Podcasts about Pynchon

“Just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. The agent is the unacknowledged legislator of the literary field.” — Laura McGrath We think of publishers and editors as the ultimate tastemakers. As those godlike gatekeepers controlling what we read. But if you're looking for literary gods, Laura McGrath argues, then you need to look at literary agents rather than publishers or editors. Her ten-year project, Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction, is the first serious scholarly account of the literary agent's astonishingly powerful role in shaping what America reads. Except, of course, the Middlemen are actually Middlewomen — since 80% of literary agents are women. The numbers are striking. Just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. McGrath interviewed 75 of them over ten years. Shelley called poets the unacknowledged legislators of the world. McGrath's agents are the unacknowledged legislators of the literary field. They shaped postmodernism (Candida Donadio and Pynchon, Heller, Gaddis). They launched the debut novel as a literary form. They made the short story collection viable. And 25 of them control more than half of the prizes. So will AI replace the agent? In operations, perhaps, McGrath acknowledges — the slush pile is overwhelming and smart machine assistance is welcome. But in creative work — in the business of writing, editing, translation, cover design, and above all taste — she thinks not. No algorithm will ever learn the Catch-22 of publishing — separating the Thomas Pynchon or Joseph Heller from all the dross. And no bot (male or female) is ever going to host a three-martini lunch in Manhattan. Five Takeaways •       The Literary Agent as the New Gatekeeper: Replacing the Publisher: In the early 20th century, publishing was shaped by the taste of individual publishers: Bennett Cerf at Random House, Alfred and Blanche Knopf at their imprint, Max Perkins at Scribner's. Those days are over. Publishers are now conglomerates where individual editors may have excellent taste but no single figure shapes the house. Into that vacuum has come the literary agent — who now operates, McGrath argues, exactly as the great publishers once did: as the primary tastemaker, the person whose aesthetic and commercial judgment shapes what America reads. •       25 Agents, Half the Prizes, 80% Women: The Numbers: McGrath's most striking statistical finding: just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. Twenty-five people. The field is 80% women — hence the tongue-in-cheek title — and 73% white. Agents tend, McGrath found, to represent authors who resemble themselves. One answer to the question “why is contemporary literary fiction so white?” is: because agents are. And agents, because they work on contingency fees rather than salaries, face severe financial pressures that concentrate power at the top of the profession. •       The Unacknowledged Legislators: Agents Shaped American Literary History: McGrath's book is full of literary history rewritten from the agent's perspective. Sterling Lord persisted past dozens of rejections to place On the Road for Kerouac. Candida Donadio — Pynchon's, Heller's, Gaddis's, and early Philip Roth's agent — championed maximalist, experimental writers whom no one was interested in, and built the social network of editor relationships that made postmodernism possible. The debut novel as a cultural form, the persistence of the short story collection despite poor sales, the rise of the New York novel — all are, in McGrath's account, partly agent-made. •       Can White Male Writers Not Get Published? No: Andrew raises the complaint he hears from white male writers: that they can no longer get published because of diversity initiatives. McGrath's answer is flat. No. She thinks it's silly. The number of books published each week is staggering. Being able to see some success on the part of writers of colour does not diminish the work white men are doing. The complaint, she notes, circulates every ten years, typically after a boom in support for writers of colour. We are in another round of this cycle. There will be another one in a decade. •       Will AI Replace the Literary Agent? In Operations, Maybe. In Taste, No: Andrew's closing question: will AI replace the middlemen? McGrath draws the distinction she heard at the US Book Show: AI in operations (slush pile management, contract tracking), yes, possibly. AI in creative work — writing, editing, translation, cover design, and above all taste — she hopes not. An algorithm is built on priors. It narrows the window of possibility endlessly, replicating itself. That is not what a good literary agent does. A good literary agent is looking for books that surprise, frustrate, and thrill. No algorithm has learned to take an author out for a three-martini lunch. About the Guest Laura McGrath is an assistant professor of English at Temple University and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. She was formerly the associate director of the Literary Lab at Stanford University. She is the author of Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction (Princeton University Press, April 28, 2026). She writes the textCrunch Substack on literary and publishing culture. References: •       Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction by Laura McGrath (Princeton University Press, April 28, 2026). •       Earlier on KOA: Gayle Feldman on Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built — the companion episode referenced at the opening. •       Sterling Lord (agent for Kerouac), Candida Donadio (Pynchon, Heller, Gaddis, Roth), Andrew Wylie — agents profiled in the book. •       Andrew Keen, Cult of the Amateur (2007) — referenced as Andrew's own defence of gatekeepers. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube

Támogatott tartalom. Március elején jelent meg magyarul Thomas Pynchon életművének eddigi legvaskosabb regénye, az Ellenfényben. Az eredetileg 2006-ban megjelent könyv műfajokon és kontinenseken átívelő, hol vadnyugati jeleneteken és detektívtörténeteken, hol pedig mély tudományos fejtegetéseken keresztül mutatja be a 19. század végének globális kavarodását, rengeteg szereplőt felvonultatva, a hagyományos olvasási módszereinket is alaposan próbára téve. A regényről és a híresen rejtőzködő Pynchon alakjáról beszélgettünk Dragon Zoltánnal, a Szegedi Tudományegyetem Angol-Amerikai Intézetének oktatójával, arra is kitérve, hogy hogyan érdemes nekifogni ennek az ezeroldalas könyvnek, és miért annyira jó élmény Pynchont olvasni. Ha valaki további kapcsolódó tartalmakra vágyna, a kötet márciusi bemutatója szintén meghallgatható nálunk. A tartalomból: 00:00 Vendégünk Dragon Zoltán. És a téma Pynchon, a kortárs irodalom legismertebb rejtőzködője. De miért érdekel minket egyáltalán annyira, hogy ki ő? Talán Krasznahorkait lenne érdemes kérdezni. 07:10 Pynchon mint egy bűvész, teljesen összeegyeztethetetlen dolgokat pakol össze, és csihol belőle értelmet. 10:10 A posztmodern hagyomány, teljesen eltérő szerzőkkel. És hogy miért lenne reménytelen kísérlet Pynchont megpróbálni utánozni. 14:00 Filmes adaptációk sikerének titka, főleg a legutóbbi Oscaron taroló Egyik csata a másik után után. 16:30 És akkor az Ellenfényben: hogyan érdemes egyáltalán olvasni? Rengeteg vicc, zsáner és párbeszéd, Pynchon maga is ad kulcsot az olvasáshoz. A matematikai fejtegetések pedig akár át is ugorhatóak. Olyan, mintha sorozatot néznénk: nem kell mindent feltétlenül megérteni, és a végére sok minden összeáll, erőlködés nélkül is. 27:10 Egyáltalán: miről szól ez a regény? Paktum az olvasóval, hogy a mélységek után mindig jönni fog valami váratlan húzás. 33:00 A rengeteg szereplő, mint eszköz a világ mozgatásához. Hit és kétely a tudományban, anarchisták és a vadnyugat vége: tényleg mindenki ott van e lapokon. 40:00 Játék a történelemmel és a paranoia, mint szervezőelv. 46:00 Pynchon új regénye, ami hamarosan érkezhet majd magyarul is. Ez a tartalom a Jelenkor Kiadó támogatásával valósult meg. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transmission incoming from the insane world of Ratner's Star, DeLillo's fourth novel, a major change in his fiction and his most difficult text, underappreciated as precedent for his later turns on encyclopedic form in Libra and Underworld. Ratner's also has, though, tons of connections to earlier works like Americana and End Zone. In this episode DDSWTNP celebrate Ratner's fiftieth anniversary with a wholly new re-reading of a book that remains for us hilarious, pleasurable, and a huge reading challenge. We consider how Ratner's Star, like any masterpiece, teaches us how to read its fabulations from its first page on. We examine its relentless juxtaposition of minds and bodies, as well as its dissection of the impulses toward pattern, order, and other “convenient fictions.” We ask what kinds of narrative experimentation with time and perspective DeLillo carries out, especially in the quest for an ultra-logical metalanguage in Part 2. We wonder about how science and math as fields of knowledge and uncertainty relate to DeLillo's later turns to examining history. We do our best to try to understand the relationships of DeLillo's “mohole” physics to Einstein's relativity, and we offer a reading of a Jesuit's interrogation of “red ant metaphysics” and “premature genuflection” that marks a new turn in DeLillo's satires of his Catholic education. We close by disagreeing with a 1976 panning review of the novel as a pale imitation of Pynchon. As we say in the episode, Ratner's fiftieth makes for a great transition into our Summer of Underworld – look for a string of episodes on that big novel from us in the next few months! Enjoy the Ratnerama rendition of our intro music, too. And the rats and the bats and the stars. And in a nod to all ARS Extants out there, this episode is being sent into the podcast universe at exactly 14:28:57 (China Standard Time). Texts mentioned and discussed in this episode: David Cowart, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. Athens: U. of Georgia P., 2002. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1967. Tom LeClair. In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel. U. of Illinois P., 1987. Mark Osteen, American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2000. Peter S. Prescott, “Mandarin's Apprentice” [review of Ratner's Star]. Newsweek, June 7, 1976, p. 88.

This week on the Backwoods Cryptid Road Trip, we pull into Meriden, Connecticut, and climb into the Hanging Hills, a range of ancient volcanic cliffs where a small black dog has been haunting hikers for more than a hundred and thirty years.He looks like an ordinary stray. Short hair, black coat, moderate size, nothing about him that should stop you in your tracks. But this dog never makes a sound, not even when you watch him bark, and he never leaves a footprint behind him in dust or snow. And the rule that's been passed down since the eighteen hundreds is simple and merciless. See him once for joy, twice for sorrow, and the third time, you don't come down off that mountain.We trace the legend all the way back to its source, a story called The Black Dog published in The Connecticut Quarterly in the spring of 1898 by geology professor William Harry Chichele Pynchon, grandfather of the novelist Thomas Pynchon. It was printed as fiction, but it broke loose from its pages almost immediately and became something people swear is real.We walk through the original three-act tale, the doomed winter climb of geologist Herbert Marshall, and the death that the legend later pinned on Pynchon himself, before separating what actually happened from the story that grew up around it.Then we get into the encounters, because that's where this thing lives. A lifelong hiker watching the dog bark in total silence before he vanishes off a bare ledge. A young man named Mike who photographed the dog at Castle Craig in 2004 while his own brother, standing ten feet away, saw nothing at all.A nighttime sighting on the bridge over the highway. A skeptic named Christina stunned into belief on the trail below the tower. Prints in fresh snow that stop mid-stride, as if the animal that made them simply lifted off the ground. We lay these against the real and sobering history of the cliffs, including the fatal fall of Mark Valenti in 2015 and the woman who fell nearly two hundred feet in 2021, and we ask whether the legend is wrapping itself around a place that was always going to be dangerous, or whether something up there is doing the counting.Before we leave the state, we take a side road into Connecticut's wider cryptid country, from the Winsted Wildman of 1895 to the silent eight-foot figure that teenager Karl S. watched cross the railroad tracks near Newtown in 1976, to the all-black upright shape a Bethel woman saw chasing thirty deer through her yard in 2022, to the lanky silhouette that stepped off Holbrook Road near Seymour in 2024. Twenty-some credible sightings, a Litchfield County hotspot, and a long traprock ridge that connects all of it.Whatever the black dog is, the silence, the missing tracks, and the way it's simply there and then isn't, all of it belongs to the same family of things that walk just outside the edge of what we're willing to call real. Climb up to Castle Craig with us, watch your footing on the ridge, and if you see a small black dog on the trail, take a good long look at him. Because that one's your first.Have you experienced a Bigfoot sighting, Sasquatch encounter, Dogman experience, UFO sighting, or any unexplained cryptid or paranormal event deep in the woods? We want to hear your story.Email your encounter to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com for a chance to be featured on a future episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories.Backwoods Bigfoot Stories is a paranormal storytelling podcast featuring real Bigfoot encounters, Sasquatch sightings, Dogman reports, cryptid experiences, and true scary stories from the backwoods.Follow the show and turn on automatic downloads so you never miss a chilling encounter from the forest. Listen with the lights off… if you dare.

Arrancamos con la actualidad, que sigue marcada por el Festival de Cannes. Seguimos con literatura de la mano de Sergio Rodríguez con 'Está todo inventado. Influencers en la publicidad española antes de la Guerra Civil'. Descubre cómo era la publicidad entonces. Además, recibimos a Diego Cobo, quien acaba de publicar 'Concord 1845. Un paseo con Emerson y Thoreau' bajo la editorial Punto de Vista Editores. Ambientado en un pequeño pueblo de Massachusetts, un grupo de amigos convierte la reflexión filosófica en una práctica cotidiana. Aloma Rodríguez nos trae hoy en 'Barra Libre' a Thomas Pynchon con 'A oscuras'. El autor llevaba doce años sin publicar y hay de todo en esta novela. No le falta un detalle: bombas, submarinos fantasmas, mentalismo, nazis, moteros pseudonazis, espías, músicos de jazz… y la trama se va enredando enredando y al final no queda claro si Pynchon está hablando de nuestro mundo de hoy o somos nosotros los que nos reconocemos en los modos del pasado, sea en la estupidez, sea en la violencia, o incluso en las teorías conspiranoicas, pero qué buen rato hemos pasado.Escuchar audio

On September 26, 2025, last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, One Battle After Another, a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, hit wide release in theaters. And then 11 days later, on October 7, Pynchon published what might be his final novel, Shadow Ticket. Not a bad year for an 88-year-old writer. This hour, a look at the (maybe) reclusive Pynchon and the novels and stories he’s published, from Gravity’s Rainbow to Mason & Dixon and more. Plus: a look at the two Paul Thomas Anderson movies that Pynchon’s work has inspired, Inherent Vice and One Battle After Another. GUESTS: David Cowart: Distinguished professor emeritus of English language and literature at the University of South Carolina and the author of a number of books, including Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion and Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History Ana Gavrilovska: A writer; you can find her work in Current Affairs, Uncut Magazine, Maggot Brain, and her Substack, Sick Sad Motherslug Leonardo Goi: A journalist and film critic Brian Slattery: A writer and musician Music featured (in order): Don Giovanni, K. 527: Overture – W.A. Mozart as performed by Claudio Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of EuropeThe most referenced piece of music in Pynchon’s catalogue. Gravity’s Angel – Laurie Anderson The Royal Scam – Steely DanMentioned in Bleeding Edge. Run Straight Down – Warren ZevonZevon attributed this song to overdosing on Pynchon — the opening words are just carcinogenic chemicals. Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) – Bonzo Dog BandPynchon put out his own playlist for Inherent Vice. This was on it. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – Gil Scott-Heron The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

„Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein!” Wer hat's gesagt? Na? Wieder keiner? Der olle Marx war's!Das wussten natürlich alle Lob und Verriss-Leserinnen aber vor hundert Jahren wusste das so ziemlich jeder, denn Karl Marx war noch ein bestimmender Philosoph und keine versubstantivierte Ideologie. Man baute seine politischen Bewegungen um, gegen oder für seine Schriften. Kommunisten, Sozialisten, Sozialdemokraten gegen Nationalisten, Zentrums- und Volksparteien – das waren nur ein Bruchteil der neuen politischen Bewegungen. Das endete in den Auswüchsen der Weimarer Republik mit ihren siebzehn Parteien im Reichstag und der daraus folgenden Lähmung des Parlamentarismus, aber auch die Nachbarländer kamen in den Strudel dieses Chaos, es war die Zeit. Ins polnische Parlament, den Sejm, kamen und gingen über die jahre gar zweiunddreißig Parteien. Politik, so kommt es einem mit dem Blick von heute vor, war Lebenszweck, war Sport, war Theater. Nach der Erstarrung des Lebens in den immergleichen Kreisläufen des Mittelalters, aufgebrochen durch die industrielle Revolution, die den Reichtum nur vom Adel zum Bürgertum verteilte, gab Marx den Habenichtsen Ideen (und Wege, diese zu verwirklichen!) an die Hand, um die Gesellschaft zu ihren Gunsten zu verändern. Der Erste Weltkrieg hatte zudem die Verkrustungen auf nationaler Ebene brutal aufgebrochen, mit dem Nebeneffekt zwei Dutzend Monarchien zu beenden. Neue Länder entstanden, alte vereinigten sich wieder und all diese Staaten brauchten neue Gesellschaftsmodelle.Die Unordnung war aufregend für alle, die nach vorn wollten, (ver-)störend für alle, die wollten, dass sich nichts verändere oder die einfach keine Chance sahen, am großen Rennen in die Zukunft teilzunehmen. Für alle, die gar nicht durchsahen oder durchsehen wollten, gab es natürlich immer die Alternative, auf die Basics zurückzufallen - der gute alte Rassismus: die dort zu braun, der zu blond, dem seine Nase zu platt und die andere zu hakelig. Das erdet und reduziert die Komplexität und die Juden haben eh schon immer gestört. Da können wir Deutsche mitreden, da sind wir Experten. Weshalb wir da eben eher nicht mitreden sollten und im Gegenteil recht dankbar sind, wenn andere die Stories erzählen vom Leben vor der Shoah: vom Überleben, vom Sterben und vom Töten. Über all das ist intensiv, gewalttätig und unendlich faszinierend zu lesen in “Der Boxer”, einem Roman, im Warschau der dreißiger Jahre spielend, in dem der polnische Autor Szczepan Twardoch uns die schwere Arbeit abnimmt, ein Bild von jüdischem Leben zu zeichnen in und außerhalb dessen, was von den Deutschen nur wenige Jahre später zum “Warschauer Ghetto” gemacht wurde – nicht, dass die polnische Mehrheit in der Stadt viel dagegen gehabt hätte. Aber das Buch hat eben nichts mit solchem Schwarz-Weiß-Holzschnitt zu tun, der herauskommen müssen, wenn das Tätervolk vom Opfervolk berichtet.Die Erzählerstimme im Buch ist Mojżesz, ein zur Handlung 1937 siebzehnjähriger Junge, streng jüdisch erzogen, lebend in Warschau, und da es damals nicht “ein” Warschau gab, braucht es die Qualifizierung: “links der Weichsel”, zwischen Nalewki und Zamenhofstraße, in Mirów und Muranów, dort, wo Warschau nicht wie Paris roch, sondern wie der Orient, wie uns Twardoch erzählt. Wir sind nicht wirklich lange im Buch, als wir erfahren, das Mojżesz Halbwaise ist. Sein Vater Naum Bernstein wurde umgebracht, gerade eben erst, zwei Tage vorm Pessachfest, und eigentlich müsste er in den Tempel, und wer bestellt eigentlich das Kaddisch, seine Mutter weint den ganzen Tag, sein Bruder ist zu klein dafür, also eigentlich sein Job, aber er hat Karten bekommen für den Boxkampf in der Stadt, das Team von Legia vs. dem von Makkabi, und wir lernen bald, wenn wir nicht ganz so firm sind in den ethnischen Hintergründen beider Teamnamen, hier kämpfen Polen gegen Juden, hier ist Prestige im Spiel oder sagen wir einfach: Rassismus. Die Eintrittskarte hat er von seinem Helden bekommen, Jakub Shapiro, dem Boxmeister des Viertels, ein schöner Mann, ein starker, ein reicher zudem, Frauen lieben ihn, Männer beneiden ihn und ausgerechnet der hat dem kleinen Mojżesz ein Ticket geschenkt und er darf mit ihm hinterher im Auto fahren, einem roten Chrysler, der aber nicht dem Boxer selbst gehört (der hat “nur” einen Buick), sondern seinem Chef, der unverholen “Der Pate” genannt wird und genau das ist, ein Pate, Chef der jüdischen Unterwelt: Schutzgeld, Prostitution, Drogen, das ganze Programm, der Boss im Viertel, der vor genau zwei Tagen Jakub, dem Boxer, den Auftrag gab, Mojżesz' Vater umzubringen. Und mit den beiden sitzt Mojżesz jetzt im Auto. Oha. Ok. Jesus… Sorry. Falscher Zungenschlag.Das alles weiß in dem Augenblick nur der erzählende Mojżesz, der das als fast Siebzigjähriger aufschreibt. Wir erfahrne das immer wieder in Zwischensätzen, kurz herausgerissen aus der Geschichte vom jungen Mojżesz, wie der alte kurz von der Schreibmaschine aufsteht und auf die Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv runterschaut, aus seinem Apartment, das er viel zu selten verlässt.Warum schenkt der Mörder dem Sohn des Opfers Tickets zum Boxkampf? Warum, wie es sich entwickelt, nimmt er ihn in seine Obhut, lässt ihn bei sich leben, trainiert mit ihm, macht ihn zu seiner rechten Hand? Schuldgefühle? Scham? Nach einem Jahrzehnt im Dienst des “Paten” eigentlich unwahrscheinlich, wird uns dieses Rätsel bis zum Ende des Romans begleiten, ja, es ist das zentrale Thema des Buches und am Ende ein Baustein für so manche Wendung.Nicht nur mit dem Mord, sondern mit der Art und Weise desselben setzt das Buch den Ton für eine Gangsterstory, einen politischen Thriller, ein Moralitätenstück angesiedelt im Polen zwischen 1918 und 1939. Denn der Mord war brutal, Naum Bernstein wurde nicht einfach umgebracht, weil er seine Schulden nicht bezahlen konnte, er wurde gevierteilt und in die verschiedenen Seen in und um Warschau verteilt, in Teile zerhackt wie der weiße Hahn, den man zu Pessach über dem Kopf schwenkt und dem man hinterher den Kopf abschlägt auf dass man von allen Sünden erlöst sei. Religion, you know.So brutal ging es in der gesamten zweiten polnischen Republik zu, wie sie genannt wurde. Entstanden war sie aus den Wirren des ersten Weltkrieges und der Oktoberrevolution, nach denen Polen die Chance zur Wiedervereinigung ergriff und verspielte. Wie sich Polen mit wem wiedervereinigte? Frag Chat. Wer sich in Polen politisch mit wem stritt, zoffte, intrigierte, putschte: versuch es zu verstehen, überlies es, lies den hervorragenden Anhang des hervorragenden Übersetzers Olaf Kühl zuerst oder: Frag Chat. Es ist endlos kompoliziert.Derart verworrene politische Chaosjahre künstlerisch zu verarbeiten kann enorm abturnend sein, wie ich kürzlich lernen musste, in einem dreistündigen Theaterstück, geschrieben nur ein paar Jahre vorm Handlungszeitraum des “Boxer” vom doch großen Hans Fallada. Das Stück “Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben” wurde gegeben am Dresdner Staatsschauspiel und es wurde einzig durch die Schauspieler und vor allem das Bühnenbild herausgerissen. Denn ob die Sozis, der Bauernpartei oder den Nationalen gerade im Bürgermeisteramt einer holsteinischen Kleinstadt Demonstrationen erlauben oder verbieten, interessierte die Theatergängerin 1931 sicherlich, eventuell, hundert Jahre später aber eher nicht. Denn so etwas spannend zu erzählen braucht es keinen begnadeten und innovativen Autoren der “Neuen Sachlichkeit” wie Hans Fallada, da braucht es einen Punk, einen atemlosen, rücksichtslosen Schreiber wie Szczepan Twardoch der uns die politischen Wirren des Warschau zwischen den Weltkriegen in einer Brutalität, Schmutzigkeit und oft kaum auszuhalten schmerzevoll in einem Stakkato von Szene zu Szene zu Szene um die Ohren haut - wir kommen oft genug nicht hinterher. Nicht nur wegen der real existierenden polnischen Politikernamen, die wir nur anhand der Diakritika an den Buchstaben ausseinanderhalten können, jeder Ausspracheversuch muss scheitern. Der mit P und durchgestrichen I ist Präsident (Ja, war Józef Piłsudski nicht wirklich, it's complicated), der mit L und durchgestrichenem T der Staatsanwalt, wer war nochmal der mit D und dem Schwänzchen unter dem E?Geschrieben ist das Ganze in einem mir sonst eher unangenehmen wilden Herumgespringe in der Zeit, von 1929 nach 1918 nach 1926 nach 1988 und wieder zurück, dazu die vielen Namen, die nur mit hartem Training bei Ellroy oder Pynchon zu durchsteigen (oder zu ignorieren) sind – es ergibt sich ein Vertigo, wie es die Zeitzeugen der Epoche selbst erlebt haben müssen und welches wir Szczepan Twardoch mal als gewolltes Stilmittel unterstellen. Nach ein paar Seiten Eingewöhnung wandelt sich das leicht verwirrte Lesen in manisches Pageturnen – man legt das Buch nicht mehr weg, man will die nächste Episode, die nächste kleine Backstory eines Charakters (oft im Sinne von “was ein Charakter!”) lesen. Ja, das Buch ist lang, aber es ist brillant und unglaublich gut übersetzt.Und so hangelt man sich also durch den politischen Urwald der 2. polnischen Republik und lernt doch viel, wenn man sich drauf einlässt, und es wird nicht einfacher dadurch, dass praktisch alle handelnden Personen permanent Wodka trinken, koksen, Frauen vergewaltigen, politische Gegner misshandeln, einsperren, umbringen – oder sich im allerbesten Fall nur mit ihnen prügeln. Wir sind nach spätestens hundert Seiten so abgestumpft, dass wir erschrocken Mitleid mit Mördern haben, Sympathie für Rechtsradikale entwickeln, Geldeintreiber als wertvolle Ordnungsmacht der Gesellschaft akzeptieren. Nur Vergewaltiger bleiben geradeso außerhalb unseres Verständnishorizontes, aber auch nur, weil Twardoch sich entscheidet, diese am Ende doch eindeutig als Bösewichte zu belassen. Alle anderen bekommen eine schwere Kindheit, ein Kriegstrauma, eine körperliche Missbildung (und was für eine, Herrgott, wurde mir schlecht!) als mildernde Umstände in die Story geschrieben, damit wir uns ja nicht zu sicher sind in unseren Urteilen.Über allem hängt die Fata Morgana eines jüdischen Staates in Palästina. Manche träumen von einem Neuanfang in Eretz Jisra'el andere warnen davor, denn ist das nicht die endgültige Niederlage, die Viertel in die man verbannt wurde freiwillig zu verlassen? Und was ist, wenn das wieder nur ein Ghetto, diesmal von Brittanias Gnaden ist? "Und was ist eigentlich mit den Palästinensern die dort leben?”, fragen besonders Weitsichtige.Das sind sie also, die berühmten Umstände, dieses “Sein”, das das Bewusstsein prägt, welches Menschen in harten Situationen hart werden lässt und in brutalen brutal. In ihren Vierteln lebend seit Jahrhunderten, chancenlos auszubrechen, entwickeln die Warschauer Juden Codes, Verhaltensmuster, “Coping Mechanisms” würde man heute sagen; es bilden sich brutale Machtstrukturen heraus wie in allen zu engen Gesellschaften, Schutz wird geboten und bezahlt und, wenn nicht, entzogen, es entstehen innerhalb der Unterdrückten Unterdrücker und Unterdrückte, innerhalb der Verlierer Verlierer und Gewinner. Druck von außen, in Warschau der fast prähistorische Antisemitismus, erzeugt kaum Gegendruck nach außen, sondern einen inhumanen solchen nach innen.“Der Boxer” ist eine Betrachtung dieser Mechanismen aus mindestens drei Perspektiven: Da ist die Erfolgsgeschichte des Gangsters Jakub Shapiro, dem Boxer, wie er zurückgekehrt aus dem Krieg der Polen gegen die Sowjetunion, bei dem er als Soldat auf der Siegerseite stand (was eher Zufall war), zu etwas bringt: im Sport, im Leben, in der Unterwelt. Bei all seiner Brutalität fiebern wir mit ihm mit und halten zum Schläger, zum Mörder.Da ist die traurige Geschichte von Mojżesz Bernstein, der seinen Vater verliert und einen Vater gewinnt, in Jakub, der Junge, der, hätte man nicht seinen Vater ermordet, wohl nicht das geworden wäre, was er heute ist.Und da ist die Perspektive des alten Mojżesz, unseres Erzählers mit erfüllter Vergangenheit, Brigadegeneral a.D. in Tel Aviv, Ende der 80er.Alle drei haben ein Leben gelebt, das nicht einfach war und Kompromisse erforderte. Jeder der drei stellt sich moralisch nicht frei. Jakub, der Boxer, der Mörder, leistet Buße, indem er Mojżesz annimmt. Dieser, der Junggangster, hat am Ende keine Wahl. Was soll er machen, fragt er sich? Nicht mit seinem Helden mitrennen, zurück in das ärmliche vaterlose Haus? Er lässt seine Mutter und seinen Bruder im Stich, bewusst. Und derselbe Mojżesz, am Ende seines Lebens, der Brigadegeneral in der israelischen Armee war, hatte doch auch keine Wahl, so sagt er sich immer wieder, was soll man machen als Israeli mit Arabern um einen herum? Die Araber nicht erschießen?Wir entwickeln Verständnis und merken genauso zu spät wie unsere Protagonisten, dass man irgendwann auf dem Weg zum Monsterwerden nicht stehen geblieben ist. Nicht “Neyn! Nie! Lo!” gesagt hat und dass man all seine moralistischen Begründungen in die Tonne treten kann, wenn man sich nicht zeitig genug wiederfindet, sich nicht zeitig genug selbst widerspricht, eine Grenze zieht, nicht mehr jedes Mittel zum Zweck erklärt und sich selbst und andere belügt.P.S. Für eine mildere und differenziertere Geschichte aus dieser Zeit sei (ungelesen) dieses nagelneuer Buch empfohlen: “Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund” von Molly Crabapple (klingt wirklich vielversprechend) und dieser Klassiker aus dem Jahr 1941 “Who Goes Nazi?” by Dorothy Thompson. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lobundverriss.substack.com

Writer Ana Gavrilovska joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about her recent article for Current Affairs, "Thomas Pynchon Saw American Fascism Coming." Gavrilovska reflects on Pynchon's long career and his interest in writing about systems, how his time as a technical writer at Boeing informs his work, his classic novels Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49, and his new novel, Shadow Ticket. She explains why Shadow Ticket's fictional Airmont family seems like stand-ins for the Trumps and considers the significance of a food-stuffed film that cheese mogul Bruno Airmont watches with his daughter Daphne as many ordinary people go hungry. The three also discuss Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-winning movie One Battle After Another, which takes inspiration from Pynchon's novel Vineland. Gavrilovska reads from Shadow Ticket. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.Ana Gavrilovska"Thomas Pynchon Saw American Fascism Coming" | Current Affairs Thomas PynchonShadow TicketVinelandGravity's RainbowThe Crying of Lot 49Inherent ViceV.Mason & DixonBleeding EdgeAgainst the DayOthersOne Battle After Another (2025)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Támogatott tartalom. Március elején jelent meg magyarul Thomas Pynchon eddigi életművének legvaskosabb kötete, az eredetileg 2006-ban megjelent Ellenfényben. A több mint ezer oldalon harminc év félig fiktív történelmére épülő, anarchistákkal, bányászokkal, matematikusokkal és magánnyomozókkal teletömött, a hagyományos olvasási szokásainkat komoly kihívás elé állító regényről és az ismerten rejtőzködő, a nyilvánosságot teljesen kerülő Pynchonról is szó volt a kötet bemutatóján a Dugattyúsban. A bemutató a 444 és a Jelenkor Kiadó közös szervezésében jött létre, és az eredeti terv az volt, hogy majd én fogok beszélgetni a fordító Greskovits Endrével és Sári B. László irodalomtörténésszel, de engem aznapra leterített egy óvodások között terjedő vírus, így az utolsó pillanatban Zelei Dávid kritikus, szerkesztő vette át a helyemet, ezúton is nagy köszönet érte. A tartalomból: Vastag könyvek korában élünk: miért írnak ilyen vastag könyveket az írók, miért olvasnak ilyen vastag könyveket az olvasók, és miért fordítanak ilyen vastag könyveket a fordítók? Pynchonnak a paranoia vezérelte totalitás bemutatásához kell a tér. Egy küzdelmes fordítás részletei. Pynchon és Pynchon eddigi magyarországi története. Forgácsokban az Ellenfényben is tartalmaz motívumokat az addigi életműből. Sőt, ez egy kicsit ellágyult Pynchon. Kaleidoszkopikus történetmesélés és a kérdés: hogyan érdemes ezt a regényt olvasni? A Pynchon wiki nagy segítség a fordításhoz és az olvasáshoz is. Technológia és történelem: olyan ez a könyv, mintha 1900-ban írták volna meg sciencefictionként. Lugosi Béla és a Burger király operett Szegeden. És a nem elég mély karakterek kérdése, meg hogy ez probléma-e egyáltalán. Ez a tartalom a Jelenkor Kiadó támogatásával valósult meg. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, novelist Hannah Smart once again joins us for a discussion of the ethical limits and critical revaluation of this maximally ambitious and chronically misunderstood novel.  A polygenetic and polyphonic novel, Infinite Jest's interlocking themes and characters circle back to the urgent need and paradoxical impossibility of self-forgetting and transcendence within the American psyche ravaged by the grotesqueries of late consumer capitalism and the imperatives of individualism. Infinite Jest builds its literary DNA out from the spiritual seriousness of Dostoevsky, the parables of Kafka, Pynchon conspiracism, and Gassian forebodings of the infantile fascist lurking in the intellectual artifices of the hidden American heart. It is a novel about the deadly pleasures of the culture industry and temptation of the hedonic oblivion promised by advertisers. In this discussion, we focus on what it can still teach us about the hard-won discipline of sustained activity of reading, what's still true about the ethics of individual responsibility, and hold up a comic mirror to the horror of our American political present and besieged future.Follow Hannah on Twitter(X): @fowlinghantodSubscribe to Hannah's Substack: @howlingfantodPreorder Hannah's debut novel, Meat Puppets: https://merchtable.bigcartel.com/product/meat-puppets-by-hannah-smartRead Hannah's LARB piece: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nothing-ever-happens-mister-squishy-and-the-year-of-the-sentence-diagram/Please consider becoming a paying subscriber to our Patreon to get exclusive bonus episodes, early access releases, and bookish merch: https://www.patreon.com/MoralMinorityFollow us on Twitter(X).Devin: @DevinGoureCharles: @satireredactedEmail us at: moralminoritypod@gmail.com

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down a week of absolute cognitive dissonance: a President receiving military briefings via two-minute "action" reels, an economy that seems to be running on Wile E. Coyote physics, and a landmark legal reckoning for the tech giants who built our fractured reality. From charging electric cars at gas stations that sell steak to the "suicide mission" plans for Kharg Island, it's a deep dive into the crumbling facade of the American empire. The Michael Bay Briefing: NBC reveals that Donald Trump's primary source for Iran war updates is a "things blowing up" compilation. The Wile E. Coyote Economy: Why the markets remain eerily calm while the petrodollar system is in flames. The Great Tech Reckoning: Landmark judgments against Meta and YouTube for mental health damages could be the "Big Tobacco moment" for Silicon Valley. The CBS Exodus: Ratings are cratering as the network pivots toward billionaire-friendly propaganda. Culture Corner: Nick struggles through the "dystopian burnout" of Paradise, while Jared survives the 760-page psychological warfare of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. If you're listening to this preview, head over to Patreon.com/muckrakepodcast to become a patron. You'll get access to the full show, live chats, and Q&A sessions. We remain editorially independent and ad-free because of your support.

Giuseppe Episcopo"La sorellina"Raymond ChandlerTraduzione di Gianni PannofinoEdizioni Adelphiwww.adelphi.it«Tra gli investigatori con o senza distintivo, forse solo Maigret può competere con Marlowe quanto a popolarità: del resto Simenon è uno dei pochissimi che, come Chandler, ha infranto ogni barriera tra letteratura mainstream e di genere» («il manifesto»).È una ragazza «minuta, ordinata, dall'aria perbene, con capelli castani pudicamente lisci e occhiali dalla montatura a giorno» quella che si presenta nell'ufficio di Philip Marlowe in una calda mattina di primavera. E se lui accetta di aiutare la giovane, giunta dal Kansas in cerca del fratello scomparso, non è certo per i miseri venti dollari che si vede allungare sulla scrivania, ma per noia, o forse per curiosità – perché è chiaro, almeno per un investigatore privato scaltro come lui, che dietro «il classico aspetto da bibliotecaria» si nasconde in realtà «un'affascinante, piccola bugiarda». Nel mondo freddo e fosco di Marlowe, d'altronde, di rado le cose sono come appaiono, e meno che mai sotto le sfolgoranti luci di Hollywood, dove lo condurrà questa indagine, fra maliose starlet, imperturbabili agenti di spettacolo, gangster costretti a occultare la loro identità e cadaveri con punteruoli da ghiaccio conficcati nella nuca. La patina di glamour che avvolge la città, infatti, maschera ricatti, menzogne, vacuità morale e corruzione – quel torbido paesaggio umano che Marlowe è solito fronteggiare con le sue armi predilette: una caustica ironia e un cinico disincanto. E che Chandler, con la prosa a un tempo poetica e spietata che è la sua cifra, riesce ancora una volta a restituire magistralmente, gettando sull'America del dopoguerra e sulla più rutilante (e illusoria) incarnazione del suo sogno uno sguardo lucido, malinconico e sferzante.Raymond Chandler (Chicago, 1888 - La Jolla, 1959) dopo gli studi in Inghilterra torna in America e si stabilisce in California. Inizia a lavorare nel campo petrolifero, ma nel 1933 collabora con la rivista gialla “Black Mask” che aveva lanciato il genere poliziesco d'azione. Nel 1939 pubblica il suo primo romanzo, Il grande sonno, che ha per protagonista l'investigatore privato Philip Marlowe. Nel 1943 firma un contratto con la Paramount e comincia a lavorare per il cinema come sceneggiatore. Intanto la salute, minata dall'alcol, si deteriora e un anno dopo la morte della moglie, avvenuta nel 1954, Chandler tenta il suicidio. Iniziano i soggiorni in cliniche private per disintossicarsi. Muore prima di aver terminato l'ottavo romanzo di Philip Marlowe, The Poodle Spring Story. Giuseppe Episcopo è ricercatore in Critica letteraria e Letterature comparate presso il Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature Culture Straniere dell'Università Roma Tre. Dal 2009 al 2022 è stato prima Teaching Fellow alla University of Edinburgh e poi Associate Lecturer alla University of St. Andrews.Ha tradotto in italiano Peter Brooks, Fredric Jameson e Franco Moretti. Ha scritto in volume e rivista su John Adams, Simon Armitage, Brecht, Balzac, Robert Coover, D'Arrigo, Philip K. Dick, Gadda, Primo Levi, Pynchon, Tolstoj, J.R. Wilcock, sulla intermedialità, la radio e il radiodramma.Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

On today's show, Alex and Calvin continue our discussion about the ongoing war in Iran, focusing on the literal use of artificial intelligence in the imperialist campaign being waged by the US and Israeli militaries. We analyze statements from major AI companies regarding their military contracts, unpacking the conflict between the “Department of War” and Anthropic, and contrasting this with the increasingly cozy relationship between OpenAI and the military. We argue, based on a close look at the language of both companies' statements, that despite all the hype there isn't much ideological gap between these two companies. While each claims to draw moral red lines against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, they both rely heavily on technical jargon to justify their ongoing military partnerships and affirm numerous arbitrary assumptions about US nationalism and the non-universality of human rights. We explore how these corporate statements might function to protect the companies' progressive brand identities, showing how they still accommodate US imperial objectives.Later in the episode, we shift our focus to Palantir and its Project Maven Smart System. We explore how the military's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Cameron Stanley, presents the Maven system's “targeting workflow” as an AI-based platform for detecting targets and suggesting convenient and efficient options for killing them. We talk about how this kind of interface gamifies the battlefield, and we argue that it severely dehumanizes the victims of military violence. We go on to discuss these AI-based systems in relation to the recent US military strike on the Minab girls school in Iran, in which at least 175 people were killed, including dozens of children. While the media and the military might refer to this tragic event as an error, we suggest that this specific language is a framing device that treats a moral failure as a simple technical glitch. We close by reporting on the results of an experiment in which we tested to what extent Anthropic's Claude (which is integrated into the Maven Smart System) will acknowledge its own culpability in the Minab school strike when prompted. Spoiler alert: it will do so, but we are dubious about the ultimate significance of this given all chatbots' tendency towards sycophancy. In the end, AI tools are designed and guided by human intentions, so we must hold the people who build and use these systems accountable for their devastating consequences.Texts Analyzed in this EpisodeAnthropic: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of WarTrump's Truth Social post condemning AnthropicOpenAI: Our agreement with the Department of WarCameron Stanley, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer of the Department of War, statements on Palantir's Project Maven Smart SystemCalvin's chat transcript with Claude about its culpability for the Minab strikeWorks & Concepts Referenced in this EpisodeHaskins, C. (March 13, 2026). Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans. Wired. Pynchon, T. (2012). Mason & Dixon. Penguin.Ramkumar, A., Hagey, K., & Bergengruen, V. (February 15, 2026). Pentagon Used Anthropic's Claude in Maduro Venezuela Raid. Wired. Read, Max. (Feb 27, 2026). What Anthropic's fight with the Pentagon tells us about the politics of Silicon Valley. Read Max. An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript)

“Nobody's reality is more or less real.” — Kevin AshtonIt's the chicken and egg question. What came first: stories or language? For Kevin Ashton, the answer is stories. In his new book, The Story of Stories, Ashton argues that rather than inventing stories with language, we invented language to tell stories. Stories, for Ashton, predate language. They are what makes us human.300,000 years ago, Ashton argues, humans sat around night fires needing to talk about things they couldn't point to — the past, the future, the Gods. So they created language. Grunts got grammatical. And the grammar had a structure that hasn't changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world's 7,000 languages is built upon the need to tell stories. Every conversation you've ever had contains a narrative. Even this one.I asked Ashton whether this makes reality itself just another narrative and him just another postmodernist. Our brains construct reality, he explained, in the same way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop. Our dog sees a different rainbow to the one we see. But, in contrast with our dog, we tell stories about that rainbow.Ashton is a technologist who first coined the term “Internet of Things”. But on AI, he is surprisingly critical. A large language model is a more complicated toaster, he says. It can produce language that fits the format of a story — character, chronology, consequence — because it's digested millions of words. But it can't produce meaning. We humans, in contrast, are made meaningful by our stories. That's why you are reading this now. Five Takeaways•       We Invented Language to Tell Stories, Not the Other Way Around: Ashton's central claim is that storytelling preceded and caused the evolution of language. A million years ago, humans around night fires needed to talk about things they couldn't point to — the past, the future, the gods. Grunts became grammar. The structure hasn't changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world's 7,000 languages is built on this need to narrate.•       Nobody's Reality Is Real: Our brains construct reality the way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop — useful, not true. Your dog sees a different rainbow than you do. Whose is real? Both. Neither. Ashton isn't a postmodernist — he's arguing that our story-shaped brains are the lens through which all experience is filtered, and there is no stepping outside it.•       The Bible Hitched a Ride on Writing: The world's great religions spread because they were among the first stories to exploit writing as a distribution technology. The Bible is just a word for book. Scripture is a word for writing. Where those texts travelled, those religions still dominate today. Homer is an oral tradition frozen by the alphabet. The oldest surviving story in the world is Noah's flood, and it comes from Southern Iraq, not Greece.•       A Large Language Model Is a More Complicated Toaster: Ashton is brutally dismissive of AI. A machine can produce something that fits the format of a story because it's digested millions of them. But it can't produce meaning. Machines are inherently meaningless. We anthropomorphise them because that's what our story-shaped brains do — we named our cars, now we're naming our chatbots.•       We Humans Are Made Meaningful by Our Stories: Ashton's own life is the proof: a Birmingham DJ who learned Norwegian in nightclubs, fell for Ibsen, marketed lipstick for Procter & Gamble, and accidentally invented the Internet of Things because mascara kept going out of stock. No algorithm would have written that life. No machine could have lived it. That's why you're reading this now. About the GuestKevin Ashton is a technologist and author who coined the term “the Internet of Things” and co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT. His previous book, How to Fly a Horse, was named Porchlight's Business Book of the Year. The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art is published by Harper. He lives in Austin, Texas.References:•       The Story of Stories by Kevin Ashton (Harper, 2026) — the book under discussion.•       How to Fly a Horse by Kevin Ashton — his previous book on the secret history of invention.•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed AI, the scientific method as secular religion, and whether machines can think.•       Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, AI slop, and cognitive atrophy — a natural companion to today's conversation.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: technology tells good stories about itself (01:46) - Language was invented to tell stories, not the other way around (04:47) - If stories are our water, how do you get outside them? (06:40) - Character, chronology, consequence: the Lego brick of narrative (07:07) - Hyper-realism and the graphic user interface of reality (09:05) - Nobody's reality is real — your dog sees a different rainbow (12:35) - Darwin, Einstein, and science as storytelling (14:32) - True stories, true crime, and the O.J. Simpson test (17:15) - The Bible as storytelling technology (21:49) - Socrates vs. Plato: speech, writing, and the Reformation (23:49) - The Internet of Stories: from campfire to smartphone (25:05) - Were the Greeks really better storytellers? No. (28:49) - Favourite storytellers: Pynchon, McCarthy, Dead Space (30...

In which the boys discuss Pynchon's delightful drug-haze California novel, Inherent Vice, and Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation to film. Both are good hangs. And honestly, perhaps uniquely, are better for being read and watched together than on their own. 

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Acceso anticipado para Fans - Seguimos avanzando en leche de rata de biblioteca en nuestra idea de traer autores conocidos pero no bestsellers. Esta vez traemos uno de los autores más herméticos de la historia y que está de moda gracias a la adaptación que se ha hecho de "Una batallas tras otra". En cuanto a Houellevecq estaba claro que debía aparecer antes o después en este programa, el autor más abiertamente islamófobo que existe y azote del feminismo, izquierdistas y liberales por igual. ¿Qué puede salir mal de este tándem?Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de La Cueva de la Macaca. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/29407

Host Jo Reed and contributor Alan Minskoff dive into three remarkable audiobooks: Zadie Smith's Dead and Alive, John Banville's Venetian Vespers, and Thomas Pynchon's long-awaited Shadow Ticket. They explore Smith's incisive essays, read by the author with clarity and authority; Venetian Vespers, with Luke Thompson navigating Banville's long, sinuous sentences; and Pynchon's noir caper, handled with virtuosic range by Edoardo Ballerini. It's a conversation filled with sharp insights into writing, narration, and what makes these audiobooks such compelling listens.   Audiobooks Discussed:  Dead and Alive, written and read by Zadie Smith (Penguin Audio) Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon, read by Edoardo Ballerini (Penguin Audio) Venetian Vespers by John Banville, read by Luke Thompson (Random House Audio) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Here they come, marching into American sunlight.” In Episode 33, DDSWTNP follow Mao II from this opening line into a chilling view of a mass Moonie wedding at Yankee Stadium, and on into the story of reclusive novelist Bill Gray, whose work, maybe, has a chance of deprogramming the mind and language of Karen Janney, one of the participants in that wedding – but maybe not, given the totalizing dominance by images that this novel documents. Our conversation delves into the several rich dialogues Mao II is known for, especially that about (quoting Bill) the “curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists,” the differing attempts by writers and bomb-makers to “alter the inner life of the culture” and “make raids on human consciousness” that DeLillo juxtaposes in this novel, which follows the writer from his cloying “bunker” to London, Athens, and (almost) Lebanon, while also taking in scenes from Iran, China, and the homeless encampments of lower Manhattan. Throughout we discuss the many followers of and sequels to Mao and Maoism DeLillo analyzes, all the ways his characters foolishly seek, outside the values of deep reading and the novel, scenes of “total vision” and messianic “total being,” the “lightning-lit” language of information and the terrorist's mastery of “the language of being noticed.” We examine in detail as well the effects of Andy Warhol's work as DeLillo sees it; what it means that readers never learn much at all about the content of Bill's famous novels; the commonalities he has with Rushdie, Salinger, Pynchon, and DeLillo himself; and why terrorist go-between George Haddad loves word processors so much. We also have a lot to say about the ailing, injured body and spirit of Bill Gray, as well as the simplicity of spoons and what they might teach us about objects and art. Mao II is a book that, as we say in the episode, sums up much of the DeLillo that came before it, lays the groundwork for the masterpiece to come, and contains so many of what have come to seem over the years since 1991 (and over the run of our episodes) the foundational DeLillo ideas and questions, especially ones about politics, violence, and images. Hope you'll have a listen and, if moved, tell us what you think! Texts referred to in this episode: David Cowart, Don DeLillo: The Physics of Language. Athens: U. of Georgia P., 2002. “Mao II is a sort of rest-and-motion book, to invent a category.  The first half of the book could have been called ‘The Book,' Bill Gray talking about his book, piling up manuscript pages, living in a house that operates as a kind of filing cabinet for his work and all the other work it engenders. And the second half of the book could have been called ‘The World.'  Here, Bill escapes his book and enters the world. It turns out to be the world of political violence . . . I was nearly finished with the first half of the book before I realized how the second half ought to be shaped. I was writing blind . . .” –“Don DeLillo: The Art of Fiction CXXXV,” The Paris Review 128 (1993): 274-306. Interview by Adam Begley. “I called him Bill Gray just as a provisional name,” DeLillo says. “I used to say to friends, 'I want to change my name to Bill Gray and disappear.' I've been saying it for 10 years. But he began to fit himself into the name, and I decided to leave it.” –Vince Passaro, “Dangerous Don DeLillo,” New York Times Magazine, May 19, 1991 (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html) Mark Osteen, American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2000. Sources of interlude clips from Warhol and Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vCKc7r8U8Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiCYKJc_VwI

Devin Thomas O'Shea transports Travis to Milwaukee, 1932, where Thomas Pynchon's newest novel Shadow Ticket kicks off with speakeasy intrigue, Depression misery, and a precision-engineered car bomb. Devin unpacks Pynchon's characteristic hinge-of-history setting, when everyone's forced to pick sides, as the book's reluctant bruiser-turned-investigator Hicks McTaggart gets thrashed around by forces he can't (and won't) understand. Shadow Ticket's paranoia, occult object-mysticism, and explosive politics connect to the real history of American labor violence: the Haymarket bombing and riot, the Bay View massacre, and the 1932 Ford hunger march. What can the novel, probably Pynchon's last, teach us about our current strange moment in history? Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium QAA episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Devin Thomas O'Shea https://devinoshea.wordpress.com/ https://x.com/devintoshea https://bsky.app/profile/devintoshea.bsky.social The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis by Devin Thomas O'Shea — Coming June 2026 https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2770-the-veiled-prophet Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media and binge the entirety of our exclusive shows Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Truly, Tradly, Deeply by Annie Kelly https://cursedmedia.net Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

#booklunch #ThomasPynchon #ShadowTicket #fiction #onebattleafteranother #adaptation In this book lunch we celebrate that one of of the greatest novelists of our time has written a new book - Shadow Ticket. We are featuring return guest Joanne Davis Woods who knows so much about Pynchon and some of the context and environments of his novels.#OneBattleAfterAnother #adaptation #film #cinema #ThomasPynchon #ShadowTicket #MitchHampton #paper #digital #language #prose #poetry #linguistics #bibliophile #library #literacy #text #words #apple #computer #reading #author #press #textbook #syntax #novel #fiction #biography #memoir #autobiography #nonfiction #essay #history #philosophy #arthistory #criticism #artsandletters  #bellelettres #politicalscience #politicalphilosophy #theology #science #naturalscience #religioushistory #paper #digital #language #prose #poetry #linguistics #bibliophile #library #literacy #text #words #apple #computer #reading #author #press #textbook #syntax #novel #fiction #biography #memoir #autobiography #nonfiction #essay #history #philosophy #arthistory #criticism #artsandletters  #bellelettres #politicalscience #politicalphilosophy #theology #science #naturalscience #religioushistory #gravitysrainbow #1972 #fiction #literature #1930s #1940s #1950s #fascism #democracy #detective #fedora #suit #milwaukee #chicago #parody #maltesefalcon #dashiellhammett #raymondchandler #europe #worldwar2 #shoah #holocaust #jazz #swingera #bigband #hungary #vienna #cheese #alcapone #theremin #dance #radio #newspaper #vineland #inherentvice #ptanderson #leonarddicaprio #seanpenn #civilrights #hippies #onebattleafteranother #password #politics #conspiracytheory #joaquinphoenix #joshbrolin #bigfootbjornsen #theman #revolution #weathermen #sds #daysofrage #shamus #tyroneslothrop #bennyprofane #thethinman #myrnaloy #williampowell #1970s #postmodernism 

As the year winds down and the calendar flips over, we're ringing in the New Year with a special bonus episode dedicated to one of our favorite—and most elusive—writers: Thomas Pynchon. In this New Year's Eve edition of Ticket Stubs, we gather to talk about what Pynchon's work has meant to us over the years, why his voice remains so singular in modern literature, and how his obsessions with paranoia, the past, and slapstick continue to resonate. From there, we dive into One Battle After Another, the recent adaptation of Vineland from director Paul Thomas Anderson, another favorite of ours. Then, we share our thoughts on Pynchon's long-awaited new novel, Shadow Ticket, before closing things out by putting our cards on the table with our own personal rankings of his novels. Whether you're a longtime Pynchon devotee, a curious newcomer, or just looking to close out the year with a little chaos and conspiratorial joy, we hope you'll spend what's left of 2025, or perhaps even the earliest part of 2026...or actually anytime in the foreseeable (or not?) future...with us. Any and all digressions are welcome when it comes to discussing this artist and his work. And believe me, we take digressions aplenty! As always, please like, subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you listen. Got thoughts or questions? Email us at huffmanbrothersproductions@gmail.com.

Happy (almost) New Year! We're closing out our Thomas Pynchon mini-revue with his latest novel, "Shadow Ticket". Along for the ride is friend of the pod, author TJ Martinson! Topics of discussion include Pynchon's relationship to pop culture, the use of alternate history in literature, and whether Pynchon offers us as readers an 'out' to our present circumstances.As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!Check out TJ's books here!

It's the end of the year, so we decided to talk about some books we read in 2025 that weren't Pynchon. Of course, we decided to do this after we finished recording a 4+ hour episode for Against the Day, so we were admittedly all a bit spacey. Anyway, hopefully you'll recognize some of these books or come away with some new stuff to add to your never-ending TBR pile.If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneIf you enjoyed our discussion, please check out the following media that relates to these chapters:As always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Merch: mapping-the-zone.myspreadshop.comShow art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit)bradspersecond.com

En este nuevo encuentro en el café de Mendel, ⁠⁠⁠⁠José Carlos Rodrigo⁠⁠⁠⁠ y ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jan Arimany⁠⁠⁠⁠ hablan de premios como el Planeta, el Nobel y el Cervantes, de sus lecturas y hasta de la lista de El País. Seas de café solo o de los que se alargan describiendo todos los ingredientes añadidos que desean, ¡no te olvides de acompañarlo con una buena lectura!

This week, we jump forward over 50 years into Thomas Pychon's career (and over all his most read books) to discuss 2013's "Bleeding Edge"! Along for the ride through Y2K is friend of the pod, Dan.Topics of discussion include reading the 2010s through the 2000s, the role of technology and espionage in Pynchon's works, and 9/11.As always, we hope you enjoy the conversations.

Starting 01 February 2026, Cody and Kate will be (kinda) deep-diving into another book. What's the twist? It's not a Pynchon book (cue "shocking" sound bite). If you want to know what we're going to be covering in a monthly 10-part series within our series, give this brief explainer episode a listen!If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mappingthezone.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/Merch: mapping-the-zone.myspreadshop.comShow art by Brad Wetzel: @bradspersecond (on IG and Reddit) bradspersecond.com

We do have our favorite but surely wouldn't mind if Thomas Pynchon won the Nobel Prize too . . . and in Episode 32 we finish off 2025 by considering Shadow Ticket, the noir detective take on the 1930s by a writer who was surely a key influence on the early DeLillo (we read from an unpublished DeLillo letter summarizing that relationship) but who also seems to have been reading works like Running Dog over the years (or so we imagine in unpacking Shadow Ticket scenes invoking Chaplin and a “German Political Celebrity” named Hitler). We try to understand how Pynchon's latest examination of historical and potential fascism works in its 1932 setting, ranging from Milwaukee to Hungary, where reluctant protagonist and “sentimental ape” and “sap” Hicks McTaggart keeps adding on to his P.I. “tickets” in a strange search for a Wisconsin heiress and her Jewish musician lover but also what might ultimately be justice (a far from simple thing). Shadow Ticket is loads of serious fun, where Pynchon manages to examine the direst of turning points amidst scenes of bowling alley and motorcycle lore, dairy strikes, Prohibition's black markets, dance hall and speakeasy glamour, and something called “Radio-Cheez.” Bela Lugosi, vampires, a beautiful pig in a sidecar, and some of the most tasteless lamps in the world also play a role. The real content here for Hicks, though, is the prospect of spiritual and other forms of peace in a world where weapons from clubs to guns and submarines operate according to mysterious laws of “apport” and “asport,” occult material that interweaves with Hicks's strike-breaking past and raises connections to Gravity's Rainbow. Is Hicks's fellow orphan and young protégé Skeet Wheeler the father of Vineland's Zoyd, headed out to California as the novel ends? What's the meaning of Hicks failing to return to his home country, and what does cheese gangster Bruno Airmont's submarine fate have to do with Bleeding Edge? Are Hungary's shifting borders a new kind of “Zone”? What's going on in the novel's many Statue of Liberty references and its anachronistic allusions to a “Face Tube” for flirtation in bars? And how does this always funny writer, now in his late eighties, keep coming up with all these absurd songs (we sing some) and hilarious mock-movies like the one featuring “Squeezita Thickly” swimming in soup pots (Shirley Temple, is that you?)? Teasing out many connections to Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day, and Vineland, this episode makes reference to just about all of Pynchon's other works, including even V. and his earliest short stories. At the same time, you need come to it with nothing but an interest in Pynchon's life and work. We doubt that we get every reference to history or previous Pynchon right or mount interpretations we won't later want to revise, but on this brand-new and captivating late work from a masterful author, we hope in nearly three hours of deep conversation and laughter that we've made a good start on the many critical readings to come. A partial list of references and quotations that we mention or paraphrase in this episode . . . On “prefascist twilight”: “And other grandfolks could be heard arguing the perennial question of whether the United States still lingered in a prefascist twilight, or whether that darkness had fallen long stupefied years ago, and the light they thought they saw was coming only from millions of Tubes all showing the same bright-colored shadows. One by one, as other voices joined in, the names began, some shouted, some accompanied by spit, the old reliable names good for hours of contention, stomach distress, and insomnia – Hitler, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Hoover, Mafia, CIA, Reagan, Kissinger, that collection of names and their tragic interweaving that stood not constellated above in any nightwide remoteness of light, but below, diminished to the last unfaceable American secret, to be pressed, each time deeper, again and again beneath the meanest of random soles, one blackly fermenting leaf on the forest floor that nobody wanted to turn over, because of all that lived, virulent, waiting, just beneath.” (Pynchon, Vineland (1990)) On “second sheep”: “Our common nightmare The Bomb is in there too. It was bad enough in '59 and is much worse now, as the level of danger has continued to grow. There was never anything subliminal about it, then or now. Except for that succession of the criminally insane who have enjoyed power since 1945, including the power to do something about it, most of the rest of us poor sheep have always been stuck with simple, standard fear. I think we all have tried to deal with this slow escalation of our helplessness and terror in the few ways open to us, from not thinking about it to going crazy from it. Somewhere on this spectrum of impotence is writing fiction about it.” (Pynchon, “Introduction,” Slow Learner (1984)) The “Sloth essay paragraph” mentioned midway through: “In this century we have come to think of Sloth as primarily political, a failure of public will allowing the introduction of evil policies and the rise of evil regimes, the worldwide fascist ascendancy of the 1920's and 30's being perhaps Sloth's finest hour, though the Vietnam era and the Reagan-Bush years are not far behind. Fiction and nonfiction alike are full of characters who fail to do what they should because of the effort involved. How can we not recognize our world? Occasions for choosing good present themselves in public and private for us every day, and we pass them by. Acedia is the vernacular of everyday moral life.” (Pynchon, “Nearer, My Couch, To Thee” (1993)) Don DeLillo Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin The Motherland Calls statue, Volgograd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls  Pareidolia defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, "Shadow Ticket," has a lot to say about politics, so Jason Dick checks in with Sean Carswell, the official Pynchon scholar of the Political Theater podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, "Shadow Ticket," has a lot to say about politics, so Jason Dick checks in with Sean Carswell, the official Pynchon scholar of the Political Theater podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema. Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about "PTA" and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things examined by Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in what follows, a very unusual live Recall This Book conversation. Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, a consolidation of the counter-insurgency ("drugs, sacrament of the 60's, Evil of the 80's) state from the post-1960's into the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically everything PTA movie but Hard Eight (1996; despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the over-the-topness of the Christmas Adventurer's Club. Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Although Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, he sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy. Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema. Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about Paul Thomas Anderson and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things that Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in this live-before-a-studio-audience Recall This Book conversation. Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot-point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, who traces what happens to counter-insurgency from the post-1960's when it meets the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically every PTA movie but Hard Eight (despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of centering non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the cartoon supervillainy of the Christmas Adventurer's Club. Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, Ethan sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy. Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema. Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about "PTA" and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things examined by Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in what follows, a very unusual live Recall This Book conversation. Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, a consolidation of the counter-insurgency ("drugs, sacrament of the 60's, Evil of the 80's) state from the post-1960's into the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically everything PTA movie but Hard Eight (1996; despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the over-the-topness of the Christmas Adventurer's Club. Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Although Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, he sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy. Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema. Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about "PTA" and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things examined by Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in what follows, a very unusual live Recall This Book conversation. Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, a consolidation of the counter-insurgency ("drugs, sacrament of the 60's, Evil of the 80's) state from the post-1960's into the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically everything PTA movie but Hard Eight (1996; despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the over-the-topness of the Christmas Adventurer's Club. Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Although Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, he sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy. Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

The second to last installment in our "Shadow Ticket" series is currently only available to subscribers in its entirety. Join the PPM Patreon today:patreon.com/ParaPowerMappingAlso, heads up - because of increasing automated censorship and flagging, I can no longer use music breaks on Spot°fy. To hear eps as originally intended, please listen on the Patreon or Substack.We're picking back up our brief, alternative history of American class violence, the anticommunist apparatus, and anti-syndicalist dynamite false flags, much wider spread than even I would have realized, this time honing in on a number of rhyming, causal & effective deep events rippling down the welded wrought iron links of the anchor chain of history, largely Chicago and Milwaukee concentric sagas of strike action and counterinsurgent reactions by the capitalist powers that be.File today's episode under: the Haymarket Affair; the Bay View Massacre at the North Chicago Rolling Mills steel foundry that left at least seven Polish, German, and Native workers dead the day following the bloodbath in the Windy City; the 8 Hour Work Day movement; the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), precursor to AFL; the snake Samuel Gompers; Milwaukee Central Labor Union socialist Paul Grottkau; Catholic Church Knights of Labor's Robert Shilling; Gov. Rusk; "shoot to kill" orders; Cpt. Treaumer muttering "halt" orders under his breath; the N. Chi Rolling Mills into Illinois Steel Company and then rolled up into US Steel come J.P. Morgan's Carnegie and otherwise monopolistic consolidation; Kosciusko Militia; FOTLU and Gomper's feud with the Knights of Labor; the labor significance of the phrase "amalgamated" (formed of individual craft unions) and what this says about ST protagonist Hicks McTaggart's work as strikebreaking PI for UNamalgamated Ops; Pynchon gets real Hobsbawmian, Gramscian, and Adamic-ian with it; "Haymarket FRAME-UP job"; explicitly references Bay View and Rolling Mills; Debs Rebellion; Pullman Strike; Henry Clay Frick nearly merc-ed by Berkman; the Gov. Steunenberg dynamiting; Big Bill Haywood's framing close shave; James McParland; Harry Orchard's confessions under duress; Pinkerton's; more US Steel; Mine Owners Association; Clarence Darrow; WFM; Wobblies; the McNamara Affair, the LA Times Building Bombing, and brothers J.J. and J.B.; surprise guilty pleas kneecapping the Job Harriman socialist mayoral candidacy in LA; spies catch Darrow bribing jurors?; Propaganda of the Deed comes to Milwaukee... or maybe not; the Italian Evangelical Church; ex-Catholic priest Rev. August Giuliani, MPD and BOI/DOJ informant; rabble rousing in the Third Ward, singing jingoistic songs, proselytizing to Catholics (which they didn't take kindly to from an apostate priest cum Protestant), and offering to pay for any anti-war anarchists or leftists of varying stripes' return tickets to the boot of Italy, all painting a picture of the gadfly pastor acting on behalf of federal law enforcement and local business interests with his troublemaking in the Ward; faced down by anarchists like Maria Nardini; the Bay View Riots, multiple Italian immigrant residents of Cream City killed by officers of the law with false flag violence (Antonio Fornasier and August Marinelli killed in the fray); the Milwaukee Station House Bombing of 1917; the comedy of errors; single deadliest day for law enforcement in American history up until 9/11; the curious lag in MPD response to the bomb's arrival at Giuliani's church; the claim the IMOPIO or infernal machine was anarchist made being sourced from BOI agent Julius Brown and possibly a Milwaukee congressman by way of MPD Capt. John T. Sullivan; the Galleanisti, followers of anarcho-communist Deed-Propagandist and advocate of various nitroglycerin and lead means for affecting change, squarely in the crosshairs; and much much more, breadcrumb trails we'll resume tracing next time.

This week, we start our mini-revue of the works of Thomas Pynchon with his first novel: "V." We discuss our individual relationships with Pynchon's writing, his place in the larger world of contemporary literature, and what we liked and disliked about this strange first novel of his. As always, we hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.Better late than never, we're back with a conversation about Paul Thomas Anderson's recent critical and box office sensation One Battle After Another. PTA loosely adapts (and updates) Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, setting the story against the backdrop of an indeterminate moment in the 21st century to tell a story of washed-up revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is dragged back into the fray when an old enemy (Sean Penn) resurfaces and threatens his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti). The film represents the first time in over 20 years that Anderson has set a story in contemporary times, and he uses the opportunity to examine the current landscape of America, its political fissures, and to lay out his personal vision of a hopeful future staked out by the next generation...But Anderson also readily betrays the limits of his political vision, and his myopic understanding of the circumstances that have produced and perpetuated this country's bigotries and oppressive hierarchies. While One Battle After Another offers countless pleasures as an obeject of undeniable cinematic energy and craftsmanship, it fails to elucidate a coherent sociopolitical ideology, even as it readily co-opts and aestheticizes the langauge and iconography of radical leftwing militancy.We unpack the film's many contradictions, and key in to what makes OBAA a simultaneously riveting and frustrating watch. Then, we discuss the film's treatment of race and the cadre of brilliant Black actresses who mine depth and nuance out of Anderson's elliptical storytelling. Finally, we call for a deeper discourse about the film that makes room for its many contradictions and shortcomings, arguing that these jagged edges make the film a more urgent and enduring work than insistences on its perfection.Read Angelica Jade Bastién, on One Battle After Another at VultureRead Lyvie Scott on One Battle After Another at Inverse....Our Theme Song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

Support the show by signing up to our Patreon and get access to the full Weekender episode each Friday as well as special Live Shows and access to our community discord: ⁠http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast⁠ On this Black Friday Weekender, Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman pour a post-Thanksgiving drink and dive headfirst into Paul Thomas Anderson's new film One Battle After Another, a loose adaptation of Pynchon's Vineland that somehow nails our political moment a little too well. The two break down the French 75 as a failed revolutionary underground, Sean Penn's Lockjaw as a walking case study in self-loathing authoritarian masculinity, and the Christmas Adventurers Club as a country club for Nazis who also run everything. They get into how the movie stitches together 60s and 70s radicalism, modern fascism, secret societies, ICE raids, false flags, and Benicio del Toro's quietly perfect sensei, then ask what it all says about living through America's own near future right now. If you care about politics and movies, this one is basically a Muckrake text. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

25 movies and 0 hits: it's been a particularly rough quarter for Hollywood. But as I discuss with the cultural commentator David Masciotra, it's actually been a pretty strong quarter in terms of movie quality. From Paul Thomas Anderson's “One Battle After Another” and Jennifer Lawrence's astonishing performance in “Die My Love” to a glitteringly bald Emma Stone in “Bugonia” and Ethan Coen's “Honey Don't!”, Hollywood is producing high quality, relevant material. One problem, however, is that Gen Z has abandoned cinema. Another is that Hollywood's penchant for movies dominated by memorably uncompromising female leads like Stone and Lawrence might be out of step with a broader culture still imprisoned by a nostalgia for a dominant masculinity. Perhaps that's why “One Battle After Another”, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as a pathetically redundant Sixties radical, is the one hit of the season. And it may also be why the excellent Springsteen biopic, “Deliver Me From Nowhere”, featuring a clueless Bruce trying to find himself by recording “Nebraska”, was such a flop. No, men don't matter, either in Hollywood or in life. Even when they do. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) The season's sole commercial success ($70 million) works because it satirizes everyone. DiCaprio's incompetent ‘60s radical provides comic relief, but it's Chase Infinity's cynical Gen Z daughter who steals the film (even if Gen Z'ers have given up going to the movies). Anderson's Pynchon adaptation makes absurdity central to American identity, both then and now—the villainous Christmas Adventures Club in golf attire perfectly capturing MAGA's ridiculousness.Die My Love (Josephine Decker) Jennifer Lawrence delivers an astonishing performance confirming she's among Hollywood's greatest actors. The film died at the box office despite critical praise—perhaps because audiences resistant to female-dominated narratives won't show up even for exceptional work like this. Her assertiveness and complexity highlights exactly what's missing from contemporary male performances.Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) Emma Stone continues her fearless run in this cultish, visually striking film. Her performance demonstrates creative risk-taking unavailable to today's male leads. Jesse Plemons plays the archetypal basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist—masculine id of our internet age. Its commercial failure suggests audiences aren't ready for cinema that interrogates rather than celebrates American mythology.Honey Don't! (Ethan Coen) Coen's lesbian B-movie homage to film noir, which David Masciotra loved, deserved better than its catastrophic box office. Margaret Qualley's detective becomes a feminist hero fighting idiotic patriarchy without losing entertainment value. Set in Bakersfield and focused on religious hypocrisy, it feels both familiar and innovative. Its death proves even clever, relevant films can't entice Gen Z'ers back to the movies.Deliver Me From Nowhere (James Mangold) The season's most revealing failure. The film captures Springsteen's Faustian bargain—trading artistic integrity for superstardom, making “Nebraska” his final serious work before “Born in the USA”'s commercial conquest. It depicts fierce masculine anxiety through Bruce's mentally ill, violent father and his own depression. Yet it bored audiences with its introspective approach—ultimate proof that even films about masculine crisis can't reach audiences imprisoned by nostalgia for an imaginary American masculinity that never existed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Please subscribe to one of the PPM Patreon paid tiers to access the full ep and support our ongoing, interwoven deep political and subtextual analysis of Pynchon. Join the Cork Board Cadre today!patreon.com/ParaPowerMappingWe're resuming our admirably thorough subtextual mapping of Pynchon's Shadow Ticket, and no expense is being spared as we embark on a discursive, brief history of class warfare; the development of the false flag, one of the capitalist class's favored strikebreaking counterinsurgent stratagems; and the erection of the anticommunist surveillance apparatus, systemized forms of domestic political control that bedded in during the 19th century and which serve as historical backdrop to the dialoguing narratives of ST and AtD.Please subscribe to one of the PPM Patreon paid tiers to support our ongoing, interwoven deep political and Pynchonian analysis efforts. Join the Cork Board Cadre today!I will update the liner notes a little later, so this is relatively brief for expediency's sake, but file under:Molly Maguires, Allan Pinkerton, Pinkerton Detective Agency, James McParland, the Baltimore Plot, Philadelphia and Reading Railroad magnate Franklin B. Gowen, social banditry, the widow Molly Maguire, Anti-Landlord Agitators, landlord beatdowns, Anthracite region of PA, the Maguires expulsion from colonized Ireland, Workingmen's Benevolent Association, the first big American anticommunist false flag, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Eugene Debs, Gilded Age, Pinkerton's Masonic meeting w/ Edward Rucker, the Abe assassination dress rehearsal, lady Pinkerton spies Kate Warne and Hattie Lawton, Baltimore secessionists Jerome Bonaparte and Thomas DeKay Winans, Bonaparte's son's overseeing of the BOI's formation, Robert Pinkerton's lobbying for the FBI's creation, Emma Goldman, rhyming McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt assassinations (one successful and one thwarted in Milwaukee), Pinkerton's Secret Service spymaster replacement Lafayette Baker, Edwin Stanton's hand in Lincoln clipping, Knights of Labor, Uriah Stephens, Terrence Powderly, Commonwealth v. Hunt, unions legalized and the slow death of conspiracy charges for collective bargaining, the Great Upheaval, a railroad company insurance scheme / boxcar torching false flag in Pittsburgh, armories installed in industrial cities, early riot control War Department white papers, Propaganda of the Deed, Johann Most, Pisacane, Bakunin, Ravachol, Galleanisti, dynamites arrival, PropDeed and vigilantism psyop parallels today (Mangione, Elias Rodriguez, Boelter), Errico Malatesta, Paris Commune, Nechayev, Narodnaya Volya aka People's Will, Lenin's brother Aleksander Ulyanov's PropDeed, assassinations galore, Tsar Alexander II, French President in '94, Spanish PM in '97, Empress of Austria in '98, King of Italy in 1900, McKinley in 1901... The Milwaukee Station House Bombing of 1917. PropDeed in Against the Day... And lastly, a relatively deep unpacking of false flag whispers, rumors of capitalist paid riot-inciters, at the infamous Haymarket Affair. This is a far-from-exhaustive index, but I think I've hit most of the primary episode beats.Additional sources incorporated into our rabbit hole excavation:Louis Adamic - Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in AmericaEric Hobsbawm - BanditsNick Fisher - Spider Web: The Birth of American Anti-CommunismBeau Riffenburgh - Pinkerton's Great Detective: The Amazing Life and Times of James McParlandThe Return of the Repressed - "Bonus Episode 13" on Molly Maguires and PinkertonsThomas Pynchon - Against the Day(among others)

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PPM PATREON to support the show & access the entire discography of Communoid Hits! Also, I doubly entreat you to visit the Patreon because I only get 4k characters to work with in the Spotify editor and these notes are missing a couple hundred more words of topical, thematic, and character indexing I put together for Read-Alongers:patreon.com/ParaPowerMappingThe Klonny has Returned from his podcast-sabbatical as a motorcycle diarist in Latin America to guide you through a decryption of Pynchon's likely swan song Shadow Ticket, sifting through the subtext to surface the loaded deep political index-names that will help us construct the text-within-the-text (or perhaps ParaPower Map, better yet). In this episode, we synopsize the Milwaukee and Chicago sequences that make up the first half of the novel, zeroing in on the Prohibition era para-parastatal underworld of speakeasies, bootlegger tunnels, and subterranean dynamiter labs and the adjacent rhizome of socialist saloons, Galleanisti anarcho-clubhouses, and union locals in Cream City. We examine how Pynchon's Reformed Detective Shadowing Cheese Heiress mystery is partly a cipher for the ways in which Capone's Chicago Outfit and their Milwaukee Mob affiliates sought to complete “transformismo” and earn assimilation into the white color criminal realm of the ruling elite during the Depression's socioeconomic crisis and contraction, gaining favor through the loyal rendering of anticommunist strikebreaking and labor racketeering services. This tacit deal between the ChiTown upper and underworlds is a minor skeleton key to much of 20th century deep politics by way of the Outfit's Joe Kennedy ties, the JFK assassination, Sam Giancana's involvement in the Fidel Assassination Prank Show, GLADIO, and beyond. We start to coalesce theories for why Pynchon is pointing us in this direction including the blatant 1930s - 2020s encroaching fascism parallels; the less-traveled counterinsurgent history of the Pinkertons, J. Edgar Hoover's early proving of mettle circa Palmer Raids, and the First Red Scare and the way in which there are telling deep event continuities to be traced from the early 1900s to McCarthyism and Cointelpro, early experiments in the strategy of tension playbook; the Bureaus of Investigation and Prohibition and their Wars on Alcohol, Crime, and the Left (including the anti-immigrant and anti-communist targeting of proletarian taverns) and how the Interwar Period gave rise to the modern surveillance and carceral apparatuses; and the secret colonial histories and conflict economies buried inside mundane commodities like cheese and milk. Incomplete List of Sources (may update):Gus Russo - The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in The Shaping of Modern AmericaJames B. Jacobs - Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor MovementTim Weiner - Enemies: A History of the FBILisa McGirr - The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American StateRobert Tanzilo - The Milwaukee Police Station Bomb of 1917Gavin Schmitt - The Milwaukee Mafia: Mobsters in the HeartlandNathan Ward - The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell HammettBryan Burroughs - Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34Alfried Schulte-Bockholt - A Neo-Marxist Explanation of Organized CrimeMusic (ALL COPYRIGHT FREE BC OF PUBLIC DOMAIN, YOU HEAR ME, SPOTIFY? GODAM*T!):| The Ambassadors, Frank Sylvano - “You're the Cream in My Coffee” | | Biltmore Trio - “Love Me or Leave Me” | | Bessie Smith - “Homeless Blues” | | Jack Hylton and His Orchestra - “Happy Feet” | 

THIS WEEK: John and Asher reads through Chapters 10-12 of Vineland, which takes them back in their shared semester at the College of the Surf (John was Asher's RA). We also learn about the scintillating backstory of Frenesi Gates and her love affair with a COP (ew)--the betrayal of all her ostensible values. We also talk Marx, Freud, Lyotard, Thorazine as a bad-trip-killer, cinematic radicalism, the horny monster who lives inside of you and makes you do stuff you shouldn't want to (or even don't want to) do, May '68, the Emerald Triangle, and the Pynchonian figure of the evil dentist.THEN: Asher is joined by Dimitri and Khalid of the Subliminal Jihad podcast to talk about Pynchon's ties (literary and otherwise) to deep state conspiracism, occult machinations, and all things para-political (or as the boys would say it: political). The truth is out there? WRONG AGAIN. The truth is in...here.MUSIC:Kimi-Bogdan Raczynski

TENE discuss the new 2025 Paul Thomas Anderson film "One Battle After Another." Music credits: "Algiers November 1, 1954" – Ennio Morricone And Gillo Pontecorvo – Battle Of Algiers - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1967) "Zyklus" – Karlheinz Stockhausen – Cycle For One Percussionist (In Two Different Versions) / Klavierstück No. X (1970) "Mao-Mao" – Claude Channes – La Chinoise (1967) Subscribe to patreon.org/tenepod @tenepod.bsky.social  x.com/tenepod

This week: John and Asher continue reading through and chatting about Vineland, a journey that takes us from California to Ohio to Japan and back again. We mull the novel's conspicuous "Eastern" influences, deep state machinations pitting the mob against the feds, and spend a lot of time with the curious--and amazing!--character Daryl Louise Chastain.Then: we're joined by writer Ana Gavrilovska to talk about D.L., One Battle After Another, Against the Day....and we finally and definitively answer the question: can Pynchon write women?Follow Ana on Twitter and read her Substack, why dontcha!Music in this Episode:Black Flag - "TV Party"Cold Foamers - "Always"

We are joined by Danny Backer to discuss One Battle After Another, Pynchon, post-modernism and other stuff too wouldn't ya know it.Danny's Linkslinktr.ee/danielbackerauthorhttps://www.instagram.com/danielbackerauthor/https://www.tiktok.com/@danielbackerauthorFND's LinksDISCORD - https://discord.gg/pX9JhgenPYPATREON - https://www.patreon.com/c/fndfilmsINSTAGRAM - https://bit.ly/3Txr4IjSupport the show

Send us a textIn this solo episode of The Fixate & Binge Podcast, host Joe Curdy dives headfirst into ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER — Paul Thomas Anderson's most politically charged and urgent film to date. (And, on a personal note, Joe also pulls back the curtain to reveal two major reasons why he is usually very positive about rating films!)Based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, Anderson's latest work unfolds as a sprawling and provocative look at revolution, authoritarianism, and the fight for human dignity in a fractured America. Through Joe's lens, this episode explores how Anderson translates Pynchon's chaos and satire into a modern reflection of the world today — where undocumented immigrants are hunted and forcibly deported by a draconian U.S. government under Donald J. Trump's leadership.With spoilers throughout, Joe shares his Letterboxd review and a deeply personal reflection on the film's themes, visual style, and political relevance. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER isn't just another PTA epic — it's a call to look at the moral decay beneath the surface of American life, and a cinematic act of resistance against the “New American Order.”Whether you're a longtime Paul Thomas Anderson devotee or simply curious how cinema can mirror our modern political reality, this episode offers a raw, unfiltered deep dive into a film that's bound to spark conversation.⚠️ Spoiler Disclaimer:This episode contains major spoilers for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. If you haven't seen the film yet, you may want to watch it first before listening.Thank you for listening! You can find and follow us with the links below!Read our Letterboxd reviews at:https://letterboxd.com/fixateandbinge/Follow us on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/fixateandbingepodcast/?hl=msFollow us on TikTok at:https://www.tiktok.com/@fixateandbingepodcast

We begin our read-through of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland in earnest, covering Chapters 1-5.John and Asher discuss the amateurishness of opening a novel with a character waking up, the perils of transfenestration, the ersatzness of Hawaiian holidays, and whether Billy Barf and the Vomitones are a heavy metal band or a hardcore band. Was there D-beat before the band Discharge? We'll never know...Also! We welcome author, broadcaster and podcaster Jesse Jarnow to talk about the legacy of the '60s hippie counterculture and help situate Pynchon's novel, culturally. Jesse is the author of arguably the chronicle of the hippie underground, Heads (among other wonderful volumes), host of The Frow Show on the mighty WFMU in Jersey, also the co-host of The Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast. Follow Jesse on Bluesky, why dontcha?Here's John's article (that Asher helped edit) in Rolling Stone, about the history of LSD manufacture, that comes up in this episode.Music in this Episode:The Last Poets - "When the Revolution Comes" (1970)The Watts Prophets - "Public Enemy Number One" (1996)Jane Birkin - "Ex-fan des sixties" (1978)

Support the show at patreon.com/leftreckoning What is going on with Your Party? Matt and David dive in the fallout from the Corbyn v. Sultana feud and what it means for what felt like a promising start for the UK left. Plus, Democratic socialism, the people like it. New poll show Democratic socialism is now mainstream. - https://jacobin.com/2025/09/new-poll-democratic-socialism-mainstream/Agree? you can join DSA here: https://act.dsausa.org/donate/membership/JOIN MATT & DAVE DSA's Phonebank! http://dsausa.us/LRPBMatt Lech and Devin Thomas O'Shea delve into the works of Thomas Pynchon, particularly focusing on 'Vineland'. They explore Pynchon's unique narrative style, his historical context, and the political themes embedded in his literature. They dive into the relevance of Pynchon's themes in today's political landscape and concludes with reflections on his literary legacy.

Sub to the PPM Patreon to hear the entirety of our hour and a half Kirk Clipping spectacle deep dive: patreon.com/ParaPowerMappingI sat down with Tarence Ray from Trillbilly Worker's Party, a true left podcasting wordsmith, to interrogate the Charlie Kirk assassination aka the Killing of the Kirk spectacle aka the Burger Reichstag Fire aka the Martyrdom of Groyp Wessel aka the Night of the Long Gums... I'm referring to the sniping of the Millennial Buckley Jr. esque campus culture warrior at Utah Valley University two days ago. Be mindful that this was recorded early on the 12th of September with smoke still clearing and dust settling, so information and musings contained herein are subject to change and revision considering how erratically the situation has been developing.We explore the ensuing propaganda fracas; the identity of the most recent suspect Tyler Robinson and his possible military uncle and alleged Discord-to-Kill, America First indoctrination; the AmerIsraeli Years of Lead and Eddington parallels; the Epstein Bday Album and Bibi's suspiciously timed "get ahead of Isntreali-triggered deep event" conservative media tour; who stands to benefit?; Mormon Central and the Latter Day Saints in the CIA; backroom Trumpworld power struggles; Peter Thiel, Musk, and Palantir; AI psychosis and the DARPA-machine of Tension; Groyper Wars; some of the positively deranged TikTokslop that has issued forth, like the Polynesian Mormon Eldertiktok character who soyfaced on live immediately after the shooting and expropriated Kirk merch; the prescience of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge and Inherent Vice; and a whole lot more. I may yet update the liner notes later, but this is all you're getting for now because I stayed up until like 4 AM to get this thing off the ground and airborne.Trillbilly Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/trillbillyworkersparty/Tarence's Twitter: https://x.com/tarencerayMusic and Clips:| Matt Akers - "Replicant" | | Matt Akers - "The Exclusive Theme" | | Charlie Kirk Clipping audio | | Trump eulogy || Polynesian Mormon TikTok Influencer Shooting Bystander Effect Phenom vid - Eldertiktok | | Tucker Carlson Puts Sam Altman on the spot re the likely Suchir Balaji hit | | Nick Fuentes' preemptive disavowal of Groyper Wars violence & reprisals post-Kirk death | | Erica Kirk speaks about the future of Turning Point |

Devin O'Shea guides us into the world of acclaimed novelist Thomas Pynchon, whose cryptic, sprawling narratives echo the chaotic info deluge of contemporary digital culture. With Paul Thomas Anderson's newest Pynchon adaptation, One Battle After Another, hitting theaters in September 2025, and Pynchon himself releasing a fresh novel, Shadow Ticket, in October, it's time to unpack what makes Pynchon uniquely relevant today. From the hippie noir mystery of Inherent Vice to the critically-panned Vineland, we explore why this reclusive author has captivated (and frequently frustrated) readers for decades. Along the way, we discuss the complex relationship his work has with history, conspiracy, technology, and power. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://patreon.com/qaa Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Cassandra Nelson, author of "A Theology of Fiction," joins me to discuss the importance of pursuing Godly truths in a secular culture, as well as the need to provide wisdom through literature. - - -  Today's Sponsor: ExpressVPN - Get 4 months FREE of ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/klavan