Great American Novel

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Willa Cather's most famous novel was published only two months before the Armistice ended the bloodshed of the Great War, and in its powerfully imagistic portrait of Midwestern homesteading, it offered readers an emotional connection to the nation's founding myth of pioneer fortitude. Yet My Ántonia wasn't just a story about pilgrims' progress across the prairies: it was a story of immigrants struggling to realize the American Dream that appeared in an era of extreme xenophobia that will feel painfully resonant to contemporary readers. In telling the story of the resilient Ántonia Shimerda and other "hired girls" from Bohemia (the modern-day Czech Republic) and other Eastern European states, Cather paid tribute to real-life migrants she had grown up with in Red Cloud, Nebraska, a small but artistically vibrant train depot that today does a thriving business in Cather tourism. In addition to Cather's powerful style and her warm memories of farming struggles, we focus on the friendship between Ántonia and the orphaned narrator, Jim Burden. At the end of the day, My Ántonia is possibly the greatest story about a platonic friendship between a woman and a man in American literature.    

Canon Fodder: The Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska. 

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

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The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  

In Episode 12 our intrepid profcasters lay into the most controversial novel of the 20th Century, Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA.  Is it Great?  Is it American?  What do we make of the controversies, the films?  We tackle the book and try to search for the real Dolores Haze within the text, and consider the best way to read Humbert Humbert, much less how we should pronounce his name (not to mention the author's). 

Film trailer clips are from the Kubrick 1962 film and the 1997 film by Adrian Lyne.  All show music is by Lobo Loco.  

Canon Fodder: The Last Life by Messud; True Grit, by Portis; Tampa by Nutting.

We may be contacted at greatamericannovelpodcast (@) gmail.com.

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

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Our eleventh episode explores the most recent novel on our list of celebrated Great American Novels, Marilynne Robinson's 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of Christian humanism, GILEAD. Set in a fictional small Iowa town in 1956, this deceptively lowkey narrative about a dying minister, John Ames, and the sudden reappearance of the town's prodigal son, Jack Boughton, raises intriguing questions about the intersection of the soul and society. Robinson is our most prominent representative of literary or philosophical Christianity today; in a marketplace in which the very notion of Christian fiction raises doctrinaire stereotypes of the rapture and the second coming, she is the rare writer who dramatizes faith as a quiet struggle between personal practice and cultural politics. Jack returns to Gilead with a secret he is convinced will challenge the drowsy, contemplative ministries of both his godfather, Ames, a Congregationalist, and his own father, Robert, a staunch Presbyterian. Jack's revelation raises questions about the function of the Church that locals may not wish to confront. But if this conflict sounds melodramatic, GILEAD is a novel of profound serenity: with a poetic style we call "conversational imagism," Robinson dramatizes the plenitude of God's presence not through fiery epiphanies but through arresting images of the natural world's divinity that pay homage to nineteenth-century American Romanticists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Known for her passionate defense of John Calvin and the Puritans as theologists, Robinson depicts faith not as a battle between the spirit and the flesh but between the humility and egotism of individual belief. Few novels have ever so clearly dramatized the relationship between the vulnerability of the religious self and the fragile exercise of democracy.  Canon Fodder: spiritual novels Mariette in Ecstasy, Hansen; Lying Awake, Salzman, and Agatha of Little Neon, Luchette. 

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

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The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  

 In conversation with writer Gertrude Stein, a Parisian mechanic disparaged the young and dissolute men who’d survived the Great War by calling them lost; Stein later tells Ernest Hemingway,  “You are all a Lost Generation.”  And so this 10th episode is a consideration of the Hemingway novel which, alongside The Great Gatsby, defines the Lost Generation of the post-World War I era for all of us: the masterful The Sun Also Rises.  We dig deep into the Papa legend, warts and all, and give the book a thorough and thoughtful reflection, taking coffee and cognac in the cafes of Montparnasse and running with the bulls in Pamplona even as we try for a few trout in the streams above Roncevalles.  Instead of canon fodder this time we  take a moment to reflect on  two losses to American Literary studies which bookended the year 2021 for us.  

 The film audio clips are from The Sun Also Rises, directed in 1957 by Henry King and staring Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner, among others (including an irascible aging Errol Flynn as Mike Campbell), and produced by Daryl F. Zanuck for 20th Century Fox. 

 All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Minute,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

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In this installment we look at another of the most iconic of GANs, Mark Twain's 1885 "bad boy" novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Written over an eight-year period, what began as a sequel to the mischievous "bad boy" book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  (1876) steepened into a caustic interrogation of racism in the United States. Twain's depiction of the relationship between the naive sprite Huck and the runaway slave Jim at once appeals to the American desire for harmonious race relations while probing blindspots in our national notions of equality. Twain employs several motifs associated with GANs---the journey, the river, the notion of the moral education--but at its core is a satirical impulse to question manners, pretentions, and aristocracies. Our discussion explores Twain's use of vernacular, the controversies surrounding both the prodigious use of the N-word and the final section of the novel (in which Tom and Huck play pranks on Jim instead of rescuing him from slavery), and what it means for our cultural notions of maturity that men want to "light out for the Territory" to avoid being "sivilized." 

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

Send us Fan Mail

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  

 Our 8th episode is a consideration of one of the most significant works of Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.  We dive deep into Morrison’s 6th novel, BELOVED, and consider the ways our culture is still wrestling with the demons she evokes in this 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  Based partly on the true story of escaped slave Margaret Garner, Beloved tells the story of Sethe and her community, and asks what it means to be haunted by a past that cannot be buried, even if people would just as soon not pass the story on.  

 Our canon fodder suggestion in this episode is Margaret Walker’s 1966 novel, Jubilee. 

 All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the midpoint intermission is “The First Minute,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information see here: https://locolobomusic.com/.

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

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In our seventh episode we explore a Great American Novel that's so ubiquitous it's almost hard to believe there was a time when the media wasn't full of contrast, random references to The Great Gatsby. The story of a mysterious millionaire who turns up on Long Island, throwing lavish parties and spinning fables as transparently invented as they are enthralling, captures something essential about the promise of America. We explore why the term used for that something---the American dream---falls flat in this day and age, and what exactly we can still learn about class boundaries in a democracy that promises prosperity and affluence for anyone willing to work for it. The Great Gatsby is an easy book to take for granted: there are so many movie versions, so many theatre and opera and ballet adaptations, that we can forget just how beautiful F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose can ring out if we stop to listen to it. We dive deep into the novel's own mythic backstory, in which a young and successful author aims for high art only to discover the public would rather he stick with formulaic romance stories. Jay Gatsby remains one of the most indelible creations in American literary history: a version of Stephen Foster's beautiful dreamer, a self-fabulist who fools nobody but himself and yet intrigues everyone.   

Canon Buster: An American Tragedy, Dreiser

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

Send us Fan Mail

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  

 This episode focuses on Zora Neale Hurston’s classic, revered novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.  We discuss the complicated history of Hurston’s interactions with the elite of the Harlem Renaissance and the reaction of some of those literati to the novel, and we dig deep in a thorough consideration of the themes and motifs of the book.  

 For Canon Fodder, we suggest James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird.

 All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the midpoint intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information see here: https://locolobomusic.com/.

Website: https://greatamericannovel.buzzsprout.com/

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

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William Faulkner's dizzyingly complex, Lost Cause-dismantling 1936 novel about the rise and fall of a Southern plantation owner who "outraged the land" amid the Civil War is perhaps the most formidable Great American Novel one can tackle: it has the distinction of making Moby-Dick look accessible! But Absalom, Absalom! is not only a tour-de-force of modernist experimentation with its long, incantatory sentences and seemingly endless convolutions; it's also an inquiry into the nature of knowledge, historical "facts," and storytelling. As speculation mounts about the motives driving Thomas Sutpen's all-consuming "design" to create a lineage in Yoknapatawpha County, Faulkner pokes a finger in the eye of America's racial anxieties, asking why the fear of miscegenation might compel a man to violent, immoral extremes. Ultimately, the novel repudiates just about every aspect imaginable of the roseate tradition of Southern literature, or what Faulkner called the "hoop skirts and plug hats" vision of Confederate mythologizing that his own novelist great-grandfather, W. C. Falkner, helped establish in the postbellum era. Absalom, Absalom! is a novel that challenges us to question our inculcated ideas of how narratives communicate, forcing us to learn to read anew in exhausting but exhilarating ways.    

CORRECTION: One of your intrepid hosts stated that Faulkner was "burned in effigy" for having moderate views during the Civil Rights era in Oxford MS.  Although he could point you to the source for this, it seems not to be borne out by the other more reliable sources...so probably there was no burning in effigy.  On the other hand, there were death threats, rocks tossed through his windows, and even a mean letter to the editor about him written by his own brother. 

Canon Fodder: Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.

Send us Fan Mail

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  

 This episode focuses on Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1920 novel The Age of Innocence.  We consider this classic novel of manners and discuss Edith Wharton’s life, including her troubled marriage to an abusive husband and her friendship with writer Henry James.  We contrast her novel to Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, her competition for the Pulitzer Prize that year.  Ultimately, we ask: what are we to make of the novel and its characters?

Cannon Buster: Mainstreet by Sinclair Lewis

The intro song is “Old Ralley” by Lobo Loco; the outro is “Inspector Invisible,” also by Lobo Loco.  The film trailer clips are from the trailers for Martin Scorcese’s 1993 adaptation of the novel, starring Michelle Pfeifer and Daniel Day Lewis.  

 All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. 

All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.