The Infinite Library

John and Ben return to the historical novel on this week's episode of The Infinite Library. We tackle British-Palestinian novelist Isabella Hammad's 2019 debut: The Parisian: a book that, much like its protagonist and the country he hails from, is curiously divided. We discuss the novelist as national representative, the perils of tying your family history directly into your fiction, "MFA writing", and the tides of history.

As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation.

Disclaimer: Contrary to what we may appear to be, Ben and John are very dumb. If we mispronounced anything in French or Arabic over the course of this episode; please, please, please don't be mean to us.

Get in your big cars and pull out your old time-y type writers, because this week John and Ben are celebrating Easter by discussing “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams. Topics of conversation include democracy and art, Williams’ concept of the “Imagination”, Williams’ vision of art and how it contrasts with his contemporaries, and Walter Benjamin. This episode is a little different than our usual fare–we’re chatting about a non-narrative piece of work for the first time on the show– so things are definitely a little looser and kookier than usual. We hope you enjoy our conversation!

It's the big one! It's the middle of March, and Ben decided to mark the occasion by making John read one of the great doorstops of English literature: George Eliot's "Middlemarch". The Book Boys enjoy a particularly long, winding conversation about the many marvellous characters inhabiting Eliot's pages, free will vs. determinism, science and religion, and doddering old uncles. We hope you enjoy!

After a heaping helping of guests for the last couple of episodes, we're back this week with an Infinite Library Classique episode. This week, John and Ben are discussing "Tun-Huang", Yasushi Inoue's sparse yet epic tale of war and religion set against the beautiful, barren plains and deserts of western China. Topics this week include the NYRB Classics imprint, historical fiction as a genre, and the deterministic forces of history. We hope you enjoy the episode!

I feel like White Kafka! Greetings, Bookheads: this week we've got a special off-week treat for you. We sat down with our friend Dan to discuss Franz Kafka's unfinished novel: The Castle. We hope you enjoy!

This week on the Infinite Library, we're talking about modern love (as in "modernism", get it?). John's girlfriend Ana joins the Book Boys to talk about Djuna Barnes' classic of lesbian literature. We talk about why this book isn't as well known as its peers, Freud and fascism, and whether or not books are supposed to teach us things. We hope you'll enjoy this discussion.

Note: We had some audio issues with this episode. We apologize for the quality here and we're working hard to figure out how to solve these problems for future episodes.

Show Notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16laFsna0Lqe2NMHhJlGTdBzZ7VJrIAnM8JnZRAIFUmg/edit?usp=sharing

This week, John and Ben welcome Geoffrey Morrison, a novelist based in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss "By Night in Chile" by Roberto Bolano. The three of us had a fantastic discussion on Bolano's life and legacy, as well as this brilliant, terrifying little novel. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

This week, Ben and John are tackling their first work by the Queen of Literary Twitter: Joyce Carol Oates. Given this show's fascination with the gothic, we decided to start with the first installment of JCO's Gothic Quartet, "Bellefleur". We talk about the gothic (again), it's role in American culture, realism & supernaturalism in fiction, amongst many other topics. This is a wild and wooly episode about a wild and wooly book. We hope you enjoy!

On this week's episode of The Infinite Library, John and Ben are hopping in the Library's time machine and heading back to the 1860s with Zadie Smith's "The Fraud". We discuss historical fiction, the role art takes in shaping us, and hysterical realism.

Picture this: you, lowly listener, have managed to secure an invitation to the swankiest New Year's soiree known to man--hosted by the Infinite Library. Pressing shoulders with the great and good of the literary world, you stumble upon your humble hosts, John and Ben, in the midst of a private conversation. Being the humble, work-a-day podcast hosts they are, they engage you in conversation and regale you with their five favorite books of 2023.

Thank you to all our guests and listeners for making 2023 a great first year for the show! We look forward to reading and talking with you all into this new year!