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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.  

 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.    

Music by Loco Lobo. 

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.  

 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?

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/.

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On the eve of its seventieth birthday, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) occupies a unique place in the American canon. On the one hand, it was instantly heralded as a Great American Novel---indeed, as Lawrence Buell notes in his study of GANs, it was the first novel by an African American to be universally admitted to the pantheon of important national fiction. At the same time, the book's subsequent reputation has ridden a rollercoaster of praise and complaint suggesting our uncertainty about what degree an epic novel about race relations should emphasize the political over the aesthetic. But while some critics find the novel a little too conservative in its insistence on the absolute autonomy of individuals to create their own identity in America, there is no doubt that Ellison's tense interrogation of the power institutions like the police and political groups exploit over minorities makes it absolutely relevant to the Black Lives Matter era.

In this episode, we explore how Ellison fused European modernism with African American jazz to create the singular voice of his narrator, whose name we're never told. We examine how the plot's picaresque form differs from Bildungsroman many coming-of-age novelists were rewriting in the 1950s and delve deep into the use of symbolism, perhaps the most telltale trait at the time Ellison wrote of a GAN's "literariness." We ask why Ellison never published a second novel after Invisible Man even as he was able to produce some of the most enduring essays on race in literature and culture until his death in 1994. Most importantly, we ask what it means for people to be invisible in American society, and how Ellison's unique exploration of the issue results in a philosophically complex story that insists that the Self must first retreat from the world to forge itself before emerging to rewrite the cliches and stereotypes the culture imposes on it.  

Music in order of appearance: “Old Ralley” by Lobo Loco; "Up in My Jam" by Kubbi; "Rap Dreams" by LOWERCASE_n; and “Inspector Invisible,” also by Lobo Loco. Clips of Ellison courtesy of (respectively) the Iowa State University Library; New York Public Library; and the Oklahoma Historical Society Film and Video Archives.

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.  

 This episode focuses on the novel branded more than any other as the Great American Epic Novel: Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel Moby Dick. We delve into such important questions as, why was the whale white?  What does it mean that Ahab leaves behind wife and child?  Is he thwarting the will of God?  Is Gregory Peck better in the film role than Patrick Stewart?  Why chapters about ropes and squeezing sperm? Why, when all is said and done, is this the most canonical of all canonical novels?  Is it truly worthy of the label “Great American Novel”?

 Additionally, for Canon Fodder Kirk proposes Charles Johnson’s excellent 1990 novel, Middle Passage. 

 The intro song is “Old Ralley” by Lobo Loco; the outro is “Inspector Invisible,” also by Lobo Loco.  The film trailer clips are from Moby Dick, directed by John Huston in 1956.

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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Ever since J. W. DeForest popularized the phrase "Great American Novel" in 1868 commentators have debated the limits of all three of its components. Does "great" necessarily mean a big "doorstop" book or is concision a worthy goal? Whose version America are we talking? And why the novel not a poem, play, or short story? In our inaugural episode we preview the challenges of defining a GAN and explore why so many writers have felt compelled to parody the concept as much as pursue it.  Feel free to send us your thoughts on the problems of canonizing works of literature at [email protected]. Music in this episode is by Lobo Loco: "Old Ralley" (intro) and "Inspector Unvisible" (outro).  

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/.