Recall This Book

158 RTB Ben Fountain in Dark Times (JP)

Listen Later

Ben Fountain is far more than just the author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which won RTB hearts and minds (and the National Book Award) long before it became a weird Ang Lee movie.

Back in 2020's lockdown, RTB asked Fountain what was consoling and engaging him. American novels, especially those about Americans abroad (Joan Didion. say) have always done something special for him. Marilynne Robinson’s and James Baldwin’s work make us confront the reality that’s happening around us all the time, “a freaking massacre.” He carried the the (fictional but genuine) facts of Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk in his head for forty years.

  • Allen Tate, Fugitive poet (and author most famously of the tricky post-Eliotic 1928 “Ode to the Confederate Dead“)
  • Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted (1996; “a masterpiece of tone and mood and character and profound interiority”; the movie, not so much)
  • Joan Didion, Democracy (1984; she goes “straight after the heart of that mystery, what is America?“)
  • Marilynne Robinson. Listeners, do you prefer her incisive nonfiction (“Poetry of Puritanism“) or the deep, torqued interiority of her first novel, Housekeeping ?
  • Zadie Smith on the amazing, terrifying Americanness of Kara Walker
  • Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety” (also referenced in our Silvia Bottinelli episode on food art!)
  • James Baldwin, A Letter to My Nephew (1962)
  • James Baldwin, e.g. If Beale Street Could Talk (Ben loves those Library of America volumes…)
  • Another Country (1962)
  • Giovanni’s Room (1956)
  • Sewanee Review, The Corona Correspondence
  • Chronicles of Now
  • George Saunders “A Letter to My Students…."

    • Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    Recall This BookBy Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7

    4.7

    29 ratings

    More shows like Recall This Book

    View all
    This American Life by This American Life

    This American Life

    91,297 Listeners

    Fresh Air by NPR

    Fresh Air

    38,430 Listeners

    The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

    The New Yorker Radio Hour

    6,881 Listeners

    The Book Review by The New York Times

    The Book Review

    3,917 Listeners

    On the Media by WNYC Studios

    On the Media

    9,238 Listeners

    Political Gabfest by Slate Podcasts

    Political Gabfest

    8,474 Listeners

    The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

    The Gray Area with Sean Illing

    10,747 Listeners

    New Books in Critical Theory by Marshall Poe

    New Books in Critical Theory

    147 Listeners

    The Dig by Daniel Denvir

    The Dig

    1,590 Listeners

    The Daily by The New York Times

    The Daily

    113,121 Listeners

    The Al Franken Podcast by The Al Franken Podcast

    The Al Franken Podcast

    8,562 Listeners

    The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

    The Ezra Klein Show

    16,525 Listeners

    Ones and Tooze by Foreign Policy

    Ones and Tooze

    366 Listeners

    Past Present Future by David Runciman

    Past Present Future

    347 Listeners

    Critics at Large | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

    Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    663 Listeners