Jacke Wilson's Blog, page 47
October 23, 2016
History of Literature #64 – Dorothy Parker
“She was a combination of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth,” said Alexander Woolcott. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) wrote short stories, poems, reviews, screenplays, and more. Perhaps most famously, she was part of the group of New Yorkers known as the Algonquin Round Table, which met every day for lunch and eventually grew famous for their witticisms, put-downs, and general high spirits. A woman of brilliance as well as deep contradiction, Parker at her best combined romantic optimism with a dark, biting pessimism that still feels modern.
In this episode, Jacke is joined by the President of the Literature Supporters Club for a field report of the Algonquin Hotel today and a discussion of Parker’s life, works, and top ten quips.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:14 — 31.3MB) | Embed
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Show Notes:
We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
“I Wished on the Moon” by Billie Holiday (1935) and Ella Fitzgerald and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (1962)
October 13, 2016
History of Literature Podcast #63 – Books I Have Loved (with Charles Baxter)
In this special episode, the revered American author Charles Baxter joins Jacke to discuss some of his favorite books, including works by Anton Chekhov, Saul Bellow, James Wright, and Paula Fox.
“Charles Baxter’s stories have reminded me of how broad and deep and shining a story can be, and I am grateful.” — Alice Munro
CHARLES BAXTER is is the author of the novels The Feast of Love(nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, and First Light, and the story collectionsGryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, andHarmony of the World. The stories “Bravery” and “Charity,” which appear in There’s Something I Want You to Do, were included in Best American Short Stories. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:07:02 — 46.3MB) | Embed
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Works Discussed:
Collected Poems by James Wright
Herzog, Henderson the Rain King, and Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow
Desperate Characters and The Widow’s Children by Paula Fox
Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov
Show Notes:
We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
“Sweet Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
October 6, 2016
The History of Literature Episode #62 – Bad Poetry
Everyone loves and admires a good poem…but what about the bad ones? After discussing his own experience writing terrible poetry, Jacke analyzes the 10 things that make a poem go wrong, assesses the curious role of Scotland and Michigan in developing bad poetry, and reviews some candidates for the worst poet in history, including:
Jennifer Aniston, whose astonishingly bad love poem to John Mayer graced (disgraced?) the pages of Star magazine;
James McIntyre, the Canadian poet known as “the Chaucer of Cheese”;
Julia A. Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan,” whose poems were described as “worse than a Gatling gun” and “rare food for the lunatic,” but who insisted on giving public performances (to her husband’s mortification and Mark Twain’s delight);
Margaret Cavendish, the seventeenth-century aristocrat whose nature poems took her into the unintentionally comic realm of extreme bad taste (and near cannibalism);
…and many others as well. It’s a celebration of bad poetry… the agony and the ecstasy… the cringeworthy and the triumphant… or, as William McGonagall, one of the best (worst?) of the bad poets might say: “This episode is very fine / Indeed I think it very fine.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23:13 — 57.4MB) | Embed
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Show Notes:
We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
September 29, 2016
The History of Literature #61 – Wharton, Murakami, Chandler, and Fowles (with Professor Vu Tran)
What do Edith Wharton, Haruki Murakami, Raymond Chandler, John Fowles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Wong Kar-wai have in common? All are known for their ability to generate a particular mood and atmosphere – and all were selected by our guest, Professor Vu Tran of the University of Chicago, as being particularly inspirational as he wrote his novel Dragonfish. In this episode, Vu and Jacke discuss what makes these works so compelling, how the works helped Vu write his novel, and how a certain American city produces an intense feeling of endless hope and melancholy, twenty-four hours a day.
VU TRAN is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Chicago and the author of Dragonfish: A Novel (2015). Professor Tran has been described as “a fiction writer whose work thus far is preoccupied with the legacy of the Vietnam War for the Vietnamese who remained in the homeland, the Vietnamese who immigrated to America, and the Americans whose lives have intersected with both.”
“Richly satisfying work….[Has] a place on the top shelf of literary thrillers.” —Gerald Bartell, San Francisco Chronicle
Works Discussed:
Dragonfish: A Novel by Vu Tran
The Magus by John Fowles
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
In the Mood for Love (dir. Wong Kar-wai)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:30 — 48.0MB) | Embed
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Show Notes:
We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
September 22, 2016
The History of Literature Episode 60 – Great Literary Endings
Everyone always talks about the greatest openings in the history of literature – I’m looking at you, Call me Ishmael – but what about endings? Aren’t those just as important? What are the different ways to end short stories and novels? Which endings work well and why? In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at great literary endings, with some assistance from David Lodge, Charles Baxter, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Samuel Beckett, Iris Murdoch, Uncle Wiggily, The Third Man, Donald Barthelme, Alice Munro, Henry James, E.B. White, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley, David Foster Wallace, O. Henry, Ian McEwan, Thomas Mann, and Joseph Conrad.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:04 — 40.2MB) | Embed
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Show Notes:
We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
September 15, 2016
The History of Literature Episode #59 – Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) lived a life that, in retrospect, looks almost like one of her short stories: sudden, impactful, and lastingly powerful. Deeply Catholic, O’Connor portrayed the American South as a place full of complex characters seeking redemption in unusual and often violent ways. She once said that she had found that violence was “strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace,” and it is this confrontation – restless faith crashing into pain and evil – that energizes O’Connor’s best works. Possessed of almost supernatural writerly gifts, O’Connor’s insight and artistry place her in the uppermost echelon of American authors. Host Jacke Wilson tells the story of O’Connor’s life, her most famous works, and his own near-connection to the author…before concluding with some troubling recent discoveries and a preview of a deeper examination of O’Connor and her place in American letters.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:23 — 44.5MB) | Embed
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Show Notes:
See the photo of the young Flannery O’Connor at the Amana Colonies at https://jackewilson.com/2014/08/08/writers-laughing-flannery-oconnor/.
Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
“Porch Blues” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
September 8, 2016
History of Literature Podcast Ep. 58 – Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism (with Professor Paul Peppis)
Embattled and arrogant, the novelist and painter Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was deeply immersed in Modernism even as he sought to blast it apart. He was the type of person who would rather hate a club than join it – and while his taste for the attack led to his marginalization, his undeniable genius made him impossible to ignore. Eventually, his misanthropic views led him down some dark paths, as the freedom and energy of the early twentieth century gave way to totalitarian regimes and the horrors of modern war. Professor Paul Peppis, an expert in the politics, art, and literature of the Modernist era, joins Jacke for a discussion of Wyndham Lewis and his leadership of the thrilling, doomed artistic revolution known as Vorticism.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:47 — 39.3MB) | Embed
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Show Notes:
Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
“Modern Piano Epsilon – The Small” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
September 1, 2016
History of Literature Podcast Ep. 57 – Borges, Munro, Davis, Barthelme – All About Short Stories (And Long Ones Too)
What makes a short story a short story? What can a short story do that a novel can’t? Can a story ever be TOO short? The President of the Literature Supporters Club stops by to discuss the length of fiction, with some help from Lydia Davis, Donald Barthelme, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Munro, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Roberto Bolano, Georges Simenon, Alberto Moravia, Augusto Monterroso, Jonathan Franzen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and Franz Kafka.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:33 — 33.6MB) | Embed
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | More
Show Notes:
Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
“Spy Glass,” “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
August 25, 2016
History of Literature Episode #56 – Shelley, HD, Yeats, Frost, Stevens – The Poetry of Ruins (with Professor Bill Hogan)
In 1818, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published his classic poem “Ozymandias,” depicting the fallen statue of a once-powerful king whose inscription “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” has long since crumbled into the desert. A hundred years later, a set of Modernist poets revisited the subject of ruins, injecting the poetic trope with some surprising new ideas. Professor Bill Hogan of Providence College joins Jacke for a look at the treatment of ruins in the poetry of H.D. (1886-1961), William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Robert Frost (1874-1963), and Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:02 — 42.9MB) | Embed
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Works Discussed:
“Ozymandias” (1818) – Percy Bysshe Shelley
“The Walls Do Not Fall” (1944) – H.D.
“The Tower” (1928) – W.B. Yeats
“The Directive” (1946) – Robert Frost
“The Anecdote of the Jar” (1919) and “The Man on the Dump” (1939) – Wallace Stevens
Show Notes:
Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature.
You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com.
Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766).
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
August 22, 2016
Covering James Joyce
Yes! Our James Joyce podcast episode smashed our record for one-day downloads. A reminder that you can get the History of Literature Podcast for free on iTunes and Stitcher.
Question for the Day: Which James Joyce cover is your favorite? (Or is your favorite not here?) Let me know in the comments!
