Send us a text

This week, we're much more tiddly than usual, so what better time to talk about anonymous authorship and literary theory? First we go through our favourite pieces of literature penned by anonymous or pseudonymous authors, including some very old medieval poems. Then we rant about the misuses of Roland Barthes' concept of the death of the author, the art of shit posting and anonymous social media accounts, as well as the wankiness of author Joshua Cohen and his thoughts on writing in a time of internet ubiquity.

Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author: https://sites.tufts.edu/english292b/files/2012/01/Barthes-The-Death-of-the-Author.pdf

Matt's essay, The Afterlife of the Death of the Author:
https://areomagazine.com/2020/08/10/the-afterlife-of-the-death-of-the-author/

Joshua Cohen interview in Bomb Magazine:
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/joshua-cohen/

Support the show

Send us a text

We're changing it up this episode, with Reuben conducting the first of our author interview series. Each season of the podcast we'll be doing a one-on-one, deep dive discussion with an author we think you should read.
 
For the inaugural interview, we've chosen Michael Winkler, author of the "exploded novel," Grimmish. This is a daring, challenging, and odd book that narrativises the life of Italian-American boxer, Joe Grim, and his tour of Australia in 1908-1909. But it's also so much more than that. Reuben and Michael discuss boxing, pain, masculinity, experimental literature, and the timidity of Australian publishing.

Find out more about Grimmish and Michael here: https://www.michaelwinkler.com.au/grimmish

Emmett Stinson's review of Grimmish:
https://overland.org.au/2021/06/the-exploded-non-fiction-novel-michael-winklers-grimmish/

Purchase ebook on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Grimmish-Michael-Winkler-ebook/dp/B08TPT1461/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=grimmish&qid=1611534650&sr=8-1

Support the show

Send us a text

Across three timezones, a quartet of homosexuals gather for a symposium on faggotry. Rio and Matt are joined by Zach Langley Chi Chi from I'm So Popular podcast and Josh from Evil Thespian podcast to talk Faggots, Larry Kramer's seminal book (yes very seminal, and urinal, and fecal). All four plunge into the pit of sexuality to sample the Dionysian extremities of gay sex, and ask important questions, such as: would contemporary gays benefit from a few more Nazi boot orgies?

After exploring gay perversity with Kramer, the boys are enveloped by the glossy nightmare that is Finding Prince Charming, Logo TV's homosexual answer to The Bachelor. In it, they experience the true terror of contemporary gay life; the need to be nice, and so socially frictionless you're drained of eros, and also the requirement to replace all your teeth with dental veneers.

Join them...if you dare.

Support the show

Send us a text

This episode we're joined by an impromptu guest: Sydney drag queen, Aaron Manhattan, who found out we were doing Gore Vidal's gender adventure Myra Breckinridge and just had to come aboard. 

Join us as we plumb the uterine depths of womanhood and the fluidity of the sex roles with Myra. It's a freewheeling discussion about the novel and the film too, which stars the magical Mae West and the smoking hot Raquel Welch as our pan/bi/trans/hypersexual heroine who no man can possess! 

Support the show

Send us a text

It's a literary hot topics episode, baby!

We engage in some capital D Discourse, talking about how saying facts about poetry will get you sacked from your editing job, complaining about Sally Rooney's writing and complaining about complaints about Sally Rooney's writing, and the plague of Gay Sincerity.

Poetry editor fired: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/barren-poetry-magazine-fires-editor-tweet/

Jessie Tu's Sally Rooney "review": https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/surely-there-are-better-literary-heroes-for-our-generation-than-sally-rooney-20210817-p58jfp.html 

Gay Sincerity is Scary: https://www.gawker.com/culture/gay-sincerity-is-scary

Support the show

Send us a text

It's been a while! That may or may not be because all three of your hosts are in Australia, which has been returning to its colonial roots as a draconian prison island.
 In this episode, Matt, Rio, and Reuben lament the endless lockdown situation in Australia, while ranging over a few things they've been reading, watching, playing, and noticing while they can't go outside.

Links to a few things discussed:

Angel Cop anime bad/great English dub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZADmRukyvA

Alex Perez's article on "literary bad boys": https://im1776.com/2021/04/27/the-new-literary-bad-boys/

Incendies trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nycksytL1A

Support the show

Send us a text

This week, Matt, Rio, and Reuben are joined by connoisseur of f**ked-up films, Alison Taylor, to discuss Georges Bataille's seminal (or perhaps that should be "urinal"?) pornographic opus, Story of the Eye, as well as Jörg Buttgereit's cinematic ode to necrophilia, Nekromantik. 

Support the show

Send us a text

Rio and Matt talk Christos Tsiolkas' explosively gay novel, Loaded, and its film adaptation, Head On. They explain "wogs" for the international listeners, then discuss gays, immigration, Australian and Greek culture, and how formative this novel has been for a lot of Aussies of the..ahem...homosexualist persuasion. 

Support the show

Send us a text

This episode, we're joined by River Page (@gayliaronline on Twitter), contributing editor at Twink Revolution and Twitter enfant terrible. We chat about The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell's harrowing account of the plight of the poor and working class in northern English coal mining towns. We talk about the disconnect between the working class and the middle class socialists who want to "help," Orwell's fiction vs his nonfiction, identity vs class politics, the deep problems with left politics and therapeutic culture, Oprah, as well as River's insightful essay on the Democratic Socialists of America, "The Standpoint Bureaucracy."

River's essay: https://twinkrev.com/2021/02/the-standpoint-bureaucracy/

Support the show

Send us a text

Reuben and Matt are joined by Sina (@KhanKuchek on Twitter) from the Trepidation podcast to talk about Michel Houellebecq's Submission and Michael Haneke's 2005 film, Caché. For once, they aren't drinking! Is this because they've converted to Islam and are extremely pious now? Or because it was too early in the morning?
Topics and themes covered: multiculturalism, French identity, the decline of the West, Islam, the difference between religious texts and literature, and whether Houellebecq is an enfant terrible satirist or something else entirely.

Support the show