Better Read than Dead: Literature from a Left Perspective
109 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 months ago - ★★★★★ - 66 ratingsThree jerky socialists talk about books you've probably heard of. With Megan Tusler, Tristan Schweiger, and Katie K.
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Episodes
Episode 9: In Cold Blood
September 01, 2019 04:00 - 1 hour - 107 MBSlightly less snark than usual in this episode on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966). Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (sure) is about the investigation of a 1959 murder of a family in Kansas and the trial and execution that followed. We discuss midcentury magazine culture and why The New Yorker sucks, how awful it must be to be a prodigy like Capote, and the fact that true crime is both the most fun and the most reactionary genre of them all. We read the Vintage International edition. We men...
Episode 8: Billy Budd
August 25, 2019 04:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBAll aboard, it's time to sail the high seas with Herman Melville's Billy Budd (1924)! Melville's posthumously published tale is about a very hot dumb guy who is kidnapped into the navy, then executed for reasons that involve mutiny, gossip, and soup. We talk about how a lot of things on this ship are described as erect, which is definitely just a coincidence, and what hundreds of sailors sleeping in hammocks would have smelled like. (Good!) We also discuss all the bodily fluids released in a...
Episode 7: Robinson Crusoe
August 18, 2019 03:00 - 1 hour - 100 MBWe have conflicting opinions about Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Megan for some reason finds a book about a dude making lists of every single item he builds, finds, or otherwise encounters on a desert island boring, while Tristan and Katie recognize that as a hallmark of Very Fine Literature (™). There’s lots of good conversation about empire, race, and the novel’s fraught and often quite bad politics. We also discuss Puritans again (we have problems, we know). And goats. SO MANY GO...
Episode 6: 1984
August 11, 2019 04:10 - 1 hour - 104 MBA slight verge from previous eps in that we spend a lot of time on this one talking Bad Takes. We’re still not sure why neoliberals, conservatives, and libertarians spend so much time citing the work of literal ANTIFA George Orwell, but hey--we’re just average book-loving sh*theads, not psychologists. We debate the merits of coveralls and yet again encounter child monsters. There is some discussion of RATS on this one, folks. Prepare yourselves. On the show we read the Plume edition with fo...
Episode 5: Pride and Prejudice
August 04, 2019 04:41 - 1 hour - 109 MBIt’s Pride and Prejudice! Jane Austen’s beloved 1813 novel about two jerks who discover that they’re hot for each other. We talk about character and the novel, as well as economies of desire and of the social, and we discuss the relative awfulness of the bourgeoisie vs. the aristocracy. We also wonder who even is Mary Bennet and grow concerned that Kitty Bennet might be secretly alt-right. On the show, we read the Oxford edition edited by James Kinsley with notes and introduction by Fiona S...
Episode 4: The Scarlet Letter
July 28, 2019 03:45 - 1 hour - 103 MBWe discuss Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and everyone’s favorite religious extremists — Puritans! We’re talking adultery, history and the novel, and whether children are evil. (Of course they are. How is this a question?) We also talk about how much Hawthorne hated work and how that makes us love him even more. On the show, we read the Norton edition edited by Leland S. Person. For more on Hawthorne (and Melville!), colonial history, and American imperial ideology, read My...
Episode 3: The Sun Also Rises
July 21, 2019 04:09 - 1 hour - 98.7 MBAre you sick of novels that are way too chill with their symbolism? Do you want a novel that has no chill at all? That blasts its symbolism on pretty much every page? Then Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) may be the book for you. We talk masculinity and the phallus, the First World War, bullfighting, and whether Hemingway was for real with this thing. (Answer: yeah, probably?) Also, Megan thinks “the fishing stuff is dope.” We read the Scribner edition. For more on American mode...
Episode 2: Dracula
July 14, 2019 00:44 - 1 hour - 92.2 MBWe continue our Creature Feature and discuss Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). We get to the important stuff here, trying to figure out why blood transfusions are so very sexy and who you should pick if your dating choices are doctor, lawyer, lord, cowboy, or insane Dutch scientist. We wonder what it might take to transform any one of us into a “train fiend.” We read the Oxford edition, edited by Roger Luckhurst. Nina Auerbach’s Our Vampires, Ourselves is a great cultural history of the vampire...
Episode 1: Frankenstein
July 09, 2019 16:29 - 1 hour - 104 MBFrankenstein On the inaugural episode of Better Read than Dead, we talk about why three jerky socialist academics wanted to do a books podcast. We also talk about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and answer every leftist’s burning questions about it. What does this novel have to do with political revolution? Why is the 1831 edition so much more anti-science than the 1818 edition? And is this novel (as Katie puts it) “19th-century Human Centipede (only less creative)”? For a terrific disc...