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River returns for a very long, freewheeling and suitably drunken chat about Carson McCullers' novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and the 2013 film version of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.

Southern Gothic and The South in fiction, the life and work of McCullers, ethno-narcissism, loneliness as a constant in the human condition, Harper Lee as a McCullers wannabe, family tales that could be true crime podcasts, gushing about Margo Martindale, the power of the Southern matriarch, eating "the fuckin catfish!",  the need for messy writers,  why The Heart is a Lonely Hunter could only be written by someone who drank themselves to death on the deck of a cruise ship, and much much more. Be prepared for long digressions!

Subscribe to River's Substack: https://riverpage.substack.com/

River's piece on Carson McCullers for the Washington Examiner: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/empty-suit-messiahs

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