English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer
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Piše Bojan Sedmak, bere Dejan Kaloper. Suzana Zagorc je v svojem tretjem romanu Ne poznam je poglobila motive iz prejšnjih dveh. Pred desetletjem je pod naslovom Kaj pa vidva čakata?! izšla njena »zgodba para, ki ga odločitev za otroka pelje od uradne preko alternativne medicine vse do osebnostne preobrazbe«. V prvencu je v prvoosebni izpovedi obravnavala probleme upadanja fertilnosti nekaj let pred s kresnikom nagrajenimi Pričakovanji Anje Mugerli. V drugem romanu Ne me silit, da ti lažem je polje boja za literarno navzočnost razširila na ženske-moške odnose v zakonih in zunaj njih. V dinamično izpisanih prigodah dveh junakinj je izkazala talent za razgradnjo razmerij, okoli katerih se vrtinčijo duše prešuštnih mož in žena – tam se med poročnimi kalupi iščeta prijateljici v neskladnih situacijah, ko se ena spopada z moževim varanjem, druga pa prav to počne svojemu. Čeprav roman Ne poznam je prvenstveno ni posvečen takšnim peripetijam solidno situiranih meščanov, tudi v njem dogajanje ne poteka brez osvobajanja junakinj izpod omoženih in tokrat predvsem delovnih obveznosti. Službena izčrpanost namreč napoti protagonistko v iskanje osvežilnih sokov iz družinskih korenin in v popestritev zakona s starimi in novimi zaljubljenostmi – takšen bi bil lahko povzetek romana v nekaj besedah. V nasprotju s prvencem je v noviteti pomembna avtoričina opomba, da so pripetljaji iz knjige zgolj plod njene domišljije in da je vsaka povezava z resničnostjo zgolj naključna in nenamerna. Z drugim romanom, prav tako opremljenim s pojasnilom o izmišljenih osebah, krajih in dogodkih, pa vsebino spaja splošno razpoloženje pripovedi, pri čemer prednjači nanašanje na ideje žensk, ki tečejo z volkovi. Uspešnica jungovske psihoanalitičarke Clarisse Pinkole Estés, ki je prisotna v motu Ne me silit, da ti lažem, na svojevrsten način obeležuje tudi zaključek zgodbe romana Ne poznam je, ko se protagonistka prijavi v projekt popisovanja volkov v kočevskih gozdovih. In tudi sicer je skozi vsa besedila Suzane Zagorc razpredeno pomembno sporočilo Žensk, ki tečejo z volkovi – za živalsko podstat človeškega partnerstva je uporabljeno vodenje krdela, ki si ga z dokončno zvestobo deli volčji par, pri ključnih odločitvah pa se trop ravna po usmerjanju samice. Izkaže se, da je tako tudi s prvoosebno pripovedovalko Katjo, ko se na zadnjih straneh besedila znajde v razrešeni dilemi med zakonskim in gozdnim možem. Čeprav razgledana pisateljica omenja tudi Lacana, je v psihologiji komunikacije med spoloma bolj naklonjena jungovskim arhetipom; v literarni tradiciji pa spada v dolgo linijo pisk, ki so že v vznikih romana v 18. in 19. stoletju količinsko v stotinah zaznamovale književnost zahoda. Poleg bolj izpostavljenih Jane Austin, sester Brontë in Mary Shelley so danes bolj ali manj neznane avtorice izdajale številne romane; v kanon pa so se z analizo odnosov med spoloma vpisovali predvsem moški, ki so ženske, željne pravic do lastnih užitkov, fiksirali v fatalke ali pošiljali v lekarne po arzenik ali pod vlak. Od takrat je ljubezen na zahodu doživela številne preobrazbe intimnosti, od sufražetk do zahtev gibanja 'jaz tudi' je tako v ženski agendi nenehno soočanje s situacijami podvojenega dela, družinskih in družbenih služnosti, najbrž tudi glavnega razloga za medlečo nataliteto liberalno-demokratskega zahoda. In tudi za izgorelost službeno sposobne, učinkovite in uspešne Katje Fink Naglič, protagonistke romana Ne poznam je. Razpisi za investicije v javni upravi terjajo od prizadevne upravnice stalno pripravljenost na odgovorno komunikacijo in koncentracijo in če je ta zavezana z marljivo delovno etiko, je pred duševnim sesutjem ne zmore obvarovati zgolj poslovna psihoterapija. Ta itak deluje kot vključeno popravilo za žrtve kapitalistične neusmiljenosti ter kot lek ponuja predvsem začasen počitek, še najbolj v naravi. Zatekanje vanjo ponuja junakinji romana, izčrpani ženi, materi in hčeri, vpoglede v belokranjske pejsaže in prebolevnica se v teh odlomkih izkaže kot poznavalka favne in flore, gob, rib, dreves. Med slednjimi v prologu čustveno pooseblja Smreko, Hrast, Gaber in Bor, med pticami pa razlikuje liščke, škrjance, grilčke, srakoperje, škorce, ščinkavce, čižke, zelence, brgleze, kaline, meniščke, lastovice, kukavice … In ker je bilo in je spoznavanje narave in družbe enovit predmet proučevanja, dodaja Katja v dogajanje ob pastoralno idiliko zgodovinske elemente z raziskovanjem svojih družinskih debel vse do uskoških prednikov. V njih je pozorna na značajsko močne ženske; za zgled na primer izpostavlja eno med njimi, ki je bila sposobna priti čez ocean v Ameriko pred vrata svojega moškega le z naslovom na listku, kar je bilo pred stoletji seveda težje kot danes. Kakorkoli že, debla je mogoče preučevati tudi sinhrono, s kolobarnimi prerezi, pri čemer se razpira sestava sedanjosti; v tej pa ne prevladujejo jin-jangovska harmonična, dopolnjujoča se razmerja, ampak asimetrična razmerja med ženskimi in moškimi principi delovanja. Mogoče jih res oblikujejo hormoni, a la testosteron in oksitocin, zaradi katerega naj bi bile ženske bojda bolj empatične kot moški – saj so baje z Venere, moški pa z Marsa, in se one menda sporazumevajo bolj zaradi komunikacije same, oni pa le zato, da bi s sporočanjem kaj postorili – a so oboji vpeti v primeže sistema, ki enako škodi človeškosti v vseh ljudeh. Ne nazadnje je tudi Katjin mož Rok – dokaj nebogljen v zadevah, ki ne služijo profitu – podvržen obsedenosti z ekonomskim statusom, pogojenim z dobičkom. In v tem smislu je morda bolj kot delovno izgorevanje preskrbljenih zaposlenih dandanes boleče depresivno hiranje brezposelnih, ker so pač brezposelnih, o čemer pa v romanu Ne poznam je ni mogoče izvedeti ničesar. In na koncu je morda zanimivo vprašanje, na koga se pravzaprav nanaša naslov. Avtorica Suzana Zagorc, ki ima v naslovih svojih del rada glagole, prepušča ugibanje tistim, ki jih bo besedilo pritegnilo. Vsekakor je s tretjim romanom potrdila svojo literarno zmogljivost in prepoznavnost, predvidoma predvsem pri ženskem bralstvu. In je Ne poznam je dobra priložnost, da se vsaj nekaj moških ove in se ne vpiše v tisto polovico ljudi, ki na leto ne preberejo nobene knjige. Če bodo z zadovoljstvom sledili zgodbi v noviteti Suzane Zagorc, bodo morda premislili in osvojili tudi njena spoznanja iz romanov Kaj pa vidva čakata?! in Ne me silit, da ti lažem. In tako morda nekoliko okrepili svojo čustveno inteligenco.
Against a time of radical change, a gothic masterpiece was written by the teenage Mary Shelley.Published in 1818, Frankenstein takes us into a dark world where man and monster meet in mutual torment. A world of raw, animalistic fear.How was this story influenced by the tragedies in Mary Shelley's own life, and the early 19th century obsessions with playing God?Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don't forget to confirm the email. Thank you!You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.
Josh Rountree returns to the show to discuss THE UNKILLABLE FRANK LIGHTNING, which vividly reimagines Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN in the Wild West.
Imagine it's 1993, and Hollywood is dominated by iconic TV shows and movies like Beavis and Butthead, Power Rangers, and Jurassic Park. Amid this, there's a fascinating story about a film that was never made—David Cronenberg's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In this episode of 'That Was Pretty Scary,' Jon Lee Brody delves into Cronenberg's unique vision, which aimed to honor Shelley's legacy by focusing on real human emotions like grief and shame. Despite his compelling approach, Cronenberg's Frankenstein never came to fruition due to a lack of studio backing. Join us as we explore what could have been, compare it to existing adaptations, and even speculate on casting choices. This thought-provoking episode reimagines a lost cinematic masterpiece while paying homage to one of horror's most influential stories. Tune in and discover the untold story of David Cronenberg's Frankenstein.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
“I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me.” In this episode, we're diving into one of literature's most enduring classics: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. From Victor's scientific ambition to the creature's desperate search for companionship, we explore how Taylor's lyrics illuminate the Gothic themes of isolation, creation, and the consequences of playing God. Join us as we examine "Don't Blame Me," "Look What You Made Me Do," and "False God" through the lens of literature's first science fiction novel—and discover why this 1818 masterpiece feels more relevant than ever in our age of artificial intelligence. Subscribe to get new episode updates: aptaylorswift.substack.com/subscribe Stay up to date at aptaylorswift.com Mentioned in this episode Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Paradise Lost by John Milton Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks film) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien E7: Ecocriticism The Handmaid's Tale *** Episode Highlights: [1:45] Quick overview of Frankenstein [8:00] “Don't Blame Me” reputation [15:56] “Look What You Made Me Do” reputation [30:24] “False God” Lover Follow AP Taylor Swift podcast on social! TikTok → tiktok.com/@APTaylorSwift Instagram → instagram.com/APTaylorSwift YouTube → youtube.com/@APTaylorSwift Link Tree →linktr.ee/aptaylorswift Bookshop.org → bookshop.org/shop/apts Libro.fm → tinyurl.com/aptslibro Contact us at aptaylorswift@gmail.com Affiliate Codes: Krowned Krystals - krownedkrystals.com use code APTS at checkout for 10% off! Libro.fm - Looking for an audiobook? Check out our Libro.fm playlist and use code APTS30 for 30% off books found here tinyurl.com/aptslibro This podcast is neither related to nor endorsed by Taylor Swift, her companies, or record labels. All opinions are our own. Intro music produced by Scott Zadig aka Scotty Z.
El *Mid-Year Freakout Book Tag* es una especie de reto literario que se hace a mitad de año, normalmente en junio o julio, y que sirve para hacer un repaso de nuestras lecturas hasta ese momento. Consiste en responder una serie de preguntas tipo: cuál ha sido tu libro favorito del año, cuál te ha decepcionado, qué libro quieres leer antes de que acabe el año… y así hasta unas diez o quince preguntas.Es la primera vez que hago algo así y en este caso me he guiado por las preguntas que aparecían en el Mid-year freak out book tag 2025 del podcast Librorum: https://sons.red/librorum/2025/06/27/218-balance-de-mitad-de-ano-mid-year-freak-out-booktag-2025/### Y ahora el mío: Almajefi's Mid-year freakout book tag 20251. Mejor libro que has leído en lo que va de año. **Diario de campo, Rosario Izquierdo**2. Mejor secuela o mejor continuación de una saga. **La sangre maldita, Eva Amuedo (Saga: el despertar de Osharan)**3. Libro nuevo que no esperabas amar tanto. **El libro azul de Nebo, Manon Steffan Ros**4. Libro más esperado de la segunda mitad del año. **El cielo de la selva, Elaine Vilar Madruga (Lava ediciones) / El vado de los zorros, Anna Starobinets (Impedimenta)**5. Mayor decepción. **Normal People, Sally Rooney**6. Mayor sorpresa: el libro que te sorprendió para bien, aunque no esperabas gran cosa. **Blackwater I: La riada, de Michael McDowell**7. Nuevo autor favorito (ya sea debut o una autora nueva para ti). **Ángeles Mora (autora de “Desaparecer y otros verbos inesperados”)**8. Nuevo crush literario. **Kishur, el dárico gris (El despertar de Osharan, Eva Amuedo)**9. Nuevo personaje favorito. **Bruna Husky (Lágrimas en la lluvia, Rosa Montero)**10. Un libro que te hizo llorar. **Olvidado Rey Gudú, Ana María Matute**11. Un libro que te hizo feliz. **Piranesi, Susana Clarke**12. La adaptación favorita a peli o a serie que has visto durante la primera mitad del año. **Murderbot**13. Reseña favorita que has hecho. 14. El libro más bonito que has comprado o recibido este año. **El mortal inmortal, de Mary Shelley (editorial Avenauta) Ilustrado por Alejandra Acosta**15. Libros que necesitas leer antes de que termine el año. **El nombre del mundo es bosque, Ursula K. LeGuin o alguna de las novelas de Anna Starobinets.**Dime qué te ha parecido este capitulo y deja un comentario en ivoox o Spotify.Si lo prefieres, envíame un correo electrónico a la dirección de gmail almadailypodcast. En redes soy @almajefi y me encuentras en X / Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram y Telegram.
Frances Wilson has written biographies of Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, D.H. Lawrence, and, most recently, Muriel Spark. I thought Electric Spark was excellent. In my review, I wrote: “Wilson has done far more than string the facts together. She has created a strange and vivid portrait of one of the most curious of twentieth century novelists.” In this interview, we covered questions like why Thomas De Quincey is more widely read, why D.H. Lawrence's best books aren't his novels, Frances's conversion to spookiness, what she thinks about a whole range of modern biographers, literature and parasocial relationships, Elizabeth Bowen, George Meredith, and plenty about Muriel Spark.Here are two brief extracts. There is a full transcript below.Henry: De Quincey and Lawrence were the people you wrote about before Muriel Spark, and even though they seem like three very different people, but in their own way, they're all a little bit mad, aren't they?Frances: Yes, that is, I think, something that they have in common. It's something that I'm drawn to. I like writing about difficult people. I don't think I could write about anyone who wasn't difficult. I like difficult people in general. I like the fact that they pose a puzzle and they're hard to crack, and that their difficulty is laid out in their work and as a code. I like tackling really, really stubborn personalities as well. Yes, they were all a bit mad. The madness was what fuelled their journeys without doubt.Henry: This must make it very hard as a biographer. Is there always a code to be cracked, or are you sometimes dealing with someone who is slippery and protean and uncrackable?And.Henry: People listening will be able to tell that Spark is a very spooky person in several different ways. She had what I suppose we would call spiritual beliefs to do with ghosts and other sorts of things. You had a sort of conversion of your own while writing this book, didn't you?Frances: Yes, I did. [laughs] Every time I write a biography, I become very, very, very immersed in who I'm writing about. I learned this from Richard Holmes, who I see as a method biographer. He Footsteps his subjects. He becomes his subjects. I think I recognized when I first read Holmes's Coleridge, when I was a student, that this was how I also wanted to live. I wanted to live inside the minds of the people that I wrote about, because it was very preferable to live inside my own mind. Why not live inside the mind of someone really, really exciting, one with genius?What I felt with Spark wasn't so much that I was immersed by-- I wasn't immersed by her. I felt actually possessed by her. I think this is the Spark effect. I think a lot of her friends felt like this. I think that her lovers possibly felt like this. There is an extraordinary force to her character, which absolutely lives on, even though she's dead, but only recently dead. The conversion I felt, I think, was that I have always been a very enlightenment thinker, very rational, very scientific, very Freudian in my approach to-- I will acknowledge the unconscious but no more.By the time I finished with Spark, I'm pure woo-woo now.TranscriptHenry: Today, I am talking to Frances Wilson. Frances is a biographer. Her latest book, Electric Spark, is a biography of the novelist Muriel Spark, but she has also written about Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, DH Lawrence and others. Frances, welcome.Frances Wilson: Thank you so much for having me on.Henry: Why don't more people read Thomas De Quincey's work?Frances: [laughs] Oh, God. We're going right into the deep end.[laughter]Frances: I think because there's too much of it. When I chose to write about Thomas De Quincey, I just followed one thread in his writing because Thomas De Quincey was an addict. One of the things he was addicted to was writing. He wrote far, far, far too much. He was a professional hack. He was a transcendental hack, if you like, because all of his writing he did while on opium, which made the sentences too long and too high and very, very hard to read.When I wrote about him, I just followed his interest in murder. He was fascinated by murder as a fine art. The title of one of his best essays is On Murder as One of the Fine Arts. I was also interested in his relationship with Wordsworth. I twinned those together, which meant cutting out about 97% of the rest of his work. I think people do read his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. I think that's a cult text. It was the memoir, if you want to call it a memoir, that kick-started the whole pharmaceutical memoir business on drugs.It was also the first addict's memoir and the first recovery memoir, and I'd say also the first misery memoir. He's very much at the root of English literary culture. We're all De Quincey-an without knowing it, is my argument.Henry: Oh, no, I fully agree. That's what surprises me, that they don't read him more often.Frances: I know it's a shame, isn't it? Of all the Romantic Circle, he's the one who's the most exciting to read. Also, Lamb is wonderfully exciting to read as well, but Lamb's a tiny little bit more grounded than De Quincey, who was literally not grounded. He's floating in an opium haze above you.[laughter]Henry: What I liked about your book was the way you emphasized the book addiction, not just the opium addiction. It is shocking the way he piled up chests full of books and notebooks, and couldn't get into the room because there were too many books in there. He was [crosstalk].Frances: Yes. He had this in common with Muriel Spark. He was a hoarder, but in a much more chaotic way than Spark, because, as you say, he piled up rooms with papers and books until he couldn't get into the room, and so just rented another room. He was someone who had no money at all. The no money he had went on paying rent for rooms, storing what we would be giving to Oxfam, or putting in the recycling bin. Then he'd forget that he was paying rent on all these rooms filled with his mountains of paper. The man was chaos.Henry: What is D.H. Lawrence's best book?Frances: Oh, my argument about Lawrence is that we've gone very badly wrong in our reading of him, in seeing him primarily as a novelist and only secondarily as an essayist and critic and short story writer, and poet. This is because of F.R. Leavis writing that celebration of him called D.H. Lawrence: Novelist, because novels are not the best of Lawrence. I think the best of his novels is absolutely, without doubt, Sons and Lovers. I think we should put the novels in the margins and put in the centre, the poems, travel writing.Absolutely at the centre of the centre should be his studies in classic American literature. His criticism was- We still haven't come to terms with it. It was so good. We haven't heard all of Lawrence's various voices yet. When Lawrence was writing, contemporaries didn't think of Lawrence as a novelist at all. It was anyone's guess what he was going to come out with next. Sometimes it was a novel [laughs] and it was usually a rant about-- sometimes it was a prophecy. Posterity has not treated Lawrence well in any way, but I think where we've been most savage to him is in marginalizing his best writing.Henry: The short fiction is truly extraordinary.Frances: Isn't it?Henry: I always thought Lawrence was someone I didn't want to read, and then I read the short fiction, and I was just obsessed.Frances: It's because in the short fiction, he doesn't have time to go wrong. I think brevity was his perfect length. Give him too much space, and you know he's going to get on his soapbox and start ranting, start mansplaining. He was a terrible mansplainer. Mansplaining his versions of what had gone wrong in the world. It is like a drunk at the end of a too-long dinner party, and you really want to just bundle him out. Give him only a tiny bit of space, and he comes out with the perfection that is his writing.Henry: De Quincey and Lawrence were the people you wrote about before Muriel Spark, and even though they seem like three very different people, but in their own way, they're all a little bit mad, aren't they?Frances: Yes, that is, I think, something that they have in common. It's something that I'm drawn to. I like writing about difficult people. I don't think I could write about anyone who wasn't difficult. I like difficult people in general. I like the fact that they pose a puzzle and they're hard to crack, and that their difficulty is laid out in their work and as a code. I like tackling really, really stubborn personalities as well. Yes, they were all a bit mad. The madness was what fuelled their journeys without doubt.Henry: This must make it very hard as a biographer. Is there always a code to be cracked, or are you sometimes dealing with someone who is slippery and protean and uncrackable?Frances: I think that the way I approach biography is that there is a code to crack, but I'm not necessarily concerned with whether I crack it or not. I think it's just recognizing that there's a hell of a lot going on in the writing and that, in certain cases and not in every case at all, the best way of exploring the psyche of the writer and the complexity of the life is through the writing, which is a argument for psycho biography, which isn't something I necessarily would argue for, because it can be very, very crude.I think with the writers I choose, there is no option. Muriel Spark argued for this as well. She said in her own work as a biographer, which was really very, very strong. She was a biographer before she became a novelist. She thought hard about biography and absolutely in advance of anyone else who thought about biography, she said, "Of course, the only way we can approach the minds of writers is through their work, and the writer's life is encoded in the concerns of their work."When I was writing about Muriel Spark, I followed, as much as I could, to the letter, her own theories of biography, believing that that was part of the code that she left. She said very, very strong and very definitive things about what biography was about and how to write a biography. I tried to follow those rules.Henry: Can we play a little game where I say the names of some biographers and you tell me what you think of them?Frances: Oh my goodness. Okay.Henry: We're not trying to get you into trouble. We just want some quick opinions. A.N. Wilson.Frances: I think he's wonderful as a biographer. I think he's unzipped and he's enthusiastic and he's unpredictable and he's often off the rails. I think his Goethe biography-- Have you read the Goethe biography?Henry: Yes, I thought that was great.Frances: It's just great, isn't it? It's so exciting. I like the way that when he writes about someone, it's almost as if he's memorized the whole of their work.Henry: Yes.Frances: You don't imagine him sitting at a desk piled with books and having to score through his marginalia. It sits in his head, and he just pours it down on a page. I'm always excited by an A.N. Wilson biography. He is one of the few biographers who I would read regardless of who the subject was.Henry: Yes.Frances: I just want to read him.Henry: He does have good range.Frances: He absolutely does have good range.Henry: Selina Hastings.Frances: I was thinking about Selina Hastings this morning, funnily enough, because I had been talking to people over the weekend about her Sybil Bedford biography and why that hadn't lifted. She wrote a very excitingly good life of Nancy Mitford and then a very unexcitingly not good life of Sybil Bedford. I was interested in why the Sybil Bedford simply hadn't worked. I met people this weekend who were saying the same thing, that she was a very good biographer who had just failed [laughs] to give us anything about Sybil Bedford.I think what went wrong in that biography was that she just could not give us her opinions. It's as if she just withdrew from her subject as if she was writing a Wikipedia entry. There were no opinions at all. What the friends I was talking to said was that she just fell out with her subject during the book. That's what happened. She stopped being interested in her. She fell out with her and therefore couldn't be bothered. That's what went wrong.Henry: Interesting. I think her Evelyn Waugh biography is superb.Frances: Yes, I absolutely agree. She was on fire until this last one.Henry: That's one of the best books on Waugh, I think.Frances: Yes.Henry: Absolutely magical.Frances: I also remember, it's a very rare thing, of reading a review of it by Hilary Mantel saying that she had not read a biography that had been as good, ever, as Selina Hastings' on Evelyn Waugh. My goodness, that's high praise, isn't it?Henry: Yes, it is. It is. I'm always trying to push that book on people. Richard Holmes.Frances: He's my favourite. He's the reason that I'm a biographer at all. I think his Coleridge, especially the first volume of the two-volume Coleridge, is one of the great books. It left me breathless when I read it. It was devastating. I also think that his Johnson and Savage book is one of the great books. I love Footsteps as well, his account of the books he didn't write in Footsteps. I think he has a strange magic. When Muriel Spark talked about certain writers and critics having a sixth literary sense, which meant that they tuned into language and thought in a way that the rest of us don't, I think that Richard Holmes does have that. I think he absolutely has it in relation to Coleridge. I'm longing for his Tennyson to come out.Henry: Oh, I know. I know.Frances: Oh, I just can't wait. I'm holding off on reading Tennyson until I've got Holmes to help me read him. Yes, he is quite extraordinary.Henry: I would have given my finger to write the Johnson and Savage book.Frances: Yes, I know. I agree. How often do you return to it?Henry: Oh, all the time. All the time.Frances: Me too.Henry: Michael Holroyd.Frances: Oh, that's interesting, Michael Holroyd, because I think he's one of the great unreads. I think he's in this strange position of being known as a greatest living biographer, but nobody's read him on Augustus John. [laughs] I haven't read his biographies cover to cover because they're too long and it's not in my subject area, but I do look in them, and they're novelistic in their wit and complexity. His sentences are very, very, very entertaining, and there's a lot of freight in each paragraph. I hope that he keeps selling.I love his essays as well, and also, I think that he has been a wonderful ambassador for biography. He's very, very supportive of younger biographers, which not every biographer is, but I know he's been very supportive of younger biographers and is incredibly approachable.Henry: Let's do a few Muriel Spark questions. Why was the Book of Job so important to Muriel Spark?Frances: I think she liked it because it was rogue, because it was the only book of the Bible that wasn't based on any evidence, it wasn't based on any truth. It was a fictional book, and she liked fiction sitting in the middle of fact. That was one of her main things, as all Spark lovers know. She liked the fact that there was this work of pure imagination and extraordinarily powerful imagination sitting in the middle of the Old Testament, and also, she thought it was an absolutely magnificent poem.She saw herself primarily as a poet, and she responded to it as a poem, which, of course, it is. Also, she liked God in it. She described Him as the Incredible Hulk [laughs] and she liked His boastfulness. She enjoyed, as I do, difficult personalities, and she liked the fact that God had such an incredibly difficult personality. She liked the fact that God boasted and boasted and boasted, "I made this and I made that," to Job, but also I think she liked the fact that you hear God's voice.She was much more interested in voices than she was in faces. The fact that God's voice comes out of the burning bush, I think it was an image for her of early radio, this voice speaking, and she liked the fact that what the voice said was tricksy and touchy and impossibly arrogant. He gives Moses all these instructions to lead the Israelites, and Moses says, "But who shall I say sent me? Who are you?" He says, "I am who I am." [laughs] She thought that was completely wonderful. She quotes that all the time about herself. She says, "I know it's a bit large quoting God, but I am who I am." [laughs]Henry: That disembodied voice is very important to her fiction.Frances: Yes.Henry: It's the telephone in Memento Mori.Frances: Yes.Henry: Also, to some extent, tell me what you think of this, the narrator often acts like that.Frances: Like this disembodied voice?Henry: Yes, like you're supposed to feel like you're not quite sure who's telling you this or where you're being told it from. That's why it gets, like in The Ballad of Peckham Rye or something, very weird.Frances: Yes. I'm waiting for the PhD on Muriel Sparks' narrators. Maybe it's being done as we speak, but she's very, very interested in narrators and the difference between first-person and third-person. She was very keen on not having warm narrators, to put it mildly. She makes a strong argument throughout her work for the absence of the seductive narrative. Her narratives are, as we know, unbelievably seductive, but not because we are being flattered as readers and not because the narrator makes herself or himself pretty. The narrator says what they feel like saying, withholds most of what you would like them to say, plays with us, like in a Spark expression, describing her ideal narrator like a cat with a bird [laughs].Henry: I like that. Could she have been a novelist if she had not become a Catholic?Frances: No, she couldn't. The two things happened at the same time. I wonder, actually, whether she became a Catholic in order to become a novelist. It wasn't that becoming a novelist was an accidental effect of being a Catholic. The conversion was, I think, from being a biographer to a novelist rather than from being an Anglican to a Catholic. What happened is a tremendous interest. I think it's the most interesting moment in any life that I've ever written about is the moment of Sparks' conversion because it did break her life in two.She converted when she was in her mid-30s, and several things happened at once. She converted to Catholicism, she became a Catholic, she became a novelist, but she also had this breakdown. The breakdown was very much part of that conversion package. The breakdown was brought on, she says, by taking Dexys. There was slimming pills, amphetamines. She wanted to lose weight. She put on weight very easily, and her weight went up and down throughout her life.She wanted to take these diet pills, but I think she was also taking the pills because she needed to do all-nighters, because she never, ever, ever stopped working. She was addicted to writing, but also she was impoverished and she had to sell her work, and she worked all night. She was in a rush to get her writing done because she'd wasted so much of her life in her early 20s, in a bad marriage trapped in Africa. She needed to buy herself time. She was on these pills, which have terrible side effects, one of which is hallucinations.I think there were other reasons for her breakdown as well. She was very, very sensitive and I think psychologically fragile. Her mother lived in a state of mental fragility, too. She had a crash when she finished her book. She became depressed. Of course, a breakdown isn't the same as depression, but what happened to her in her breakdown was a paranoid attack rather than a breakdown. She didn't crack into nothing and then have to rebuild herself. She just became very paranoid. That paranoia was always there.Again, it's what's exciting about her writing. She was drawn to paranoia in other writers. She liked Cardinal Newman's paranoia. She liked Charlotte Brontë's paranoia, and she had paranoia. During her paranoid attack, she felt very, very interestingly, because nothing that happened in her life was not interesting, that T.S. Eliot was sending her coded messages. He was encoding these messages in his play, The Confidential Clerk, in the program notes to the play, but also in the blurbs he wrote for Faber and Faber, where he was an editor. These messages were very malign and they were encoded in anagrams.The word lived, for example, became devil. I wonder whether one of the things that happened during her breakdown wasn't that she discovered God, but that she met the devil. I don't think that that's unusual as a conversion experience. In fact, the only conversion experience she ever describes, you'll remember, is in The Girls of Slender Means, when she's describing Nicholas Farrington's conversion. That's the only conversion experience she ever describes. She says that his conversion is when he sees one of the girls leaving the burning building, holding a Schiaparelli dress. Suddenly, he's converted because he's seen a vision of evil.She says, "Conversion can be as a result of a recognition of evil, rather than a recognition of good." I think that what might have happened in this big cocktail of things that happened to her during her breakdown/conversion, is that a writer whom she had idolized, T.S. Eliot, who taught her everything that she needed to know about the impersonality of art. Her narrative coldness comes from Eliot, who thought that emotions had no place in art because they were messy, and art should be clean.I think a writer whom she had idolized, she suddenly felt was her enemy because she was converting from his church, because he was an Anglo-Catholic. He was a high Anglican, and she was leaving Anglo-Catholicism to go through the Rubicon, to cross the Rubicon into Catholicism. She felt very strongly that that is something he would not have approved of.Henry: She's also leaving poetry to become a prose writer.Frances: She was leaving his world of poetry. That's absolutely right.Henry: This is a very curious parallel because the same thing exactly happens to De Quincey with his worship of Wordsworth.Frances: You're right.Henry: They have the same obsessive mania. Then this, as you say, not quite a breakdown, but a kind of explosive mania in the break. De Quincey goes out and destroys that mossy hut or whatever it is in the orchard, doesn't he?Frances: Yes, that disgusting hut in the orchard. Yes, you're completely right. What fascinated me about De Quincey, and this was at the heart of the De Quincey book, was how he had been guided his whole life by Wordsworth. He discovered Wordsworth as a boy when he read We Are Seven, that very creepy poem about a little girl sitting on her sibling's grave, describing the sibling as still alive. For De Quincey, who had lost his very adored sister, he felt that Wordsworth had seen into his soul and that Wordsworth was his mentor and his lodestar.He worshipped Wordsworth as someone who understood him and stalked Wordsworth, pursued and stalked him. When he met him, what he discovered was a man without any redeeming qualities at all. He thought he was a dry monster, but it didn't stop him loving the work. In fact, he loved the work more and more. What threw De Quincey completely was that there was such a difference between Wordsworth, the man who had no genius, and Wordsworth, the poet who had nothing but.Eliot described it, the difference between the man who suffers and the mind which creates. What De Quincey was trying to deal with was the fact that he adulated the work, but was absolutely appalled by the man. Yes, you're right, this same experience happened to spark when she began to feel that T.S. Eliot, whom she had never met, was a malign person, but the work was still not only of immense importance to her, but the work had formed her.Henry: You see the Wasteland all over her own work and the shared Dante obsession.Frances: Yes.Henry: It's remarkably strong. She got to the point of thinking that T.S. Eliot was breaking into her house.Frances: Yes. As I said, she had this paranoid imagination, but also what fired her imagination and what repeated itself again and again in the imaginative scenarios that recur in her fiction and nonfiction is the idea of the intruder. It was the image of someone rifling around in cupboards, drawers, looking at manuscripts. This image, you first find it in a piece she wrote about finding herself completely coincidentally, staying the night during the war in the poet Louis MacNeice's house. She didn't know it was Louis MacNeice's house, but he was a poet who was very, very important to her.Spark's coming back from visiting her parents in Edinburgh in 1944. She gets talking to an au pair on the train. By the time they pull into Houston, there's an air raid, and the au pair says, "Come and spend the night at mine. My employers are away and they live nearby in St. John's Wood." Spark goes to this house and sees it's packed with books and papers, and she's fascinated by the quality of the material she finds there.She looks in all the books. She goes into the attic, and she looks at all the papers, and she asks the au pair whose house it is, and the au pair said, "Oh, he's a professor called Professor Louis MacNeice." Spark had just been reading Whitney. He's one of her favourite poets. She retells this story four times in four different forms, as non-fiction, as fiction, as a broadcast, as reflections, but the image that keeps coming back, what she can't get rid of, is the idea of herself as snooping around in this poet's study.She describes herself, in one of the versions, as trying to draw from his papers his power as a writer. She says she sniffs his pens, she puts her hands over his papers, telling herself, "I must become a writer. I must become a writer." Then she makes this weird anonymous phone call. She loved the phone because it was the most strange form of electrical device. She makes a weird anonymous phone call to an agent, saying, "I'm ringing from Louis MacNeice's house, would you like to see my manuscript?" She doesn't give her name, and the agent says yes.Now I don't believe this phone call took place. I think it's part of Sparks' imagination. This idea of someone snooping around in someone else's room was very, very powerful to her. Then she transposed it in her paranoid attack about T.S. Eliot. She transposed the image that Eliot was now in her house, but not going through her papers, but going through her food cupboards. [laughs] In her food cupboards, all she actually had was baked beans because she was a terrible cook. Part of her unwellness at that point was malnutrition. No, she thought that T.S. Eliot was spying on her. She was obsessed with spies. Spies, snoopers, blackmailers.Henry: T.S. Eliot is Stealing My Baked Beans would have been a very good title for a memoir.Frances: It actually would, wouldn't it?Henry: Yes, it'd be great.[laughter]Henry: People listening will be able to tell that Spark is a very spooky person in several different ways. She had what I suppose we would call spiritual beliefs to do with ghosts and other sorts of things. You had a sort of conversion of your own while writing this book, didn't you?Frances: Yes, I did. [laughs] Every time I write a biography, I become very, very, very immersed in who I'm writing about. I learned this from Richard Holmes, who I see as a method biographer. He Footsteps his subjects. He becomes his subjects. I think I recognized when I first read Holmes's Coleridge, when I was a student, that this was how I also wanted to live. I wanted to live inside the minds of the people that I wrote about, because it was very preferable to live inside my own mind. Why not live inside the mind of someone really, really exciting, one with genius?What I felt with Spark wasn't so much that I was immersed by-- I wasn't immersed by her. I felt actually possessed by her. I think this is the Spark effect. I think a lot of her friends felt like this. I think that her lovers possibly felt like this. There is an extraordinary force to her character, which absolutely lives on, even though she's dead, but only recently dead. The conversion I felt, I think, was that I have always been a very enlightenment thinker, very rational, very scientific, very Freudian in my approach to-- I will acknowledge the unconscious but no more.By the time I finished with Spark, I'm pure woo-woo now. Anything can happen. This is one of the reasons Spark was attracted to Catholicism because anything can happen, because it legitimizes the supernatural. I felt so strongly that the supernatural experiences that Spark had were real, that what Spark was describing as the spookiness of our own life were things that actually happened.One of the things I found very, very unsettling about her was that everything that happened to her, she had written about first. She didn't describe her experiences in retrospect. She described them as in foresight. For example, her first single authored published book, because she wrote for a while in collaboration with her lover, Derek Stanford, but her first single authored book was a biography of Mary Shelley.Henry: Great book.Frances: An absolutely wonderful book, which really should be better than any of the other Mary Shelley biographies. She completely got to Mary Shelley. Everything she described in Mary Shelley's life would then happen to Spark. For example, she described Mary Shelley as having her love letters sold. Her lover sold Mary Shelley's love letters, and Mary Shelley was then blackmailed by the person who bought them. This happened to Spark. She described Mary Shelley's closest friends all becoming incredibly jealous of her literary talent. This happened to Spark. She described trusting people who betrayed her. This happened to Spark.Spark was the first person to write about Frankenstein seriously, to treat Frankenstein as a masterpiece rather than as a one-off weird novel that is actually just the screenplay for a Hammer Horror film. This was 1951, remember. Everything she described in Frankenstein as its power is a hybrid text, described the powerful hybrid text that she would later write about. What fascinated her in Frankenstein was the relationship between the creator and the monster, and which one was the monster. This is exactly the story of her own life. I think where she is. She was really interested in art monsters and in the fact that the only powerful writers out there, the only writers who make a dent, are monsters.If you're not a monster, you're just not competing. I think Spark has always spoken about as having a monster-like quality. She says at the end of one of her short stories, Bang-bang You're Dead, "Am I an intellectual woman, or am I a monster?" It's the question that is frequently asked of Spark. I think she worked so hard to monsterize herself. Again, she learnt this from Elliot. She learnt her coldness from Elliot. She learnt indifference from Elliot. There's a very good letter where she's writing to a friend, Shirley Hazzard, in New York.It's after she discovers that her lover, Derek Stanford, has sold her love letters, 70 love letters, which describe two very, very painfully raw, very tender love letters. She describes to Shirley Hazzard this terrible betrayal. She says, "But, I'm over it. I'm over it now. Now I'm just going to be indifferent." She's telling herself to just be indifferent about this. You watch her tutoring herself into the indifference that she needed in order to become the artist that she knew she was.Henry: Is this why she's attracted to mediocrities, because she can possess them and monsterize them, and they're good feeding for her artistic programme?Frances: Her attraction to mediocrities is completely baffling, and it makes writing her biography, a comedy, because the men she was surrounded by were so speck-like. Saw themselves as so important, but were, in fact, so speck-like that you have to laugh, and it was one after another after another. I'd never come across, in my life, so many men I'd never heard of. This was the literary world that she was surrounded by. It's odd, I don't know whether, at the time, she knew how mediocre these mediocrities were.She certainly recognised it in her novels where they're all put together into one corporate personality called the pisseur de copie in A Far Cry from Kensington, where every single literary mediocrity is in that critic who she describes as pissing and vomiting out copy. With Derek Stanford, who was obviously no one's ever heard of now, because he wrote nothing that was memorable, he was her partner from the end of the 40s until-- They ceased their sexual relationship when she started to be interested in becoming a Catholic in 1953, but she was devoted to him up until 1958. She seemed to be completely incapable of recognising that she had the genius and he had none.Her letters to him deferred to him, all the time, as having literary powers that she hadn't got, as having insights that she hadn't got, he's better read than she was. She was such an amazingly good critic. Why could she not see when she looked at his baggy, bad prose that it wasn't good enough? She rated him so highly. When she was co-authoring books with him, which was how she started her literary career, they would occasionally write alternative sentences. Some of her sentences are always absolutely-- they're sharp, lean, sparkling, and witty, and his are way too long and really baggy and they don't say anything. Obviously, you can see that she's irritated by it.She still doesn't say, "Look, I'm going now." It was only when she became a novelist that she said, "I want my mind to myself." She puts, "I want my mind to myself." She didn't want to be in a double act with him. Doubles were important to her. She didn't want to be in a double act with him anymore. He obviously had bought into her adulation of him and hadn't recognised that she had this terrifying power as a writer. It was now his turn to have the breakdown. Spark had the mental breakdown in 1950, '45. When her first novel came out in 1957, it was Stanford who had the breakdown because he couldn't take on board who she was as a novelist.What he didn't know about her as a novelist was her comic sense, how that would fuel the fiction, but also, he didn't recognize because he reviewed her books badly. He didn't recognise that the woman who had been so tender, vulnerable, and loving with him could be this novelist who had nothing to say about tenderness or love. In his reviews, he says, "Why are her characters so cold?" because he thought that she should be writing from the core of her as a human being rather than the core of her as an intellect.Henry: What are her best novels?Frances: Every one I read, I think this has to be the best.[laughter]This is particularly the case in the early novels, where I'm dazzled by The Comforters and think there cannot have been a better first novel of the 20th century or even the 21st century so far. The Comforters. Then read Robinson, her second novel, and think, "Oh God, no, that is her best novel. Then Memento Mori, I think, "Actually, that must be the best novel of the 20th century." [laughs] Then you move on to The Ballad of Peckham Rye, I think, "No, that's even better."The novels landed. It's one of the strange things about her; it took her so long to become a novelist. When she had become one, the novels just landed. Once in one year, two novels landed. In 1959, she had, it was The Bachelors and The Ballad of Peckham Rye, both just completely extraordinary. The novels had been the storing up, and then they just fell on the page. They're different, but samey. They're samey in as much as they're very, very, very clever. They're clever about Catholicism, and they have the same narrative wit. My God, do the plots work in different ways. She was wonderful at plots. She was a great plotter. She liked plots in both senses of the world.She liked the idea of plotting against someone, also laying a plot. She was, at the same time, absolutely horrified by being caught inside someone's plot. That's what The Comforters is about, a young writer called Caroline Rose, who has a breakdown, it's a dramatisation of Sparks' own breakdown, who has a breakdown, and believes that she is caught inside someone else's story. She is a typewriter repeating all of her thoughts. Typewriter and a chorus repeating all of her thoughts.What people say about The Comforters is that Caroline Rose thought she is a heroine of a novel who finds herself trapped in a novel. Actually, if you read what Caroline Rose says in the novel, she doesn't think she's trapped in a novel; she thinks she's trapped in a biography. "There is a typewriter typing the story of our lives," she says to her boyfriend. "Of our lives." Muriel Sparks' first book was about being trapped in a biography, which is, of course, what she brought on herself when she decided to trap herself in a biography. [laughs]Henry: I think I would vote for Loitering with Intent, The Girls of Slender Means as my favourites. I can see that Memento Mori is a good book, but I don't love it, actually.Frances: Really? Interesting. Okay. I completely agree with you about-- I think Loitering with Intent is my overall favourite. Don't you find every time you read it, it's a different book? There are about 12 books I've discovered so far in that book. She loved books inside books, but every time I read it, I think, "Oh my God, it's changed shape again. It's a shape-shifting novel."Henry: We all now need the Frances Wilson essay about the 12 books inside Loitering with Intent.Frances: I know.[laughter]Henry: A few more general questions to close. Did Thomas De Quincey waste his talents?Frances: I wouldn't have said so. I think that's because every single day of his life, he was on opium.Henry: I think the argument is a combination of too much opium and also too much magazine work and not enough "real serious" philosophy, big poems, whatever.Frances: I think the best of his work went into Blackwood's, so the magazine work. When he was taken on by Blackwood's, the razor-sharp Edinburgh magazine, then the best of his work took place. I think that had he only written the murder essays, that would have been enough for me, On Murder as a Fine Art.That was enough. I don't need any more of De Quincey. I think Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is also enough in as much as it's the great memoir of addiction. We don't need any more memoirs of addiction, just read that. It's not just a memoir of being addicted to opium. It's about being addicted to what's what. It's about being a super fan and addicted to writing. He was addicted to everything. If he was in AA now, they'd say, apparently, there are 12 addictions, he had all of them. [laughs]Henry: Yes. People talk a lot about parasocial relationships online, where you read someone online or you follow them, and you have this strange idea in your head that you know them in some way, even though they're just this disembodied online person. You sometimes see people say, "Oh, we should understand this more." I think, "Well, read the history of literature, parasocial relationships everywhere."Frances: That's completely true. I hadn't heard that term before. The history of literature, a parasocial relationship. That's your next book.Henry: There we go. I think what I want from De Quincey is more about Shakespeare, because I think the Macbeth essay is superb.Frances: Absolutely brilliant. On Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.Henry: Yes, and then you think, "Wait, where's the rest of this book? There should be an essay about every play."Frances: That's an absolutely brilliant example of microhistory, isn't it? Just taking a moment in a play, just the knocking at the gate, the morning after the murders, and blowing that moment up, so it becomes the whole play. Oh, my God, it's good. You're right.Henry: It's so good. What is, I think, "important about it", is that in the 20th century, critics started saying or scholars started saying a lot, "We can't just look at the words on the page. We've got to think about the dramaturgy. We've got to really, really think about how it plays out." De Quincey was an absolute master of that. It's really brilliant.Frances: Yes.Henry: What's your favourite modern novel or novelist?Frances: Oh, Hilary Mantel, without doubt, I think. I think we were lucky enough to live alongside a great, great, great novelist. I think the Wolf Hall trilogy is absolutely the greatest piece of narrative fiction that's come out of the 21st century. I also love her. I love her work as an essayist. I love her. She's spooky like Spark. She was inspired.Henry: Yes, she is. Yes.Frances: She learnt a lot of her cunning from Spark, I think. She's written a very spooky memoir. In fact, the only women novelists who acknowledge Spark as their influencer are Ali Smith and Hilary Mantel, although you can see Spark in William Boyd all the time. I think we're pretty lucky to live alongside William Boyd as well. Looking for real, real greatness, I think there's no one to compare with Mantel. Do you agree?Henry: I don't like the third volume of the trilogy.Frances: Okay. Right.Henry: Yes, in general, I do agree. Yes. I think some people don't like historical fiction for a variety of reasons. It may take some time for her to get it. I think she's acknowledged as being really good. I don't know that she's yet acknowledged at the level that you're saying.Frances: Yes.Henry: I think that will take a little bit longer. Maybe as and when there's a biography that will help with that, which I'm sure there will be a biography.Frances: I think they need to wait. I do think it's important to wait for a reputation to settle before starting the biography. Her biography will be very interesting because she married the same man twice. Her growth as a novelist was so extraordinary. Spark, she spent time in Africa. She had this terrible, terrible illness. She knew something. I think what I love about Mantel is, as with Spark, she knew something. She knew something, and she didn't quite know what it was that she knew. She had to write because of this knowledge. When you read her, you know that she's on a different level of understanding.Henry: You specialise in slightly neglected figures of English literature. Who else among the canonical writers deserves a bit more attention?Frances: Oh, that's interesting. I love minor characters. I think Spark was very witty about describing herself as a minor novelist or a writer of minor novels when she was evidently major. She always saw the comedy in being a minor. All the minor writers interest me. Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green. No, they have heard Elizabeth Bowen has been treated well by Hermione Lee and Henry Green has been treated well by Jeremy Treglown.Why are they not up there yet? They're so much better than most of their contemporaries. I am mystified and fascinated by why it is that the most powerful writers tend to be kicked into the long grass. It's dazzling. When you read a Henry Green novel, you think, "But this is what it's all about. He's understood everything about what the novel can do. Why has no one heard of him?"Henry: I think Elizabeth Bowen's problem is that she's so concise, dense, and well-structured, and everything really plays its part in the pattern of the whole that it's not breezy reading.Frances: No, it's absolutely not.Henry: I think that probably holds her back in some way, even though when I have pushed it on people, most of the time they've said, "Gosh, she's a genius."Frances: Yes.Henry: It's not an easy genius. Whereas Dickens, the pages sort of fly along, something like that.Frances: Yes. One of the really interesting things about Spark is that she really, really is easy reading. At the same time, there's so much freight in those books. There's so much intellectual weight and so many games being played. There's so many books inside the books. Yet you can just read them for the pleasure. You can just read them for the plot. You can read one in an afternoon and think that you've been lost inside a book for 10 years. You don't get that from Elizabeth Bowen. That's true. The novels, you feel the weight, don't you?Henry: Yes.Frances: She's Jamesian. She's more Jamesian, I think, than Spark is.Henry: Something like A World of Love, it requires quite a lot of you.Frances: Yes, it does. Yes, it's not bedtime reading.Henry: No, exactly.Frances: Sitting up in a library.Henry: Yes. Now, you mentioned James. You're a Henry James expert.Frances: I did my PhD on Henry James.Henry: Yes. Will you ever write about him?Frances: I have, actually. Just a little plug. I've just done a selection of James's short stories, three volumes, which are coming out, I think, later this year for Riverrun with a separate introduction for each volume. I think that's all the writing I'm going to do on James. When I was an academic, I did some academic essays on him for collections and things. No, I've never felt, ever, ready to write on James because he's too complicated. I can only take tiny, tiny bits of James and home in on them.Henry: He's a great one for trying to crack the code.Frances: He really is. In fact, I was struck all the way through writing Electric Spark by James's understanding of the comedy of biography, which is described in the figure in the carpet. Remember that wonderful story where there's a writer called Verica who explains to a young critic that none of the critics have understood what his work's about. Everything that's written about him, it's fine, but it's absolutely missed his main point, his beautiful point. He said that in order to understand what the work's about, you have to look for The Figure in the Carpet. It's The Figure in the CarpetIt's the string on which my pearls are strung. A couple of critics become completely obsessed with looking for this Figure in the Carpet. Of course, Spark loved James's short stories. You feel James's short stories playing inside her own short stories. I think that one of the games she left for her biographers was the idea of The Figure in the Carpet. Go on, find it then. Find it. [laughs] The string on which my pearls are strung.Henry: Why did you leave academia? We should say that you did this before it became the thing that everyone's doing.Frances: Is everyone leaving now?Henry: A lot of people are leaving now.Frances: Oh, I didn't know. I was ahead of the curve. I left 20 years ago because I wasn't able to write the books I wanted to write. I left when I'd written two books as an academic. My first was Literary Seductions, and my second was a biography of a blackmailing courtesan called Harriet Wilson, and the book was called The Courtesan's Revenge. My department was sniffy about the books because they were published by Faber and not by OUP, and suggested that somehow I was lowering the tone of the department.This is what things were like 20 years ago. Then I got a contract to write The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, my third book, again with Faber. I didn't want to write the book with my head of department in the back of my mind saying, "Make this into an academic tome and put footnotes in." I decided then that I would leave, and I left very suddenly. Now, I said I'm leaving sort of now, and I've got books to write, and felt completely liberated. Then for The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, I decided not to have footnotes. It's the only book I've ever written without footnotes, simply as a celebration of no longer being in academia.Then the things I loved about being in academia, I loved teaching, and I loved being immersed in literature, but I really couldn't be around colleagues and couldn't be around the ridiculous rules of what was seen as okay. In fact, the university I left, then asked me to come back on a 0.5 basis when they realised that it was now fashionable to have someone who was a trade author. They asked me to come back, which I did not want to do. I wanted to spend days where I didn't see people rather than days where I had to talk to colleagues all the time. I think that academia is very unhappy. The department I was in was incredibly unhappy.Since then, I took up a job very briefly in another English department where I taught creative writing part-time. That was also incredibly unhappy. I don't know whether other French departments or engineering departments are happier places than English departments, but English departments are the most unhappy places I think I've ever seen.[laughter]Henry: What do you admire about the work of George Meredith?Frances: Oh, I love George Meredith. [laughs] Yes. I think Modern Love, his first novel, Modern Love, in a strange sonnet form, where it's not 14 lines, but 16 lines. By the time you get to the bottom two lines, the novel, the sonnet has become hysterical. Modern Love hasn't been properly recognised. It's an account of the breakdown of his marriage. His wife, who was the daughter of the romantic, minor novelist, Thomas Love Peacock. His wife had an affair with the artist who painted the famous Death of Chatterton. Meredith was the model for Chatterton, the dead poet in his purple silks, with his hand falling on the ground. There's a lot of mythology around Meredith.I think, as with Elizabeth Bowen and Henry Green, he's difficult. He's difficult. The other week, I tried to reread Diana of the Crossways, which was a really important novel, and I still love it. I really recognise that it's not an easy read. He doesn't try, in any way, to seduce his readers. They absolutely have to crawl inside each book to sit inside his mind and see the world as he's seeing it.Henry: Can you tell us what you will do next?Frances: At the moment, I'm testing some ideas out. I feel, at the end of every biography, you need a writer. You need to cleanse your palate. Otherwise, there's a danger of writing the same book again. I need this time, I think, to write about, to move century and move genders. I want to go back, I think, to the 19th century. I want to write about a male writer for a moment, and possibly not a novelist as well, because after being immersed in Muriel Sparks' novels, no other novel is going to seem good enough. I'm testing 19th-century men who didn't write novels, and it will probably be a minor character.Henry: Whatever it is, I look forward to reading it. Frances Wilson, thank you very much.Frances: Thank you so much, Henry. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe
durée : 00:58:31 - Mauvais genres - par : François Angelier - Frankenstein et Sherlock Holmes à l'affiche d'un Mauvais Genres british en diable. - réalisation : Laurent Paulré - invités : François Rivière Romancier, critique littéraire, éditeur, traducteur, biographe et scénariste de bande dessinée; Alain Morvan Professeur émérite à la Sorbonne Nouvelle, spécialiste du 18e siècle et de la littérature gothique
durée : 00:58:31 - Mauvais genres - par : François Angelier - Frankenstein et Sherlock Holmes à l'affiche d'un Mauvais Genres british en diable. - réalisation : Laurent Paulré - invités : François Rivière Romancier, critique littéraire, éditeur, traducteur, biographe et scénariste de bande dessinée; Alain Morvan Professeur émérite à la Sorbonne Nouvelle, spécialiste du 18e siècle et de la littérature gothique
Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of foster care and child removal. Lech grew up in a big family in country Queensland, where his dad Tom ran pubs for a living. He had six older siblings, who had come to the family as foster kids before he was born.It was a happy, knockabout, sports-obsessed childhood. But in the midst of all the love and warmth, Lech's mum Lenore lived with a creeping sense of dread.She knew that one day, the troubled biological parents of three of the children in the family would appear in their lives.Michael and Mary Shelley were Christian fanatics wandering from place to place, in and out of jail and psychiatric hospitals, and notorious for stalking politicians and judges.One evening, when Lenore was at home with some of the children, Mary Shelley knocked on her door, changing the family's life forever.This episode of Conversations explores family, origin stories, adoption, foster care, religion, Christianity, mental health, mental illness, family dynamics, parenting.Further informationAustralian Gospel is published by Black Inc.Help and support is always available. You can call Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14.This episode of Conversations was produced by Nicola Harrison and presented by Sarah Kanowski.It explores family dynamics, origin stories, adoption, foster care, religion, Christianity, mental health, mental illness, parenting, blended families, biological children, adoption, Australia, books, writing, journalism, memoir.Find out more about the Conversations Live National Tour on the ABC website.
Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of foster care and child removal. Lech grew up in a big family in country Queensland, where his dad Tom ran pubs for a living. He had six older siblings, who had come to the family as foster kids before he was born.It was a happy, knockabout, sports-obsessed childhood. But in the midst of all the love and warmth, Lech's mum Lenore lived with a creeping sense of dread.She knew that one day, the troubled biological parents of three of the children in the family would appear in their lives.Michael and Mary Shelley were Christian fanatics wandering from place to place, in and out of jail and psychiatric hospitals, and notorious for stalking politicians and judges.One evening, when Lenore was at home with some of the children, Mary Shelley knocked on her door, changing the family's life forever.This episode of Conversations explores family, origin stories, adoption, foster care, religion, Christianity, mental health, mental illness, family dynamics, parenting.Further informationAustralian Gospel is published by Black Inc.Help and support is always available. You can call Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14.This episode of Conversations was produced by Nicola Harrison and presented by Sarah Kanowski.It explores family dynamics, origin stories, adoption, foster care, religion, Christianity, mental health, mental illness, parenting, blended families, biological children, adoption, Australia, books, writing, journalism, memoir.Find out more about the Conversations Live National Tour on the ABC website.
In de podcast Wat Blijft een aflevering over de Engelse Verlichtingsfilosoof Mary Wollstonecraft. Zij geldt als inspirator voor het twintigste-eeuwse feminisme. Haar belangrijkste werk, het boek A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is een pleidooi voor gelijke rechten voor vrouwen, ze trok haar leven lang ten strijde tegen achterstelling van vrouwen. Haar eigen leven was vol pieken en dalen, van een nare jeugd met een alcoholistische vader tot romantische affaires die uiteindelijk misliepen. Ze stierf in het kraambed aan kraamvrouwenkoorts, na de geboorte van haar dochter Mary Shelley die later de beroemde roman Frankenstein zou schrijven. Journalist Inge ter Schure praat met: *Jet Bussemaker, voormalig staatssecretaris van VWS en minister van OCW voor de PvdA en tegenwoordig Hoogleraar Wetenschap, beleid en maatschappelijke impact aan de Universiteit Leiden. *Jabik Veenbaas, schrijver, vertaler en filosoof, gespecialiseerd in De Verlichting. Hij schreef het voorwoord bij Wollstonecrafts 'Pleidooi voor de rechten van de vrouw' en nam haar levensverhaal op in zijn boek 'De Verlichting als kraamkamer'. *Heleen Debruyne, Vlaams schrijver, feminist en presentator. Zij schreef onder andere het boek 'Vuile lakens', waarin ze samen met Anais van Ertvelde blootlegt dat seksuele vrijheid een illusie is.
In this Fanbase Feature, The Fanbase Weekly co-hosts Bryant Dillon and Claire Thorne are joined by special guests Christian Angeles (entertainment journalist – The Comics Beat, writer - Dead on the Inside) and Jessica Maison (writer, Mary Shelley's School for Monsters) to participate in a thorough discussion regarding 28 Years Later (2025) in light of the film's recent release, with topics including how the film was inspired by the COVID pandemic, how it speaks to the filmmakers' fears of societal regression, how the film plays with fan expectations, and more. (Beware: SPOILERS for 28 Years Later abound in this panel discussion!)
"16 de julio de 1833. Se trata de un memorable aniversario para mí; ¡en este día concluye mi años trescientos veintitrés! ¿El judío errante? Desde luego que no. Sobre su testamento han transcurrido más de dieciocho siglos. En comparación, soy un inmortal muy joven". Así comienza "El mortal inmortal" uno de los relatos más célebres de la icónica Mary Shelley (1797-1851). Una historia gótica y romántica sobre la desesperación y el inconformismo a través del tiempo con la que ocupamos este episodio de LA CAJA MISTERIOSA.
Back to a solo episode this week. In it I will discuss the recent SCOTUS decision that should lead us to behave similarly to the townspeople in one of the screen adaptations to a Mary Shelley book. Also, the drums of war reached a crescendo Saturday. How will Iran respond, but more importantly what should the USA do? Additionally, what is political violence? Don't forget to subscribe to the blog at https://libertyleadershipandlies.com You can subscribe to or follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform – Rumble | YouTube | Overcast | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Pocket Casts | RadioPublicJoin me on social media:Twitter – both at @LarryForTN12 @LiesLibertyTruth Social – @LarryForTN12Instagram – @larry_conservative_activist @the_l5_podcastFacebook – Larry Linton - Sevier County Conservative Activist Facebook – Liberty, Leadership and LiesGab – @LarryLintonGETTR – @LarryLintonTelegram – t.me/libertyleadershipandliesOr on the web at – https://libertyleadershipandlies.com#LarryForTN12 #LintonForTN12 #LarryLintonForTN12 #LibertyLeadershipAndLies #Liberty #Leadership #Lies #Constitutionalist #Conservative #Tennessee #StandInTheArena
Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Audiolibro completo de Hija de Marte de Robert A. Heinlein 🪐 Una historia de ciencia ficción con tintes filosóficos, viajes espaciales y una protagonista inolvidable: nuestra Lolita interplanetaria. GRACIAS A TODOS LOS TABERNEROS QUE SIGUEN EN LA NAVE, Muy pronto retomamos los especiales de Mary Shelley y El cuento de la criada: Diario de June Osborne. Con su mirada. 💙 de L.J. Harlow. Vuestro apoyo lo hace posible. Gracias de corazón por cada regalo y por estar ahí. ¡Únete a la nave de Historias para ser Leídas y conviértete en uno de nuestros taberneros galácticos por solo 1,99 € al mes! Al hacerlo, tendrás acceso a 🚀lecturas exclusivas y ayudarás a que estas historias sigan viajando por el cosmos.🖤Aquí te dejo la página directa para apoyarme: 🍻 https://www.ivoox.com/support/552842 ¡¡Muchas gracias por todos tus comentarios y por tu apoyo!! 📌Más contenido extra en nuestro canal informativo de Telegram: ¡¡Síguenos!! https://t.me/historiasparaserleidas Voz y sonido Olga Paraíso, música epidemic sound con licencia premium para este podcast. BIO Olga Paraíso: https://instabio.cc/Hleidas 🚀PLAYLIST TODOS LOS AUDIOS PARA FANS AQUÍ: https://go.ivoox.com/bk/791018 📚 ¡Mi primer libro ya está disponible en Amazon! 📚 Lo puedes encontrar en formato bolsilibro tapa blanda, Ebook y 2ª edición en tapa dura 22x14 con una carta extra de Olga a Vera. 🖤 Crónicas Vampíricas de Vera 👉 en amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/4bNGU3y Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
We love Mel Brooks. He is responsible for some of the funniest movies of all time. Young Frankenstein is also one of the best adaptations the Mary Shelley classic ever made. So, we were both excited to hear about the sequel to Spaceballs. We rank our favorite movies from Brooks and why Spaceballs once disappointed us.We are also huge fans of Fright Night. While there was a great remake in the early 2010s, you just do not hear enough about it. Despite having one of horror's most iconic lines, it does not get that much love. This week, we have two bits of news; one is concrete; one is its rumored connection to one of the most infamous murders of all time.This year for Pride Month we are discussing The Last Thing Mary Saw. It is a great bit of folk horror that is frightening, atmospheric, and filled with great characters. The mystery is engaging and the performances are top notch. It also treats its queer subject matter with a sensitivity that is not seen enough.The first six months just whooshed by and we have a lot to discuss. We cover a wide range of topics. Why do we sometimes consider no longer reviewing documentaries? The good and bad of AI in film. More folk horror, a slasher, and a reverse exorcism all enter our conversation about 2025's first six months. Adventures in Movies! is a part of the Morbidly Beautiful Podcast Network. Morbidly Beautiful is your one stop shop for all your horror needs. From the latest news and reviews to interviews and old favorites, it can be found at Morbidly Beautiful.Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror. You can reach us personally or on Twitter @AdventuresinMo1.Music in the background from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com
Send us a textKathy and Lara, Mistresses of the dark, react to Frankenstein, an upcoming American gothic science fiction horror film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, based on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The film stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz. It is set to release on Netflix in November 2025.Support the show
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a 1994 science fiction horror film directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Victor Frankenstein, with Robert De Niro portraying Frankenstein's monster (called The Creation in the film), and co-stars Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, John Cleese, Richard Briers and Aidan Quinn. The film follows a medical student who creates new life in the form of a monster composed of various corpses' body parts. If you have anything to add to the discussion, please don't hesitate to do so by reaching out to us on social media @TheFilmFlamers, or call our hotline and leave us a message at 972-666-7733! Watch Frankenstein: https://amzn.to/4e1d82p Out this Month: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Hot Take: 28 Years Later Patreon: Poll Get in Touch: Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheFilmFlamers Visit our Store: https://the-film-flamers.printify.me/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefilmflamers Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFilmFlamers/ Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/thefilmflamers/ (NEW!) SCANS Movie Rating Calculator: https://scans.glide.page/ Our Website: https://www.filmflamers.com Call our Hotline: 972-666-7733 Our Patrons: Alex M Andrew Bower Anthony Criswell Ashlie Thornbury BattleBurrito Benjamin Gonzalez Bennett Hunter BreakfastChainsawMassacre Brittany Bellgardt Call me Lestat. Canadianmatt3 CenobiteBetty Christopher Nelson Dan Alvarez Dirty Birdy eliza mc Gia Gillian Murtagh GlazedDonut GWilliamNYC Irwan Iskak James Aumann Jessica E Joanne Ellison Josh Young Karl Haikara Kimberly McGuirk Kitty Kelly Kyle Kavanagh Laura O'Malley Lisa Libby Lisa Söderberg Livi Loch Hightower M Hussman Mac Daddy Matt Walsh Matthew McHenry Nicole McDaniel Niko Allred Nimble Wembley Orion Yannotti Pablo the Rhino Penelope Nelson random dude Richard Best Robert Eppers Rosieredleader Ryan King SHADOW OF THE DEAD SWANN Sharon Sinesthero Thomas Jane's gun Walstrich William Skinner Sweet dreams... "Welcome to Horrorland" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Includes music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
Alle Jahre wieder die Frage: Was ist das richtige Buch für den Strand? Das gilt auch für "Was liest Du gerade?". Maja Beckers und Alexander Cammann präsentieren diesmal in der Sachbuchfolge vier Sommerbücher, über die man wunderbar debattieren kann. In der Rubrik "Der erste Satz" geht es diesmal um Glamour: Ute Cohen erklärt, wer oder was alles glamourös sein kann und ob wir in verdammt unglamourösen Zeiten leben. Eine neue Sicht auf Thomas Mann bietet Tilmann Lahme in seiner Biografie des Literaturnobelpreisträgers, pünktlich zu dessen 150. Geburtstag. Sie wurde in den vergangenen Wochen bereits gefeiert und intensiv diskutiert: Spiegelt sich in Manns Leben und Werk dessen Homosexualität noch stärker als bisher bekannt wider? Ob Musik oder Film, Madonna oder Taylor Swift: Seit den späten 1990er-Jahren sind Frauen in der Popkultur häufig zu globalen Stars geworden. Für die Journalistin Sophie Gilbert ist dieser Siegeszug aber kein Anlass zur Freude: Denn hinter solch vermeintlichem Empowerment steckt in Wahrheit vor allem Sexismus und eine globale pornografische Kultur. Was ist dran an dieser These? Der Klassiker stammt diesmal aus dem Jahr 2017 und ist ein etwas anderes Reisebuch: Rainer Wieland hat in einem prächtigen Band viele Texte berühmter Deutschland-Touristen aus 2.000 Jahren versammelt: Von Caesar bis Virginia Woolf, von Mary Shelley bis Andy Warhol erzählen diese Reisenden davon, wie sie ein ihnen fremdes Land erlebt haben – oft klug beobachtet, oft saukomisch. Mit diesen Lektüren werden Sie den Sommer jedenfalls gut überstehen! Das Team von "Was liest du gerade?" erreichen Sie unter buecher@zeit.de. Literaturangaben: Ute Cohen: Glamour. Über das Wagnis, sich kunstvoll zu inszenieren. 184 Seiten, zu Klampen, 22 Euro Tilmann Lahme: Thomas Mann. Ein Leben. 592 Seiten, dtv, 28 Euro Sophie Gilbert: Girl vs. Girl. Wie Popkultur Frauen gegeneinander aufbringt. A. d. Englischen übersetzt von Britta Fietzke, 336 Seiten, Piper, 17,99 Euro Rainer Wieland: Das Buch der Deutschland-Reisen. Von den alten Römern bis zu den Weltenbummlern unserer Zeit. 512 Seiten, Propyläen, antiquarisch erhältlich [ANZEIGE] Mehr über die Angebote unserer Werbepartnerinnen und -partner finden Sie HIER. [ANZEIGE] Mehr hören? Dann testen Sie unser Podcast-Abo mit Zugriff auf alle Dokupodcasts und unser Podcast-Archiv. Jetzt 4 Wochen kostenlos testen. Und falls Sie uns nicht nur hören, sondern auch lesen möchten, testen Sie jetzt 4 Wochen kostenlos DIE ZEIT. Hier geht's zum Angebot.
Intro Cassilda 👩🏻 y Olga "Dicen que cuando la niebla cae y el viento cesa, puede escucharse el galope de un caballo maldito... En este episodio, abrimos las páginas de una antigua leyenda: la del Jinete Sin Cabeza. Un alma errante, un castigo eterno, y un pueblo que aún recuerda (aunque no quiera) aquella noche en que volvió. Apaga la luz, sube el volumen... y escucha con atención." Washington Irving nació en Tarrytown el 3 de abril de 1783. Está considerado uno de los grandes escritores del romanticismo y de la literatura del siglo XIX. Irving comenzó su carrera escribiendo relatos para varios periódicos y revistas, de tal modo que consiguió un cierto éxito y renombre popular con sus historias cortas, normalmente con grandes dosis de humor y sátira. Tras una primera estancia en Europa por motivos de trabajo, Irving, una vez consagrado a la escritura, viajó por Inglaterra, Alemania y París, donde conoció a Mary Shelley. De esta época son relatos que han pasado a convertirse en auténticos cuentos populares, como La leyenda de Sleepy Hollow -llevada al cine en multitud de ocasiones, la última de ellas por el cineasta Tim Burton- o Rip van Winkle. En 1826 acude a España para realizar una investigación sobre algunos documentos referidos al descubrimiento de América, para luego ser elegido como embajador de los Estados Unidos hasta 1845. Sin duda, de esta época, es una de sus obras más famosas, los Cuentos de la Alhambra (1832). Washington Irving murió en Tarrytown el 28 de noviembre de 1859. Únete a la nave de Historias para ser Leídas y conviértete en uno de nuestros taberneros galácticos por solo 1,99 € al mes! Al hacerlo, tendrás acceso a 🚀lecturas exclusivas y ayudarás a que estas historias sigan viajando por el cosmos.🖤Aquí te dejo la página directa para apoyarme: 🍻 https://www.ivoox.com/support/552842 ¡¡Muchas gracias por todos tus comentarios y por tu apoyo!! 📌Más contenido extra en nuestro canal informativo de Telegram: ¡¡Síguenos!! https://t.me/historiasparaserleidas Voz y sonido Olga Paraíso, Música epidemic sound con licencia premium para este podcast. Art by Lou Patrick Mackay BIO Olga Paraíso: https://instabio.cc/Hleidas PODCAST creados por OLGA PARAÍSO 🚀Historias para ser Leídas https://go.ivoox.com/sq/583108 ☕Un beso en la taza https://go.ivoox.com/sq/583108 y en Youtube: https://youtu.be/hQfUWte2bFU 🚀PLAYLIST TODOS LOS AUDIOS PARA FANS AQUÍ: https://go.ivoox.com/bk/791018 📚 2ª edición Crónicas Vampíricas de Vera ya está disponible en Amazon! 📚 formato tapa dura 22x14 incluye carta extra de Olga a Vera. Crónicas Vampíricas de Vera🖤 👉https://amzn.eu/d/aGN1Rhz Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
Vi tar fram en favorit ur arkivet. Hör om den romantiska författarikonen som bröt ny mark och gav oss litteraturhistoriens mest kända monster. Nya avsnitt från P3 Historia hittar du först i Sveriges Radio Play. Redaktionen för detta avsnitt består av:Cecilia Düringer – programledare och manusElina Perdahl – maus och researchTove Palén – producentPablo Leiva Wenger – scenuppläsarePeter Jonasson – ljuddesign och slutmixMedverkar gör också Merete Mazzarella, litteraturvetare, kulturskribent och författare till Mary Shelley-biografin Själens nattsida.Vill du veta mer om Mary Shelley? Här är några av de böcker som ligger till grund för avsnittet:Själens nattsida - om Mary Shelley och hennes Frankenstein av Merete MazzarellaRomantic Outlaws av Charlotte GordonMary Shelley av Miranda SeymourFrankenstein eller den moderne Prometheus av Mary Shelley
Érase una vez un programa de ciencia que decidió adentrarse en la literatura. Lilian Bermejo y Adrián Villalba analizan desde la filosofía las implicaciones éticas de la ciencia ficción. Con Laura Toribio volvemos a Frankenstein para ver la ciencia desde la perspectiva de Mary Shelley y cómo cambiamos quimeras de infinita grandeza por realidades que apenas valían nada. Arcadi García nos invita a imaginar un mundo sin papel, poniendo en jaque a la literatura. Ricardo Moure, por su parte, toma lanza en astillero y adarga antigua para defender al Quijote frente a los psicoanalistas de turno y nos cuenta por qué huelen a libro los libros. Finalmente, Mario Panadero nos trae un cómic de 51.000 años y reflexiona sobre el impacto de la ficción en la sociedad.
In this episode, Chris and Alex discuss one of the greatest challenges writers face and how to overcome it.They emphasize the importance of allowing one's imagination to run free and ask 'what if,' using historical examples from Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley to illustrate how these iconic writers created groundbreaking stories without the modern conveniences we have today. They also explore the relevance of classic storytelling techniques in contemporary writing and encourage aspiring writers to continue telling their stories despite obstacles, offering practical advice and motivational insights.Have any questions, comments, or suggestions?Then, please leave them in the Comments Section.Write: TTDSOnAir@gmail.comAnd follow us on ...@Tell The Damn Story www.TellTheDamnStory.comwww.Facebook.com/Tell The Damn Story Youtube.com/ Tell The Damn StoryIf you're enjoying these episodes, please take a moment to help wet our whistle by clicking on the link to ... Buy Me A Coffee!
Profligator Daniel presents this epic-length Profile in Cinemania on the mother of science-fiction, Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley. Mary Shelley is best known for her novel "Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus," as well as her feminism and her relationships with Regency-era English poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Ordinarily a PIC on an author would not be our bailiwick, but her best-known novel has been adapted for the screen numerous times and will doubtless be adapted numerous more... Written and performed by Daniel Scribner Editing by Andy Slack and Ethan Ireland Sound design by Ethan Ireland Music by Karl Casey at White Bat Audio Tracks used: "Agreya," "Iridium," "Luminous," "Papaya Island" Caricature art by Andy Slack Comics
En un rincón olvidado del tiempo, donde la alquimia rozaba los límites de la ciencia y el amor desafiaba a la muerte, nace una historia que nos obliga a preguntarnos: ¿qué precio tiene la eternidad? Mary Shelley, conocida por haber dado vida al monstruo de Frankenstein, nos regala en 'El mortal inmortal' un relato íntimo y perturbador sobre el deseo humano de trascender la muerte. No se trata de una épica de héroes ni de una lucha contra demonios externos; esta historia se libra dentro del alma de un hombre que, sin buscarlo, queda atrapado en los hilos del tiempo… sin posibilidad de soltarse. Prepárate para sumergirte en esta narración cargada de melancolía, pasión y preguntas sin respuesta. Un viaje que comienza con una decisión aparentemente trivial… y termina con una eternidad de soledad.❣️ ¡Únete a la nave de Historias para ser Leídas y conviértete en uno de nuestros taberneros galácticos! Al hacerlo, tendrás acceso a 🚀lecturas exclusivas y ayudarás a que estas historias sigan viajando por el cosmos.🖤Aquí te dejo la página directa para apoyarme: 🍻 https://www.ivoox.com/support/552842 ¡¡Muchas gracias por todos tus comentarios y por tu apoyo!! 📌Más contenido extra en nuestro canal informativo de Telegram: ¡¡Síguenos!! https://t.me/historiasparaserleidas Voz y sonido Olga Paraíso, música epidemic sound con licencia premium para este podcast. BIO Olga Paraíso: https://instabio.cc/Hleidas PODCAST creados por OLGA PARAÍSO 🚀Historias para ser Leídas https://go.ivoox.com/sq/583108 ☕Un beso en la taza https://go.ivoox.com/sq/583108 y en Youtube: https://youtu.be/hQfUWte2bFU 📚 ¡Mi primer libro ya está disponible en Amazon! 📚 Lo puedes encontrar en formato bolsilibro tapa blanda e Ebook Crónicas Vampíricas de Vera 👉 https://amzn.eu/d/1Q4PWUY Una vampira inmortal que busca respuestas. 🖤 Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
Recomendados de la semana en iVoox.com Semana del 5 al 11 de julio del 2021
En un rincón olvidado del tiempo, donde la alquimia rozaba los límites de la ciencia y el amor desafiaba a la muerte, nace una historia que nos obliga a preguntarnos: ¿qué precio tiene la eternidad? Mary Shelley, conocida por haber dado vida al monstruo de Frankenstein, nos regala en 'El mortal inmortal' un relato íntimo y perturbador sobre el deseo humano de trascender la muerte. No se trata de una épica de héroes ni de una lucha contra demonios externos; esta historia se libra dentro del alma de un hombre que, sin buscarlo, queda atrapado en los hilos del tiempo… sin posibilidad de soltarse. Prepárate para sumergirte en esta narración cargada de melancolía, pasión y preguntas sin respuesta. Un viaje que comienza con una decisión aparentemente trivial… y termina con una eternidad de soledad.❣️ ¡Únete a la nave de Historias para ser Leídas y conviértete en uno de nuestros taberneros galácticos! Al hacerlo, tendrás acceso a 🚀lecturas exclusivas y ayudarás a que estas historias sigan viajando por el cosmos.🖤Aquí te dejo la página directa para apoyarme: 🍻 https://www.ivoox.com/support/552842 ¡¡Muchas gracias por todos tus comentarios y por tu apoyo!! 📌Más contenido extra en nuestro canal informativo de Telegram: ¡¡Síguenos!! https://t.me/historiasparaserleidas Voz y sonido Olga Paraíso, música epidemic sound con licencia premium para este podcast. BIO Olga Paraíso: https://instabio.cc/Hleidas PODCAST creados por OLGA PARAÍSO 🚀Historias para ser Leídas https://go.ivoox.com/sq/583108 ☕Un beso en la taza https://go.ivoox.com/sq/583108 y en Youtube: https://youtu.be/hQfUWte2bFU 📚 ¡Mi primer libro ya está disponible en Amazon! 📚 Lo puedes encontrar en formato bolsilibro tapa blanda e Ebook Crónicas Vampíricas de Vera 👉 https://amzn.eu/d/1Q4PWUY Una vampira inmortal que busca respuestas. 🖤
A quest for identity meets the shadows of societal perception. As Rosina struggles to be seen, will she reclaim her voice or remain lost in the darkness? The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.You may be wondering why this episode of The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast took longer to appear than a ghost at a séance. At the end of The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft, we promised you this story. And you probably thought, “Hey, Mary Shelley—the woman who gave us Frankenstein and The Mortal Immortal—must've written another bone-chilling, brain-bending slice of early sci-fi, right?”Then you saw the title: The Invisible Girl. Sounds science fiction-y, doesn't it? Invisibility! Mystery! Possibly lasers!Yeah… about that.Halfway through recording, we realized The Invisible Girl is, well… not quite science fiction. It's more “Victorian drama with a faint whiff of mystery” than “steampunk invisibility ray.” So we had a choice: 1. Stop, confess our literary oopsie, and give you something more sci-fi. 2. Finish the story, release it anyway, and throw ourselves at your mercy.We chose Option 2. Because, frankly, we've gotten good at begging. Would you please rate our podcast wherever you can? Five stars if you think we deserve it. See what I mean!So please forgive us—and enjoy The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, and we promise this one is science fiction! Before David's startled gaze the newcomer placed his right hand to his left shoulder and removed the left arm. He then proceeded to dismember himself until only a torso, head and one arm remained. The Artificial Man by Clare Winger Harris.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================
durée : 00:58:31 - Mauvais genres - par : François Angelier - Frankenstein et Sherlock Holmes à l'affiche d'un Mauvais Genres british en diable. - réalisation : Laurent Paulré - invités : François Rivière Romancier, critique littéraire, éditeur, traducteur, biographe et scénariste de bande dessinée; Alain Morvan Professeur émérite à la Sorbonne Nouvelle, spécialiste du 18e siècle et de la littérature gothique
We're kicking PRIDE off a little early because comics librarian Jack Phoenix is here and we are ready to talk about the very straight story of a man showing up to another man's house and pulling him away from his wife so that the two of them can make a human life together! Very straight. So straight. Not gay at all. Doctor Pretorius, we love you and the tiny people you've been cloning and dressing. And Una O'Connor, you and your ridiculous accent are the real MVP!Alicia really wants it to be known that we didn't talk nearly enough about Elsa Lancaster, her marriage to Charles Laughton, and that she was in Mary Poppins. All apologies.Who made it?Director: James WhaleWriters: William Hurlbut, John L. Balderston, Mary ShelleyStarring:Boris KarloffColin CliveValerie HobsonElsa LanchesterErnest ThesigerE. E. CliveOliver Peters HeggieUna O'ConnorRecs:Jack - Queer for Fear / The Ex-Wives of FrankensteinEmily- Junji Ito Frankenstein / #DRCL mangaBen - Young FrankensteinJeremy - Invisible Man / Old Dark House Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
durée : 00:58:31 - Mauvais genres - par : François Angelier - Frankenstein et Sherlock Holmes à l'affiche d'un Mauvais Genres british en diable. - réalisation : Laurent Paulré - invités : François Rivière Romancier, critique littéraire, éditeur, traducteur, biographe et scénariste de bande dessinée; Alain Morvan Professeur émérite à la Sorbonne Nouvelle, spécialiste du 18e siècle et de la littérature gothique
Episode 42 Show Notes In this episode of Booklist's Shelf Care: The Podcast, host Susan Maguire talks to librarian and horror expert Becky Spratford about the forthcoming collection of essays she edited, Why I Love Horror, what Mary Shelley might think about the current trend of monster romance, and, of course, why she loves horror. Then Booklist's Audio Editor Heather Booth presents an epic rant against AI-narrated audiobooks, and Susan and Booklist Senior Editor, Adult Books Annie Bostrom chat about two water-related books they're loving. Here's what we talked about: Becky's early “Why I Love Horror,” featuring Booklist folks The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, by Becky Siegel Spratford Danse Macabre, by Stephen King Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith The Hunger, by Alma Katsu Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones James, by Percival Everett Horror for Weenies, by Emily Hughes Circulating Ideas podcast, hosted by Steve Thomas LibraryReads Hall of Fame Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein The Grip of It, by Jac Jemc Horror Makes Us Happy podcast with Becky Spratford The Bewitching, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Cynthia Pelayo 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered, Sadie Hartmnn Paperbacks from Hell, by Grady Hendrix A Plate of Hope: The Inspiring Story of Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen, by Erin Frankel and Paola Escobar. Read by Luis Carlos de la Lombana. (Odyssey Award Winner, 2025) How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, by Tony Keith Jr. Read by the author. (Odyssey Award Winner, 2025) The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story, by Pagan Kennedy. Read by Claire Danes The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart. Read by Del Roy Listening Still, by Anne Griffin. Read by Nicola Coughlan A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, by Sophie Elmhirst Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer The Love Fix, by Jill Shalvis The Listeners, by Maggie Stiefvater
A man and his uncle set out to scientifically investigate a crumbling home steeped in centuries of death and decay. But as night falls, they confront a grotesque, unseen horror feeding on the living—a parasitic evil that may be older than the house itself. The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.The Shunned House was penned by H.P. Lovecraft in October 1924 but remained in the shadows until it was published 13 years later, just seven months after his passing! Discover this haunting tale in Weird Tales magazine, October 1937, starting on page 418, The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, A quest for identity meets the shadows of societal perception. As Rosina struggles to be seen, will she reclaim her voice or remain lost in the darkness? The Invisible Girl by Mary Shelley.☕ Buy Me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/scottsV===========================
¡Así es osado podescucha! ¿Es un clon? ¿Un espectro? ¿Una imagen astral? No señoras y señores, ninguna de las anteriores y todas las anteriores, nuestro querido amigo Pedro estuvo con nosotros haciendo un recuento de todo lo que hubiera dicho en todos los episodios donde no ha estado. Leyó usted bien, TODOS los episodios donde no estuvo. Desde Rob Liefeld hasta Chainsaw Man pasando por Millarworld, Local Man, Frankenstein de Mary Shelley, la muerte de Mafalda y Karmatron. Y si, aquí podrá usted escuchar la sensual voz de Pedro sin edición y en directo a su canal auditivo. Escuche bajo su propio riesgo!'Nuff Said! Descarga aquí (click derecho y guardar como) o Escucha directamente: If you canto see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here
The Daisies discuss episodes 3 & 4 of I Kissed a Boy, and the squiggliest moments from episode 2 of Virgin Island. They also share some MAFS gossip about Clint & Jacqui and Awhina & Adrian.Watch the full ep on Youtube!Follow and DM us on Instagram @doingthemafs or email daisygrantproductions@gmail.comWatch us on Youtube www.youtube.com/@doingthemafsClick here to sign up to our PATREON!
Send us a textMr. Bartley - plain fontMr. Poe - italics fontWelcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 376 - A Crawling ShapeIn this episode, I would like to slightly change the subject to early Gothic novels such as The Castle of Otrano - literature that most scholars believed influenced Edgar Poe's works.Ah, Mr. Bartley - I know that some scholars have said that I must have been familiar with the The Castle of Otranto from 1764, which many have said was the first Gothic novel,and influenced such individuals as Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley, whose works I greatly admired and even referenced. My own Gothic tales, such as The Fall of the House of Usher, share thematic and stylistic elements with Walpole's work, including haunted settings, supernatural events, and psychological terror.Ah yes, Mr. Poe - what about E.T.A. Hoffman?Ah, Mr. Bartley, Mr. Hoffman definitely influenced my works - due to hisuse of first-person narratives and exploration of madness, align with techniques pioneered in Otranto. And I must point out how Otranto's Gothic tropes - —haunted castles, doomed aristocrats, and supernatural Thank you for experiencing Celebrate Poe.
Wepa, Crusaders! Today, we welcome writer and creator David Swartz to the show as he unveils his latest Kickstarter project, Confederate Monster—a mind-blowing historical horror mashup that throws Frankenstein's Monster right into the heart of the Civil War! ⚡⚔ï¸ðŸ'€ We dive into: ðŸ§Ÿâ™‚ï¸ How Confederate Monster was born and why Frankenstein's Monster is getting a Civil War makeover âš¡ The wild blend of horror and history—balancing real events with monstrous mayhem 🎨 The creative madness behind the project and what fans can expect from the Kickstarter campaign 🔥 What it takes to make an indie comic like this come to life (or should we say, reanimated?) 😂 And of course, the most insane backer requests, dream casting for a Confederate Monster movie, and what Mary Shelley would think of all this! You don't wanna miss this one—David Swartz brings the energy, the laughs, and the monstrous storytelling magic! 🔗 BACK THE KICKSTARTER HERE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/daveswartzart/confederate-monster-1-5/creator 📌 FOLLOW DAVID SWARTZ: https://www.facebook.com/daveswartzart/ https://www.instagram.com/daveswartzart/ https://x.com/daveswartzart If you love indie comics, horror, or just wild, out-of-the-box storytelling, hit that LIKE button, SUBSCRIBE, and drop a comment below—What horror character would YOU throw into the Civil War?! Thank You for Watching / Listening! We appreciate your support! Episode 548 in an unlimited series! Host: Al Mega Follow on: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook): @TheRealAlMega / @ComicCrusaders Make sure to Like/Share/Subscribe if you haven't yet: / comiccrusadersworld Twitch: / comiccrusaders Visit the official Comic Crusaders Comic Book Shop: comiccrusaders.shop Visit the OFFICIAL Comic Crusaders Swag Shop at: comiccrusaders.us Main Site: https://www.comiccrusaders.com/​​​​ Edited/Produced/Directed by Al Mega 🚀 LET'S GO! #ConfederateMonster #Kickstarter #IndieComics #ComicCrusadersPodcast
On the cover of Deerhoof's new album, Noble and Godlike in Ruin, is an image of the band's lineup—Satomi Matsuzaki, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Greg Saunier—collaged together into one strange visage. Given that the album's title is drawn directly from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this cobbled together assemblage makes sense, but it also doubles as a handy metaphor for Deerhoof's identity as a band. Together, they equal more than the sum of their parts; working together in radical co-operation, they become one art rock organism. By the time most bands reach their third decade, they've settled into a groove, but Deerhoof seems custom built to resist static stasis or aesthetic complacency. Noble and Godlike in Ruin pulls from free jazz, prog rock, noise, and j-pop, resulting in a sound that is at once recognizable as Deerhoof, but nonetheless surprising, even to the band's members themselves. Focusing in on sci-fi futurism and some of the most directly political songs of the band's vast discography, it's a triumphant work that illustrates what makes Deerhoof one of the most fascinating bands in all of indie rock. This week on the show, Satomi Matsuzaki and Greg Saunier join Jason P. Woodbury for a winding discussion about the new album, the current political moment, haute cuisine, the function of art, and at the very end—some Star Trek discussion. You can read a full transcript of this conversation at Aquarium Drunkard, where you'll find 20 years worth of playlists, recommendations, reviews, interviews, podcasts, essays, and more. With your support, here's to another decade. Subscribe at Aquarium Drunkard. Stream a playlist of bumper music featured on Transmissions, as well as selections from our guests. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts.
Happy Mother's Day! This episode is for anyone who has a mom, is a mom, has lost a mom, wants to be a mom, or anything in between - so, yes, we talk about how hard this day can be for people in addition to celebrating it. Sheena covers mother Ann Jarvis and daughter Anna Jarvis, who inspired others to celebrate their mothers. Hannah covers the original goth queens, Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley. Lori shares the story of Mary Ann Bevan, a mother who endured humiliation as the "ugliest woman in the world" to provide for her family.
Send us a textDorian Linskey explores humanity's persistent fascination with apocalyptic scenarios through his book "Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World." This deep dive into our cultural obsession with the end times reveals how these narratives reflect our psychology, politics, and understanding of human nature.• Mary Shelley created the first secular apocalyptic novel with "The Last Man," establishing a genre that continues to influence modern fiction• Our imagination was "swallowed" by the atomic bomb for decades, making it the reference point for all other existential threats• Pandemics often leave surprisingly little cultural impact despite their devastation, as seen after both the Spanish Flu and COVID-19• Zombie narratives function as political commentary on social breakdown, revealing how communities respond to crisis• Climate change has replaced nuclear war as our primary apocalyptic concern• Apocalyptic language is used by various groups to motivate action or manipulate fear• Looking at past unrealized doomsday predictions can provide reassurance about current anxietiesFind out more about Dorian Linskey at dorianlinskey.com or listen to his podcasts "Origin Story" and "Oh God, What Now?"
In celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Tachyon Publications, we invited publisher Jacob Weisman to join us in a fascinating exploration of the independent publisher whose list of authors includes classic tales from Stanley Weinbaum, A.E. Van Vogt, and even Mary Shelley, as well as major work from contemporary writers like Peter S. Beagle, Patricia McKillip, Michael Swanwick, Terry Bisson, Jane Yolen, Ellen Klages, Eileen Gunn, Joe Lansdale, Nalo Hopkinson, James Morrow, Lavie Tidhar, and Daniel Pinkwater, and newer writers such as Mary Thompson, Austin Habersahw, Martin Cahill, and Josh Rountree. We touch upon the challenges of building an independent press in a rapidly changing marketplace, the importance of anthologies in identifying and preserving trends in the field, and what to expect next from Tachyon.
In 1816, 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley) birthed science fiction during a rainy vacation on Lake Geneva. Inspired by a vision of a man crouched beside the corpse he reanimated, Frankenstein warned of what happens when man tries to play God. Two centuries later, the monsters are real, and they're called Musk, Altman, and Zuckerberg. Today's tech titans, like Frankenstein's Victor, race to build superintelligent machines in their image: soulless wannabe-gods with devastating reach. Gil Duran, of the Nerd Reich newsletter, connects this to A.I. worship, quoting a billionaire obsessed with “creating God” through algorithms. M.I.T.'s annotated Frankenstein likens Victor's horror to Oppenheimer's nuclear regret. We've entered a new atomic age, but instead of bombs, it's information weapons and hacked minds. As Pulitzer-nominated journalist Carole Cadwalladr warns, this is what a digital coup looks like. A.I. is trained to replace journalists, strip away privacy, and deepen inequality, just as Gaslit Nation has warned since 2018. What's the answer? Community. Skill-sharing. Nature. The real world. Jack Welch, once worshipped like Musk is today, gutted G.E. with fear-based leadership. Now he's a cautionary tale. So will today's tech gods be. Mary Shelley saw it coming. “Frightful must it be,” she wrote. We agree. But there's power in human connection, in rejecting the machine's illusions. Frankenstein's monster was abandoned. Let's not abandon each other. Join our resilience salons. Find your people. Build the future together. Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit! Show Notes The song you heard in this week's episode is “Unspoken Word” by Evrette Allen: https://soundcloud.com/user-726164627/unspoken-word-mix-13/s-GEvlnfQnmh4?si=954f31de09d644948d51a225224bd7ba&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Nerd Reich: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein After two hundred years, are we ready for the truth about Mary Shelley's novel? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein Astronomers have determined the exact hour that Mary Shelley thought of Frankenstein. https://lithub.com/astronomers-have-determined-the-exact-hour-that-mary-shelley-thought-of-frankenstein/ AI's Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet's Hyper-Consumption Era Generative artificial intelligence tools, now part of the everyday user experience online, are causing stress on local power grids and mass water evaporation. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-energy-demands-water-impact-internet-hyper-consumption-era/ Short-term profits and long-term consequences — did Jack Welch break capitalism? https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1101505691/short-term-profits-and-long-term-consequences-did-jack-welch-break-capitalism Carole Cadwalladr TED Talk: This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZOoT8AbkNE Self-styled prophets are claiming they have "awakened" chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/
Christopher Moore's new novel Anima Rising combines his signature elements – complicated artists, suspicious detectives, a bawdy sisterhood, and supernatural bonking – into a strangely moving tale of friendship and survival. Set in 1911 Vienna, Chris's new novel is a spiritual sequel to his 2012 art world masterpiece Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art and, in anticipation of his upcoming book tour, Chris reveals how his fondness for Gustav Klimt and Mary Shelley drives this unlikely comic adventure; how both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung had to figure into the story (because: 1911 Vienna); and how his novels are becoming increasingly touching...or at least that's how they're being read. (Length 21:17) The post 961. Christopher Moore's Frankenstein appeared first on Reduced Shakespeare Company.
It's a special Geek History Lesson crossover episode about The Hunger Games with Fanbase Press! The Fanbase Weekly co-host Bryant Dillon is joined by special guests Jessica Maison (writer, Mary Shelley's School for Monsters), Ashley V. Robinson (writer, Jupiter Jet, Aurora and the Eagle / podcast host – Geek History Lesson), and Rebecca Lear (Executive Producer – The Katniss Chronicles Audio Drama) to participate in a thorough discussion regarding Sunrise on the Reaping (2025) in light of the new Hunger Games novel's recent release, with topics including reactions to this new chapter in the Hunger Games mythology, discussion of how the book changes the panelists' view of Haymitch Abernathy and his appearance in previous Hunger Games novels, how the story explores themes like implicit submission, media literacy, and more. (Beware: SPOILERS for Sunrise on the Reaping abound in this panel discussion!)Cast members: Jessica Maison (writer, Mary Shelley's School for Monsters), Ashley V. Robinson (writer, Jupiter Jet, Aurora and the Eagle / podcast host – Geek History Lesson), Rebecca Lear (Executive Producer – The Katniss Chronicles Audio Drama), and Bryant Dillon (Fanbase Press President, The Fanbase Weekly co-host, writer – Something Animal, Identity Thief)For exclusive bonus podcasts like our Justice League Review show our Teen Titans Podcast, GHL Extra & Livestreams with the hosts, join the Geek History Lesson Patreon ► https://www.patreon.com/JawiinGHL RECOMMENDED READING from this episode► https://www.geekhistorylesson.com/recommendedreadingFOLLOW GHL►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geekhistorylessonThreads: https://www.threads.net/@geekhistorylessonTik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@geekhistorylessonFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/geekhistorylessonGet Your GHL Pin: https://geekhistorylesson.etsy.comYou can follow Ashley at https://www.threads.net/@ashleyvrobinson or https://www.ashleyvictoriarobinson.com/Follow Jason at https://www.threads.net/@jawiin or https://bsky.app/profile/jasoninman.bsky.socialThanks for showing up to class today. Class is dismissed!
This week, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Quinta Jurecic and Lawfare's new senior legal fellow James Pearce to talk through the week's biggest national security news stories, including:“Midnight Planes Going Anywhere.” The Supreme Court has weighed in on the Trump administration's decision to quickly fly dozens of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador with little to no meaningful process, holding that those detained had to be provided notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal, but only through habeas in their place of detention. Meanwhile, we are still awaiting the Court's final decision on whether a lower court can direct the executive branch to seek the return of another man who was removed to El Salvador by mistake. What will these decisions mean for the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies?“All the King's Horses and All the King's Men, Won't Be Able to Put Humphrey's Together Again.” Watchers of the D.C. Circuit may have suffered whiplash this week, as an appellate panel reversed a district court's conclusion that the Trump administration's removal of statutorily protected members of the Merit Service Protection Board and National Labor Review Board was most likely unlawful, only for the panel itself to be reversed in short order by the whole en banc court. The issues now seem clearly poised for review by the Supreme Court. Is Humphrey's Executor and other case law preserving independent agencies toast? Or might the Court stop short of killing independent agencies altogether?“A Duty of Pander.” Attorney General Pam Bondi punished a Justice Department attorney this week after he admitted to a federal court that he had not been provided adequate answers to some of the court's questions. It's the latest in a parade of disciplinary actions accusing attorneys of disloyalty for engaging in candor with the federal courts over the confusion that some of the Trump administration's policies have caused. Is the Attorney General within her rights to crack down on these actions? And what impact will her demand for loyalty have on the Justice Department's relationship with the federal courts?For object lessons, Quinta recommended the movie "Margin Call" as a reflection on the last financial crisis, as we prepare for the next one. Ben brought attention to Russia's brutal and inhumane attack on a children's playground in Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvi Rih, which underscores just how committed Russia really is to peace. Scott shared his latest home pizza discovery—a one hour no-knead recipe for pan pizza crust from King Arthur's Baking—as well as his next experiment: an all edge pieces pan pizza. And James gave a double-header object lesson, sharing his participation in the Baker to Vegas footrace and his reading of another story about something even more inhuman: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Quinta Jurecic and Lawfare's new senior legal fellow James Pearce to talk through the week's biggest national security news stories, including:“Midnight Planes Going Anywhere.” The Supreme Court has weighed in on the Trump administration's decision to quickly fly dozens of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador with little to no meaningful process, holding that those detained had to be provided notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal, but only through habeas in their place of detention. Meanwhile, we are still awaiting the Court's final decision on whether a lower court can direct the executive branch to seek the return of another man who was removed to El Salvador by mistake. What will these decisions mean for the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies?“All the King's Horses and All the King's Men, Won't Be Able to Put Humphrey's Together Again.” Watchers of the D.C. Circuit may have suffered whiplash this week, as an appellate panel reversed a district court's conclusion that the Trump administration's removal of statutorily protected members of the Merit Service Protection Board and National Labor Review Board was most likely unlawful, only for the panel itself to be reversed in short order by the whole en banc court. The issues now seem clearly poised for review by the Supreme Court. Is Humphrey's Executor and other case law preserving independent agencies toast? Or might the Court stop short of killing independent agencies altogether?“A Duty of Pander.” Attorney General Pam Bondi punished a Justice Department attorney this week after he admitted to a federal court that he had not been provided adequate answers to some of the court's questions. It's the latest in a parade of disciplinary actions accusing attorneys of disloyalty for engaging in candor with the federal courts over the confusion that some of the Trump administration's policies have caused. Is the Attorney General within her rights to crack down on these actions? And what impact will her demand for loyalty have on the Justice Department's relationship with the federal courts?For object lessons, Quinta recommended the movie "Margin Call" as a reflection on the last financial crisis, as we prepare for the next one. Ben brought attention to Russia's brutal and inhumane attack on a children's playground in Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvi Rih, which underscores just how committed Russia really is to peace. Scott shared his latest home pizza discovery—a one hour no-knead recipe for pan pizza crust from King Arthur's Baking—as well as his next experiment: an all edge pieces pan pizza. And James gave a double-header object lesson, sharing his participation in the Baker to Vegas footrace and his reading of another story about something even more inhuman: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
HOUR ONE: It is considered by many, Britain's most well-known disappearing person case. Even now, over three decades later, people in the UK are still fascinated and intrigued by the unexplained vanishing of Suzy Lamplugh. (The Suzy Lamplugh Mystery) *** John List planned the murders of his own family so carefully, he almost got away with it. In fact, it took 18 years to catch him. (The Family Man Who Murdered His Family) *** We'll look at what it was like to be a woman in the 17th Century… and accused of witchcraft. (Witchly Accusations) *** If you drink whiskey, or even if you don't, you're likely familiar with “Jameson Irish Whiskey.” But did you know that cannibalism played a part in its history? (Whiskey and Cannibalism) *** A strange phenomenon takes place in Arkansas, and despite the numerous sightings and investigations, there is still no explanation for it. (Unexplained In Arkansas)==========HOUR TWO: Seeing a lifelike human skeleton in a doctor's office, especially in the past couple of centuries, was – and in many cases still is - commonplace. But where did one go to get such lifelike skeletons if you were a doctor in the 1800s? Why, a skeleton factory, of course! (The Skeleton Factory) *** The story of Kate Watson is a grim one – living as a prostitute in the Old West, and when that wasn't enough she took up cattle rustling. Her husband wasn't any better. So it's probably no surprise that she was strung up until dead. But maybe you should wait to pass judgement until you hear the whole story. (The Lynching of Cattle Kate) *** In March of 2004, teenager Brianna Maitland left work in the late evening hours and was never seen again. To this day it is still one of Vermont's most infamous mysteries. (The Vanishing of Brianna Maitland) *** Plus, “The Haunted Adirondack Mountains”==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Parents always feel their child is special in some way – something that makes their child better in some way than other children. Parents of indigo children are no different, with some parents thinking their children have psychic abilities. Doctors say that these children have ADD or ADHD, but one parapsychologist says indigo children have something even more special – possibly even paranormal - inside them. (Supernatural Indigo Children) *** When you think of a mad scientist you most likely think of Victor Frankenstein – but it's rumored Mary Shelley took inspiration for the character from a real mad scientist by the name of Andrew Ure. (Andrew Ure: A Real Life Mad Scientist) *** The story of Kate Watson is a grim one – living as a prostitute in the Old West, and when that wasn't enough she took up cattle rustling. Her husband wasn't any better. So it's probably no surprise that she was strung up until dead. But maybe you should wait to pass judgement until you hear the whole story. (The Lynching of Cattle Kate)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT'S SHOW:"The Suzy Lamplugh Mystery” by Amelia Gentleman for The Guardian: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2v2z6tp6“The Family Man Who Murdered His Family” from The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/392yt322“Witchly Accusations” by Jessica Nelson for the UK's National Archives: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/j7nnd3ax“Whiskey and Cannibalism” posted at The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/9rx24777“Supernatural Indigo Children” by Gina Dimuro for All That's Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/apk85b29“Unexplained in Arkansas” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/27zaptdb“Haunted Adirondack Mountains” by Molly Briggs for Paranormality Magazine: http://weirddarkness.com/magazine“The Skeleton Factory” from Strange Ago: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2j8reje3“Andrew Ure: A Real Life Mad Scientist” posted at The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3n5tfpeh“The Murder of Nurse Cindy” posted the The Trouble With Justice: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2kfah7mv“The Lynching of Cattle Kate” posted at Strange Company: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/utdy2sh6“The Vanishing of Brianna Maitland” by Orrin Grey for The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/je9s98ru==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2025==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb steps into the electrifying world of Elizabethan theatre to unravel the dark allure of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, a work that would forever change English drama. Together with Professor Emma Smith, she decodes the Renaissance masterpiece that dared to humanize the devil and challenge religious orthodoxy. How did Dr. Faustus become a cultural phenomenon that still echoes through history via Mary Shelley, John Grisham and James Bond?Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Alice Smith, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK
In this twenty-eighth installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins.... we head to 1989 and explore, along with the pawn shop owner who bought the camera that contained it, a tape of some chilling home video footage of two film students investigating an urban legend set inside a local abandoned insane asylum.This episode was scored by Logan Keith. We recommend listening with headphones to experience the full effect of all the creepy background noises! If you like this episode, please let us know wherever you rate and review podcasts. Thanks so much!For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com