Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives into Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur, covering chapters 1 through 25. Through the late Russian Empire into the early Soviet Union, Sasha Dvanov is finally orphaned when his fisherman father drowns in an attempt to understand his all-knowing, deathless fish. Growing up in the shuffling shadow of the new world, he joins the Bolshevik party and seeks to spread communism. 

This episode covers his adventures trying to find out if the peasants have, after the abdication of the Tsar, suddenly begun to embrace communist lives. From anarchist militias to a Bolshevik Fyodor Dostoevsky, he finds little to approve of in the countryside.

Check out our old episode covering The Cow and the Third Son.

A Companion to Andrei Platonov’s “The Foundation Pit” by Thomas Seyfrid.

Time out of line: Sequence and plot in Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur by by Hallie A. White

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

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Show Notes:

This week, Cameron returns to Vasily Grossman, covering his first novel of World War II, The People Immortal. 

I’ll write more later, but it’s almost 5 a.m. and I have to be at work in four hours. Womp womp. 

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

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Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives into Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic and Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger, trying to probe the question plaguing recent episodes: “What is the value of art during wartime?”

Deaf Republic tells an all-too-familiar parable of a town under occupation, subjected to abuse and murder, and how the people there chose their own forms of resistance to occupation. 

Delicious Hunger tackles the issue from another angle: Hai Fan is the pen name for Ang Tiam Huat, a guerilla who fought for the Malaysian Communist Party for over a decade. His book fictionalizes the stories and struggles of his comrades during their years in the rainforest. 

Hai Fan’s interview during Ethos Books’ launch party for Delicious Hunger.

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

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We were supposed to talk about Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic and Fan Hai's Delicious Hunger today, but the episode's audio is trapped on a dead computer. You can look forward to listening to (a probably re-recorded) episode on Monday.

Since we have the time, I wanted to take a step back and discuss the ever-evolving reason for this podcast. It's hard to talk about "just" literature right now. But I think it's still worthwhile. We'll go over that and what's coming up next.

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Show Notes:

This week, Cameron continues speaking about Yevgenia Belorusets’ work with War Diary and also explores the experience of women living through war in Merce Rodoreda’s The Time of Doves. 

War Diary catalogues the first 40 days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, capturing the turbulence and violence while never forgetting to focus on the human element. Belorusets’ writing is a powerful call against apathy and a reminder to not forget what is human in man. 

The Time of Doves follows Natalia, a Catalan woman in a new marriage in the years prior, during and after the Spanish Civil War. Rodoreda’s writing depicts the anxiety of being a woman — subject to an overly-expectant husband, keeping house and kids while earning rent money. The flow-of-consciousness style gives you an intimate look into Natalia’s experiences, sometimes blatantly and sometimes merely hinting at the things in her subconscious. 

Read the entries of War Diary at https://www.isolarii.com/kyiv

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

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Show Notes:

This week, Cameron talks about unreliable narrators in Yevgenia Belorusets’ Lucky Breaks and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, posing an unusual argument: what if lying to your reader was a good thing?

Belorusets is a Ukrainian writer whose work focuses on the people marginalized by society and takes that eye toward the East, writing stories of women from the Donbas region after war broke out in 2014. Her work brings a light to stories often left untold — and even poses questions about the morality of doing so. 

Yevgenia Belorusets’ website

“The Complaint Against Language” in Wartime Ukraine: A Conversation with Yevgenia Belorusets, interview by Eugene Ostashevsky

Yevgenia Belorusets Focus On Ukraine, Creative Horizons (video, 2024)

One Day More — Yevgenia Belorusets’ visit to Brussels

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

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Show Notes:

This week, in For Your Consideration, Cameron dives into Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič’s Alindarka’s Children and Laguna-Pueblo-American writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Both novels explore people native to a land that is now, in different ways, hostile to them. 

Alindarka’s Children follows Avi and Sia’s fairy tale-like journey escaping a camp where they’re fed “vitamins” and taught to speak the correct Lingo, rejecting their own language. Their trip is beset by an unstable father, who insistantly passed their native Leid, a forest witch, a “corrected” hunter and other dangers. Written in both English and Scots to capture the Russian and Belarusian of the original, the novel challenges the reader’s understanding of linguistic and cultural preservation. 

Ceremony is downstream of Marmon Silko’s brief attempt to write a humorous story about the native WW2 veterans of her childhood, who often drank heavily to deal with their trauma. As the wrote, though, she found that it really wasn’t very funny at all. Her exploration of Tayo’s PTSD, and the struggle to find a way forward, is a profoundly empathetic approach to everyone involved. 

Alhierd Bacharevič: “Belarus is the place where literary subjects are just lying under our feet.”

Special Problems in Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony” by Paula Gunn Allen

I have lost everything: The impact of homeless sweeps - Propublica

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

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Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives into William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The uniting theme this week: reflection and memory. Both novels cast a long shadow over his life, so it’s time to untangle exactly why that is. 

Can Europe Central be cleanly read as a series of parables? Is it appropriate to turn Hitler into a sort-of fairy tale? Is it a red flag that Cameron has read Norwegian Wood six times? Tune in to find your answers. 

“Shostakovich in Love: William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central” by Peter G. Christiansen

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:

This week, Cameron dives solo into two books: Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me by Teffi and In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien. He’ll pull apart their authors’ mutual love for taking a creative license to their own lives.

Major themes: Emotional truth, social expectations, Vietnam

The interview with Tim O’Brien I read from.

The documentary on My Lai I mentioned.

Seymour Hersh’s article on My Lai 

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ 

Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | Facebook

Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands