Island Idylls

F. Scott Fitzgerald lived through the Spanish Flu of 1918. But he didn’t write about it.

Most famously, he wrote about glitz, glamor, and romance. This Side of Paradise. The Beautiful and the Damned. The Great Gatsby. Tender is the Night.

Long before the sexual revolution of the 1960s, authors like Fitzgerald worked hard to create a new morality, unmoored from the traditions of the past.

In this introduction to Fitzgerald, Barry and Aaron talk about his writing, his morality, and the morality of an era--both in theology and literature--that paved the way for the postmodernism of today.

Friends, these are trying times.

You are probably anxious about the days ahead. This is understandable.

Perhaps, you can take a break and listen in as Barry and Aaron discuss the basic elements of a story: plot, setting, character, point-of-view, and tone.

Why bother? For one, we are all consumers of stories, be they written or on the screen. Knowing the composite parts of a story will make you a better consumer of fiction. Why else? Simply because you may need a break from all the bad news around you.

What were you doing in your mid to late 20s? D. H. Lawrence was writing Sons and Lovers, an autobiographical coming of age story about his life in an industrializing region of England. He describes his parents’ awful marriage, his mother’s unnatural attachment to her sons, and his own failed attempts at love.

For the reader, his writing will floor you. His prose is simple, elegant, and powerful.

For the agnostic/skeptic, you will find a man who looked into the face of religion and rejected it wholesale.

For the Christian, you will be saddened by a man who boldly identified himself as the center of the universe.

As always, Barry and Aaron don’t always agree, but their conversation brings Lawrence’s ideas to life.

It’s Season 2 of Island Idylls!

In episode 13 we introduce you to D. H. Lawrence, the famous, British author who did more than push the envelope when it came to writing about sex and sexuality . . . he blew it up.

What is considered mainstream today would have been banned a century ago. Lawrence played a huge role in that change.

Barry and Aaron don’t just talk about Lawrence. They dive into the question about why people disagree over what’s appropriate to watch and read. They agree it’s a decision everyone has to make for himself. Aaron argues your view of God will change your viewing and reading habits. Barry agrees and rightly points out not everyone believes in the God of the Bible.

Welcome to the last episode of season one! Barry and Aaron address the elephant in the room: they are two white men who have been talking about dead white authors.

Therefore, recording on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2020, Barry and Aaron dive into the topic of African-American authors.

Since 1965 and well into the twenty-first century, Barry introduced more than one generation to literature written by black authors.

Authors like James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, John A. Williams (The Man Who Cried I Am), John Edgar Wideman, Toni Morrison, and W. E. B. Dubois are important not fundamentally because they are black authors but because they are good authors.

Writing is a process of learning and discovery. Do you want to be a writer? This episode is for you. Should you start the process with a pencil or a keyboard? This episode is for you. Do you want to know what trips up most writers? This episode is for you. Is it more important for your writing to be clear or for your writing to be beautiful? Again, this episode is for you,

Good writing is the fruit of slow, careful, and deliberate thinking.They start with a quote by Francis Bacon: “Reading maketh a full man, conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man.” It’s a saying Barry has turned to again and again because critical thinking requires all three.

Maybe 2020 will be a year you devote yourself to writing more: a personal journal, a blog, even your first novel. If that’s you, you’ll enjoy listening as Barry and Aaron go back and forth about the process of writing.

What is marriage? Does it matter? Does your view of marriage affect how you read literature?

In their tenth episode (whoohooo!) Aaron and Barry dive into The Portrait of a Lady by the great Henry James. Interestingly, though James never married himself, he wrote a novel with marriage as the central theme. Spoiler alert: they give away the whole plot! Barry and his son trace the journey of young Isabel Archer who marries the despicable Gilbert Osmond.

But in this episode, Aaron and Barry don’t just talk about The Portrait, they talk about marriage itself. This is where it gets really interesting. They discuss the relationship between romance and marriage. They explore why people get married.

As usual, their differences shine through this episode. Remember, Aaron is a Christian church pastor, Barry is a Jewish college professor. But their love and respect for one another shines through, too. Listen in, and enjoy!

Do you like Marvel movies? Barry doesn’t. In fact, he says he hasn’t even seen one. But most of us have, and we like action. Lots of action. Superhero action.

Henry James was a different kind of author. His heroines were usually women, but not of the Captain Marvel variety! They are strong, independent, willful women. But they are women, like all of us, who live in a world that is full of pain. We live in a world that doesn’t go our way.

In this episode, Barry introduces us to an author who devoted himself to developing characters. Their trials and pain is the heart of the works of Henry James.

His writing raises big questions. What is happiness? Why is the world so hard? Whom can you trust?

Listen in and learn about a writer known as “the Shakespeare of the novel.”

As an added bonus, this episode is not nearly as long as a Marvel movie!

Okay, so technically speaking, reading is not an art. The book is the art. But the point is that reading is more complicated than one might think! You have to decide what to read, and that means saying “no” to a lot of other reading.

Barry and Aaron go back to forth about how they decide what to read. Barry points out there are different seasons in life that will dictate your reading choices. Aaron shares how much of his reading is affected by his conviction a personal God inspired the Bible.

Both agree that Netflix and the like are not friends to reading in the twenty-first century. There is something to be gained through flipping the pages of a book that can’t be captured by the most epic movie.

Time will tell. In the meantime, consider putting down your smartphone and picking up a book.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (okay, not really) lived a man named Henry David Thoreau. He was a radical in his day, a philosopher and a loner. Barry calls him an anarchist. He spent a couple of years living by himself, near a pond, looking at nature and thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

If you’ve ever heard the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation or if you’ve ever been encouraged to march to the beat of your own drum . . . you’ve felt the enduring influence of Thoreau’s Walden.

Barry and Aaron agree Thoreau is influential, but they disagree on how helpful he is. Barry celebrates Thoreau’s resolute, personal optimism. Aaron sees in Thoreau an unfortunate slide away from the value of faith in a persona, real Creator.

It’s an interesting conversation. Listen in.