Sherds Podcast

In this episode, we look at Boris Vian's 'Red Grass' (1950), a surrealist science fiction novel in which the main character, Wolf, creates a machine that allows him to erase his own memories.

Over the course of our discussion, we consider Vian's playful complexity, his parodies of psychoanalytical and existentialist thought, and the possible significance of 'Red Grass' in terms of French collective memory in the wake of the Second World War.

In this episode, we discuss Ronald Fraser's 'Flower Phantoms' (1926), an obscure fantasy in which Judy, a student of botanical sciences, engages in a psycho-sexual communion with the soul of an orchid in Kew Gardens.

We were beguiled by this strange, orchidaceous novella. Over the course of the programme, we consider Fraser's at once fascinating and problematic treatment of female sexuality, his preoccupation with epistemological questions, and his meditations on the creative act itself