Book Spider

In this episode, we discuss the lasting phenomenon that is the Hitchhikers' media series. Just why is it so popular? It's not extraordinarily profound. It's certainly not upbeat, either. But: it caught the world at the right time and: it was written to be very easily digestible by a lot of different folks. 

In this episode, the Book Spider hosts tackle The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy. Casterbridge is a complex novel about the rise and fall of Michael Henchard. After dramatically selling his wife and baby daughter to a stranger for five pounds, Henchard vows to abstain from alcohol for twenty years. Eighteen years after this event, the novel picks up with Henchard at the height of his powers, living as a prosperous corn merchant and the mayor of the small town of Casterbridge. However, after selling some bad grain to his constituents and being surpassed in business acumen by Farfrae, a newcomer, Henchard's fortunes fall into steep decline.

Does submission to fate bring weight or lightness? Can Milan Kundera find the clit? Special guest Sarah Ashcraft joins us to discuss The Unbearable Lightness of being, a novel whose deceptive readability hides its thematic obscurity.

In this episode, we discuss the close attention Woolf gives to her characters and how mercurial and impermanent we are under her atomic analysis. We also discuss why, it seems, To the Lighthouse is a 1 of 1, rarely emulated (at least successfully) despite the fact that Woolf is in the canon. In fact, brilliant as she is - or maybe because of her brilliance - we suggest young writers shouldn't try to emulate her. Better to read her, and enjoy her, and accept that To the Lighthouse has already been written, and need never be written again. 

In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss Lost Memory of Skin, a novel that seeks to empathize with probably the most reviled subgroup in the entire world: pedophiles. The novel follows the exploits of a young sex criminal known only as the kid, whose life of hardship culminates in an attempt to meet a teenage girl for sex. In the aftermath, the kid finds himself homeless, living under a causeway in southern Florida, attempting to eke out an existence among other down-and-out sex criminals. When he meets the professor, a sociology researcher at a local university, his fortunes seem to turn for the better, until the professor's past catches up to both of them.

The spiders attempt to fit together the refracting, self-contradictory plot and reconcile the competing thematic strands of Namwali Serpell's enigmatic The Furrows, which might or might not be a compelling meditation on grief and loss.

In this episode we discuss McCarthy's newest two novels, published a couple months apart but obviously intended to be read together. And we talk about why, though they are excellent, these are such awful books for young writers to read and try to emulate. Don't even try it, kids. Leave this particular magic to McCarthy.

In this episode, we discuss a collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil. This collection revels in despair and decay, in erotic death. Come along with us into the depths of pain and sexual horror.

The spider tackles Painted Devils, a collection of strange stories (perhaps not horror but darkly surreal in a horror-adjacent way) by the author Robert Aickman. Dense and enigmatic, these stories use the uncanny to explore various themes, particularly the life of the artist. Recorded just in time for Halloween but then posted in the middle of January.

In which we discuss, among other things: