Close Readings

What happens when the techniques of realist literature become absorbed into our understanding of real life? And what would it mean to try to depict that experience in fiction? In Dag Solstad’s Shyness and Dignity (1994), a middle-aged teacher, Elias Rukla, is teaching Ibsen’s The Wild Duck for perhaps the hundredth time when he has a revelation about an apparently insignificant detail in the play relating to a minor character, Dr Relling. The detail is classically realist in that it appears to have no importance in the plot, yet it acquires a major significance in Rukla’s life, who shortly after the lesson has a breakdown in the school playground and is convinced his career is finished.

In this episode, James Wood is joined by Adam Thirlwell to discuss a novel that avoids the expectations of realism to explore the psychological and cultural impact of the realist tradition.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor

Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor

Read more in the LRB:

Adam Mars-Jones on Solstad: https://lrb.me/realism1101

David Edgar on Ibsen: https://lrb.me/realism1103

Michael Hofmann on Thomas Bernhard: https://lrb.me/realism1102

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In 1737, Samuel Johnson and his student David Garrick decided to walk to London from Lichfield in search of opportunity. It worked out well for both of them, but for many of the large number who made their hopeful journey to the capital from all over the country in the 18th century, life was more likely to end up like a scene from a Hogarth print, ruined by gin and despair.

London had become a ‘great and monstrous thing’ according to Daniel Defoe. However, if you were lucky enough to survive childhood, and gin, and have a bit of money, it was an increasingly pleasant monster, offering strolls through grand squares and pleasure gardens, and shops displaying a dizzying variety of goods from all over the world alongside cheap copies of a new literary form: the novel. To discuss London’s emergence as a brutal city of consumption and cultural innovation, Rosemary is joined again by Markman Ellis, a professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applesignuplr⁠⁠⁠

Other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/scsignuplr⁠⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Clare Bucknell on Samuel Richardson: https://lrb.me/lrep1001

John Mullan on Pamela: https://lrb.me/lrep1002

Rosemary Hill on Hogarth: https://lrb.me/lrep1003

Tom Paulin on Daniel Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep1004

Claude Rawson on Henry Fieldings: https://lrb.me/lrep1005

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In 1848, Arthur Hugh Clough resigned his fellowship at Oxford after realising that he could no longer in good conscience teach the doctrines of the Anglican Church, as the job required. He immediately embarked on some European travel and the following year found himself in Rome during the short-lived republican uprising against the Pope, led by Giuseppe Mazzini. Out of these experiences came Amours de Voyage, an epistolary verse novel written in hexameters, in which a young scholar visits Italy during the uprising and falls in love with a fellow English tourist.

In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at Clough’s poem as an expression of its author’s rootlessness and the crisis of faith that characterised the age, and the ways in which it undercuts the grand Byronic promise of its title and meter to unfold an Austenian story of subtle social snobbery and young romantic failure.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applesignupnp⁠

Other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/scsignupnp

Read more in the LRB:

Fergus McGhee: Mr Mid-Victorian Doubt https://lrb.me/npep1001

Christopher Clark: God Bless Italy https://lrb.me/npep1002

Stefan Collini: Matthew Arnold https://lrb.me/npep101003

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‘The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right’ is a different kind of book from the others Meehan and Peter have discussed so far in their series, even as their focus has shifted from biology to society. Its authors, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, are both anti-fascist researchers writing explicitly from the activist left. Unlike commentators such as Mark Lilla, who worry about ‘vilification inflation’, Moore and Roberts make the case for the continuing salience of the word fascism.

They argue that a direct line can be traced between early fascist ideology in Italy and Germany and the ‘reharmonising’ green nationalism of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France and Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. Mystical and dangerous ideas claiming to be environmentalist, once the preserve of fringe online groups, have entered the political mainstream through these successful disrupter parties, and understanding the connection between past and present is the only way to speculate meaningfully about the future of far-right ecological thought and action. Meehan and Peter consider the plausibility of the three future scenarios sketched in the book: ‘Fossilised Reaction’, ‘Batteries, Bombs and Borders’ and ‘Climate Collapse Cultists’.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture

Read more in the LRB:

Daniel Trilling: Is this fascism? ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep1001⁠

Alan Ryan: Fascism in the Plural ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep404⁠

Edward Luttwak: Why fascism is the wave of the future: ⁠https://lrb.me/c6350c ⁠

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‘The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right’ is a different kind of book from the others Meehan and Peter have discussed so far in their series, even as their focus has shifted from biology to society. Its authors, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, are both anti-fascist researchers writing explicitly from the activist left. Unlike commentators such as Mark Lilla, who worry about ‘vilification inflation’, Moore and Roberts make the case for the continuing salience of the word fascism.

They argue that a direct line can be traced between early fascist ideology in Italy and Germany and the ‘reharmonising’ green nationalism of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France and Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. Mystical and dangerous ideas claiming to be environmentalist, once the preserve of fringe online groups, have entered the political mainstream through these successful disrupter parties, and understanding the connection between past and present is the only way to speculate meaningfully about the future of far-right ecological thought and action. Meehan and Peter consider the plausibility of the three future scenarios sketched in the book: ‘Fossilised Reaction’, ‘Batteries, Bombs and Borders’ and ‘Climate Collapse Cultists’.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Daniel Trilling: Is this fascism? ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/nicep1001⁠⁠

Alan Ryan: Fascism in the Plural ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/nicep404⁠⁠

Edward Luttwak: Why fascism is the wave of the future: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/c6350c ⁠

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When Muriel Spark describes the art teacher, Mr Lloyd, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, she writes that ‘most wonderful of all, he had only one arm, the right, with which he painted’. The loss of an arm was hardly wonderful for Mr Lloyd, but for the girls at the centre of the novel it is a rich source of fascination, and Spark’s description exemplifies her use of one of the classic realist tools, free indirect style, to fill her short book with the life and character of adolescent girlhood at an Edinburgh school in the 1930s.

In this episode, James Wood considers the ways in which Spark, like Nabokov, gave the grammar of realism a post-modernist treatment to interrogate what it means to tell the story of a life. He considers the influence of Miss Brodie’s tyrannical, charismatic personality on the structure of the book itself, with its use of flash-forwards to suggest a Calvinistic, omniscient narrator, and the effect of Spark’s Dickensian leitmotif that sets the novelistic desire for knowability against the relentless change of youth.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor

Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor

Read more in the LRB:

Frank Kermode on Spark's life: https://lrb.me/realismep1001

Colin Burrow on Spark's letters: https://lrb.me/realismep1002

Susan Eilenberg on Spark's poems: https://lrb.me/realismep1003

More Spark in Close Readings:

Listen to Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow on Spark's novel A Far Cry from Kensington in their Close Readings series On Satire.

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The coffee served in London in the 1690s was notoriously unappetising, likened at the time to ‘burnt shoes and charcoal’. Nonetheless it was extremely popular, not least for the energy and locations it provided for two great booms in London life: financial speculation and a genuinely public print culture. For this episode, Rosemary is joined by Markman Ellis, professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London, to look at the architecture, literature and culture of ‘politeness’ that emerged after the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the stories spun out of it by Daniel Defoe and John Gay. They discuss the coffee houses where London’s stock exchange and marine insurance market were created, the front rooms where women enjoyed the new ‘visiting system’ and the increasingly hazardous streets where Moll Flanders and others sought their fortune.

Reading by Fiona Sheehan

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applesignuplr⁠⁠

Other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/scsignuplr⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Steven Shapin on coffee: https://lrb.me/lrep901

Tom Paulin on Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep902

Michael Ledger-Lomas on the South Sea Company: https://lrb.me/lrep903

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‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ has baffled readers and critics ever since it was published in Men and Women in 1855. It baffled its author, too. It ‘came upon me as a kind of dream’, Browning recalled. ‘I had to write it then and there, and I finished it the same day.’ The result, inspired by a line spoken by Edgar (as Poor Tom) in Act III of King Lear, is a grim, hallucinatory quest poem that exemplifies Browning’s talent for what G.K. Chesterton called ‘the poetry of mean landscapes’.

In this episode, Seamus and Mark read Browning’s mysterious poem as a rejection of the resources and consolations established by the Romantics. They then turn to an earlier narrative poem, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1843), in which Browning uses a comical, Byronic tone to tell the story of another prophetic figure.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applesignupnp⁠

Other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/scsignupnp

Read more in the LRB:

Barbara Everett: https://lrb.me/npep901

Matthew Reynolds: https://lrb.me/npep902

Donald Davie: https://lrb.me/npep903

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Over the past twelve years, the walls and shop shutters of Upper Manhattan have been gradually filled by giant paintings of climate-threatened birds, inspired by the species depicted by the artist John James Audubon, who lived in the area. Emily Raboteau’s ‘Lessons for Survival’ (2024) takes these murals, along with Raboteau’s own photographs of local birds, as a way into exploring the challenges faced by a mother of two Black sons in New York City living through Hurricane Sandy, the first Trump presidency, Covid and mounting climate breakdown.

In this episode, Meehan and Peter talk through the different aspects of Raboteau’s project of survival, from experiences of gentrification and medical racism to the models it offers for dealing with existential threat and ‘justifiable rage’, and Raboteau’s stylistic achievement of bringing together the urban and natural environment.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture

Further reading in the LRB:

Meehan Crist: When the ice melts: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep901⁠

Liam Shaw: Great Auks: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep902⁠

Richard Fortey: Sea Slugs, Wombats, Microbes: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep903⁠

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If Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956) belongs firmly to postwar American realism, then Pnin (1957) certainly doesn’t. With its self-conscious fictionality and unreliable narrator, Nabokov’s novel is a model of postmodernism. Yet for all its playfulness, the book maintains, in its powers of noticing and subtle emotional intelligence, a strong commitment to the real. To examine the debts to realism in Nabokov’s story of a Russian-born academic in the United States, James Wood is joined by Patricia Lockwood, who wrote about Nabokov for the LRB in 2020. They discuss why, despite the cruelty of the narrator, Pnin offers one of Nabokov’s most affectionate portraits, and whether it’s possible to define the style of a writer often referred to as a ‘master stylist’.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor

Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor

Read more on (and by) Nabokov in the LRB:

Patricia Lockwood: https://lrb.me/realismep901

Vladimir Nabokov: ‘The University Poem’ (read by Ralph Fiennes): https://lrb.me/realismep902

Michael Wood: https://lrb.me/realismep903

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