Podcasts about ravelstein

Today, we're joined by one of our favorite writers and thinkers, Vinson Cunningham, to discuss his excellent debut novel, Great Expectations, which tells the story of brilliant-but-unmoored young black man, David Hammond, who finds himself recruited — by fluke, folly, or fate — onto a historic presidential campaign for a certain charismatic Illinois senator. A staff writer at the New Yorker, Vinson also worked for Obama's 2008 campaign in his early twenties. (He bears at least some resemblance to his protagonist.) And his novel provides a wonderful jumping-off point for a deep discussion of political theater, the novel of ideas, race, faith,  the meaning of Barack Obama, and the meaning of Kamala Harris. Also discussed: Christopher Isherwood, Saul Bellow, Garry Wills, Ralph Ellison, Marilynne Robinson, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant! If you can't get enough Vinson, check out his podcast with Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz, Critics at Large.  Sources:Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations: A Novel (2024)— "The Kamala Show," The New Yorker, Aug 19, 2024— "Searching for the Star of the N.B.A. Finals," The New Yorker, June 21, 2024— "Many and One," Commonweal, Dec 14, 2020.Saul Bellow, Ravelstein  (2001) Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992)Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)— Shadow and Act (1964)David Haglund, "Leaving the Morman Church, After Reading a Poem," New Yorker Radio Hour, Mar 25, 2016. Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior (1995)Glenn Loury, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (2024)Matthew Sitman, "Saving Calvin from Clichés: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson," Commonweal, Oct 5, 2017...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon so you can listen to all of our premium episodes!

Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005) was a Canadian–American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited "the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age." His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift, and Ravelstein. Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself. Bellow grew up as an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellow's fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, a battle "to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses." Bellow's protagonists wrestle with what Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December, called "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century." This transcendence of the "unutterably dismal" (a phrase from Dangling Man) is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a "ferocious assimilation of learning" (Hitchens) and an emphasis on nobility. Original video here Full Wikipedia entry here Saul Bellow's books here --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theunadulteratedintellect/support

This episode provides some incentives for our librarians to pick up a book by an author they have always meant to read. And with Sadie back, a topic that hurts Corene's brain resurfaces: buying series. Books mentioned on this episode: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Ravelstein by Saul Bellow, Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, and Defy the Night by Brigid Kemmerer. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/keepitfictional/message

India Policy Watch: Countering Wokeism Insights on burning policy issues in India— RSJYou know a term has entered the zeitgeist when it reaches your family WhatsApp group that’s kept alive by aunts and uncles forwarding every dubious message that confirms their biases. So, when I received a message on the group that urged us to celebrate this Diwali with firecrackers to show the ‘wokes’ their place, I realised the word has crossed some kind of a threshold. And then I noticed social media was full of similar assertion of Sanatan Dharma against wokes (and Christians too). Some kind of international conspiracy of the wokes had to be thwarted, our religion and tradition had to be reclaimed and, apparently, lighting a firecracker was the place to start. Another day, another assault on our dharma and another lightening response by us because we are ever vigilant now. And that set me thinking about wokeism. Is it a nihilistic, virtue signaling, leftist movement that imagines victimhood, rejects tradition and reduces everything to identity? Or, is it an easy catch-all pejorative that serves as a convenient fig leaf for bigots of every shade to run down any progressive, liberal idea without engaging with their merit? Are all anti-woke responses the same? Or, is there a right and a wrong cause to protest wokeism? Blooming Of The Conservative MindI thought it will be useful to go back to the original text that questioned ‘openness’ and relativism to search for answers. Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind (1987) was the earliest and remains perhaps the most intellectually stimulating challenge to the dogma of liberalism that had take over the academic and media bastions in America. Bloom, a professor of Philosophy at University of Chicago, wrote the book based on the ‘sample’ of students he taught over a couple of decades starting from the 60s. Bloom took a counterintuitive view to the liberal consensus that keeping an open mind that’s free of prejudice is the way for a society to progress. He countered:“Prejudices, strong prejudices, are visions about the way things are. They are divinations of the order of the whole of things, and hence the road to a knowledge of that whole is by way of erroneous opinions about it. Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment. The mind that has no prejudices at the outset is empty. It can only have been constituted by a method that is unaware of how difficult it is to recognize that a prejudice is a prejudice.”While woke as a term and cultural phenomenon was still a few decades away, Bloom had anticipated its origin and its pathologies quite accurately. For Bloom, the moral goal of every education system and, therefore, of the society, was to produce a human being who is in accord with its fundamental principle. As he wrote:“Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality. Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime.”So, what did this mean for the US? For Bloom, the moral imperative of a US citizen was quite clear:“Above all he was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."“A powerful attachment to the letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man's reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man.”This starting position is important to appreciate when anyone is looking to imitate or transplant anti-woke rhetoric into their societies. If you live in a democracy and value its moral principles, your argument against the liberal project will have to be founded on this truth. The Three MovesFrom this starting position, Bloom makes three key moves in his dissection of where liberalism or wokeism, as we might call it today, loses its way.First, he argues that allegiance to the natural rights of man should supersede all other allegiances or identities. The folksy way of saying this is you should do no favour to your first cousin that you will deny a fellow citizen. In his scepticism of what is called progressive thought, Bloom didn’t hark back to an ancient way of life or a religious code. Instead, he stuck to the first principles of liberty:“This called for something very different from the kinds of attachment required for traditional communities where myth and passion as well as severe discipline, authority, and the extended family produced an instinctive, unqualified, even fanatic patriotism, unlike the reflected, rational, calm, even self-interested loyalty—not so much to the country but to the form of government and its rational principles—required in the United States.”“The palpable difference between these two can easily be found in the changed understanding of what it means to be an American. The old view was that, by recognizing and accepting man's natural rights, men found a fundamental basis of unity and sameness. Class, race, religion, national origin or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers. The immigrant had to put behind him the claims of the Old World in favor of a new and easily acquired education. This did not necessarily mean abandoning old daily habits or religions, but it did mean subordinating them to new principles. There was a tendency, if not a necessity, to homogenize nature itself.”So far, so good. The liberals would grudgingly and partially agree to this too. It is the second move of Bloom, both dazzlingly insightful and contentious, that made the book a bestseller and launched a vigorous conservative intellectual movement against what passed as liberalism in the late 20th century.  Bloom made a strong case against openness and relativism, two notions dear to the liberal hearts. What’s the basis for deeming these as lofty ideals? The pursuit of being open to every thought and ideology without rigorously questioning it. Or, the belief that every culture and its way of life hold virtues that might be different from ours but are virtues nevertheless. Bloom eviscerated the liberal platform that dominated (and still dominates) the US academic and intellectual environs. On openness, Bloom wrote:“Thus there are two kinds of openness, the openness of indifference —promoted with the twin purposes of humbling our intellectual pride and letting us be whatever we want to be, just as long as we don't want to be knowers—and the openness that invites us to the quest for knowledge and certitude, for which history and the various cultures provide a brilliant array of examples for examination. This second kind of openness encourages the desire that animates and makes interesting every serious student—"I want to know what is good for me, what will make me happy" —while the former stunts that desire.Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled.”Then Bloom laid into cultural relativism:“Men cannot remain content with what is given to them by their culture if they are to be fully human. This is what Plato meant to show by the image of the cave in the Republic and by representing us as prisoners in it. A culture is a cave. He did not suggest going around to other cultures as a solution to the limitations of the cave. Nature should be the standard by which we judge our own lives and the lives of peoples. That is why philosophy, not history or anthropology, is the most important human, science.”And his bold claim that there is reason to believe in superiority of Western culture because it is moored in the natural rights of man and on the primacy of reason.“Cultural relativism succeeds in destroying the West's universal or intellectually imperialistic claims, leaving it to be just another culture. So there is equality in the republic of cultures. Unfortunately the West is defined by its need for justification of its ways or values, by its need for discovery of nature, by its need for philosophy and science. This is its cultural imperative. Deprived of that, it will collapse.”This second move of Bloom is interesting when viewed from an Indian conservative perspective. Let’s consider democracy and its central premise of equality are moral imperatives that are subscribed to by the conservatives. Then when they make a case against woke or liberal ideas, what’s their alternative moral position? That which is rooted in principles of natural rights like it is laid out in our constitution? If it is this, then they have Bloom on their side. Or, is it some principles strewn across multiple ancient texts of the Sanatan Dharma? If it is this, then they will have to prove how these principles will hold good in a modern democracy. Because this was the exact debate on the Hindu Code Bill right after independence. That was an attempt to reconcile the long-running practices of Hinduism to the democratic code we had adapted. It wasn’t easy because, on multiple issues, no reconciliation was possible. The past had to be reformed. I suspect the alternative that most anti-woke voices in India will stand for today will be this harking back to some mythical past where social order was “equal” only in some kind of a twisted way that would justify caste and gender discrimination. This is a subversion of true conservatism as Bloom would point out.The third move of Bloom in his book was how he makes a case for majoritarianism as a virtue. Again, this is interesting from an Indian conservative perspective. For Bloom, liberal democracy was designed in a way where minority interests that are often driven by passion, prejudice or spite cancel each other out for the rational and temperate instincts of the majority to thrive. Pandering to factions and minorities while blaming the majority was antithetical to the democratic project. Here’s Bloom:“Much of the intellectual machinery of twentieth-century American political thought and social science was constructed for the purposes of making an assault on that majority. It treated the founding principles as impediments and tried to overcome the other strand of our political heritage, majoritarianism, in favor of a nation of minorities and groups each following its own beliefs and inclinations. In particular, the intellectual minority expected to enhance its status, presenting itself as the defender and spokesman of all the others.This reversal of the founding intention with respect to minorities is most striking. For the Founders, minorities are in general bad things, mostly identical to factions, selfish groups who have no concern as such for the common good. Unlike older political thinkers, they entertained no hopes of suppressing factions and educating a united or homogeneous citizenry. Instead they constructed an elaborate machinery to contain factions in such a way that they would cancel one another and allow for the pursuit of the common good. The good is still the guiding consideration in their thought, although it is arrived at, less directly than in classical political thought, by tolerating faction. The Founders wished to achieve a national majority concerning the fundamental rights and then prevent that majority from using its power to overturn those fundamental rights. In twentieth-century social science, however, the common good disappears and along with it the negative view of minorities. The very idea of majority—now understood to be selfish interest—is done away with in order to protect the minorities. This breaks the delicate balance between majority and minority in Constitutional thought. In such a perspective, where there is no common good, minorities are no longer problematic, and the protection of them emerges as the central function of government.”This is where Bloom’s words find an echo in the past half a century in India. Read that passage again. The Indian “liberal” fell prey to this cleavage between majority and minority. And they are now buckling under a majoritarian backlash that doesn’t want to restore just the democratic meaning of majority like Bloom would’ve wanted. Rather they want the absolutist kind of majority. This is a problem then in India. Any criticism of wokeism can be used to shove this notion of majority down our collective throats. Any argument against it is considered woke! This then is the closing of the Indian mind. A Framework a Week: No More COP-outs Tools for thinking public policy— Pranay KotasthaneI co-teach a course on Fundamentals of Public Policy. One of the exercises in the course involves developing a policy proposal based on Eugene Bardach’s Eightfold Path to Policy Analysis. One of these eight steps involves coming up with evaluation criteria to compare and judge possible solutions. The four most common criteria, applicable across a wide variety of policy problems, are effectiveness (how well do the proposed solutions solve the stated problem?), efficiency (do the benefits of solutions outweigh their costs), equity (do the proposed solutions account for distributional consequences?), and feasibility (can the administrative and political systems bear the load of implementing the proposed solutions?).Confronting trade-offs across these four criteria is really difficult. No perfect solutions exist. As objective as you can make it appear, it finally comes down to a subjective assessment of deciding the relative importance of these four criteria. Some policy solutions might do well on effectiveness and efficiency but not on equity while many others might be brilliantly equitable and yet ineffective at tackling the policy problem at hand. And now, to this already challenging endeavour has been added another parameter: Emissions Impact.A couple of years ago, I would have argued that given the moral imperative for raising incomes in India, emissions impact shouldn’t be a high voltage concern. I have now updated my Bayesian priors. Whether we like it or not, the emissions reduction commitments made by the Indian PM at COP26 mean that emissions impact will translate into a fifth criterion for evaluating policy options. The weightage to be given for this criterion might well be on the lower side but it must be considered nevertheless. Instead of being a vertical issue with some polluting sectors alone, emissions impact is now a horizontal concern across many unrelated policy sectors.Confronting the trade-offs between raising incomes on one hand and emissions impact on the other will not be easy. There are two wrong directions this evaluation can take. One, analysts may unthinkingly transplant problems and solutions from the West to the Indian context. Ideas such as ‘enforced degrowth’ or Malthusian tirades against the mere existence of people might find more currency. Two, analysts will have to confront the cynical narrative which goes along the lines — “it’s futile to do anything about climate change now; we’re all doomed anyway”. This view can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and inhibit all action on emissions reduction. Policymakers and thinkers need to avoid both these pitfalls and instead think of emissions reduction as another important criterion for evaluating policy options. No more cop-outs.Money Quote: Bertrand Russell on a ‘Kindly’ Philosophy— Pranay KotasthaneIf you curate your YouTube subscriptions well, the recommendation algorithm can be quite rewarding. I realised this, yet again, when my feed threw up this 1952 interview with well-known mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (30 minutes). If you can, go through the entire interview yourself. I’ll talk about just two ideas that I found most intriguing. One, Russell’s reply to interviewer Romney Wheeler’s question on a philosophy that can counter Marx applies quite well to the identitarian politics of the information age. “Q: For those of us who reject Marx, can you offer us a more positive philosophy to help us towards a more hopeful future?A: One of the problems has been that of dogmatically believing in something or the other. And I think all these matters are full of doubt, and the rational man will not be too sure he's right. I think we ought always entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine, not even mine. No! We should accept our philosophies with a measure of doubt. What I do think is this, if a philosophy is to bring happiness, it should be inspired by kindly feeling. Now, Marx is not inspired by a kindly feeling. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat, what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the Bourgeois. And it was because of that negative element, because of that hate element, that his philosophy produced disaster. A philosophy which aims to go good must be one inspired by kindly feeling, and not by unkindly feeling (emphasis mine).The lodestar philosophical ideas of today on all sides of politics, unfortunately, appear similar in intent if not content, to the Marxian thought. They are interested more in demeaning and then defeating the ‘other’ than winning them over. Secondly, when you reflect on Russell’s lines, the political genius of Gandhi becomes crystal clear. It was a philosophy that was inspired more by ‘kindly’ feeling than ‘hatred’. For a political philosophy to have this character is rare. The other idea that struck me was Russell’s response to the question: what are the things the world needs to be happier? Russell gives a three-fold answer: a world government, approximate economic equality among different parts of the world, and a stable population. The first part is well-understood given Russell’s views against the first world war and his tireless advocacy of pacifism. What interests me is his answer about population. He expands that since “food produce cannot rise appreciably, there must not be many more people than we have now”. Several towering intellectuals of that age, from Russell to Ambedkar, believed that population was a problem because we will run out of food. Technological advances proved them all wrong on this count. The world population is nearly 7.7 billion today, thrice of what it was in 1950. The rates of increase in population have fallen appreciably in the last thirty years but it was prosperity and not famines that led to this social change. No wonder then that Russell is believed to have said “I Would Never Die for My Beliefs Because I Might Be Wrong”.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Podcast] Know Your Enemy: Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow. A deep-dive into Ravelstein, Saul Bellow’s roman à clef about the Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who achieved late-in-life wealth and fame after publishing his controversial best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind.[Report] IEA on Implementing Effective Emissions Trading Systems: Lessons from international experiences.[Podcast] A Puliyabaazi on institutional public policy change in India. Subscribe at publicpolicy.substack.com

Ayad Akhtar's plays—Disgraced (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama), The Who and the What, and Junk¬—and his novels, American Dervish and Homeland Elegies, are electrifying, unforgettable works of art that push audiences and readers to think about community and power, money and success, and what it means to be American. He joins us on the show to talk about the inspiration for the outrageous and wildly funny Homeland Elegies (now available in paperback), Shakespeare and more. Featured books: Homeland Elegies, American Dervish, Disgraced and Junk by Ayad Akhtar; Ravelstein and The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow; Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy; Henry IV Part One and Part Two and Coriolanus by William Shakespeare; and Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. Produced/Hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.

In this episode Matt and Sam discuss Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's roman à clef about the Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who achieved late-in-life wealth and fame after publishing his controversial bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Along the way they consider the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, eros and the intellectual life, love and friendship, Bellow and Bloom's shared Jewishness, and much, much more.Sources and Further Reading:Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (Penguin, 2000)Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987)                              Giants and Dwarfs (Simon & Schuster, 1990)                              Love and Friendship (Simon & Schuster, 1993)Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship," from The Complete Works (trans. Donald Frame)D.T. Max, "With Friends Like Saul Bellow," New York Times Magazine, April 16, 2000Christopher Hitchens, "The Egg-Head's Egger-On," London Review of Books, April 27, 2000Patrick Deneen, "Who Closed the American Mind? Allan Bloom, Edmund Burke, & Multiculturalism," The Imaginative Conservative, May 29, 2013PLUS: Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Hans litterära stil kännetecknas av fart och fläkt, myllrande persongallerier, ständig växling mellan komik och tragik, högt och lågt, triviala episoder och filosofiska uttolkningar. I romaner som Augie Marchs äventyr (1953), Herzog (1964), Humboldts gåva (1975), Professorns december (1982) och Ravelstein (2000) odlar han en konst som han själv en gång karakteriserade med orden ”att berätta avspänt och ditt och datt”. Danuta Fjellestad, professor i amerikansk litteratur vid Uppsala universitet, samtalar med Peter Luthersson.

John J. Miller is joined by Matthew Continetti to discuss Saul Bellow's 'Ravelstein.'

Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine,  joins Eric and Kate to discuss the “social industry" — online platforms that monetize and manipulate our need to share our lives online. Seymour moves beyond the negative effects social media has on us as individuals and as a community, bringing into view a bigger picture: the social, economic, and political perils that are now at our fingertips. Also, Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies, returns to recommend Saul Bellow's Ravelstein

Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine,  joins Eric and Kate to discuss the “social industry" — online platforms that monetize and manipulate our need to share our lives online. Seymour moves beyond the negative effects social media has on us as individuals and as a community, bringing into view a bigger picture: the social, economic, and political perils that are now at our fingertips. Also, Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies, returns to recommend Saul Bellow's Ravelstein.

The discussion of Saul Bellow's Ravelstein concludes in this episode, while Michael & Ethan finish their Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban.  And they have a lot to say about both.... In this episode:​​​​​​​ Ethan confuses himself with Michael.  It's the worst intro ever. A clarification of the rules makes Michael laugh maniacally. They can't pretend. There's heated debate about the rules. Ethan imports Kierkegaard. Michael finds a loophole. Michael alienates the entire Hoosier audience. Ethan loses Minnesota.  Michael gets it back. Michael loses Wisconsin.  Ethan gets it back. Indiana is definitely gone. There's even more debate about rules. Michael says civil war is okay. Join the discussion!  Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line.  We'd love to hear from you! Next month, the discussion will be on Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, by Walker Percy.  Read along, and tell us what you think! Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett) "Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco.  Used by permission.

Michael & Ethan, sipping on some ruby red Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, discuss Saul Bellow's last novel Ravelstein, surprising themselves and one another with all of their thoughts and insights and stupidities. In this episode: Ethan solves Michael's crisis of identity. Ethan tries his hand at "Names with Michael."  Guess how that goes. Their analysis of Ravelstein boils down to: "Seymour: An Introduction, longer and Jewish." Michael has a childish epiphany. Michael & Ethan are dumb. Ethan gets into trouble with his wife. So does Michael. Michael's wife, Sarah, wins the episode. Michael says a sentence that makes Ethan hate him. Ethan gives Michael more work to do. Join the discussion!  Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line.  We'd love to hear from you! Come back in two weeks to hear the conclusion of this discussion! Next month, the discussion will be on Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, by Walker Percy.  Read along, and tell us what you think! Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett) "Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco.  Used by permission.

Michael & Ethan, after two weeks, conclude their discussion of J. D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: an Introduction. In this episode: The show starts before Ethan knows it. Ethan explains synecdoche. Michael says “literally” a lot.  It’s embarrassing, really. They read listener feedback, which includes a game of Date/Marry/Murder. They discuss their wives’ plans to start a sitcom without them. Ethan suffers out of humility. Ethan is right. Join the discussion!  Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line.  We'd love to hear from you! #IsThisScotch? #BetterThanMouthmallows #IsOneSecondWorthIt? Next month, the pair will discuss Ravelstein by Saul Bellow.  Read along! Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett) "Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco.  Used by permission. Other SFX: News 2 by IthacaAudio, edited for this podcast, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. acclivity, used under an Attribution Noncommercial License.

One of Ethan's favorite authors comes under the scalpel in this episode, as the pair discusses J. D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: an Introduction.  This is part one of that discussion, part two will come in two weeks! In this episode: Michael & Ethan play Calvinball and Whose Line Is It, Anyway? simultaneously. The loss comes sooner than ever. Michael & Ethan decide not to be rational. A new regular segment: "Names with Michael"! Ethan disagrees with Michael a lot (sort of). Michael & Ethan are very mysterious. The dog is a good girl. Join the discussion!  Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line.  We'd love to hear from you! Come back in two weeks to hear the conclusion of this discussion! Next month, the pair will discuss Ravelstein by Saul Bellow.  Read along! Special thanks to Cody Hardin! Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett) "Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco.  Used by permission.

Saul Bellow (1915-2005) fick exceptionell framgång under några år på 1970-talet. Han erhöll 1971, som den förste någonsin, en tredje gång National Book Award for Fiction, blev 1972 hedersdoktor vid såväl Yale som Harvard och tilldelades 1976 både Pulitzerpriset och Nobelpriset i litteratur. Hans litterära stil kännetecknas av fart och fläkt, myllrande persongallerier, ständig växling mellan komik och tragik, högt och lågt, triviala episoder och filosofiska uttolkningar. I romaner som Augie Marchs äventyr (1953), Herzog (1964), Humboldts gåva (1975), Professorns december (1982) och Ravelstein (2000) odlar han en konst som han själv en gång karakteriserade med orden ”att berätta avspänt och ditt och datt”. Danuta Fjellestad, professor i amerikansk litteratur vid Uppsala universitet, samtalar med Peter Luthersson.

Saul Bellow was one of the lions of American literature in the 20th century, and Chris Walsh served as his student, friend, mentee and amanuensis for several years late in Bellow's life. What was it like to be so close to someone who produced such amazing works as "The Adventures Of Augie March," "Henderson The Rain King," "Humboldt's Gift," "Herzog" and many more? Bellow is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, he won a Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature and the National Medal of Arts. Chris digs into why Bellow is still so important, and what we learn about ourselves when we read him. NOTES: Follow Chris Walsh - @ChrisWalsh2013 Buy Walsh's book - "Cowardice: A Brief History" from Princeton University Press Watch "O.J. Simpson: Made In America" by contacting your cable provider and finding it on-demand Saul Bellow books mentioned: Dangling Man (1944) The Victim (1947) The Adventures Of Augie March (1953) Seize The Day (1956) Henderson The Rain King (1959) Herzog (1964) Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) Humboldt's Gift (1975) The Dean's December (1982) More Die Of Heartbreak (1987) A Theft (1989) The Bellarosa Connection (1989) The Actual (1997) Ravelstein (2000) Follow The Juggernaut - @JuggernautPod Join the Juggernaut fan page - search "Juggernaut Podcast" on Facebook  Subscribe to our communiques - www.juggernautpod.com/contact