Reading in the Time of Monsters

We’re back! I took a little break. My friend Quentin — poet, musician, bartender, general man of letters and experience — comes on to talk about scifi legend Robert A. Heinlein. We get down to cases with the Heinlein Hero as a type, the hero of an individuality so profound that his creator eventually pushes him into some deeply unsettling sexual scenarios - not (just) to satisfy horniness, but to efface the stain of reproduction on his solipsism. We had a great time with this one, and we both agree: for all his flaws, at least Heinlein was complex and seldom boring.

You can find some of Quentin’s work published by 1080 Press, findable at the instagram handle (at sign)1080press, and you can see his band Harmonium in the Woodstock, New York area.

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On this RITTOM we discuss the great and vile Louis-Ferdinand Celine! We here at RITTOM reject the cop-outs criticism deploys to avoid uncomfortable dealing with great artists who have done monstrous things. Celine was one of the greaters writers of his time and still highly readable today- Celine was a scabrous anti-semite, fascist, and self-serving liar. My friend and historian of France Drew Flanagan and I discuss the life and legacy of Celine in part through the lens of one of his most important American interlocutors, Milton Hindus, a man in a position many of us might find familiar when it comes to admire troubling artists.

If you get this in your inbox instead of through a podcatcher, you get to see a cute picture of my cat! Consider subscribing to my podcast and newsletter at https://peterberard.substack.com.

EDIT- I sent out a minorly glitchy version of this. But this one should be good.

On this episode, I talk about what antifascism might add to critical perspective. People commonly treat the antifascist attitude to criticism as, basically, a limiting factor, that you’re not supposed to like or enjoy works by artists you might otherwise be in the streets protesting against. Maybe I’ll get more into the specifics in a later episode, but as far as actual practicing antifascist organizers such as myself go, this is not the case. Rather, it’s the application of ideas to practice and the lessons drawn from practice to ideas. Left-leaning intellectuals ignore this at their peril, as we’ve seen in the embarassing spectacle of the hosts of Dissent’s “Know Your Enemy” podcast failing to know when a 23-year-old forum fascist, Nate Hochman, was taking them for a ride, and completely failing to own up to it when the extent of how badly they were duped was revealed after Hochman was fired from the DeSantis campaign for posting memes. The ways in which left intellectuals fail to engage with antifascism might be harmful for the left… but it’s damn sure harmful for my ability to take these people seriously. What do they care? They still get paid.

Think about subscribing to Melendy Avenue Review to get all the RITTOM podcasts, my book reviews, pictures of my beautiful cat, and other fun contributions. https://peterberard.substack.com .

On this episode of RITTOM, we talk with Russian historian Kevin Murphy about his Deutscher Prize-winning book, “Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory.” Since the Russian Revolution and its descent into Stalinist tyranny, there’s been a great deal of debate of how and why things went the way it did. Much of the discussion focuses on major individual political actors and on ideologies. Kevin chose to delve into the world of the Hammer and Sickle metal factory in Moscow, its labor disputes, political debates amongst workers, and conditions on the shop floor. The result is a fascinating work of history that sheds light on the fate of the revolution in Russia. Kevin was good enough to join me in discussing his work, and I think you’ll all enjoy it.

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This is a big one! One my literary heroes, John Dolan aka Gary Brecher aka The War Nerd comes onto RITTOM to discuss Rick Emerson’s “Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries” and the broader topic of literary forgery and fraud. You may have read some of Beatrice Sparks’ fabulisms in middle school, maybe even got assigned such dubious classics as “Go Ask Alice” without having been told it wasn’t a real druggie diary, but the fabrication of a supremely frustrated middle class Mormon housewife. John and I get into the broader history of literary forgery, why people produce and believe them, and some dirty truths about the reader-author-publisher relationship. “Unmask Alice” is a great book and this was a fantastic discussion, if I do say so myself.

I mentioned Strange Aeons, a youtuber who does internet history, including work on literary fabulism, which as you can imagine gets pretty wild in internet fandom communities. She’s a really great historian and critic, check out her YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@STRANGEONS . You might figure this isn’t my thing- but thoughtful, rigorous history of culture that isn’t my thing IS my thing, indeed. Plus she’s funny! A good place to start, if you’re into literary fraud, is her story on tumblr fandom gadabout “hivliving”.

If you’re listening to this, there’s a good chance you already know of this, but John Dolan is one half of Radio War Nerd, a podcast covering the “world of wars” and occasionally other topics like literature as well, from the unique and uncompromising perspective Dolan and Mark Ames bring to things. You can find it at: https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd/posts

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On this episode of RITTOM, we talk about Chris Onstad’s great webcomic Achewood, an absurdist slice of life comic and “love letter to the English language.” Friend and fellow writer/organizer John Perich joins me to explain what Achewood is, why it’s a big deal, and how a webcomic about cats and stuffed animals says more about consumer culture, masculinity, and depression than a lot of works with more studiously serious approaches manage.

Read John’s newsletter! Disparaging the Boot

Read Achewood! Here’s the first comic in the legendary May 2004 run.

Support Onstad’s Achewood comeback!

Intro music by a friend, soon to experience a big life event! Shouts out!

Hello all! RITTOM has returned. I had the 11th most popular literature podcast among Irish listeners, and dammit, I will not let the people of Ireland down! In this episode, I discuss why I was gone for a while, the format going forward (unless I need to change it again!), and then, Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, a marvelous work of history that is also… annoying? Somehow? In parts? In any event, give it a listen. Also consider subscribing to Melendy Avenue Review, the newsletter where I post more of my criticism, cat pics, and more! See the link below. Pay five dollars a month and get access to our Discord server!

Hello all! In this episode of Reading in the Time of Monsters, we are joined by Quinn Slobodian, professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley College and author most recently of “Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy”. Quinn is one of the most incisive historians of the late twentieth century working, and here he cuts through stale debates about globalization versus nationalism to show how ideologues with deep pocketed backers are working to create whole new visions of sovereignty through division. In “Crack-Up Capitalism,” we see how special economic zones, Bantustans, breakaway states and such scifi ideas as seasteading have all provided inspiration — or are instantiations of — the dream of encasing markets, capital, and their hierarchies from interfering democracy. This is an incredibly rich book and Quinn and I only scratch the surface- enjoy the interview then go pick it up!

This will also be this week’s Melendy Avenue Review, so help yourself to a Mithra pic!

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https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250753892/crackupcapitalism

You can follow Quinn on Twitter @zeithistoriker . While you’re at it, you can follow this podcast @RITTOMpod .

This one is was a Chieftain request! If you subscribe to Melendy Avenue Review at the Chieftain level, you, too, can request a book for me to review (within reason- needs to be in English, under 100,000 words, sourceable, etc). This one is a novel by Kremlin wire-puller Vladislav Surkov, and it proves that Putin’s goons can be just as pretentious, self-important, and bad at aping culture as any Ivy League or Oxbridge fancylad. Enjoy!

We have our first guest! My friend Kit joins me to talk about R.F. Kuang’s 2022 novel, and likely big scifi/fantasy award nominee, “Babel.” Kuang’s fourth novel published before she turned 26 (she has another out this year), this historical fantasy tale of a young Chinese man drawn into the British imperial apparatus as a translator and maker of magic driven by translation has drawn rave reviews. Kit and I have other ideas about the book, its mediocre prose, uninspired characterization, shallow politics, and all-around stifling, suffocating quality. We do a deep dive on what Kit has named “the new chosen one” narrative, where instead of simpletons being chosen for quests ala Tolkien or Star Wars, we get young people of marginalized identities taken into the bosom of the empires that marginalize them, only to lead rebellion against them. Some examples of these narratives are good, and some are bad, and it’s worth looking at their prominence.

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