voice. And, how many is that? Is that four or five?OLIVER: I think that's four.HENSHER: Oh, what am I going to do, then? Oh, you've got to have a Dickens. Bleak House. I think actually there's a fallacy in people recommending novels to reluctant readers, which is, they always suggest something kind of easily digestible. But I think the way forward is to give something at its most intense and concentrated and just see if that counts. “This is what the novel really is like.”Oh, I know the other one. I mentioned it earlier, the James Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Oh my god, that's a fantastic novel. I really do think that's good. Yes.OLIVER: And can you do the same for children's books?HENSHER: No.OLIVER: Fair enough.HENSHER: No, I'm 61 years old. “Would you like to read this book, little—?” No, no, no, thank you.Quick-Fire QuestionsOLIVER: Let's do a quick-fire round. I say the name of a novelist, and you give us your opinion. Short form.HENSHER: Oh, gosh. Oh, terrifying.OLIVER: That's all right. You'll do very well. Arnold Bennett.HENSHER: Underrated. Marvelous.OLIVER: Where should we start? And how good—HENSHER: The Old Wives' Tale. No, or The Card. The Card is a glorious novel. It's absolutely ludicrous; it's fantastic. The Old Wives' Tale is, I think, the greatest French novel in English. It's magnificent.OLIVER: When you say underrated, how good is he?HENSHER: Oh, top 20. Top 20 writers in English.OLIVER: Iris Murdoch.HENSHER: She's out of fashion at the moment, very much out of fashion at the moment, I think for reasons that were out of her control. It's impossible to tell at this point what is going to happen to a novelist like that. Is she going to carry on declining and drift out of our interest in the way that the novels of William De Morgan did? Or is she going to reach a bottom and then slide upwards?I must say that I loved Iris's novels to an incredible degree when I was 17. I could read them all day long. I think I must have read every single one of Iris Murdoch's novels between the ages of 17 and 20. And the moment when I came to London and saw Iris at a literary party was one of the most overwhelming of my life.What happened—weirdly, it was at a party in a secondhand bookshop in Clapham Old Town. Doesn't exist anymore. And she was just standing there looking around with great empty eyes. And then Woodrow Wyatt tottered in in a very noisy way and said, “Iris, Iris, what are we doing here? What is this place? What are we doing?” It was very strange.OLIVER: Walter Scott.HENSHER: The creation is immense. The achievement is overwhelming. And towards the end of the 19th century, a reaction set in, which was so powerful that it defined many of Scott's most characteristic stylistic features as the embodiment of bad writing. It's not his fault. I myself, I admit to sharing in that reaction. And he comes to me in flashes of sublimity. I think the first chapter of The Heart of Midlothian is one of the most impressive pieces of writing of the century.He did so much good for literature that it's hard to be dismissive about him altogether, and I wouldn't want to be. On the other hand, stylistically, he's so out of tune with what we regard as good writing that I thought in the end it would just ring a completely false note if I pretended that I didn't have problems with the style. So, you know, he's in a particular historical position. We're in a particular historical position. Who knows what that tells you about either of us, really?OLIVER: Alan Hollinghurst.HENSHER: Oh, who is my best friend, so yes, of course he's marvelous.OLIVER: Which one do you recommend?HENSHER: I absolutely love The Stranger's Child. I think that's such an innovative novel, and it's so clever and funny. But they're all simply marvelous. He's a marvelous novelist.OLIVER: That's the one I'm always pushing on people. It's heartbreaking. It's beautiful.HENSHER: Yes.OLIVER: It's clever. It's really wonderful.HENSHER: So clever. You're not going to trap me into saying rude things about darling Alan.Various ElizabethsOLIVER: No, no traps. No traps. Elizabeth Taylor.HENSHER: Great novelist. Great novelist. And central to her time in a way that I don't think anyone really appreciated until some time after she died. After she died, some organization or other gave her a posthumous award for a lifetime's achievement, and her husband, John, went to collect it. And he said in his acceptance speech, “What a shame you couldn't have said this while she was alive.” And it was absolutely right.As a handler of technical material, I don't think there's a novelist in the 20th century to surpass her. Just the way in which characters are introduced and interact, how the plot proceeds, the evocation of place, it is just the most extravagantly perfect technical handling.She's the novelist who, more than anything, I show to my students in Bath Spa. And it is astonishing how if you give them a page of Elizabeth Taylor, almost chosen at random, you can go through it inch by inch, word by word, and just emerge at the end absolutely astonished by the expertise of the handling. I think she's an absolutely marvelous novelist.OLIVER: Elizabeth Bowen.HENSHER: I think she went off. But those novels from To the North certainly to The Death of the Heart, and maybe even The Heat of the Day, are absolutely thrilling. Psychologically, she's an absolute whiz at seeing people, seeing into people's minds. She's better at children than almost anybody, and there are a lot of people writing about childhood in the 1930s.The Death of the Heart, I think, is her best novel, though The House in Paris runs it pretty close. The middle section, where the young heroine goes to the seaside to stay with a family that she doesn't really know and is followed by her cad of a boyfriend, is an absolutely stunning survey of uncertain behavior. And it's rarer than you think, actually, novelists writing about people behaving uncertainly for reasons that they don't quite understand.The Heat of the Day, it has superb things in it, but I would say that it falls slight victim to the tendency of the time to think that novelists ought to write about serious subjects of contemporary concern. Novels of ideas, Henry, I'm sorry to say. And she just wasn't that sort of novelist. When she's doing two people lying on the grass just talking about nothing much, it's marvelous. But when you creak it up into this plot about someone's a spy and—oh, Elizabeth, don't do it to me. Anyway, but that's just me. A lot of people absolutely love The Heat of the Day.OLIVER: Elizabeth Jenkins, Bowen's great friend.HENSHER: My knowledge of Elizabeth Jenkins that I can produce at short notice is The Tortoise and the Hare. And I think a lot of the same things that I said about Elizabeth Taylor are the same. It's a lovely classical style.I've often given people to look at the first page of The Tortoise and the Hare. I think it slightly suffers from the title, which makes the narrative seem a bit predetermined, but that's a minor sin. I would love to read some more Elizabeth Jenkins, actually. I know I read another one or two some time ago, but I've completely forgotten what they were called, so don't test me.OLIVER: The best ones are Dr. Gully, Honey, and Brightness, after The Tortoise and the Hare.HENSHER: Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. I've got a bit of an allergy—you're going to disprove this immediately. I've got a bit of an allergy to novels, like Twitter profiles, which include the word doctor. [laughter]OLIVER: It's only called that because it's a historical novel.HENSHER: Yes, they are putting me off.OLIVER: Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough.HENSHER: I love Trollope, but I must say that when I reach out for Doctor Thorne, my hand—OLIVER: It's not the best.HENSHER: I don't know why. Why is it?OLIVER: Because relative to what actually happens, it's too long, and so you have to get through a lot of stuff that doesn't really do anything for the novel.HENSHER: No, I mean why is it the title that includes the word doctor is so off-putting?OLIVER: Oh, that I can't help you with.HENSHER: No, I can't help. Yes, I'm going to investigate to see if I can think of a novel with doctor in it.OLIVER: Jenkins is another one who's a superb biographer.HENSHER: Oh, yes.OLIVER: Her Jane Austen biography is amazing, really beautiful. Really incredible.HENSHER: Okay. All right. Okay.More NovelistsOLIVER: Martin Amis.HENSHER: Yes, I think he is great. I do think he was wonderful. There are some later novels where he slightly fell down because he wanted to say something solemn about a major political situation. But he went on being a very good novelist a lot longer than people assume. I remember when The Pregnant Widow came out, and I think The Pregnant Widow is an absolutely enchanting novel. It's just full of regret and grown-up thoughts, and, oh, I absolutely loved it.Oh, my Lord, you should have seen the reviews that it got. I think word just got round among young people that Martin was no good anymore. He's got the thing that his father had, of a brilliant ear for dialogue, and much more than his father, but sharing some of the same qualities. He had the air of being able to write a sentence that readers would remember. I'm sure that most people who like Martin Amis, if you said to them, “Give us a sentence from Martin Amis,” they'd be able to come up with one.OLIVER: And lastly, Jilly Cooper.HENSHER: Oh, yes. Do you know, people always roll their eyes when I say I don't see why Jilly Cooper shouldn't be the novelist from our time that survives in posterity. She's got a lot of the qualities that actually make for a good prospect of survival. Her characters sound distinct. You always know who's speaking. It's got a good social range. It's not about two retired actors sitting in a bedsit in Kentish Town. They're funny, which is always good. People love them.The first of the series of her long books—not the 1970s romances, though those are very enjoyable too—the earliest of them, Riders, published in 1986, never gone out of print. Now, there's not many novels from 1986 that are still going strong with large readership. They had large readerships even before the television drama. That's not the only reason. So I think, yes, I'd put my money on Jilly Cooper still to be read in 100 years' time, ahead of Julian Barnes.Final ThoughtsOLIVER: Last two questions. How do you think AI will change the novel?HENSHER: No idea. Absolutely no idea. I think that novel has found ways to take advantage of technology and change in society before. It will do so again. I'm a novelist myself, but my practice has been long formed. I don't think that I'm the person to ask this about.What you want to do is ask somebody like the brilliant student that I was just talking to, who's 22 years old, a student of mine who has been thinking about AI since he started his undergraduate degree. Those people, they will have it in their bones, and they will master it, I'm convinced. But my answer is worth less than nothing.OLIVER: What will you do next?HENSHER: Oh, I've retired. That's it. That's it. Glorious. I'm very happy.OLIVER: You're not going to set up the Library of Britain?HENSHER: No, no, I couldn't run that. Someone else can do that. No. I mean, it'd be nice if anyone took it seriously.OLIVER: I think it's a great idea.HENSHER: Yes, I think it's a great idea. I wouldn't have put it—but no, I'm going to retire now. I've spent 30 years publishing novels, and there's 12 novels, 2 volumes of short stories, and finishing with a history of my art form. I think that sounds like a nice, shapely career.I don't want to be writing novels about my idea of what the kids are like when I'm 75. I think that's absolutely a fatal idea. [laughter] Of course, I'm just saying that, and you never know when something's going to tempt. But at the moment, I think I'm going to retire.OLIVER: Very good. Philip Hensher, thank you very much.HENSHER: Pleasure. Thank you, Henry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

In colonial Massachusetts, a dying woman made her husband lock her gowns and jewels in an attic trunk and swear that her sister would never open it – a promise Henry James turned into one of the coldest ghost stories he ever wrote.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Locked Trunk” (July 21, 1978) ***WD00:46:18.627 = Quiet Please, “Shadow Of The Wings” (April 17, 1949) ***WD01:15:10.049 = Radio City Playhouse, “Wine Of Ora Paula” (December 18, 1949) ***WD01:43:14.151 = Isn't It Crime, “Speaking Of Murder” (December 14, 1945)02:12:06.344 = Sam Spade, “The Rushlight Diamond Caper” (July 04, 1948) ***WD02:39:41.697 = The Sealed Book, “Design For Death” (June 03, 1945)03:09:05.253 = The Shadow, “A Pass To Death” (February 06, 1944) ***WD03:37:48.563 = Sleep No More, “Homecoming And Aunt Cassie” (April 17, 1957) ***WD04:06:34.356 = BBC Radio 4 Spinechillers, “Eat Your Heart Out” (October 20, 2007)04:20:24.502 = Stay Tuned For Terror, “Lizzie Borden Took An Axe” (July 23, 1945) ***WD04:33:21.990 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Man Who Knew Everything” (March 20, 1945) ***WD04:45:31.119 = Strange, “Captain Robinson” (1955)04:59:16.313 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0755

In 1895, Henry James suffered through a terrible failure, as his play Guy Domville was greeted by hoots, jeers, and tomatoes being thrown at the play's author. James responded by starting work on his masterpiece The Turn of the Screw, which tells the story of a governess and the demonic forces haunting her and the children in her care. In this episode, Jacke talks to playwright and screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm about her new adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, which has its world premiere at London's Arcola Theater in September. PLUS eighteenth-century expert David Womersley (Thinking Through Shakespeare, Gulliver's Travels: The Cambridge Anniversary Edition) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. On Sale Now! For more information and to order ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Great Detective! An Adventure for Two People [2-Book Boxed Set]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ by Jacke Wilson, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠press.historyofliterature.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPECIAL OFFER! For a limited time, enter promotion code LOVE26 to get 20% off! And if you help us get the word out by posting two people enjoying the book on social media (plus a link to our website), we will refund money to your account. Learn more at press.historyofliterature.com! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠gabrielruizbernal.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Help support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/literature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠historyofliterature.com/donate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James borrows from Eliot, Austen, folktales and potboilers, but ‘the thing that he took from nowhere was Isabel Archer'. James transformed the 19th-century novel through his evocation of Isabel, a woman who wants and suffers in a profoundly new (and American) way. Deborah Friedell and Colm Toíbín join Tom to discuss the novel that established Henry James as ‘the Master'. They dissect James's and his characters' complicated motivations, the significance of his 1905-6 revisions, and the ways in which a ‘primitive plot' irrupts in a painstakingly subtle and stylish novel. Get 50% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code SUMMER50 at checkout when you sign up here: https://lrb.me/crtravelna Find our full Close Readings travel playlist here: https://lrb.me/crtravelwebna Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On episode 168 of the Director Watch Podcast, co-hosts Ryan McQuade and Jay Ledbetter discuss the next film in their Jane Campion series, The Portrait of a Lady (1996). Welcome back to Director Watch! On this AwardsWatch podcast, the boys attempt to breakdown, analyze, and ultimately, get inside the mind of some of cinema's greatest auteurs. In doing so, they will look at their filmographies, explore what drives them artistically and what makes their decision-making process so fascinating. Add in a few silly tangents and a fun game at the end of the episode and you've got yourself a podcast we truly hope you love. After making a masterpiece, and what many consider to be the defining work of her career, Jane Campion took on the literary classic by Henry James about an innocent young woman of independent means who is manipulated by all of those around her for her money and her heart. It's the strangest films in Campion's filmography, as it has the hallmarks of her previous three films, and plenty of style and flare that she's become known for after breaking out with The Piano. But unlike adapting Janet Frame's work for An Angel at My Table, the guys felt there isn't much personal connection with this material, and therefore, Campion's film is rather distant and uninspired, with a central performance from its lead actress that leaves a lot to be desired. Ryan and Jay break down their thoughts on the film, what makes a good period piece adaptation, the films and novels they thought about while watching The Portrait of a Lady, why Kidman is not right for this role, how great Barbara Hershey and John Malkovich in their villainous roles, how Mary-Louise Parker gives maybe one of the worst performances ever put to screen, and just how stupid Tom Brady is. You can listen to the Director Watch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more. You can also listen on the AW YouTube page. This podcast runs 1h34m. The guys will be back next week to continue their series on the films of Jane Campion with a review of her next film, In the Cut. You can rent it via iTunes and Amazon Prime rental in preparation for the next episode of Director Watch. Till then, let's get into it. Music: MUSICALIFE, from Pond5 (intro) and "B-3" from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).

“Theory said, it doesn't matter what you've read. It's how you read.” — Emily Eakin on the seduction of the FrenchmenWhen I was a graduate student at Berkeley in the Eighties, there was a bewildering rage for Frenchmen. Foucault in history, Derrida in literature, Althusser in political philosophy, Lacan in psychology. Not that anybody could quite explain what any of them meant — which only made their ideas even more compelling. It was the seduction of the American mind, especially its elite campus version. Innocent times with forty years of hindsight.Emily Eakin caught this Eighties fever for French theory at Harvard. Now an editor at the New York Times Book Review, Eakin has written The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory, which is both a confessional of her own seduction and a serious piece of intellectual history.A self-described farm girl from Indiana — albeit one whose Francophile parents once left her waiting at a Paris nursery school because a Lévi-Strauss lecture went overtime — she fell for theory as the intellectual equivalent of a little black dress. It looked expensive, even off the rack, she confesses. For a middle-class Midwesterner, it seemed like a passport to Left-Bank sophistication. All you needed was the jargon, the black clothes and, in Eakin's case, the opera gloves.But her Frenchmen, Eakin warns, turned out to be a slippery bunch. Lacan was so difficult that professors cancelled their own classes rather than teach him. Althusser murdered his wife. Foucault's histories were as much fiction as fact. Not even Derrida took Derrida seriously. These were the men undoing the “master narratives” while an enthralled generation of cross-legged young feminists in their little black dresses took notes.And yet Eakin's Frenchmen may have the last laugh. Their theory of language — an impersonal system requiring no human at its center — presciently describes today's AI revolution. Foucault predicted that “man” would be erased like a face drawn in sand on the beach. Forty years on, that tide may be engulfing us all.Five Takeaways•       The Little Black Dress of the Mind. Eakin grew up in a family of Francophiles — one of her earliest memories is her mother arriving late to the Paris maternelle because Claude Lévi-Strauss's lecture had run over — and arrived at Harvard as a middle-class kid from a middling Midwestern high school, painfully aware of the gaps in her education. Theory offered the shortcut: it didn't matter what you'd read, only how you read. The cliché about the little black dress is that it looks expensive even bought on sale off the rack at Macy's, and theory, Eakin says, was its intellectual equivalent. It was also, frankly, sexy — young professors in jeans lecturing on the masturbation of the comma in Henry James, as Lorrie Moore's barely-parodic parody had it, and students dressed in black. Eakin went as far as the opera gloves.•       System Replaces the Self. After the war, Sartre's existentialism made every accurate thought an authentic act of resistance — a heroic message for a France humiliated by four years of Nazi occupation. But the postwar world was not being changed by individual actors, and Lévi-Strauss dismissed the whole business in Tristes Tropiques as “shop girl metaphysics.” Around the time the Berlin Wall went up, Althusser routed Sartre at the École Normale, and a new philosophy took hold, obsessed with vast impersonal forces: not humans controlling events but a structure — with language at its center. The moment that fascinated Eakin is that sixties moment when system replaced the self.•       Difficult by Design — and Easy to Distort. A colleague of Eakin's at the Times was once assigned Lacan's lecture on The Purloined Letter; a few minutes into class, the professor cancelled it, admitting he didn't understand the text he had assigned. That is the level of difficulty in question. Underedited and self-indulgent, Eakin the editor concedes — but each Frenchman left behind one bold idea worth the struggle, like Lacan's mirror stage, in which identity is formed outside ourselves in an act of misrecognition. The difficulty carried a price: it made the work easy to parody, and conservative pundits handed the public a distorted picture. The Frenchmen never said truth doesn't exist, Eakin insists. Their message was to beware political claims masquerading as eternal truths.•       Slippery Politics, Awkward Pasts. Foucault, insecure about his thinning hair, shaved his head, ditched the suits, and by 1970 was in the streets with a megaphone defending prisoners, immigrants, and workers — and he was in San Francisco at the start of the AIDS catastrophe, which is reason to take his politics seriously. Derrida was temperamentally otherwise: nothing follows from deconstruction, as Stanley Fish put it, and the moment of silence his classmates held for Stalin at the École Normale was a bit much for him. The posthumous exposure of de Man's collaborationist journalism hastened theory's American demise. And there was the paradox Eakin only saw while writing the book: men undoing the master narratives, and a generation of feminists — herself included — enthralled to them. De Beauvoir was the indomitable exception, awarded second place in the agrégation by jurors who could barely decide between her and Sartre.•       The Frenchmen's Revenge: AI. When the chatbots got good, American linguistics went into a tailspin: Chomsky's account of language as a uniquely human, embodied endowment cannot explain a machine producing sophisticated sentences. The structuralists' theory — language as an impersonal system in which meaning derives from how words differ from one another — describes generative AI rather well, and scholars such as NYU's Leif Weatherby are now calling for a structuralist revival to understand it. De Man called language a machine; Foucault wrote of the proliferation of authorless discourse; Eakin's recent New York Times essay argues Foucault foresaw everything from AI to the deep state. The Frenchmen, she thinks, would be fascinated rather than appalled — and would remind us to be just as wary of AI's language as of anyone else's.About the GuestEmily Eakin is an editor at The New York Times Book Review. She has worked as a senior editor at The New Yorker, an ideas reporter for The New York Times, a fashion features writer at Vogue, and a deputy editor of Lingua Franca. Her features, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books. A Harvard graduate with graduate degrees from Columbia and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, she lives in New York City. Her first book is The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory (Penguin Press, July 2026).References:•       The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory by Emily Eakin (Penguin Press, July 2...

On this episode of the daily, I'm discussing book recommendations:Books: The Lying Game By New York Times, best selling author, Ruth Ware. I discuss about Ruth Ware as she is known as the Agatha Christie of our modern times. I also discussed the books by the amazing Agatha Christie. I go into all of her books and everything she accomplished in the literary world and she was also known as Dame. I also discussed the books by Best selling author, Charlaine Harris. I discussed all about her books and how her characters have been turned into series. Like the Sookie Stackhouse series which was turned into HBO hit True Blood. Then also the Aurora Teagarden series which has also been turned into a series on Hallmark. And also midnight, Texas, which was a series that was on the air for two seasons. She has been writing books now for 46 45 years. Then also the books by Henry James and the turn of the screw. And how Henry James was a giant in the literary world along with F. Scott Fitzgerald and his famous novel, the great Gatsby.I also mentioned the discussion of the scene book a primer for the fiction writer which I will be discussing tomorrow by the talented Sandra Scofield. All music provided by Pixabay royalty free music by pixiebay.com

En este pase doble nos adentramos en dos adaptaciones cinematográficas de Henry James, autor clave de la literatura modernista, y reconocido por su exploración de la psicología de los personajes, su interés por la percepción del tiempo y las decisiones que definen una vida. Hablamos primero de «La bestia» (La bête, Bertrand Bonello, 2023), una versión libre de la novela corta «La bestia en la jungla» (1903). Bonello convierte el relato introspectivo de James en una película que salta entre temporalidades y géneros para cuestionar qué significa ser humano en un mundo cada vez más artificial. En el episodio analizamos sus motivos visuales, sus decisiones estéticas, y las preguntas del cineasta sobre el ser y las apariencias. Después comentamos «Hombre de dos mundos» (The House in the Square, Roy Ward Baker, 1951), adaptación de la novela inconclusa «El sentido del pasado» (1917). Aquí James suma a sus temas habituales, como el paso del tiempo y la vida no vivida, el choque cultural entre el Viejo y el Nuevo Mundo, junto con un viaje temporal que pone en primer plano la idealización de lo desconocido y la noción de predestinación. Un episodio sobre atmósferas interiores y personajes atrapados entre lo que fueron, lo que son y lo que pudieron haber sido. Tras los micros de este programa henryjamesiano están Lourdes Esqueda, José Luis Forte y Miguel Muñoz Garnica.

Last week I was invited to a VIP tour of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, guided by their Chief Curator. What I found was a woman who turned grief into one of the most unconventional art collections in American history — and who once glued tea-box tinfoil to her dining room walls because she liked the way it looked. I even got to stand two feet from a Rembrandt that survived the largest unsolved art heist in history! This is the story of Isabella Stewart Gardner, and why she knew the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe,. In this episode: - Who Isabella Stewart Gardner was, and why she remains one of the most unconventional art collectors in American history - How personal loss — the death of her young son Jackie — led Isabella to start traveling and collecting art - The artists and friends in Isabella's orbit, including John Singer Sargent, Henry James, and Johannes Brahms - A close encounter with Rembrandt's 1629 self-portrait — the only surviving piece from Isabella's original five Rembrandts - The story of the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, the largest unsolved art theft in history - A recommendation for the podcast "Last Seen" by Kelly Horan and WBUR, which covers the heist in depth - The surprising detail about silver tea-box tinfoil glued to Isabella's dining room walls — and why it made me love her even more

Sök på Sommarföljetongen för att hitta ljudböcker från Radioföljetongen Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radios app. ”När skruven dras åt” och ”Dörren” är sommarens följetongslyssning Du hör Henry James klassiska skräckroman När skruven dras åt, i uppläsning av Saskia Husberg och Hans Alfredsson från 19e juni, och med start 10e juli kan du lyssna till Julia Dufvenius uppläsning av Magda Szabós roman Dörren. En ungersk modern klassiker, om en vänskap full av hemligheter- mellan en författare och en hushållerska. Sök på Sommarföljetongen i vår app Sveriges Radio.

Lundströms Bokradio firar midsommar med att bokcirkla om sommarlovsföljetongen När skruven dras åt, klassikern och spökhistorien från 1898 av Henry James. Välkomna! Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radios app. Marie Lundström bjuder in bokjournalisten Lotta Olsson och författaren och översättaren Kristoffer Leandoer till en bokcirkel om sommarens första radioföljetong: När skruven dras åt från 1898 av Henry James, i svensk översättning av Ola Klingberg. Hela romanen finns att lyssna på i appen Sveriges Radio.Skriv till oss! bokradio@sverigesradio.seProgramledare: Marie Lundström

Front Row Classics is taking a look at one of our most requested films since the inception of the podcast. Brandon is joined by Peter Martin to chat about 1949's The Heiress. Based on Henry James' Washington Square, this period drama rings true close to 80 years later. Olivia de Havilland won her second Oscar for her transformative performance. Brandon and Peter discuss de Havilland as well as the complex performances of Montgomery Clift and Sir Ralph Richardson.

Bolt the Door, Mariah. Front Row Classics is taking a look at one of our most requested films since the inception of the podcast. Brandon is joined by Peter Martin to chat about 1949’s The Heiress. Based on Henry James’ Washington Square, this period drama rings true close to 80 years later. Olivia de Havilland … Continue reading Ep. 457- The Heiress →

A young governess takes a position at the secluded country estate of Bly to care for two remarkably charming orphans. Surrounded by beautiful gardens, a shimmering lake, and an atmosphere of perfect tranquility, she soon senses that something is deeply wrong. Strange figures appear where none should be, and the children's innocent smiles hide secrets she cannot ignore. Caught between duty and dread, she must battle unseen forces to protect the children, and her own fragile sanity. Henry James's haunting classic delivers elegant chills and unforgettable tension in this atmospheric tale of innocence, isolation, and the supernatural. Perfect for listeners who love slow-building psychological dread. Read by Steve Rimmer.

This week on The Write Place Podcast, I'm joined by actress, podcaster and author Sonya Walger.Many listeners will know Sonya from her roles in Lost, For All Mankind, FlashForward, The Catch and many more, but she is also the author of the acclaimed debut novel Lion and her latest book, Wifehouse.In our conversation, Sonya talks about the idea behind Wifehouse, a novel about a woman who leaves her family, and why she wanted to explore that story without judgement. We discuss marriage, motherhood, identity, multiple points of view, and the difficult creative challenge of writing a character readers may not approve of but can still understand. We also talk about Sonya's move from acting into fiction, how years of inhabiting other characters have shaped her as a novelist, and why she finds writing so liberating after a career spent waiting for permission to play a part.Along the way, Sonya shares her thoughts on rejection, creative fear, handwriting first drafts, journalling, writing on planes, and why reading is one of the most important ways we practise empathy.And of course, we cover the usual Write Place favourites, including the Book That Saved Your Life, where Sonya chooses The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.A thoughtful, generous and wide-ranging conversation about writing, performance, creativity and the need to keep feeding the artist in you.LinksSonya's website: https://sonya-walger.com/ Sonya on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonyawalgerofficial/ Bookish with Sonya Walger: https://bookishwithsonyawalger.com/ Buy Wifehouse: https://www.waterstones.com/book/wifehouse/sonya-walger/9781786586384 My book, Real Writers Never Quit: https://mybook.to/realwritersneverquit Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrkelly2u/

Send us Fan MailPublished December 17, 1927 in the Saturday Evening Post, "A Short Trip Home" is most notable as one of a handful of supernatural short stories F. Scott Fitzgerald published throughout his career. Indeed, the Post almost declined the story because they weren't keen on tales of specters, wraiths, or apparitions, but ultimately they couldn't resist his prose. In this tale, a St Paul college boy, Eddie Stinson, takes it upon himself to protect local girl Ellen Baker from a mysterious man named Joe Varland---who appears to be from another dimension. We explore this story in the tradition of spoooky tales from Poe to Henry James while examining Fitzgerald's love of trains and the Midwest. Although not a famous story, "A Short Trip Home" demonstrates how adept Fitzgerald was when he decided to take on a specific genre in popular fiction.  

We all know our attention is being competed for — but historian of science D. Graham Burnett calls it something more alarming: a "civilizational biohack." In this episode, we talk with Burnett, a Princeton historian of science and co-founder of "The Friends of Attention," about the movement to liberate our minds from the 17-trillion-dollar attention economy. He draws on surprising sources — the German Romantics, St. Augustine, Simone Weil, Henry James — to argue that we've lost touch with older, richer forms of attention. And he makes the case that reclaiming it will require more than screentime apps or digital detox – it'll take collective resistance. Plus: why your Pilates class, your evening needlework, or your walk with the dog might already be forms of radical attention — and how reframing everyday activities can make ordinary life feel richer, more mysterious and more full of wonder.– “Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement” The Friends of Attention The Strother School of Radical Attention D. Graham Burnett website   –0:00 Introduction3:00 Human Fracking27:30 Attention as Generosity30:55 Wonder and Disenchantment Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/awesome-audiobooks--4788468/support.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/awesome-audiobooks--4788468/support.

Tune in to hear why James's 1880 New York novel might be all of the above--plus funny! The close look at the innovative, wry narrative stance is reason enough to spend an hour thinking about this slim book. Not to mention the excellent characterization, the use of satire and the send up of the Gothic meddlesome spinster aunt! Treat yourself now!

On this episode of Match+Book, librarian Paul share someshorter books that you should check out.You can check out these items with your EBPL or STELLAlibrary card: https://www.ebpl.org/adults/news/matchbook-short-reads Exiles by Mason CoileHeadshot by Rita BullwinkelThe Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Ottavio Fatica"Operazione Shylock"Philip RothPrefazione: Emmanuel CarrèreAdelphiwww.adelphi.it«Un libro infernale, che non si riesce a smettere di leggere. Una riflessione sul giudaismo, su Israele, sull'invecchiare, sulla menzogna, sull'invenzione, sulla letteratura – su tutto ciò che conta nella vita. Assolutamente vertiginoso. Leggetelo» (Emmanuel Carrère). Traduzione di Ottavio FaticaTraduzione della prefazione di Emmanuel Carrère: Ena MarchiNella sua burrascosa carriera, Philip Roth ci ha abituato alle più spericolate acrobazie narrative, ma mai ha osato tanto quanto in Operazione Shylock, dove, per dire e fare tutto ciò che vuole, ha sentito il bisogno di misurarsi con il suo più temibile avversario: un altro Philip Roth – stesso nome e stessi connotati, solo il nomignolo Moishe Pipik a distinguerlo da sé. Mai il tema del Doppio è stato usato in un romanzo con un tale autolesivo virtuosismo. Roth azzanna sé stesso come essere umano, come ebreo, come Philip Roth, e non si accontenta di una libbra di carne. Come congegnare, altrimenti, una spy story che tiene insieme il Mossad, il processo al mostro di Treblinka, il recupero dopo un crollo psichico da Halcion, l'incontro-scontro con ebrei e palestinesi in una Gerusalemme pattugliata dall'esercito israeliano, il faccia a faccia ustorio con l'altro Philip Roth – un megalomane che per salvare gli ebrei ashkenaziti da un probabile prossimo sterminio si fa propugnatore di una nuova diaspora, uno spregiudicato controesodo verso i paesi europei d'origine – e con la sua procace, concupita compagna? Sfoggiando una lingua viscerale e insieme altamente speculativa, Roth combina in queste pagine la più spiritata, isterica commedia nera con il dramma di popoli e di singoli individui lacerati, e mette in scena una mirabolante due-giorni a Gerusalemme che – incredibile a dirsi – fa anche ridere.Philip Milton Roth nasce a Newark, nel New Jersey, il 19 marzo del 1933 in una famiglia della piccola borghesia ebraica. Si laurea alla Bucknell University e fa un master in letteratura inglese all'Università di Chicago. Pubblica i primi racconti sulla Paris Review, su Esquire e sul New Yorker. Il suo capolavoro è Pastorale Americana, con cui vince il Premio Pulitzer nel 1997 e da cui è stato tratto un film da Ewan McGregor, che interpreta anche il ruolo del protagonista. Il libro fa parte una trilogia che comprende Ho sposato un comunista e La macchia umana. Il suo esordio avviene nel 1959 con Addio Columbus. Dieci anni dopo la fama con Il lamento di Portnoy, in cui il protagonista, un trentenne ebreo, Alexander Portnoy, racconta all'analista le proprie nevrosi sessuali.Autore di trentuno libri, Roth è stato un critico feroce della società americana, della sessualità maschile e dei falsi miti dell'uomo occidentale (in Complotto contro l'America del 2004 immagina che alle elezioni per la presidenza americana del 1940 venga eletto Charles Lindbergh anziché Roosevelt, e che questo trasformi gli Stati Uniti in un alleato della Germania nazista). Nel 2009 annuncia il suo ritiro dall'attività di romanziere. Il suo nome è apparso spesso nella lista dei concorrenti al premio Nobel per la letteratura. Muore a New York il 22 maggio 2018.Ottavio FaticaFamoso per le sue numerose traduzioni, ricordiamo: il Moby-Dick di Melville, quasi tutto Kipling, i diari di Byron, i limerick di Lear, Céline, Henry James. Per Einaudi ha pubblicato nella collana Collezione di poesie, Le omissioni (2009) e Vicino alla dimora del serpente (2019).Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

Happy “Tax Day”! I wonder what the American Revolutionary Founders would think of ‘Tax Day’, on this momentous 250th Anniversary of our American Independence…? Links Videos / Clips [x] = Played The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer – American Archive of Public Broadcasting [x] 48:56--49:39 JIM LEHRER: What is the proper relationship, what should be the proper relationship between a chairman of the Fed and a president of the United States? ALAN GREENSPAN: Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take. So long as that is in place and there is no evidence that the administration or the Congress or anybody else is requesting that we do things other than what we think is the appropriate thing, then what the relationships are don’t, frankly, matter. And I’ve had very good relationships with presidents. 1. [x] Understanding Fractional Reserve Banking: How It Fuels Economic Growth Fractional reserve banking is the banking system most countries use today. It requires banks to hold only a fraction of the money their customers deposit. That amount is the reserve requirement, and in most countries, it is set by the central bank. Banks can loan the rest of their deposits to other customers, which serves to expand the economy. It works like this. Banks accept deposits from individuals and businesses providing them with savings and checking accounts in return. Banks can loan out the bulk of those deposits to other customers to buy homes or cars, start businesses, or to fund other projects. If a customer deposits $100,000 into a bank and the reserve requirement is 5%, the bank can loan $95,000 out to other customers. Once the bank has loaned out $95,000, it in essence has created $195,000. Customers borrow that $95,000 and deposit some or all of it into other banks. If the reserve requirement is still 5%, then the other banks can loan $90,250 to new customers. And the process keeps repeating itself. Financial crisis occurs when the fractional banking system breaks down and the money supply does not expand. Many US banks had to shut down during the Great Depression, because so many people attempted to withdraw their money at the same time. Today, safeguards exist to prevent such an occurrence. 1. Dollar Decline, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) & IMF as World Federal Bank – Jim Rickards – The Triffin Dilemma Headlines [x] = Mentioned / Discussed [x] Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said? | Washington DC | The Guardian [x] Prosecutors from Jeanine Pirro’s office tried to access Federal Reserve headquarters, but were turned away | CBS News [x] Grand jury declines criminal charges against 6 Democrats who urged military to reject illegal orders | CBS News [x] Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit | 404 Media WebinarTV Secretly Scraped Zoom Meetings of Anonymous Recovery Programs | 404 Media Farmer Arrested for Speaking Too Long at Datacenter Town Hall Vows to Fight | 404 Media The Rest [x] = Mentioned / Discussed Previous RWR Episodes [x] Road Warrior Radio with Chris Hinkley, April 14, 2026 | Hour 1 | Hour 2 Administrative Fourth Branch [x] The Birth of the Administrative State: Where It Came From and What It Means for Limited Government | The Heritage Foundation [x] The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State on JSTOR [x] America Is A Don't Ask Don't Tell Nation – Road Warrior Radio The Paper Ponzi Scheme [x] Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 27 May 1788 The bankruptcies in London have recommenced with new force. There is no saying where this fire will end. Perhaps in the general conflagration of all their paper. …nothing is necessary but a general panic, produced either by failures, invasion or any other cause, and the whole visionary fabric vanishes into air and shews that paper is poverty, that it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. [x] Money, whence it came, where it went : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent. [x] Economists John Kenneth Galbraith and Alan Greenspan appeared before… News Photo – Getty Images [x] Crash Could Not Happen Again, Heller, Galbraith and Greenspan Tell Congress – The New York Times [x] FRB Speech, Bernanke – On Milton Friedman’s ninetieth birthday – November 8, 2002 Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again. [x] Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval (1816) – Teaching American History We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. [x] Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address (Mar 4, 1837) | The American Presidency Project The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government. The power which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States. [x] Federal Reserve Act – Wikisource, the free online library Sec. 30.. The right to amend, alter, or repeal this Act is hereby expressly reserved. [x] hypothecate – definition and meaning [x] Websters 1828 – Webster’s Dictionary 1828 – Hypothecate HYPOTH’ECATE, verb transitive [Latin hypotheca, a pledge; Gr. to put under, to suppose.] 1. To pledge, and properly to pledge the keel of a ship, that is, the ship itself, as security for the repayment of money borrowed to carry on a voyage. In this case the lender hazards the loss of his money by the loss of the ship, but if the ship returns safe, he received his principal, with the premium or interest agreed on, though it may exceed the legal rate of interest. 2. To pledge, as goods. [x] 321gold: Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan 1966 In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard. Triffin dilemma – Wikipedia The Shot Heard Round The World [x] Battles of Lexington and Concord – Wikipedia On This Day Events April 2026 Calendar of Public Holidays | Office Holidays Holidays and Observances in the United States in 2026 What day is it today? Important events every day ad-free | United States OTD Worldwide Public Holidays Wednesday April 15th 2026 | Office Holidays On This Day – What Happened on April 15 Today in History: April 15, the Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic | AP News What Happened on April 15 – On This Day What Happened on April 15 | HISTORY April 15 – Wikipedia What Happened On April 15 In History? 15 | April | 2020 | Executed Today Holidays Tax Day (US) Father Damien Day (Hawaii) Jackie Robinson Day (US) Titanic Remembrance Day (US) American Sign Language (ASL) Day (US) Historical Events 2013 – Boston Marathon Bombing: Two bombs made from pressure cookers exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260. But: Who is Graham Fuller, and who is Uncle Ruslan…?123456789 1998 – Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia's killing fields, dies of apparently natural causes while serving a life sentence imposed against him by his own Khmer Rouge. 1994 – The World Trade Organization is founded: The WTO coordinates and strives to liberalize international trade. It has been criticized for ignoring and escalating the negative social and environmental side-effects of globalization. 1990 – Sketch comedy TV series In Living Color premieres on FOX TV 1989 – A small group of students initiates pro-democracy protest on Tiananmen Square in Beijing: The death of reformer Hu Yaobang triggered the demonstrations, which grew in size and were brutally dispersed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4. 1986 – The United States launches retaliatory air strikes against Libya: Around 40 Libyans died in Operation El Dorado Canyon, including an infant girl. The attack was the United States’ response to the bombing of a Berlin discotheque on April 5, in which 3 people had died. 1974 – Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army held up a branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco; a member of the group was SLA kidnap victim Patricia Hearst. (Hearst later said she had been forced to participate in the robbery.) 1960 – Guy Carawan sings We Shall Overcome to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh, popularizing the song as a protest anthem 1955 – Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. 1945 – The German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen is liberated: British and Canadian troops found about 53,000 prisoners inside the camp. Tens of thousands died before and after the liberation. 1935 – The Eastman Kodak Company launches Kodachrome: The photographic film was one of the most popular media used by professional and hobby photographers around the world. The product was discontinued in 2009 because of the advent of digital photography. 1924 – Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas. 1912 – British luxury liner RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland just over two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Over 1,500 people died; 710 survived. 1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. 1892 – The General Electric Company is formed. 1877 – World’s first home telephone is installed in Somerville, Massachusetts at the house of Charles Williams Jr. 1874 – First Impressionist art exhibition opens in Paris, features Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot 1865 – Abraham Lincoln died after being shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater the previous evening; Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17th president hours later. 1861 – Federal army of 75,000 volunteers is mobilized by President Abraham Lincoln at the start of the American Civil War 1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a “long belt” of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. 1783 – Preliminary articles of peace ending the American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence) are ratified. 1755 – Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London 1729 – Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion premieres at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Holy Roman Empire (now Germany) Births 1978 – Chris Stapleton, American country singer-songwriter and guitarist (48) 1922 – Harold Washington, American lawyer and politician, 51st Mayor of Chicago (died 1987) 1894 – Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician, 7th Premier of the Soviet Union (died 1971) 1858 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher [read Lark’s Collected Musings] (died 1917) 1843 – Henry James, American/English author (died 1916) 1841 – Joseph E. Seagram, Canadian businessman and politician, founded the Seagram Company Ltd (died 1919) 1832 – Wilhelm Busch, German poet, painter, illustrator (died 1908) 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, architect (died 1519) Deaths 2025 – Wink Martindale, American DJ, radio personality, and TV personality (born 1933) 2024 – Whitey Herzog, American professional baseball outfielder and manager (born 1931) 2018 – R. Lee Ermey, USMC drill instructor, American actor (born 1944) 1998 – Pol Pot, Cambodian general and politician, 29th Prime Minister of Cambodia (born 1925) 1990 – Greta Garbo, Swedish actress (born 1905) 1980 – Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, writer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1905) 1912 – Victims of the Titanic disaster: Archibald Butt, American general and journalist (born 1865) Benjamin Guggenheim, American businessman (born 1865) Charles Melville Hays, American businessman (born 1856) Edward Smith, English Captain (born 1850) Henry B. Harris, American producer and manager (born 1866) Henry Tingle Wilde, English chief officer (born 1872) Ida Straus, German-American businesswoman (born 1849) Isidor Straus, German-American businessman and politician (born 1845) Jack Phillips, English telegraphist (born 1887) Jacques Futrelle, American journalist and author (born 1875) James Paul Moody, English Sixth Officer (born 1887) John B. Thayer, American business and sportsman (born 1862) John Jacob Astor IV, American colonel, businessman, and author (born 1864) Thomas Andrews, Irish shipbuilder (born 1873) Wallace Hartley, English violinist and bandleader (born 1878) William McMaster Murdoch, Scottish First Officer (born 1873) William Thomas Stead, English journalist (born 1849) 1889 – Father Damien, Flemish missionary, priest, and saint (born 1840) 1865 – Abraham Lincoln, American lawyer, politician, 16th President of the United States (born 1809) Footnotes Jimenez, Guillermo. “The Tsarnaevs and the CIA: Who Is Graham Fuller?” Traces of Reality by Guillermo Jimenez, 2026, web.archive.org/web/20130503080950/tracesofreality.com/2013/04/29/the-tsarnaevs-and-the-cia-who-is-graham-fuller/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. It has been confirmed that the Tsarnaev family, at least to some degree, have been connected to the Central Intelligence Agency for almost 20 years. In 1995, Ruslan Tsarni (formerly known as Ruslan Tsarnaev, affectionately known as “Uncle Ruslan,” the American corporate media darling who bemoaned the alleged actions of his nephews Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev ) married the daughter of the former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council on Intelligence, Graham Fuller. While the marriage of Samantha Ankara Fuller and Ruslan Tsarnaev was short-lived, reportedly ending in divorce in 1999, it appears that Ruslan and Graham Fuller were more than just father-in-law and son.  They may also been business partners. These key details in the history of the Tsarnaev family and the CIA were first reported by Daniel Hopsicker of Mad Cow Morning News, and the marriage of Fuller's daughter and Ruslan has indeed been confirmed by Al-Monitor reporter, Laura Rozen. ↩ Hopsicker, Daniel. “Boston Bombers' Uncle Married Daughter of Top CIA Official.” MadCow Morning News, 26 Apr. 2013, www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/26/boston-bombers-uncle-married-daughter-of-top-cia-official/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Hopsicker, Daniel. ““Uncle Ruslan” Aided Terrorists from CIA Official's Home.” MadCow Morning News, 29 Apr. 2013, www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/29/uncle-ruslan-aid-to-terrorists-from-cia-officials-home/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Corbett, James. “Who Is Graham Fuller?” The Corbett Report, 2026, corbettreport.com/who-is-graham-fuller/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ “Graham Fuller – Wikispooks.” Wikispooks.com, 2026, wikispooks.com/wiki/Graham_Fuller. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Wikipedia Contributors. “Graham E. Fuller.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Mar. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_E._Fuller. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Wikipedia Contributors. “Islamism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Wikipedia Contributors. “Tablighi Jamaat.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Apr. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablighi_Jamaat. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Engdahl, F. William. “Graham E. Fuller Where Were You on the Night of July 15?” Archive.org, 9 Aug. 2016, www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Aug2016.php. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩

Ante la visita de la delegada del Colegio de Personajes Históricos y Ficticios, a Sergio del Molino se le ha ocurrido que la compañía del Teatro Luis del Olmo interprete una versión propia de la obra de Henry James y el público evalúa su compromiso con la igualdad.

Ottavio Fatica"Ormai non poteva succedere più nulla"Henry JamesEdizioni Adelphiwww.adelphi.itUn autentico forziere che schiude il segreto della vita narrativa di Henry James.«È l'arte che crea la vita, l'interesse, l'importanza di ogni cosa... Non conosco alcun sostituto alla forza e all'ardore del processo creativo» (da una lettera di Henry James a H.G. Wells, 1915).A cura di F.O. Matthiessen e Kenneth B. MurdockEdizione italiana a cura di Ottavio FaticaCon uno scritto di Roberto CalassoHenry James aveva un segreto: lo nascose nelle pieghe velenose della vita mondana, l'unica che gli fosse concesso di conoscere, e lo nascose ancor meglio nella sua prosa evasiva. Un segreto pronto a balzare alla gola dei protagonisti, e dell'autore, come la «bestia nella giungla» di un suo celebre racconto che divora ogni cosa, anche chi si arrischia a darle un nome. L'occasione per penetrarlo la offriranno questi taccuini: un autentico forziere dove James custodì quel materiale umano – aneddoti, pettegolezzi, visite, pranzi, cene, passeggiate – che andava cogliendo fra i prodotti della civiltà perfezionata, e gli si presentava ogni giorno sotto forma di «minuscolo germe per un minuscolo racconto». Poi, secondo la formula ricorrente nei Taccuini, lo scrittore sarebbe andato a «vedere un po' i particolari». In quel preciso istante cominciavano a vibrare le antenne narrative di James: ed è come se assistessimo al momento aurorale dell'invenzione narrativa. Subito dopo, eccolo delineare il profilo del racconto, con una tale perspicuità da non far rimpiangere che non sia mai stato narrato distesamente: era già stato scritto, nelle pagine dei Taccuini. Non occorreva di più.Henry James (New York, 15 aprile 1843 – Londra, 28 febbraio 1916) è uno dei maestri del romanzo moderno. Figlio di un celebre filosofo e fratello del psicologo William James, trascorse gran parte della vita in Europa, diventando cittadino britannico nel 1915.  La sua opera esplora con sottile realismo psicologico il contrasto tra innocenza americana e raffinatezza europea, tema che percorre capolavori come Ritratto di signora (1881), Le ali della colomba (1902) e Gli ambasciatori (1903).  Pioniere della narrazione interiore, influenzò profondamente Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust e tutto il Novecento letterario. Morì a Londra, lasciando un'eredità di stile e profondità ancora insuperata.Ottavio Fatica (Perugia, 1949) è uno dei più raffinati traduttori italiani contemporanei. Nato a Perugia e trasferitosi presto a Roma, dove ha vissuto per decenni, dal 2013 risiede a Narni, in Umbria. Ha esordito in Adelphi e ha collaborato con Theoria, Editori Riuniti, Bompiani ed Einaudi; da anni è consulente editoriale a tutto campo per Adelphi. Traduttore dall'inglese e dal francese, ha ritradotto gran parte dell'opera di Rudyard Kipling (per Adelphi ed Einaudi), Moby Dick di Melville, i diari di Byron, Céline, Lovecraft, Henry James, Philip Roth e molti altri classici. Tra i suoi lavori più recenti: la nuova traduzione de Il Signore degli Anelli di J.R.R. Tolkien (Bompiani, 2019-2020, poi in volume unico), Guerra (Adelphi, 2023) e Londra (Adelphi, 2025) di Louis-Ferdinand Céline, e Potrebbe anche non esserci più un mondo di H.P. Lovecraft (Adelphi, 2025). Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

In Part 2 of our discussion on Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, editor Dora Zhang returns to discuss the original cover and the design of the Norton Library edition, her first encounter with Woolf's writing during college, and a few of her favorite moments in the text. Dora Zhang is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist Novel (University of Chicago Press, 2020), which studies the works of Henry James, Marcel Proust, and, centrally, Virginia Woolf in order to reinvigorate our understanding of the ubiquitous but undertheorized category of novelistic description. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Chronicle Review, and The Point.To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of A Room of One's Own, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393893991. Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

"Milan is a place that seems to open itself slowly - grave, rich, and full of quiet splendour" - Henry James, Italian HoursMilan is a city of Art, Design, Architecture, Innovation and Commerce. It is full of great art and history. And a wonderful place to discover more about Italian culture. Here is Part 2 on some of the fabulous places you can visit in Milan Italy - Da Vinci's Last Supper and suburb Museums & Villas. I also include some history and detail about the many places to visit while in the city of Milan.Enjoy, Michelle xShownotes A Writer in Italy InstagramSubstack - At My TableMichelle's BooksMusical Scores by Richard JohnstonA Writer in Italy is about travel, art and life. A place to share the beautiful travel journeys and the discoveries along the way. Italy has many attractions - art, design, architecture, history and the wonderful food culture. Michelle shares her love of books on Italy and the places and regions that have inspired her along the way.Michelle started 'A Writer in Italy Podcast' to share personal stories and the love of books on Italy that would lead to beautiful conversations with people and like minded souls who share a deep love affair with Italian Culture and the country as a place of beauty and spiritual renewal.Michelle Johnston lives in Australia with her family.© 2026  A Writer In Italy - travel, books, art and lifeMusic Composed by Richard Johnston © 2026Support the show

In Part 1 of our discussion on Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, we welcome editor Dora Zhang to discuss the author's early life in a literary and artistic household, the enduring nature and distinctive prose of Woolf's works, and the argument of certain necessary material conditions for creating art. Dora Zhang is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist Novel (University of Chicago Press, 2020), which studies the works of Henry James, Marcel Proust, and, centrally, Virginia Woolf in order to reinvigorate our understanding of the ubiquitous but undertheorized category of novelistic description. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Chronicle Review, and The Point.To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of A Room of One's Own, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393893991. Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

Send a textHer Life in Ink, a brand new biography by Sharon Harris about Elizabeth Garver Jordan, provides a good reason to plunder our podcast vault this week to revisit an episode about this star journalist, editor and mystery author. Jordan's riveting coverage of the Lizzie Borden trial for The New York World captivated true-crime junkies of the late 19th-century, and her lengthy career as a journalist, fiction writer and literary editor still resonates today. Lori Harrison-Kahan and Jane Carr, editors of a brand new collection of Garver Jordan's work, join us to discuss her courtroom dispatches, her connection to today's #MeToo movement and how her “invisible labor” shaped the writing of literary giants like Sinclair Lewis and Henry James. Mentioned in this EpisodeASU/FIDM screening of Virginia Faulkner's "Bridal Suite" followed by a Q&A with Brad BigelowHer Life in Ink: Elizabeth Jordan, Journalist, Editor and Mystery Author by Sharon Harris The Case of Lizzie Borden & Other Writings by Jane Carr and Lori Harrison-KahanElizabeth Garver Jordan's work:The Sturdy OakThe Whole Family The Lady of PentlandsThree Rousing Cheers“Ruth Herrick's Assignment”“The Cry of the Pack”The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam MichelsonHeirs of Yesterday by Emma WolfThe New York WorldNellie BlyThe Lizzie Borden caseThe Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Mass.Harper's BazaarHarper and BrothersSupport the showFor episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.comSubscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit. Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast

Support Us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://libri-vox.org/donateThe Art of FictionHenry James (1843 - 1916) and Walter Besant (1836 - 1901)A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American writer Henry James in the same year. (Summary by Julie VW)Genre(s): Essays & Short Works, Literary CriticismLanguage: EnglishKeyword(s): speech , literary criticism  lecture, controversy Support Us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://libri-vox.org/donate

In this author-focused episode, we dive into the strange, funny, violent, and unsettling world of Flannery O'Connor. We talk about what surprised us most in her stories and novels, why her work still provokes such strong reactions, and what it's like to read her closely today. As always, this is a conversation driven by curiosity, not expertise, and please accept our invitation to read along with us!2026 Novella Book ClubWe have announced the four novellas we will be reading for The Mookse and Gripes Novella Book Club in 2026!* January: Daisy Miller, by Henry James* April: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, by César Aira* July: The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector* September: Prelude, by Katherine MansfieldDiscussions will be hosted at The Mookse and the Gripes Discord (see below!).We've got some fantastic author-focused episodes lined up for the foreseeable future, and we want to give you plenty of time to dive in if you'd like to read along with us. These episodes come around every ten episodes, and with our bi-weekly release schedule, you'll have a few months to get ready for each. Here's what we have in store:* Episode 135: William Faulkner* Episode 145: Elizabeth Taylor* Episode 155: Naguib Mahfouz* Episode 165: Annie Ernaux* Episode 175: Henry JamesThere's no rush—take your time, and grab a book (or two, or three) so you're prepared for these as they come!ShownotesWhat are you reading?* Paul: Time Shelter, by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel; My Heresies, by Alina Stefanescu* Trevor: Bomarzo, by Manuel Mujica Lainez, translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa; Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava SobelFlannery O'Connor's Books* Wise Blood (1952)* A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)* The Violent Bear It Away (1960)* Everything that Rises Must Converge (1965)* Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)* The Complete Stories (1971)* The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (1979)Join the Mookse and the Gripes on DiscordWant to share your thoughts on these upcoming authors or anything else we're discussing? Join us over on Discord! It's the perfect place to dive deeper into the conversation—whether you're reading along with our author-focused episodes or just want to chat about the books that are on your mind.We're also just now in the first novella book club of 2026, where we're reading Daisy Miller, by Henry James. It's a fantastic book, and we'd love to have you join the discussion. It's a great space to engage with fellow listeners, share your insights, and discover new perspectives on the books you're reading.The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast is a bookish conversation hosted by Paul and Trevor. Every other week, we explore a bookish topic and celebrate our love of reading. We're glad you're here, and we hope you'll continue to join us on this literary journey!A huge thank you to those who help make this podcast possible! If you'd like to support us, you can do so via Substack or Patreon. Subscribers receive access to periodic bonus episodes and early access to all new episodes. Plus, each supporter gets their own dedicated feed, allowing them to download episodes a few days before they're released to the public. We'd love for you to check it out! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mookse.substack.com/subscribe

Winter is cold, dark, and a little creepy...but it can also be cozy! Rachel and Mary recommend their favorite reads during this strange season. Check out what we talked about: "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens with readalike "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James. "Welcome to Night Vale," "The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home," and "It Devours!" by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. "Cackle" by Rachel Harrison with readalike "In the Company of Witches" by Auralee Wallace. The 1987 film "The Monster Squad" with watchalike film "The Goonies" from 1985. "Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery" by Gerald Brom with readalike "My Darling Dreadful Thing" by Johanna van Veen. The 2019 video game "Jenny LeClue" with playalike video game series "Duck Detective." Briefly mentioned were Netflix series "The Haunting of Bly Manor," the 2020 film "The Turning," radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," and the 1996 film "Matilda." To access complete transcripts for all episodes of Not Your Mother's Library, please visit: oakcreeklibrary.org/podcast Check out books, movies, and other materials through the Milwaukee County Federated Library System: countycat.mcfls.org wplc.overdrive.com oakcreeklibrary.org

We've all said it: “I wish I could read that again for the first time.” But what do we really mean when we say it? In this episode, Trevor and Paul explore the magic of first encounters with books. Is it about surprise? Youth? Timing? Being unprepared in the best possible way? Or is it about discovering not just a book, but a new way of reading, thinking, or feeling?Along the way, we talk about books that opened doors, books we read at exactly the right (or wrong) moment, what rereading gives us. A conversation about memory, generosity, regret, delight, and why reading remains endlessly alive.2026 Novella Book ClubWe have announced the four novellas we will be reading for The Mookse and Gripes Novella Book Club in 2026!* January: Daisy Miller, by Henry James* April: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, by César Aira* July: The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector* September: Prelude, by Katherine MansfieldDiscussions will be hosted at The Mookse and the Gripes Discord (see below!).We've got some fantastic author-focused episodes lined up for the foreseeable future, and we want to give you plenty of time to dive in if you'd like to read along with us. These episodes come around every ten episodes, and with our bi-weekly release schedule, you'll have a few months to get ready for each. Here's what we have in store:* Episode 125: Flannery O'Connor* Episode 135: William Faulkner* Episode 145: Elizabeth Taylor* Episode 155: Naguib MahfouzThere's no rush—take your time, and grab a book (or two, or three) so you're prepared for these as they come!ShownotesWhat are you reading?* Paul: House of Day, House of Night, by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones* Trevor: The Comforters, by Muriel SparkPaul's Picks* It, by Stephen King* On the Road, by Jack Kerouac* Tree of Smoke, by Denis JohnsonTrevor's Picks* To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf* Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell* No Tomorrow, by Vivant Denon, translated by Lydia DavisOther Books & Works Mentioned* Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft* Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson* Bomarzo, by Manuel Mujica Lainez, translated by Gregory Rabassa* Lolly Willowes, by Sylvia Townsend Warner* And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie* Atonement, by Ian McEwan* The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas* House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski* Jesus' Son, by Denis Johnson* Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson* The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James* The Ambassadors, by Henry James* Infinite Jest, by David Foster WallaceJoin the Mookse and the Gripes on DiscordWant to share your thoughts on these upcoming authors or anything else we're discussing? Join us over on Discord! It's the perfect place to dive deeper into the conversation—whether you're reading along with our author-focused episodes or just want to chat about the books that are on your mind.We're also just now in the first novella book club of 2026, where we're reading Daisy Miller, by Henry James. It's a fantastic book, and we'd love to have you join the discussion. It's a great space to engage with fellow listeners, share your insights, and discover new perspectives on the books you're reading.The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast is a bookish conversation hosted by Paul and Trevor. Every other week, we explore a bookish topic and celebrate our love of reading. We're glad you're here, and we hope you'll continue to join us on this literary journey!A huge thank you to those who help make this podcast possible! If you'd like to support us, you can do so via Substack or Patreon. Subscribers receive access to periodic bonus episodes and early access to all new episodes. Plus, each supporter gets their own dedicated feed, allowing them to download episodes a few days before they're released to the public. We'd love for you to check it out! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mookse.substack.com/subscribe

In this video, Chris and Gerry take an in-depth look at The Innocents (1961), one of the most unsettling and beautifully crafted psychological horror films ever made. Directed by Jack Clayton and based on Henry  James' The Turn of the Screw, this chilling classic stars Deborah Kerr in a haunting performance as a governess who may - or may not - be losing her grip on reality. We explore the film's eerie atmosphere, Gothic cinematography, use of sound and silence, and its lasting influence on psychological and supernatural horror. Is The Innocents truly a ghost story, or a disturbing portrait of repression and madness? Join the discussion as we break down themes, performances, and why this film remains essential viewing more than 60 years later.  Perfect for fans of classic horror, Gothic cinema, and slow-burn psychological thrillers. Like subscribe and share your interpretation of The Innocents in the comments!

Stepping inside an Impressionist painting? Yes, please.Week 41 of Ted Gioia's Immersive Humanities Course made me realize something startling: these books weren't picked for my enjoyment--and yet I loved them anyway. This week's readings, Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton and the “Overture” to Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, carry us right into the early twentieth century.I approached James with dread, expecting a slow narrative, but instead I found a moody, infinitely readable novel built around obsession, property, and desire. With a small cast and dialogue-driven scenes, it feels almost theatrical, no surprise since James briefly wrote plays. But it's also chilling in its fixation on “stuff” and ownership. This one was a winner.Proust, meanwhile, surprised me with prose that felt dreamlike, luminous, and unexpectedly funny. I had expected dense, boring, and pointless--Proust was none of those. The famous madeleine scene becomes a meditation on memory that expands from a sensation as small as a crumb into an entire world.Though radically different on the surface, James and Proust share a similar impressionistic quality, finding vast meaning in subtle gestures. A brilliant pairing--and a week I adored, even if Ted doesn't care.The Housekeeping:LINKTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)CONNECTThe complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2rTo read more of my writing, visit my Substack - https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/LISTENSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bdApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm

In this episode, we look ahead to 2026, not with resolutions or reading quotas, but with curiosity about what we're drawn to next. We talk about a handful of upcoming releases we're excited for, and then share some longer, looser reading plans for the year ahead, including big novels, rereads, and ongoing projects we're hoping to live with slowly.Along the way, we acknowledge the heaviness many people are feeling right now and talk about why reading, conversation, and community continue to matter. Whether you're planning your own reading year or just looking for company, we're glad you're here.2026 Novella Book ClubWe have announced the four novellas we will be reading for The Mookse and Gripes Novella Book Club in 2026!* January: Daisy Miller, by Henry James* April: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, by César Aira* July: The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector* September: Prelude, by Katherine MansfieldDiscussions will be hosted at The Mookse and the Gripes Discord (see below!).We've got some fantastic author-focused episodes lined up for the foreseeable future, and we want to give you plenty of time to dive in if you'd like to read along with us. These episodes come around every ten episodes, and with our bi-weekly release schedule, you'll have a few months to get ready for each. Here's what we have in store:* Episode 125: Flannery O'Connor* Episode 135: William Faulkner* Episode 145: Elizabeth Taylor* Episode 155: Naguib MahfouzThere's no rush—take your time, and grab a book (or two, or three) so you're prepared for these as they come!ShownotesUpcoming Releases Mentioned* Vigil, by George Saunders* Now I Surrender, by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer* The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, by Terry Tempest Williams* Vilhelm's Room, by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by Jennifer Russell & Sophia Hersi Smith* The Beginnings, by Antonio Moresco, translated by Max Lawton* Theodorus, by Mircea Cărtărescu* Five, by César Aira, translated by Chris Andrews* Ada, by Mark HaberReading Projects & Plans Discussed* The NYRB Classics Big Books project* Currently reading: Bomarzo, by Manuel Mujica Láinez, translated by Gregory Rabassa* On deck: Effingers, by Gabriele Tergit, translated by Sophie Duvernoy* Reading Pilgrimage (Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage)* Monthly conversations and resources; videos posted online as a long-term archive by Brad Bigelow* The website* Shakespeare! Up next: King Lear* Trevor's 2026 “in the mix” authors/projects:* Henry James (next up The Ambassadors)* Charles Dickens (Everyman editions; weighing Bleak House vs. other Christmas gifts)* Émile Zola (returning to the Rougon-Macquart project)* Virginia Woolf journals + moving toward Mrs Dalloway* NYRB Women readalong with Kim McNeil (starting with Lolly Willowes)* Library book club (next up: Loved and Missed, by Susie Boyt)* Paul's year-long/slow-burn plans:* Pilgrimage alongside the community project* Continuing Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy* Deeper into Mircea Cărtărescu, William H. Gass, and Clarice Lispector* Potential Big Classics like The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas and Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray* Bookstore book club focus on translated fiction/small presses* Taiwan Travelogue, by Yang Shuangzi, translated by Lin King* Time Shelter, by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel* Woman Running in the Mountains, by Yūko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine HarcourtBooks Also Mentioned* In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust* The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann* The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, by Margaret Renkl* The Land in Winter, by Andrew MillerJoin the Mookse and the Gripes on DiscordWant to share your thoughts on these upcoming authors or anything else we're discussing? Join us over on Discord! It's the perfect place to dive deeper into the conversation—whether you're reading along with our author-focused episodes or just want to chat about the books that are on your mind.We're also just now in the first novella book club of 2026, where we're reading Daisy Miller, by Henry James. It's a fantastic book, and we'd love to have you join the discussion. It's a great space to engage with fellow listeners, share your insights, and discover new perspectives on the books you're reading.The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast is a bookish conversation hosted by Paul and Trevor. Every other week, we explore a bookish topic and celebrate our love of reading. We're glad you're here, and we hope you'll continue to join us on this literary journey!A huge thank you to those who help make this podcast possible! If you'd like to support us, you can do so via Substack or Patreon. Subscribers receive access to periodic bonus episodes and early access to all new episodes. Plus, each supporter gets their own dedicated feed, allowing them to download episodes a few days before they're released to the public. We'd love for you to check it out! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mookse.substack.com/subscribe

Send Kevin a Text MessageIn this episode of Don't Kill the Messenger, host Kevin Goetz welcomes acclaimed writer Matthew Specktor and his father, legendary CAA agent Fred Specktor. Matthew's latest book, The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood, captures the underbelly of Los Angeles through the lens of three generations embedded in the motion picture industry. Together, Matthew and Fred explore the industry that shaped American culture.The College Course with James Baldwin (9:47): Matthew describes being chosen by lottery to study with James Baldwin at Mount Holyoke. Baldwin taught Henry James and told his students, "For it to have happened or for it to be beautiful is not enough."Lew Wasserman's Assistant at 19 (18:26): Fred recalls working for Lew Wasserman at MCA, the most powerful man in the industry.The Birth of the Modern Motion Picture Industry (22:43): Matthew explains how his family lived through the entire transformation of Hollywood, recalling Lew Wasserman seeing the line of people waiting to see Jaws in a Texas rainstorm and pioneering the wide release."No More Middle-Class Movies" (30:14): Matthew recounts a Fox 2000 corporate retreat where Bill Mechanic announced the studio would only make films over $100 million or under $10 million – nothing in between.The Gene Hackman Call That Won an Oscar (34:19): Fred describes how Gene Hackman passed on Unforgiven due to violence concerns. Fred gave Clint Eastwood Gene's phone number, and Clint convinced Gene to take the role that won Gene the Academy Award.Letting the Artist See What Others Don't (37:37): Fred's philosophy: "I believe every one of my clients belongs at the top of the list." He shares thoughts on his clients, including Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Taylor Hackford, and Danny DeVito.This conversation reveals how great writers mine their personal history to illuminate an industry, and how great agents operate, not as cartoon hustlers but as believers in fairness and quality. Matthew and Fred Specktor show us that Hollywood's golden hour wasn't just about glamour; it was about families, power, and the American dream colliding in ways both beautiful and devastating.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share. We look forward to bringing you more behind-the-scenes revelations next time on Don't Kill the Messenger.Host: Kevin GoetzGuests: Matthew and Fred SpecktorProducer: Kari CampanoWriters: Kevin Goetz, Darlene Hayman, and Kari CampanoAudio Engineer: Gary Forbes (DG Entertainment)For more information about Matthew and Fred Specktor:Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_SpecktorThe Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood: https://a.co/d/8Qy91qaWebsite: https://matthewspecktor.com/For more information about Kevin Goetz:- Website: www.KevinGoetz360.com- Audienceology Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Audience-ology/Kevin-Goetz/9781982186678- How to Score in Hollywood: https://www.amazon.com/How-Score-Hollywood-Secrets-Business/dp/198218986X/- Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Substack: @KevinGoetz360- LinkedIn @Kevin Goetz- Screen Engine/ASI Website: www.ScreenEngineASI.com

Today on Let There Be Talk, guitarist and songwriter Henry James of Robert Jon & The Wreck stops by. We dive deep into songwriting, guitar tones, fashion and what it takes to build a real rock band in the modern era. Henry is a real deal guitar player that absolutely rocks live. Robert Jon & The Wreck are a must see live band. Check out their new record Heartbreaks and Last Goodbyes produced by the legend himself Dave Cobb. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for all the episodes and my Stand Up Special 5836 https://youtu.be/nbeaApu4OP0?si=-oER0gsgq8laK1oW  Tour Dates to see me around the country can be found here - https://www.deandelray.com/tourdates  Join my Patreon for all kinds of Bonus Episodes - https://www.deandelray.com/patreon  Thank You and Happy New Year DDR

This week we're bringing you an ITEM RENEWAL from our archives. In this episode of Rhody Radio first released on December 19, 2023, Liz Gotauco AKA Cosbrarian dispenses with the merry and instead wishes you a Very Scary Christmas, sharing some macabre yuletide folk tales to accompany a dark winter night. If you love this episode and haven't yet, be sure to read Liz's book and listen to our episode with her and her sister Jade Gotauco all about folktales, illustrating the book, and their respective efforts to shine a light on neglected stories: F*cked Up Fairy Tales by Liz Gotauco, illustrated by Jade Gotauco Overdueing It Episode 35 - F*cked Up Fairy Tales the Book! With Liz and Jade Gotauco Overdueing It is a project funded by the Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services and is produced by library staff around the Ocean State. We are proud to be a resident partner of the Rhode Island Center for the Book. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not represent those of the Overdueing It podcast, its sponsor organizations, or any participants' place of employment. The content of Overdueing It episodes are the property of the individual creators, with permission for Overdueing It to share the content on their podcast feed in perpetuity. Any of the content from the Overdueing It podcast can not be reproduced without express written permission. Our logo was designed by Sarah Bouvier and our theme music is by Neura-Flow. Story sources and further reading "Frau Perchta, the Belly-Slitter" by Bone and Sickle "Meet the Thirteen Yule Lads, Iceland's Own Mischievous Santa Clauses" by Smithsonian Mag "Why Iceland's Christmas Witch Is Much Cooler (and Scarier) Than Krampus" via Smithsonian Mag "Hans Von Trotha" via Wikipedia "The Evil Butcher" via the St. Nicholas Center Ginevra, or, The old oak chest, a Christmas story by Susan Wallace (1894) "The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough" via Wikipedia "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" by Henry James (1868) "Secrets of the Old Oak Trunk" is an original short story by Liz Gotauco, November 2023 Music "The Demons Dance on Christmas Eve" by melodyayresgriffiths, via Pixabay "Coventry Carol" by Chillmore from Pixabay "A Christmas Tale" by lena_orsa via FreeSound.org "Our Love is Here to Stay" performed by Gracenotes in 2011, featuring Charles Wizon on violin, Lou Messana on guitar and Al Cardillo on bass "Grey Cuckoo Christmas Background Music" by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay "In the Bleak Midwinter" by Julius H. from Pixabay

This week we're bringing you an ITEM RENEWAL from our archives. In this episode of Rhody Radio first released on December 19, 2023, Liz Gotauco AKA Cosbrarian dispenses with the merry and instead wishes you a Very Scary Christmas, sharing some macabre yuletide folk tales to accompany a dark winter night. If you love this episode and haven't yet, be sure to read Liz's book and listen to our episode with her and her sister Jade Gotauco all about folktales, illustrating the book, and their respective efforts to shine a light on neglected stories: F*cked Up Fairy Tales by Liz Gotauco, illustrated by Jade Gotauco Overdueing It Episode 35 - F*cked Up Fairy Tales the Book! With Liz and Jade Gotauco Overdueing It is a project funded by the Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services and is produced by library staff around the Ocean State. We are proud to be a resident partner of the Rhode Island Center for the Book. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not represent those of the Overdueing It podcast, its sponsor organizations, or any participants' place of employment. The content of Overdueing It episodes are the property of the individual creators, with permission for Overdueing It to share the content on their podcast feed in perpetuity. Any of the content from the Overdueing It podcast can not be reproduced without express written permission. Our logo was designed by Sarah Bouvier and our theme music is by Neura-Flow. Story sources and further reading "Frau Perchta, the Belly-Slitter" by Bone and Sickle "Meet the Thirteen Yule Lads, Iceland's Own Mischievous Santa Clauses" by Smithsonian Mag "Why Iceland's Christmas Witch Is Much Cooler (and Scarier) Than Krampus" via Smithsonian Mag "Hans Von Trotha" via Wikipedia "The Evil Butcher" via the St. Nicholas Center Ginevra, or, The old oak chest, a Christmas story by Susan Wallace (1894) "The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough" via Wikipedia "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" by Henry James (1868) "Secrets of the Old Oak Trunk" is an original short story by Liz Gotauco, November 2023 Music "The Demons Dance on Christmas Eve" by melodyayresgriffiths, via Pixabay "Coventry Carol" by Chillmore from Pixabay "A Christmas Tale" by lena_orsa via FreeSound.org "Our Love is Here to Stay" performed by Gracenotes in 2011, featuring Charles Wizon on violin, Lou Messana on guitar and Al Cardillo on bass "Grey Cuckoo Christmas Background Music" by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay "In the Bleak Midwinter" by Julius H. from Pixabay

Broadcasting legend Clare Balding tells us why the Celebrity Traitors' castle was the perfect place to finish writing her latest book, how the author of a ‘bonkbuster' that was banned from her school became the person who got Clare into novel-writing, and the animals and women in literature who have captured her imagination. Clare grew up in the countryside surrounded by horses and dogs, reading everything from Jilly Cooper to Henry James. A keen rider, she competed as an amateur flat jockey during her teenage years, winning Champion Lady Rider in 1990. She is now one of Britain's leading broadcasters, receiving the BAFTA Special Award and RTS Presenter of the Year Award for her expert coverage of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and is an ardent campaigner for better coverage of women's sport. Clare hosts her much-loved Ramblings series on Radio 4, taking her across the British Isles exploring its landscape and its storytelling. She is also a bestselling and award-winning author of numerous books and children's novels, including her autobiography, My Animals and Other Family, which won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year. Her debut novel for adults, Pastures New, is a love letter to the countryside and the kindness of small communities, told with Clare's characteristic warmth and wit.  Clare's book choices are:  **Black Beauty by Anna Sewell **Riders by Jilly Cooper **The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid **Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus  **Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season eight of the Women's Prize's BookshelfiePodcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women's Prize for Fiction is the biggest celebration of women's creativity in the world and has been running for over 30 years.  Don't want to miss the rest of season eight? Listen and subscribe now! You can buy all books mentioned from our dedicated shelf on Bookshop.org- every purchase supports the work of the Women's Prize Trust and independent bookshops.  This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

Henry James once said "There are only 3 important things in life. the first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind!"

Hey Kingslingers! Remember us! We're back for this special bonus episode, taking a look at the newest King adaptation: The Long Walk. We covered this book in season 3 of the show, so you know we had to come back to chat about the movie! If you miss us, I hope you've checked out Flanagan's Wake where we're still going strong every week. We're currently reading through some Henry James in preparation for our study of Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor. Come join us! Check out the show schedule: https://tinyurl.com/244c4ejm Get Merch: https://doofmedia.myshopify.com/ Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/doofmedia Stay updated with Flanagan's Wake: https://bsky.app/profile/flanaganswakepod.bsky.social Message us at flanaganswakepod@gmail.com Edited by Scott Daly Original music created by Matt Freeman

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 31, 2025 is: simpatico • sim-PAH-tih-koh • adjective Simpatico typically describes two or more people or things with shared qualities, interests, etc. It can also describe someone who is agreeable or likeable. // Even though they weren't always simpatico with regard to the direction of their company, the pair managed to be successful partners for more than 35 years. See the entry > Examples: “From the early 2010s, when he was a young teen rapper in Chicago ... Chief Keef was flooding his Instagram with self-documentation, all of which is essentially gone now. Enter Eduard Taberner Pérez, an amateur archivist and professional graphic designer, who compiled ‘Sosa Archive,' a limited-run art book that gathers several thousand photos pulled from Keef's Instagram, presenting then in visually simpatico grids of 12.” — Jon Caramanica, The New York Times, 5 Mar. 2025 Did you know? Simpatico, which comes ultimately from the Latin noun sympathia, meaning “sympathy,” was borrowed into English from both the Italian simpatico and Spanish simpatico. In those languages, the word has been chiefly used to describe people who are well-liked or easy to get along with. Early uses of the word in English reflected those of their forebears, as in Henry James's 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady, in which one character says of another's dying cousin, “Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully sorry for you.” In recent years, however, the word has gained an additional sense describing things or people who get along well or work well together.