Lit Century

In this episode, co-hosts Catherine Nichols and Sandra Newman discuss André Breton's First Surrealist Manifesto from 1924. Why were the demands of the surrealists such a lasting influence on twentieth century art? Are they revolutionary or insidiously counter-revolutionary in their meaning? Mentioned in the episode is Catherine Nichols' essay about privilege and the avant garde, "A God-awful Small Affair."

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In this episode, writer Matthew Hunte joins host Catherine Nichols to discuss David Bradley's 1981 novel The Chaneysville Incident, a historical novel based on a legend of thirteen runaway slaves who killed themselves to avoid being caught and returned to slavery. Matthew Hunte is a writer from St. Lucia, whose essays include "In Praise of Minor Literature," and "Albert Murray and the Americas."

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In this episode V V Ganeshananthan joins host Catherine Nichols to discuss Barbara Pym's novel Excellent Women, a comedy of manners about an unmarried woman living in the very small world of 1950s Britain, and about the pleasures of independence—and of pettiness.

V V Ganeshananthan is a fiction writer and journalist. Her novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and named one of Washington Post Book World's best books of the year, and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. Her work has also appeared in Granta, The New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Washington Post, among many other publications.

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In this episode, author Tyrese L. Coleman joins hosts Catherine Nichols and Sandra Newman again to continue their discussion of Gloria Naylor’s book of linked short stories, The Women of Brewster Place (1982), a classic of Black women’s literature.

Tyrese L. Coleman is a writer, wife, mother, and attorney. Her debut collection of stories and essays, How to Sit, was published by Mason Jar Press in 2018 and nominated for a 2019 PEN Open Book Award. Her work has appeared as a notable in Best American Essays 2018 and 2016 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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In this episode, author Tyrese L. Coleman joins hosts Catherine Nichols and Sandra Newman to discuss Gloria Naylor's book of linked short stories, The Women of Brewster Place (1982). This book is a classic of Black women's literature; does that canon differ from the white male canon, and why might any differences have arisen?

Tyrese L. Coleman is the author of How to Sit, a 2019 Pen Open Book Award finalist published with Mason Jar Press in 2018. She's also the writer of the forthcoming book, Spectacle. Writer, wife, mother, attorney, and writing instructor, she is a contributing editor at Split Lip Magazine and occasionally teaches at American University. Her essays and stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Warrior Review, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, and the Kenyon Review and noted in Best American Essays and the Pushcart Anthology. She is an alumni of the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Find her at tyresecoleman.com or on Twitter @tylachelleco.

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In this episode, hosts Sandra Newman and Catherine Nichols discuss Thomas Nagel's 1974 essay "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?" How did materialism, for centuries the tool of radical thinkers, become the philosophy of the status quo? And why was this philosophical essay about the possibility of understanding other minds—or any minds—so crucial for contemporary thinkers?

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In this episode, Adalena Kavanagh joins hosts Sandra Newman and Catherine Nichols to discuss Tom Drury's 1994 novel The End of Vandalism, a quietly hilarious and profound novel about a love triangle in rural Iowa, with a huge cast of characters who have all known each other from birth. What does this book have to tell us about rural America, and why does this relatively recent novel already feel like a work that could not be written and published now?

Adalena Kavanagh is a writer and librarian in New York. She has just completed a novel, and writes a weekly photography newsletter which you can find here.

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In this episode, author J. Robert Lennon joins hosts Sandra Newman and Catherine Nichols to discuss Kazuo Ishiguro's novel-in-the-form-of-an-extended-dream, The Unconsoled (1995). Why is this novel called a masterpiece by some (including the participants in this conversation), while being dismissed as rambling and pointless by others?

J. Robert Lennon is the author of nine novels, including Familiar, Broken River, and Subdivision, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand, See You in Paradise, and Let Me Think. He lives in Ithaca, New York. His most recent books are available for order and pre-order here. You can find all his other books, and more information here.

And, as a bit of supplemental reading on The Unconsoled, here's a LitHub piece giving Ishiguro's own list of the dream techniques he used in the novel.

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In this episode, hosts Catherine Nichols and Sandra Newman talk about the short stories of Anton Chekhov, particularly "Lady With a Little Dog" and "Ward No. 6." What do these stories tell us about the revolutionary sentiment that was about to change not just Russia but the world? The stories embody a radical hopelessness, but also a harsh judgment of that hopelessness. Do we need to continue to hope in order to be good people? And is Chekhov telling us that (partly for that reason) it's not possible for some people to be good?

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In this episode, hosts Catherine Nichols and Sandra Newman discuss "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov, and particularly what it has to say about slavery, upper-class revolutionary types, and the twentieth-century tendency to turn all relationships into transactions. With added material from guest Isaac Butler, who tells us how Chekhov originally wrote the play for Stanislavsky, and the hijinks that ensued.

Isaac Butler is a writer and theater director, co-author (with Dan Kose) of The World Only Spins Forward, and author of the upcoming The Method. 

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