The Spouter-Inn

But Peter had already lost interest in Mr Pomfret and his affairs. He was leaning with his elbows on the parapet, looking down into Cat Street. Harriet joined him.

There, eastward, within a stone’s throw, stood the twin towers of All Souls’, fantastic, unreal as a house of cards, clear-cut in the sunshine, the drenched oval in the quad beneath brilliant as an emerald in the bezel of a ring. Behind them, black and grey, New College frowning like a fortress, with dark wings wheeling about her belfry louvres; and Queen’s with her dome of green copper; and, as the eye turned southward, Magdalen, yellow and slender, the tall lily of towers; the Schools and the battlemented front of University; Merton, square-pinnacled, half-hidden behind the shadowed North side and mounting spire of St Mary’s. Westward again, Christ Church, vast between Cathedral spire and Tom Tower; Brasenose close at hand; St. Aldate’s and Carfax beyond; spire and tower and quadrangle, all Oxford springing underfoot in living leaf and enduring stone, ringed far off by her bulwark of blue hills.

Suzanne ponders the relationship between absolute truth and precarious human life via the Oxford setting of Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective novel Gaudy Night, while Michael ruminates on the great difficulty of having hope in the current moment via Jen Silverman’s dark comedy play Witch.

Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night.

Jen Silverman: Witch.

Chris and Suzanne discuss Dorothy L. Sayers’s novel The Nine Tailors on a previous episode of The Spouter Inn.

Jason Arday.

Faust.

Angela Collier’s excellent video about Faust.

The Screwtape Letters.

A scene from Witch adapted as a short indie film.

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Abe Strapp and the Widow Caines viewed the world as a glass to their own visage and nothing within their sight was granted a life independent. Every creature beyond themselves existed only to serve their designs and appetites. For years that knowledge had lived in Bride as a persistent, formless discomfort and even now it was beyond her to outline or offer it in any detail.

“You oughten to speak so about her,” Solemn said.

“That woman would eat her own children,” Bride whispered.

Michael has been thinking about the nature of evil as manifested in a captivating sibling rivalry in Michael Crummey’s latest novel The Adversary, while Suzanne has been thinking about water, oceanic and fluvial identities, and the nature of the self in relation to other and to environment, through Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—and Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem.

Michael Crummey: The Adversary.

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick.

Natalie Diaz: Postcolonial Love Poem.

Our previous episode on Moby-Dick.

Michael’s essay about Michael Crummey’s novel Sweetland: “Newfoundland Off the Map: Michael Crummey’s Sweetland”.

A quick Q&A with Michael Crummey about The Adversary.

Natalie Diaz reading the opening poem in Postcolonial Love Poem.

Natalie Diaz's poem "It Was the Animals".

A brief bio and some additional poems by Natalie Diaz.

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In the plastic bag I had been given at the hospital there were a pair of corduroy pants, a wool shirt, a belt, and I think nothing else. [...] I remember putting his cell phone in the charger on his desk. I remember putting his silver clip in the box in the bedroom in which we kept passports and birth certificates and proof of jury service. [...] I remember combining the cash that had been in his pocket with the cash in my own bag, taking special care to interleaf twenties with twenties, tens with tens, fives and ones with fives and ones. I remember thinking as I did this that he would see that I was handling things.

We’ve got a special guest host while Chris is on sabbatical: Michael!

Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking is a non-fiction examination of how the author’s psyche responds to the sudden loss of her husband and the serious illness of her daughter. David Demchuk’s Red X is a folkloric queer horror about the serial disappearances of gay men over a span of centuries in Toronto. Suzanne and Michael discuss two books that reflect on grief and loss in two very different ways.

Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking.

David Demchuk: Red X. (A new US edition comes out in June.)

Chris and Suzanne’s episode on Middlemarch and our bonus episode with Michael.

Our episode on Gertrude Stein, who was certain that commas are unnecessary.

Chris mentioned reading Red X back in September.

On the serial murders in Toronto.

The Barghest.

Alexander Wood, (formerly) at Church and Alexander Streets.

For more on bears, our episode on Marian Engel’s Bear.

Michael’s interview with David Demchuk from his old podcast, This Is Your Mixtape.

Vampire: The Masquerade.

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The fire, now rising two thousand meters into the sky, snatched oxygen to itself so violently that the air currents reached hurricane force, resonating like mighty organs with all their stops pulled out at once. The fire burned like this for three hours. At its height, the storm lifted gables and roofs from buildings, flung rafters and entire advertising billboards through the air, tore trees from the ground, and drove human beings before it like living torches. Behind collapsing facades, the flames shot up as high as houses, rolled like a tidal wave through the streets at a speed of over a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, spun across open squares in strange rhythms like rolling cylinders of fire. The water in some of the canals was ablaze. The glass in the tram car windows melted; stocks of sugar boiled in the bakery cellars.

W.G. Sebald’s collection Luftkrieg und Literatur, translated and expanded as On the Natural History of Destruction, is both a reflection of the air strikes that Germany endured during World War II and on the literary response — or lack of repsonse — to that destruction. Samuel R. Delany’s monumental science-fiction novel Dhalgren explores the people who remain in a Midwestern American city after an unexplained collapse mostly cuts it off from the rest of the world. Suzanne and Chris find each of the books they’ve been reading difficult to discuss, but nevertheless they're compelled to try.

(Thank you to Michael Collins for helping to edit this episode.)

W.G. Sebald: On the Natural History of Destruction.

Samuel R. Delany: Dhalgren.

Our episodes on The Rings of Saturn and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

Other books by W.G. Sebald: Austerlitz. The Emigrants.

Trümmerliteratur.

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five. Chris discussed the book on another podcast.

Other books by Samuel R. Delany: The Jewels of Aptor. The Einstein Intersection. Tales of Nevèrÿon is the first book in the series that Chris particularly enjoys.

Bill Wood, ed.: On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren.

Our episodes on Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

Jared’s little joke.

Our episodes on Middlemarch, Peter Hujar’s Day, and Forgetting Elena.

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So then I go and I make another cup of coffee and two pieces of toast with raspberry jelly and now I’m going to call Allen Ginsberg at exactly noon. Because he does his meditations and they told me to call him either at 11 at night or after twelve. So it’s exactly 12 and I call him. And it’s busy. I go and put my red jacket on and I go down and get cigarettes. I break a ten-dollar bill. And I give her a penny because the cigarettes are 56 cents.

Linda Rosenkrantz’s Peter Hujar’s Day is a transcription of a conversation she had with the photographer, detailing everything that he did on one day in 1974. Colm Tóibín’s On Elizabeth Bishop explores the life and work of the poet, weaving in an account of Tóibín’s own life and influences. Chris and Suzanne discuss different approaches to portraiture (in books, films, and photography) — as well as some of the particular joys of smaller books.

Linda Rosenkrantz: Peter Hujar’s Day.

Colm Tóibín: On Elizabeth Bishop.

The end of the mass-market paperback.

Gertrude Stein: How to Write and The World Is Round (illus. Roberta Arenson).

Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk.

Chuck Close: Linda.

Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, 2025).

Follow Chris or Suzanne on Letterboxd.

The Peter Hujar Archive, which includes an iconic photo of Susan Sontag, catacombs and some spectacular cityscapes. Oh, and his photo of Allen Ginsberg.

Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death.

It was, indeed, pretty cold on 19 December 1974, with a high of 38°F, if this website is to be believed.

Elizabeth Bishop: Poems. (Ah, right, the latest edition is no longer called The Complete Poems, 1927–1979!)

Poems by Elizabeth Bishop mentioned:

Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell, 2026). Our episode on Wuthering Heights.

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You should realize that no living man can go to Paradise. By land no man can go thither because of the wild beasts in the wilderness, and because of the hills and rocks, which no one can cross; and also because of the many dark places that are there. No one can go there by water either, for those rivers flow with so strong a current, with such a rush and such waves that no boat can sail against them. [...] And so no man, as I said, can get there except through the special grace of God. And so of that place I can tell you no more; so I shall go back and tell you of things that I have seen in the isles and lands of the empire of Prester John, which, relative to us, are below the earth.

We start the new year (a little late) by looking at some old travel literature! Suzanne is revisiting The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a fourteenth-century guide to visiting the Holy Land and beyond. Chris, on the other hand, is looking at Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage Around My Room, an eighteenth-century account of one man’s triumphant journey from his bed to his writing desk.

John Mandeville: The Book of John Mandeville, trans. Iain Macleod Higgins, is the translation Suzanne read; The Book of Marvels and Travels, trans. Anthony Bale, is what Chris read.

Xavier de Maistre: Voyage Around My Room, trans. Stephen Sartarelli. This volume includes the sequel, Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room. Read a sample.

Robert Durling & Ronald Martinez: Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime Petrose contains the text and a translation of Dante’s poems.

Not I (Anthony Page, 1973), a film of Samuel Beckett’s play starring Billie Whitelaw. Chris discusses this more on another podcast.

Suzanne’s article The diversity of mankind in The Book of John Mandeville.

Iain Macleod Higgins: Writing East: The“Travels” of Sir John Mandeville.

Our episodes on the Inferno and the Hereford Mappa Mundi.

Prester John.

Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. fr. 4515 has the correct Hebrew alphabet at fol. 96v.

Otto of Freising: The Two Cities is his universal history.

Joseph de Maistre, Xavier’s brother.

Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

Our episodes on Boethius and Montaigne.

Daniel Spoerri: An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, trans. Emmett Williams.

Daniel Spoerri: Kichka’s Breakfast.

The map of Spoerri’s desk is included in his Wikipedia article.

Georges Perec: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, trans. Marc Lowenthal.

Our episode on W, or the Memory of Childhood.

Boris Razon: Écoute.

Melissa Moreton & Suzanne Conklin Akbari, eds.: Textiles in Manuscripts: A Local and Global History of the Book

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The men seized Jesus and arrested him. Then one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

“Am I leading a rebellion,” said Jesus, “that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” Then everyone deserted him and fled.

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

We wrap the year up by looking at a few ways people have written about Jesus. Chris revisits The Gospel According to Mark, with all its strange little moments (and looks at a few recent queer retellings of Jesus’ life story). Suzanne, meanwhile, revisits On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, John Milton’s poem about the birth of Jesus, and how its poetry makes us question our sense of time.

The Gospel According to Mark, in its New International Version (which Chris reads from) and the King James Version (which Suzanne reads from).

John Milton: On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.

Our episode on Milton’s Paradise Lost and its accompanying bonus episode with Anthony Oliveira.

The audiobook reading of the Bible that Chris mentions.

Geoff Ryman: Him. We also discussed his Was in our episode on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. His hypertext novel, 253, is worth checking out too.

Anthony Oliveira: Dayspring. (An early version of a section was published in Hazlitt if you want a taste.)

Leo Steinberg: The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (later published as a book).

Catherine Conybeare: Augustine the African.

David Townsend: The Ram in the Thicket: A Novel of Medieval Norwich.

Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and you can listen to a special holiday treat!

[Estragon takes Vladimir's hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Vladimir's hat in place of his own which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Estragon's hat. Estragon adjusts Vladimir's hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Estragon's hat in place of Lucky's which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Lucky's hat. Vladimir adjusts Estragon's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Lucky's hat in place of Vladimir's which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes his hat. Estragon adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Vladimir puts on his hat in place of Estragon's which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes his hat. Vladimir adjusts his hat on his head. Estragon puts on his hat in place of Lucky's which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Lucky's hat. Estragon adjusts his hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Lucky's hat in place of his own which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Vladimir's hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon hands Vladimir's hat back to Vladimir who takes it and hands it back to Estragon who takes it and hands it back to Vladimir who takes it and throws it down.]

Chris revisits an old favourite — Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot — and revels in how many types of nothing happen in its two acts. Suzanne, meanwhile, is excited about a new book, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s essay Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, and is wrapping her head around how, in it, Simpson thinks with water (in all of its forms) to imagine new political possibilities.

Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot, originally published as En Attendant Godot.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead.

Other books by Samuel Beckett mentioned: Molloy, and Imagination Dead Imagine.

Other books by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson mentioned: Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, Rehearsals for Living (with Robyn Maynard), Islands of Decolonial Love, and Dancing On Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence.

Our episode on Dancing On Our Turtle's Back.

Also, our episode on The Tempest.

Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit.

Beckett on Film.

When Robin Williams and Steve Martin starred in Waiting for Godot.

Wikipedia’s overview of sintering.

Textiles in Manuscripts: A Local and Global History of the Book, edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Melissa Moreton, will be available in a few months! You can already explore the book’s companion website.

Map Men (Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones): This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters). And their YouTube channel.

Chris talks about Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, 1972) at length in the latest episode of It’s Just A Show.

Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025).

Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015).

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For me, when I read the book, it’s not so much reading the simple text that you see before you, but it’s remembering things that my mother and father taught us as siblings growing up. These were daily lessons that we were taught. And in some ways, it’s a source of great pride, and in other ways, it’s a bit of pain to think that other people did not have the opportunities that I did.

Suzanne had the opportunity to speak with John Nicholas, a member of Munsee-Delaware Nation, whose parents Grey Owl and Little Pigeon wrote Cry of the Ancients, published in 1974. They discuss how the book developed over time, the legacy of its teachings, and its relevance today. John and Suzanne connect themes in the book with their research trips to museums in Germany and the US, where they visited with ancestor belongings from the Munsee community

Grey Owl and Little Pigeon’s book Cry of the Ancients is currently out of print.

Please don’t confuse John Nicholas’s father, Grey Owl (Harvey G. Nicholas), with this early twentieth-century figure who used the same name.

Suzanne mentioned reading Cry of the Ancients in our previous episode.

John and colleagues describe their visits with ancestor belongings.

Recordings of past Munsee Language and History Symposia and Munsee Story Evenings.

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“Mr Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise.”

“No” — said Darcy. “I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. — It is I believe too little yielding — certainly too little for the convenience of the world.... My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. — My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.”

“That is a failing indeed!” — cried Elizabeth. “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. — I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“And your defect is a propensity to hate every body.”

“And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”

Jane Austen was born 250 years ago, on December 16, 1775, and we’re happy to celebrate! Suzanne takes a look at her most beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice, while Chris makes a case for one of her more curious novels, Northanger Abbey. They talk about Austen’s humour (in all its various modes), her clever plots and dialogue, as well as adaptations, inspirations, and more.

Thanks to Michael Collins for helping to edit this episode!

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey.

Our episode on Emma.

Also, our episode on Middlemarch.

Some Pride and Prejudice adaptations we mention: the 1995 BBC miniseries; the 2005 Keira Knightley film; Fire Island; Bridget Jones’s Diary; Bride and Prejudice; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; Pride/Prejudice.

Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho, and the audiobook read by Karen Cass.

The Portland Poetry Confluence that Chris read at.

Munsee Language and History Symposium.

Enos Montour: Brown Tom’s School Days.

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