Book Fight

This week we continue our Fall of Frauds season with a book that's a kind of "fraudulent artifact." Michael Martone's book Michael Martone (published by FC2) is a series of stories in the form of contributor's notes. We talk about some ways that writers can use existing forms to experiment with both fiction and nonfiction, and what makes these stories interesting, rather than gimmicky.

Direct download: Ep196_Fall17_Martone.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we're diving into our new fall season, in which we'll be reading stories, essays, and books with a "fraud" theme. That could mean stories in which characters are actually defrauding people, but it could also mean stories that are, themselves, frauds, as in fictional pieces masquerading as real-world documents. For this first episode, though, we've got a story that's the former, about a man who invents a charity at a party, while trying to impress a girl, and then has to see it through so he doesn't lose face.

We also talk about a famous literary fraud, in which a couple journalists, annoyed by the popularity of books they found to be vapid and sex-fueled, decided to write a lowest-common-denominator erotic novel, which turned into a best-seller.

Plus stories of romantic fraud, including men who pose as soldiers to rip off lonely women, and one about an accomplished physicist who was convinced a bikini model several decades his junior was in love with him, based entirely on internet correspondence.

A jam-packed, good-time episode!

Direct download: Ep195_Fall17_Uggs.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This is the last week for our Summer of Selfies, and we're turning our attention to a story about selfies. It's also fan fiction (depending on how one defines fan fiction), so it was probably inevitable we'd want to read it. Kevin Fanning, who was recently profiled in The Boston Globe, first made his name on Wattpad with a story called Kim Kardashian: Trapped In Her Own Game. The story we read this week, which is still being regularly updated by the author, also involves Kim Kardashian, this time as a "terrorist" celebrity who continues posting selfies even after President Krump has declared them illegal.

In the second half of this week's show, we've got some literary raccoon news, plus another installment of Millennial M0m3nt. What is America's most maligned generation killing off this week?

Direct download: Ep194_NoMoreSelfies.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we continue our "summer of selfies" with a book we knew we'd have to read as soon as we conceived of the season's concept. Nearly everyone in the literary world seems to have an opinion about Knausgaard's six-book autobiographical series, whether they've read any of the books or not. While lots of critics (and other authors) have praised him as a genius, all that praise has led to an inevitable backlash, with plenty of people saying the books are over-long and tedious. So where will your Book Fight co-hosts come down?

We'll also consider some of the gendered arguments made about the book: Does Knausgaard "write like a woman"? And would these books have been so highly praised if they'd been written BY a woman?

Finally, we've got another installment of Millennial M0m3nt, this week about a fast-casual eatery that doesn't care if its Millennial customers ever come back.

Thanks for listening! 

Direct download: Ep193_Summer17_Knausgaard.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

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