For our last show of the year, we’re going into therapy - or, more accurately, we’ll be talking about therapy’s intersection with literature. Does analysis make good fiction? Do therapists make good characters, or good authors? What has the language of psychology given to literature? We’re very happy that the inspiration for today’s topic is our guest, Ben Lerner, whose third novel The Topeka School is a brilliant meditation on family, psychology, toxic masculinity, whiteness and American life, told through the lens of one man’s coming of age in Topeka, Kansas in the 90s, where Ben himself was born. So, lay down on the couch and do the work with us for the next hour on Literary Friction, and we'll catch up with you in the new decade. Happy holidays, everyone!

Recommendations on the theme, In Therapy:

Octavia: Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-century Paris by Asti Hustvedt https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/medical-muses-9780747576334/

Carrie: The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz https://www.stephengrosz.com/the-examined-life/

General Recommendations:

Octavia: Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/year-of-the-monkey-9781526614759/

Ben: The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178325/the-mushroom-at-the-end-of-the-world

Carrie: The Past by Tessa Hadley https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062270429/the-past/

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