Book Spider

The Book Spider crew puzzles over Tanya Tagaq's Split Tooth, a novelish work whose mixture of bleak slice-of-life vignettes with a more fantastic, spiritual register seems like it might be magical realism (but definitely probably isn't). Are we ill-equipped to understand this work, or are we bringing the wrong tools for the job? Check out the episode for the answer, if such a thing exists. In the web department, intriguing parallels are found with Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This.

In this episode, we discuss the dreamy, expansive, magical, and somehow also frustrating Martin Dressler, as well as some right and wrong ways to criticize capitalist systems. 

In this episode, we discuss the intriguing, awesome memoir Road Song by Natalie Kusz. Check it out, if you want to be impressed.

No One is Talking About This is a hilarious, moving and disorienting novel about communication and the search for authentic experience in contemporary networked and mediated Western life, and how one woman's encounter with tragedy brings her back to a more human way of being. Or is that an oversimplification? 

In this episode, Hans and Patrick patiently butcher and then discard the disappointing cuts of Chris's pick, Waterland - a novel he's sure he remembers liking, the first time he read it.

In this episode, Chris, Hans, and I discuss Orwell's hilarious Coming Up for Air, the best of his lesser known novels.

Take a trip up the apartment building of death with J.G. Ballard's classic tale of social disintegration, High Rise. Scrupulously faithful to the cold details of modern mechanized life while ignoring the very idea of psychological verisimilitude, High Rise is a brilliant scummy head trip, easy to follow but hard to truly understand, and we do our best to tease out its many secrets.

In this episode, the Book Spider crew discusses Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, which is deals with haircuts, getting tazed, self immolation, the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism, and where limousines go at night when they're not in use during the day. 

In this episode, the Book Spider crew discusses PKD's A Scanner Darkly, which deals with addiction, authority, and the nature of identity. Enjoy!

Can Xue's Love in the New Millennium is a dense, confusing novel which portrays a complex web of relationships with no clear center, and lacks a conventional protagonist. It is, perhaps, a fitting choice for our first episode under the new name Book Spider.