The Spouter-Inn

By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

Chris (a poet) and Suzanne (a professor) spent six years talking about “great books” (whatever that means), and are now talking about reading (and all the things that means).... more

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How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 114 episodes available.

The Spouter-Inn episodes:

September 08, 2020 34b. Bonus: Karla Mallette on Purgatorio.
There a lot that I like about the Purgatorio. I mean, I like the fact that
there’s time. Uniquely among the three canticles, the Purgatorio takes place
against a backdrop of time. Time is weird—it doesn’t work the same way for
the penitent souls as it does for us, you know—and it’s really clear,
especially in Purgatorio and the Paradiso, that Dante is experiencing these
regions of the afterworld on demo mode.
Karla Mallette is a professor of
Italian and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her
work focuses on the relationship between literary traditions in the medieval
Mediterranean, especially Arabic, Latin, and Romance vernaculars. Her earlier
books include The Kingdom of Sicily,
1100–1250, and European
Modernity and the Arab
Mediterranean. Her most
recent book, called Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the
Medieval Mediterranean, will appear in 2021. She joins Chris and Suzanne to
talk about all the feels in the Purgatorio, as well as what it’s like to teach
the poem to a wide variety of students.
Show Notes.
The Inferno as translated by Mark Musa
[Bookshop] or Charles
Singleton. Also available free online in Allen
Mandelbaum’s translation (with useful notes by Teodolinda
Barolini) at Digital Dante.
Jacques Le Goff: The Birth of Purgatory.
Stephen Greenblatt: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare.
(Suzanne, tell us what you really think of Stephen
Greenblatt…)
German expressionist films.
Frederic Leighton: Dante in
Exile.
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy, book 3 metre
12.
Sandow Birk’s and Gustave
Doré’s illustrations for the
Divine Comedy.
If you are enjoying the show and are able to, please consider supporting us
(and our network) on Patreon. Thanks.
...more
47min
September 01, 2020 34. Purgatorio.
Close to the top, we reached a point from where
I saw a gate...
...and I saw
the silent figure of someone on guard.
I slowly raised my eyes: I saw that he
was sitting on the highest step, his face
too splendid for my eyes—I looked away!
And in his hand he held a naked sword;
so dazzling were the rays reflected thence,
each time I tried to look I could not see.
...
Falling devoutly at his holy feet,
in mercy’s name I begged to be let in;
but, first of all, three times I smote my breast.
Then with his sword he traced upon my brow
the scars of seven P’s. “Once entered here,
be sure you cleanse away these wounds,” he said.
Dante’s Divine Comedy continues with Purgatorio , in which the poet
explores Purgatory. As he climbs this terraced mountain with his guides, he
will learn about the seven deadly sins, and talk with people who are working
through their problems. Eventually he will reach the top of the island—the
Garden of Eden—and reencounter his beloved Beatrice, who will be his guide
through the final section of the poem, Paradiso (which we’ll probably do next
year). Also, Chris and Suzanne take this opportunity to talk about
ekphrasis—the depiction of one medium of art in another medium (such as a
description of a painting).
Show Notes.
The Inferno as translated by Mark Musa
[Bookshop] or Charles
Singleton. Also available free online in Allen
Mandelbaum’s translation (with useful notes by Teodolinda
Barolini) at Digital Dante.
Our episodes on the first part of the Divine Comedy,
Inferno, and on Virgil’s epic poem, the
Aeneid.
Statius.
This article by Suzanne
begins with a medieval map of the cosmos.
Alan of Lille’s Sermon on the
Intelligible Sphere is in this collection.
Sandow Birk’s, Gustave
Doré’s, and William
Blake’s illustrations for the Divine Comedy.
A collection of other illustrations of the Commedia, including a
map of Purgatory.
Next: Eden Robinson: Monkey Beach [Sadly, not
available on Bookshop].
If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, and can afford to, please consider
supporting us (and our network) on Patreon.
Thank you.
...more
52min
August 04, 2020 33. W, or the Memory of Childhood.
What is true, what is certain, what is immediately striking, is that W,
today, is a land where Sport is king, a nation of athletes where Sport and
life unite in a single magnificent effort. The proud motto FORTIUS ALTIUS
CITIUS emblazoned on the monumental arches at the gates of each village, the
splendid stadiums with their meticulously maintained cinder tracks, the
gigantic wall sheets which publicize the results of sporting contests hour
by hour, the celebrations held daily for the winners, the men’s dress: grey
tracksuits with an outside W emblazoned on the back, such are the sights
which greet the newly arrived visitor. From them, he will grasp with
wonderment and enthusiasm [...] that life, here, is lived for the greater
glory of the Body.
Georges Perec’s W, or the Memory of Childhood,
retells a story the author wrote as a child, of W, a far-off island where all
of life revolves around sport. But we also get, in alternate chapters, a
curious autobiography, where the author tries to recover his mostly forgotten
childhood: growing up in Paris during World War 2, losing his father in the
early fighting of that war when he 4 years old, and losing his mother soon
after, as she was taken to the concentration camps. The author assures us that
both halves are needed to tell the story, and although at first they seem
unrelated, the connections slowly pile up, to devastating effect.
It’s a curious and haunting book, and Chris and Suzanne discuss its take on a
monomaniacal approach to sport, its exploration of the slipperiness of memory
and language, and (surprisingly enough in a book with so much loss) its
profound sense of play.
Content warning: There’s a discussion of sexual violence that lasts about
two minutes; we give a heads up. Also, this was an ill-fated recording
session, so apologies for the occasionally dodgy audio.
Show Notes.
Georges Perec: W, or the Memory of Childhood.
[Bookshop.]
Other books by Perec mentioned: A Void [La
Disparation], Life A Users Manual.
Our episode on Hayy ibn Yaqzan.
Oulipo, the Ouvroir pour la litérrature
potentielle.
Perec’s
palindrome.
A newer, longer palindrome (in
English).
David Rousset: A World Apart [L’Univers
concentrationnaire].
Double or Nothing: Jewish Speech and Silence in Georges Perec’s W ou le
souvenir d’enfance.
The Absolute Originality of Georges
Perec.
Next: Dante: Purgatorio.
[Bookshop.]
If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider supporting The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
56min
July 20, 2020 32b. Bonus: David Hadbawnik on the Aeneid.
Besides that Diores starts whining since
   he’d fall off the podium altogether
   if Salius were awarded first
      “RELAX”
says Aeneas, “I’m not taking nothing
   from nobody
      but I can sympathize
   with someone who lost out
   through no fault of his own”
For this bonus episode, we are joined by David
Hadbawnik, a poet, translator, and
medieval scholar, whose exciting translation of Aeneid Books
I–VI
was published by Shearsman Books in 2015. In 2012, he edited Thomas Meyer’s
Beowulf (Punctum
Books), and in 2011 he co-edited selections from Jack Spicer’s
Beowulf
for CUNY’s Lost and Found Document Series. He has published academic essays on
poetic diction in English poetry from the medieval through early modern
period. His latest book, Holy Sonnets to Orpheus and Other
Poems, was published by Delete Press in 2018.
We ask David about the particular challenges of translating the Aeneid, his
approach to the translation, and what he finds compelling (and frustrating)
about the second half of the poem as he completes his translation.
Show Notes.
David’s translation of Aeneid Books
I–VI.
A sample from Book
IX.
An interview with David on his translation of the
Aeneid.
Sandow Birk: Inferno,
Purgatorio, Paradiso.
Sandow Birk: American Qur’an.
Thomas Meyer: Beowulf.
Christopher Logue: War Music.
Kevin Varrone: Box
Score.
Since we recorded this conversation, the first episode of David’s new poetry
podcast, Primitive
Information, is out, with an interview with José Felipe
Alvergue. Check it out!
If you enjoy the show, please support The Spouter-Inn on
Patreon, if you can. Thanks!
...more
41min
July 13, 2020 32. The Aeneid.
The runners took their places. At the signal,
They sprang across the line and down the course,
Pouring like clouds. Now with the goal in sight,
Nisus flashed out ahead of them to first place
As swiftly as the wind or wings of thunder.
The next, though only after a long gap,
Was Salius; Euryalus came third,
Some distance back.
Helymus followed him, and after that
Diores sped—his foot brushed on a heel,
His shoulder loomed. And had the track been longer,
He would have slipped ahead or tied for fourth.
But as they came exhausted to the last stretch,
Poor Nisus skidded in some slippery blood
Which had poured down and wet the grassy ground
When—as it happened—steers were slaughtered there.
Already thrilled with victory, the young man
Did a short dance against the fall but fell
Face-first in filthy dung and sacred blood.
Virgil’s Aeneid, the epic poem about how “it was so hard to found the race of
Rome”, was commissioned by the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, as a piece of
propaganda, and was unfinished at the time of Virgil’s death. And yet it
became possibly the most important work in European literature for well over a
thousand years. Its hero, Aeneas, is tasked by the gods to escape Troy as it
falls and found a new city in Italy—and yet other gods try to prevent this
from happening. Amongst his varied adventures, there’s an entire section
devoted to a day of sports on the beach, and that’s the section Chris and
Suzanne zero in on as they try to unpack what’s going on in this section and
in the poem as a whole.
Show Notes.
The Aeneid: Sarah Ruden’s translation
[Bookshop]. Allan Mandelbaum’s
translation
[Bookshop].
[Chris got the notion that the Aeneid was supposed to be longer from Ruden’s
introduction, but it may not be widely held.]
See also our episodes on the Iliad, the
Odyssey, and the
Inferno. Oh, and our last episode on
C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary.
On Messi vs. Ronaldo.
The kids who come out to the soccer pitch are called player
escorts.
The sortes virgilianae can
now be played online.
Ursula K. LeGuin: Lavinia.
The Aeneid, As Told in Subtweets.
Next: Georges Perec: W, or The Memory of Childhood.
[Bookshop.]
If you’re enjoying the podcast and you’re able to, please consider supporting
The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
53min
June 24, 2020 31. Beyond a Boundary.
I haven't the slightest doubt that the clash of race, caste and class did
not retard but stimulated West Indian cricket. I am equally certain that in
those years social and political passions, denied normal outlets, expressed
themselves so fiercely in cricket (and other games) precisely because they
were games. Here began my personal calvary. The British tradition soaked
deep into me was that when you entered the sporting arena you left behind
you the sordid compromises of everyday existence. Yet for us to do that we
would have had to divest ourselves of our skins. […] The class and racial
rivalries were too intense. […] Thus the cricket field was a stage on
which selected individuals played representative roles which were charged
with social significance.
C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary is part
history of cricket, part history of the West Indies in the mid-twentieth
century, part autobiography, part aesthetic treatise, part historiographical
manifesto. It’s a curious book, but it’s also considered one of the best books
of sports writing ever published. Chris and Suzanne, who know very little
about cricket, are still excited to read it and talk about what James has to
say about the intersections of sport, race, colonialism, and literature.
Show Notes.
C.L.R. James: Beyond a Boundary.
[Bookshop.]
Explained: Cricket, a video
which goes over the rules of the sport (and its history since Beyond a
Boundary was published).
Beyond a Boundary, the 1976
documentary for the BBC.
Our episode on The Black Jacobins.
Our previous episode, on Vanity Fair.
Tom Brown’s School
Days.
An archive of interviews with C.L.R.
James.
James in conversation with Stuart
Hall.
A lecture by Robert A. Hill,
James’s literary executor, at a conference for the 50th anniversary of the
publication of Beyond a Boundary.
Next: Virgil, Aeneid.
[Bookshop.] (We’re linking to the
Mandelbaum translation, but read whatever translation you like.)
David Hadbawnik, trans.: Aeneid, Books I-VI.
[Bookshop.]
Enjoying our podcast? Consider supporting The Spouter-Inn on
Patreon. (Thanks!)
...more
53min
June 12, 2020 30b. Bonus: Reading During Crisis, Part Two.
I’m going to be tired for a while. But [one of the things I think is really
important for keeping] that drive is to curate a reading diet that has some
things for pleasure, some things for edification, some poetry if you’re into
poetry, some nonfiction, stuff from different time periods… I find that to be
helpful and sustaining, so you’re not just being bombarded with all the
information about all the racism ever, right now!
A few months ago, at the start of social isolation, we recorded a bonus
episode, checking in with four
interesting people to see how they were doing and how it was affecting their
reading. We thought we might do another episode now that social restrictions
are, in some places, starting to ease—and then there was widespread protesting
against police violence and white supremacy, and political conversations
changed in remarkable ways. The readers we spoke with offer their reflections
on this complex moment, as well as a look at what they’re reading.
Our Guests.
Carissa Harris teaches medieval literature
at Temple University in Philadelphia. Her research and
writing focus on obscenity, rape and consent,
medieval gender and sexuality, and long histories of rape culture and
misogynoir. Her favorite medieval book is The Book of Margery
Kempe, after whom her cat is named.
Alison Kinney’s first book of
cultural history, Hood, was published by
Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series in 2016. She’s written online and/or for
print at The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, Harper’s, Lapham’s Quarterly,
Longreads, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Believer, and
several other publications and has had four Notable Essays in The Best
American Essays 2016–2019. Alison has taught nonfiction writing at The New
School and at Catapult since 2017 and was hired in 2019 as an Assistant
Professor of Writing at Eugene Lang College.
Simone de Rochefort is a Senior Video
Producer at video-games website Polygon,
and she’s one of the hosts of the tech podcast
Rocket on Relay FM. She’s also a notorious
Hemingway aficionado, and you may remember when she joined us for our bonus
episode after we read Hemingway’s A Moveable
Feast.
Shamma Boyarin is an Assistant
Professor in the English Department at the University of Victoria. He is also
the director of the Religion, Culture and Society Program. His research and
teaching interests span medieval literature (with a specific focus on Hebrew
and Arabic literature), religion, and pop culture.
Show Notes.
Our previous bonus episode on Reading During
Crisis.
Cord Whitaker’s interview with the Institute for Advanced
Study.
bell hooks: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope.
Paula Giddings: Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign
Against Lynching.
Audre Lorde: A Burst of Light and Other Essays.
Camille Acker: Training School for Negro Girls.
Ben Jonson: The Masque of
Blackness and The
Irish Masque at Court.
Queen Elizabeth’s edicts.
Alison’s essay for How We Are.
Alison’s website, with links to more of her
writing.
Colson Whitehead: Zone One.
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man.
Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile, The Big
Four, Murder Is Easy…
Louise Penny.
Ernest Hemingway: Pursuit as
Happiness
(a newly published story).
A reading list of African-American mystery
writers.
Bogi Takács: The Trans Space Octopus Congregation.
Tom King: Vision: The Complete Series.
Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass.
Jakov Z. Mayer: Nehemia (an extract translated by Ilana Kurshan).
Sabbatai Zevi, a historical
figure mentioned in Mayer’s novel.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and help
us create this podcast—but also support antiracism
activists.
...more
55min
June 02, 2020 30. Vanity Fair.
“I am alone in the world,” said the friendless girl. “I have nothing to look
for but what my own labour can bring me; and while that little pink-faced chit
Amelia, with not half my sense, has ten thousand pounds and an establishment
secure, poor Rebecca (and my figure is far better than hers) has only herself
and her own wits to trust to. Well, let us see if my wits cannot provide me
with an honourable maintenance, and if some day or the other I cannot show
Miss Amelia my real superiority over her. Not that I dislike poor Amelia: who
can dislike such a harmless, good-natured creature?—only it will be a fine day
when I can take my place above her in the world, as why, indeed, should I
not?”
William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is a massive novel that follows
the lives of two women: Amelia Sedley, who is naive and sweet and devoted, and
Becky Sharp, who is cunning and manipulative and beautiful. But novel’s
subtitle is “A Novel without a Hero”, and Thackeray doesn’t paint either woman
as entirely good or entirely evil. And as their fortunes rise and fall, they
offer a glimpse into the mercurial, ambitious, and often cruel world of Vanity
Fair, in which everyone scrambles for money, power, and status, and for what?
It’s a world that the narrator lampoons mercilessly while also participating
in fully, and Chris and Suzanne start to unpack it—and talk about whether
they’re #TeamBecky or #TeamAmelia. (Oh, come on, you know the answer to that
one.)
Show Notes.
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair.
[Gutenberg.
Librivox.
Bookshop.]
Our episode on C.L.R. James’s The Black
Jacobins.
John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress.
Our episode on Little Women.
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy.
Also by Thackeray: The Memoirs of Barry
Lyndon [and its film
adaptation] and The History of
Henry Esmond.
Becky Sharp (1935).
Speaking of that spicy meal that Becky can’t
handle…
How a recent ITV adaptation of Vanity Fair dealt with the book’s
racism.
On Mira Nair’s recent adaptation of the book into a
movie.
Next episode: C.L.R. James: Beyond a Boundary.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon, if you
can.
...more
55min
May 18, 2020 29b. Bonus: Lee Maracle on Great Expectations.
The point is to express something, and to express something of yourself, so
that you can go forward with that. You’ve armed yourself, and you’re going out
and about in the world. And the armour is your words, and you speak so that
words are dancing on your skin and always ready for you. You’ve got your
weapons always ready. They’re there at hand.
Lee Maracle,
OC, is a writer and a
teacher, an artist and a performer, a siyam and an inspiration to many. She is
one of the Sto:lo people, who are part of the Pacific Coast Salish Nation, and
a granddaughter of Chief Dan George (band chief, actor, and writer). Lee has
written many award-winning works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction,
including her wonderful book Memory
Serves, which we featured on
this podcast back in January. Her most
recent books are My Conversations with
Canadians, a non-fiction work that sets out the grounds for what a shared
future might look like for settlers and indigenous people, and the
collaborative book Hope Matters, written
with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter. Lee joins us for a
wide-ranging conversation that begins with her experiences reading Great
Expectations aloud to her children and
her community.
Show Notes.
Lee Maracle’s books include Memory
Serves, My Conversations with
Canadians, Hope Matters, I Am
Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and
Feminism,
Ravensong, and Celia’s
Song.
On being added to the Order of
Canada.
More info about water in Indigenous
communities.
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale.
Muriel Miguel of Spiderwoman
Theater.
...more
35min
May 11, 2020 29. Great Expectations.
“If I could have settled down,” I said to Biddy, plucking up the short grass
within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings out of my hair
and kicked them into the brewery wall,—“if I could have settled down and been
but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was little, I know it would have
been much better for me. You and I and Joe would have wanted nothing then, and
Joe and I would perhaps have gone partners when I was out of my time, and I
might even have grown up to keep company with you, and we might have sat on
this very bank on a fine Sunday, quite different people. I should have been
good enough for you; shouldn’t I, Biddy?”
Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned for answer,
“Yes; I am not over-particular.” It scarcely sounded flattering, but I knew
she meant well.
Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is the
tale of Philip Pirrip, better known as Pip, a young blacksmith’s apprentice
who unexpectedly finds he has been given the means to become a gentleman of
leisure. Who is his mysterious benefactor? Will this change of station ruin
Pip, or will he become enough of a gentleman to win the heart of his beloved
Estella? And why are we spending so much time around nineteenth-century
London’s criminal class?
Show Notes.
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations.
[Gutenberg.
Librivox.
Bookshop.]
George Orwell: Charles Dickens.
The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Our episodes on Little Women,
Frankenstein, The
Jungle, and the
Decameron.
Some excellent analysis of Great Expectations from The Toast (RIP), including:
Every Meal In Great Expectations, Ranked In Order Of How Upsetting It
Is
Alternate Endings To Great Expectations
Miss Havisham: A History
Charles Dickens’ Internet Search History
Next: William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair.
[Gutenberg.
Librivox.
Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
59min

FAQs about The Spouter-Inn:

How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 114 episodes available.