[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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The remainder of the letter is for yourself alone. I want to ask you two questions: the first is,—How did you contrive to preserve the common sympathies of human nature when you resided here? I cannot recognise any sentiment which those around share with me.

The second question I have great interest in; it is this—Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I sha’n’t tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married.

Chris finally reads Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and considers that novel’s many delights — even with its cast of unpleasant and hateful characters. Suzanne returns to the comfort reading of Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking, a collection of essays about food, and how it connects childhood, food, and the act of creating something out of whatever is at hand. They also talk about reconsidering books, reading about local history, and the pleasures of magazine writing.

Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights.

Laurie Colwin: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen.

Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre.

Anne Brontë: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey.

All three: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

Also by Laurie Colwin: More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen and Happy All the Time.

Our episodes on The Tempest and Frankenstein.

James Haffey: The Villain in Wuthering Heights.

Edward Gorey’s Baby Toss is most conveniently found on a jigsaw puzzle.

Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939) vs. Wuthering Heights (Robert Fuest, 1970) vs. Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell, 2026).

Munsee Language and History Symposium.

David Demchuk: Red X.

Maggie Helwig: Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community.

Toronto’s serial killer.

Chris will be reading at the Portland Poetry Confluence on Saturday, October 4th. (The 297th reading that Spare Room, the reading series Chris helped found, has hosted! Yowza.)

Our episode on Emma.

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                   It was her voice that made

Chris and Suzanne both recently celebrated a big round birthday, and so they each decided to revisit something that they loved when they were younger. Suzanne returns to The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (with its interest in forms and philosophical riddles), and Chris revisits James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake (with its cacophany of language and dream logic). They also talk about their own creative processes — because one of them has just put something out into the world...

Wallace Stevens: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Audiobook coming in May 2026.

James Joyce: Finnegans Wake. Audiobook. Online at the James Joyce Digital Archive.

The Minor Thirds (i.e., Chris and friends): The New Songs is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and more. Enjoy!

Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Stratford Festival.

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, illustrated by John Steuart Curry. (Our episode on Leaves of Grass.)

Alice B. Toklas: The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.

Yasmin Zaher: The Coin.

Sandra Boynton: The Going to Bed Book.

Suzanne Conklin Akbari, ed.: How We Write: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page (book designed by Chris Piuma).

Poems by Wallace Stevens mentioned in this episode:

Andrew Marvell: The Garden.

Walt Whitman: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.

Our episodes on William Carlos Williams and Andrew Marvell.

We don’t normally include the quote from an episode’s second book, but it helps to be able to read along with this one, so here it is:

> Soe? La! Lamfadar's arm it has cocoincidences. You mean to see we have been hadding a sound night’s sleep? You may so. It is just, it is just about to, it is just about to rolywholyover. Svapnasvap. Of all the stranger things that ever not even in the hundrund and badst pageans of unthowsent and wonst nice or in eddas and oddes bokes of tomb, dyke and hollow to be have happened! The untireties of livesliving being the one substrance of a streamsbecoming. Totalled in toldteld and teldtold in tittletell tattle.

Our episode on Ulysses.

The sections Chris recommends for those starting to dip into the Wake:

A video tour of Chapelizod from 1988.

Giambattista Vico: The New Science.

Samuel Beckett et al.: Our Exagmination Round His Factification For Incamination Of Work In Progress. (Work In Progress was the working title of Finnegans Wake.)

Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson: A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.

William York Tindall: A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake.

John Bishop: Joyce's Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake is an interesting reading of how the book interprets dreams.

The Joyce Foundation has a list of books on the Wake.

And there are lots of online guides and resources for Finnegans Wake, too! Chris found FinWake.com and The James Joyce Digital Archive particularly useful.

John Cage: Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake.

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Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were —

      Flopsy,

They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

‘Now my dears,’ said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.’

This month, Chris improbably decides to talk about Beatrix Potter’s classic children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Suzanne, on the other hand, remembers Edmund White’s recent passing and reads his first novel, the curious Forgetting Elena. They also discuss reading in second languages, reading authors before they pass, and museum gift shops.

(We mention a few things that we consider spoilers for Forgetting Elena, and we sound the spoiler alarm before we say them. But the spoilers do not ruin the book, just take away some of the surprise.)

Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Edmund White: Forgetting Elena.

Also by Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and many more.

Also by Edmund White: A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and Nocturnes for the King of Naples.

Georges Simenon: Tout Maigret, a ten-volume collection of his novels featuring the detective Jules Maigret.

Pierre Boulle: La planète des singes.

On Beatrix Potter and observational drawing.

On Beatrix Potter and character merchandise.

Our recent episode on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

A translation of Peter Rabbit.

A.A. Milne: Winnie Ille Pu.

Michael T. Luongo remembers Edmund White at LitHub.

Laurie Colwin: Home Cooking.

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When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

This month, Suzanne returns to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. Meanwhile, Chris has been checking out the work of Stanisław Lem, beginning with his classic science fiction novel Solaris. They discuss the joys of short novels and the desire for the unobtainable. Oh, and they celebrate Pride. Happy Pride!

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby.

Stanisław Lem: Solaris (trans. Bill Johnston). See also: Summa Technologiae (trans. Joanna Zylinska); A Perfect Vacuum (trans. Michael Kandel).

R.I.P., Edmund White. His books include Forgetting Elena, A Boy’s Own Story, and The Beautiful Room Is Empty.

The Great Gatsby (Herbert Brenon, 1926) is a lost film, but the trailer is available on its Wikipedia page.

The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton, 1974) and The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013).

Our episode on A Moveable Feast.

The Great Gatsby and World War II.

In addition to our episodes on The Blazing World and Frankenstein, we forgot that we have covered a proper science fiction book: Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue!

More Solaris and Lem talk can be found on Chris’s other podcast, which covered MST3K’s take on First Spaceship on Venus, a movie based on Lem’s first novel, The Astronauts (which is still not available in English).

Justine M. Pas: The Politics of Relay Translation and Language Hierarchies: The Case of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris (from the collection Translation and the Intersection of Texts, Contexts and Politics) is the essay Chris refers to.

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972) and Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002).

Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990).

Pierre Bayard: How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Also: How to Talk About Places You Haven’t Been, Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, etc.

The Karl May Museum.

Our episode on The Tempest also had a lot of birds in the background.

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“Is he stuffed?” asked the Lion in surprise, as he watched her pick up the Scarecrow and set him upon his feet, while she patted him into shape again.

“Of course he’s stuffed,” replied Dorothy, who was still angry.

“That’s why he went over so easily,” remarked the Lion. “It astonished me to see him whirl around so. Is the other one stuffed also?”

“No,” said Dorothy, “he’s made of tin.” And she helped the Woodman up again.

“That’s why he nearly blunted my claws,” said the Lion. “When they scratched against the tin it made a cold shiver run down my back. What is that little animal you are so tender of?”

“He is my dog, Toto,” answered Dorothy.

“Is he made of tin, or stuffed?” asked the Lion.

“Neither. He’s a—a—a meat dog.”

Two very different books this month (but maybe they have some unexpected similarities?). Chris has returned to L. Frank Baum’s beloved The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and finally takes a look at some of its sequels. Suzanne reads Margareta von Oswald’s study Working Through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, and considers its nuanced exploration of the work that goes into dealing wtih a problematic museum collection. Also, Suzanne has a new book (which she edited with former guest of the show Melissa Moreton), and Chris has a bunch of new books (thanks, Independent Bookstore Day!).

L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels, including The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, and more...

Margareta von Oswald: Working through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin

A current exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Chris talked about seeing a concert over on The Scene Of The Scene.

Norman Akers and his current residency.

Just in case: The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939).

A video essay on the making of The Wizard of Oz from the delightful Be Kind, Rewind.

Ruth Plumly Thompson’s Oz books.

The Ruby Slippers at the National Museum of American History.

The Saw-Horse, illustrated by John R. Neill.

Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Return to Oz (Walter Murch, 1985).

Geoff Ryman: Was.

Gregory Maguire: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Wicked (Jon M. Chu, 2024).

The Ethnological Museum in Berlin and the Humboldt Forum.

Suzanne wrote an article about getting to know the museum.

An overview of the Berlin Palace.

An article from the Guardian on the rebuilding of the palace.

And an overview of the Palast der Republik.

On the Humboldt brothers.

Adolf Bastian, founder of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.

A statement by the Humboldt Forum’s collaborators from communities of origins.

Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024).

Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads, which Suzanne helped curate at the Aga Khan Museum.

The objects from that exhibit.

Our episode with Melissa Moreton on that exhibit.

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

Canadian Independent Bookstore Day. (And the US version, on the same day.)

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                               Rolling in, top up,

                              divided as the dew,

                              shells and animalcules

                              to Paterson.

Suzanne has been enjoying Paterson, Paterson, Paterson! Paterson is a book-length poem by William Carlos Williams (you know, the guy who wrote the one about the red wheelbarrow and the one about the plums in the icebox). Paterson is a classic photo essay by George A. Tice. Paterson is also a film inspired by the poem, directed by Jim Jarmusch and starring Adam Driver. And, of course, Paterson is a city in New Jersey. It’s near where Suzanne grew up, so she talks about how her own experiences open up these different reflections of Paterson.

Chris, meanwhile, has stepped far from home by reading Magda Szabó’s novel The Door, a classic of twentieth-century Hungarian literature. (Chris has never been to Hungary. Or Paterson, for that matter, despite also growing up near there.)

We talk about reading literature that emerges from a familiar place, and literature that emerges from unfamiliar places. And we talk about book covers that have mesmerized us — or not.

Thank you to Michael Collins for helping to edit this episode!

William Carlos Williams: Paterson.

George A. Tice: Paterson.

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016).

Magda Szabó: The Door, trans. Len Rix.

Also by William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems, vol. 1 includes Spring And All. Collected Poems, vol. 2. Also check out The Doctor Stories.

Also by Magda Szabó: Abigail.

We mention our episodes on Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Walt Whitman and Dante.

The cover of Joyce’s Ulysses that Chris describes.

The cover of The Door on the edition by New York Review Books.

Eva Hesse.

The covers of Paterson on Suzanne’s copy, Chris’s copy, and the first editions.

Charles Demuth: I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold. (Which includes the text of the poem.)

Ezra Pound: The Cantos.

Ron Padgett. He's got a Very Collected Poems coming out this fall (over 1100 pages!).

Charles Olson: The Maximus Poems.

The Kossuth Prize.

Shushan Avagyan: A Book, Untitled, trans. Deanna Cachoian-Schanz, but Chris has the edition from Tilted Axis.

Shushanik Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayan.

Margareta von Oswald: Working through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin

Kent Monkman at the Royal Ontario Museum.

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I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody." That was so—I couldn't get around that noway. That was where it pinched.

Chris has been rereading Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain never intended that book (or the book it’s a sequel to, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) as books for children, but that is often how they are categorized today. Suzanne, meanwhile, has been rereading The Nine Tailors, a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, which is as much about campanology (the art of bell ringing in all its mathematical and combinatorical glory) as it is about the crime scene.

We talk about keeping up with the latest books (and movies), iconic scenes in novels, reworking classic literature, evoking a sense of time and place, and the literature that emerges after a pandemic.

Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Also available on Project Gutenberg.

Dorothy L. Sayers: The Nine Tailors.

Also by Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Also by Dorothy L. Sayers: The Divine Comedy. Gaudy Night. The Man Born to Be King. Murder Must Advertise. Whose Body?

Premee Mohamed: One Message Remains is the new book; The Annual Migration of Clouds is the one Chris read.

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023).

Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024).

Peter Watson & Cecilia Todeschini: The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums.

Margareta von Oswald: Working through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin

Our episodes on children's books include Harriet the Spy and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Ultimate Best Books of 2024 List over on LitHub.

Percival Everett: James and I Am Not Sidney Poitier.

Margaret Atwood: The Penelopiad.

Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea.

Madeline Miller: Circe.

A resource for learning more about campanology, if you’re so inclined.

Isaac Asimov wrote about The Nine Tailors in his essay Exclamation Point!, which can be found in his collections From Earth to Heaven or Asimov on Science.

Our episode on Boethius.

Jared Pechaček (of By-The-Bywater): The West Passage.

Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997).

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