Book Fight

This week we're starting our new summer season, in which we'll read work by the less-famous halves of writer couples. To kick it off, we discuss an essay called "Envy" by Kathryn Chetkovich, in which she writes about the crippling jealousy she felt after her boyfriend, Jonathan Franzen, published a little book called The Corrections. The essay caused a bit of a lit-world stir when it came out in 2003 from Granta.

We also talk about the upcoming season, and why we're interested in exploring these spousal relationships. Plus, Tom reads tweets to Mike against his will.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

Direct download: Ep233_SummerOfSpouses.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:41pm EDT

This week is the final installment in our Spring of Scandal season, and we're wrapping it up with an essay by a writer who saw a scandal from a unique perspective: as a private investigator hired to get information from college football players, and from a madam, related to a sexual assault case filed against a large university's football program. Erika Krouse details her involvement in the case, and her mixed feelings about the relative ethics of the job, for this piece in Granta.

In the second half of the show, we tackle a writing question: specifically, what you do when you're between projects and can't seem to get going on something new. Not that we have any great advice. But commiseration is helpful, right?

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

Direct download: Ep232_Krouse_Comfort_Woman.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we're continuing our Spring of Scandal season with a discussion of Mark Greif's "Afternoon of the Sex Children," first published in N+1, and later appearing in Greif's collection Against Everything.

Direct download: Ep231_Greif_SexChildren.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we continue our Spring of Scandal with an essay by Sarah Marshall, first published in the Believer, called "Remote Control: Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and the Spectacles of Female Power and Pain". The essay revisits that particular scandal, and in particular how the public narrative of it formed and then cemented itself in our shared cultural memory.

In the second half of the show, we talk about a recent literary scandal in the romance world, one that has the unfortunate hashtag #cockygate. We also eat a weird Pop Tart, and hope it doesn't kill us.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

Direct download: Ep230_Marshall_TonyaHarding.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

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