Book Fight

This week we're wrapping up our Winter of Wayback season by reviewing what we've learned. Which stories and essays did we love? Which pieces did we hate? What did we learn about 1968, and how did it compare to our previous presuppositions? Also, as a special bonus, Tom reviews a famous 1968 movie he'd never seen before, and Mike eats a Big Mac.

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Direct download: Ep369_1968_WrapUp_-_32821_7.00_PM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we continue our exploration of 1968 by checking out a Bernard Malamud story, "Man in the Drawer," which won the O'Henry prize that year. Also: what were hippies up to in 1968? We take a deep dive into newspaper archives to learn how that term was being used, and what it could tell us about the state of the counterculture (and the attitudes of squares).

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Direct download: Ep368_1968_Malamud.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we continue our Winter of Wayback season by checking out a couple stories from the 1969 Best American Short Stories anthology (featuring stories published in 1968). We intentionally chose authors we didn't know anything about, though it turns out both writers went on to fairly celebrated careers, albeit in different genres. Norma Klein became a beloved YA author, often compared to Judy Blume, though she died at the tragically young age of 50. Jack Cady, meanwhile, won numerous awards for his horror and sci fi novels and spent a couple decades teaching in the Pacific Northwest.

Also this week: Poetry gets political in the late 60s, in a way that feels very similar to today.

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Direct download: Ep367_Wayback_BASS_-_31521_12.01_AM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we continue our Winter of Wayback season by reading a dispatch about the 1968 Democratic National Convention written for Esquire by William S. Burroughs. The convention itself was famously contentious, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was criticized for allegedly allowing the cops to run roughshod over protesters outside the convention hall. Burroughs, meanwhile, brings to the party a politics we'd describe as "confusing."

Also this week: The poetry of 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. And the return of Raccoon News!

If you like our show, and would like more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 and get access to a whole wealth of bonus episodes, including our latest series, The Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

 

Direct download: Ep366_Burroughs_at_DNC_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week, we're continuing our Winter of Wayback trip to 1968 by reading a story, "Boys and Girls," from Alice Munro's first story collection. We revisit arguments about Munro's stories from our grad school years, and consider the unique structure of her stories, which often rely less on plot trajectory than on a kind of synthesis, looking at a character's life from a variety of angles. Plus: a new game, Munro or No!

You can read the story here: http://www.giuliotortello.it/shortstories/boys_and_girls.pdf

If you like the show, you can subscribe to our Patreon for just $5 and get access to our entire vault of bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

 

Direct download: Ep365_Wayback68_Munro.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

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