In this episode of the Free and Direct Podcast, we are joined by repeat guest Brian Heston and our very own Associate Poetry Editor Alexandra Romero, to break down T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Alex and Brian lead us through a close reading of Prufrock, among the most significant poems of the 20th century, and a cornerstone of Modernist literature. We also get into Eliot’s life and times, along with a consideration of his legacy—and that of Prufrock—into contemporary poetry.

At Indirect Books we’ve recently opened our first poetry contest, the 2026 J. Alfred Prufrock Prize, which occasioned this episode. Alex talks about what she finds in Eliot’s work that inspires this contest, and what we’re looking for in submissions. At one point Brian discusses the myth of “the existential peasant.” It’s a great episode.

Welcome to this week’s episode of Cordelivres club! Today, we are joined by recurring guest Diane Josefowicz and Indirect Books’ new Publicist, Millie Oliver!

We discuss Diane’s new book, Guardians and Saints, and the way she explores character, time, and place. We had Diane on an early episode to talk about her novel L’Air du Temps (1985), and in today’s show we get into the ways she has traced her protagonist across multiple books. We also hit on how childhood connections influence storytelling and arrangements evolve into short stories and the vagaries of language.

Millie will be reviewing Diane’s novel for L’Esprit, and that made for a great discussion on the show. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

Nothing was more natural than that these things

should be the other things they absolutely were not.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Our Mrs Dalloway series rolls on into 2026 with critic extraordinaire Nicole Gantz joining the show to bring her expertise and lens to the novel. This is Part Two of our discussion with Nicole, looking at the book’s linguistic surface and the various ways in which Woolf structures her architecture to offer an insightful look at what’s happening compositionally.

Check out Part One from a couple of weeks ago, and we have Part Three planned, featuring another special guest, in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Our Mrs Dalloway series rolls on into 2026 with critic extraordinaire Nicole Gantz joining the show to bring her expertise and lens to the novel. Nicole focuses on the book’s linguistic surface and the various ways in which Woolf structures her architecture to offer an insightful look at what’s happening compositionally.

This post is Part One of our conversation, which abruptly ends upon my making an excellent Hatchards joke. Part Two will be out next week, picking up right where we left off, and we’ve a Part Three planned with another special guest in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

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And it comes over her in a rush, the memory of what it used to feel like, being alive.

This episode is our first look at a novel by Rachel Cusk, my favorite writer (or co-favorite, with Woolf), and, à mon avis, the most important novelist of the 21st century. We talk about The Bradshaw Variations, from 2009, looking at how Cusk’s narration and its interest in philosophical depth power the book.

We talk about how her use of free indirect style—one more attuned to an “observational mirroring” rather than the messier, more associative syntactic refraction of, say, Woolf—enables her to cover an entire year in the lives of several perspective characters while still getting us close to them. We read out a few passages and talk about the ways that art—what it is and why it matters—gets into this novel. I would definitely encourage everyone to check it out; it’s a great first Cusk book if you’ve never read her. Some really incredible lines and passages all over this one.

Stay tuned for the Substack post with complete show notes in a few days, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

This episode features the formidable friend of the journal, Devyn Andrews, joining the show to discuss Anna Burns’ Milkman. Devyn—Issue Seven L’Esprit contributor and fellow veteran of the UIC Program for Writers—brings her singular insight to this incredible novel and its very strange, highly compelling use of first-person.

We get into the novel and break down its use of homodiegetic narration, and nearly make it out of the first chapter in the process. It’s an incredible novel and the first in our (possible?) series Indirect After Dark, which may or may not continue! In any event, it was a very fun conversation, and I hope you all enjoy it. In the meantime, check out Devyn’s website and, of course, stay critical!

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…seemed to suggest the possibility of madness as a kind of shelter.

In the episode of Les Cordelivres Criticism Club, we dive deep into Rachel Cusk's 2024 novel Parade as an example of a work that pushes the boundaries of the novel form. We discuss how the book arguably represents a new frontier in utilizing the novel as a philosophical text while still maintaining compelling narrative elements. We also use a super cool cricket-oval analogy to get there!

We get into Cusk's attempt to enact, rather than describe, the process and costs of artistic creation. The novel's fragmented structure, shifting perspectives, and blurring of fiction and reality are viewed as mirroring the messy, non-linear nature of art-making and selfhood. This allows Parade to encompass themes such as the relationship between art and life, gender and creativity, and the possibility of madness as both a danger and a shelter for artists. In many ways, Parade is a culmination of Cusk's career-long exploration of these ideas, praising its philosophical depth and formal innovation while remaining an endlessly engaging read.

Stay tuned for the Substack post with complete show notes in a few days, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

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She could probably return in time to destroy the notes.

Happy New Year! This episode is the second half of our conversation on Mrs Dalloway intertextualities, looking at Michael Cunningham's The Hours and Robert Lippincott's Mr. Dalloway. We dove right back into composition, looking at how both novels look to make their readerly impact through plot-based narrative developments rather than through narration itself, which differs from Woolf's approach in MRSD.

We also covered the books’ status as queer literature, their meta-textual elements, and a look at how POV functions in each. In this second part, we focused a lot on the various ways in which Lippincott and Cunningham “win”—by which we simply mean how they seek to execute the plans and goals of their work and, ultimately, achieve an emotional resonance.

Stay tuned for the Substack post with complete show notes in a few days, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

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