The Spouter-Inn

By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris PiumaArts Books

The Spouter-Inn episodes

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!)
53 min
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.
55 min
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.
55 min
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.
35 min
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.
59 min
April 29, 2020 28b. Bonus: Jess Henderson on Emma.
I think it’s interesting in Austen’s novels that they’re all so positive, and
we think of them as sort of happy comforting kinds of things, because from all
sides are pressing in these realities of disease and death… There are so many
characters in this novel that just aren’t there or don’t have family members
because they’ve passed away.
Jess Henderson is a contract faculty
member of the English and Drama Department at the University of Toronto,
Mississauga. She teaches a wide array of texts—from Middle English through to
the digital age—as well as a variety of skills—from how to read literature
critically to how to write effectively. She loves reading and is delighted
when she gets to talk with others about books. In fact, she recently hosted a
virtual reading group on Emma which Suzanne attended, so she and Chris asked
her on to discuss that experience and to share her thoughts on which
characters are underrated, what other possibilities lie within the novel, how
letters work in this world, and to debate what the novel would be called if it
were titled like Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility.
Show Notes.
Jess Henderson on Twitter.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and join
us in a members-only Slack to talk about books (and/or Animal Crossing).
44 min
April 25, 2020 28. Emma.
Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!—It was a union to distance every wonder of
the kind….—Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It was
horrible to Emma to think how it must sink him in the general opinion, to
foresee the smiles, the sneers, the merriment it would prompt at his expense;
the mortification and disdain of his brother, the thousand inconveniences to
himself.—Could it be?—No; it was impossible. And yet it was far, very far,
from impossible.
We finally cover a Jane Austen novel! Emma , a young woman of high social
standing, is a curious mix of observant and clueless, intelligent and
clueless, capable and clueless… and, having secured a good marriage for her
former governess, she’s determined to use her powers of matchmaking for good
once again—this time on the innocent (and clueless) Harriet Smith. Will her
meddling be successful? Or will she make something of a fool of herself for
our amusement, and learn a lesson or two along the way, and maybe, just maybe,
accidentally find herself married by the end? I think you can guess the answer
to that, but there’s still a lot to enjoy in seeing it all unfold. Chris and
Suzanne launch a cluster on the nineteenth-century English novel—and therefore
a cluster on class—with this classic.
Show Notes.
Emma.
[Gutenberg.
LibriVox.
Bookshop.]
Some adaptations: Emma. and
Clueless.
Ian Balfour: Free Indirect Filmmaking: Jane Austen and the Renditions (On
Emma among Its Others) (PDF
provided with permission of the author and publisher).
Janeites.
Austenolatry.
Virginia Woolf on Jane
Austen.
Recognizing the Enduring Whiteness of Jane
Austen.
Next episode: Charles Dickens: Great Expectations.
[Gutenberg.
Librivox.
Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn and join us on a
friendly, chatty Slack!
54 min
April 03, 2020 27b. Bonus: Reading During Crisis.
In late March 2020, in the first few weeks of the social distancing brought
about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris and Suzanne checked in with a few
friends about how they’re handling this new stress and isolation, and what (if
anything) they’re reading right now.
We hope you’re all doing well. We would love to
know what you’re reading.
Our Guests.
Irina Dumitrescu is a professor of medieval
literature at the University of Bonn, but she also has a secret life as a
writer of creative non-fiction, especially essays—including one published last
year in a volume called How We Read: Tales, Fury, Nothing,
Sound,
co-edited by Suzanne along with Kaitlin Heller. Most recently, she had an
article in the Times Literary Supplement titled “How to Write Well: Rules,
Style and the ‘Well-made Sentence’”.
Cord J. Whitaker is a Philadelphia native
whose lifelong relationship with the African Methodist Episcopal Church led
him to fall in love with Chaucer and medieval literature. Today an associate
professor at Wellesley and an internationally known
speaker, Whitaker regularly writes and lectures on
blackness and the Middle Ages, on white supremacist deployments of the Middle
Ages, and on African American political medievalism. His most recent book is
Black Metaphors: How Modern Race Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking.
Oriana Schwindt is a freelance
writer based in New York, with bylines in New
York Magazine, Vice, and Vox, and she co-hosts By-The-Bywater, a Tolkien podcast right here on
Megaphonic FM. She is thinking about restarting her own podcast about grift in
America (it’s called American
Grift). In
2017, she experienced this grift firsthand on a crowdfunded reporting trip to
the geographic center of every state in
America. Yep, she did all 50. No, your
state isn’t her favorite.
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, and
she is just finishing a new one called Lives of the Great Languages:
Cosmopolitan Languages in the Medieval Mediterranean.
Show Notes.
Irina Dumitrescu, ed.: Rumba Under
Fire. [Free PDF!]
Our friend Nadia is the host of The Opposite Of
Lonely.
L. Frank Baum: The Wizard of Oz.
Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore: Watchmen.
Walter Mosely: Futureland.
The Wizard of Oz and the gold
standard.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass.
Octavia Butler: Seed to Harvest.
Polygon’s video on Animal Crossing (and translating its fake
language).
Dante: Inferno, trans. Allan Mandelbaum.
Dante: Purgatorio and
Paradiso, trans. Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M.
Durling.
Kengo Hanazawa: I Am a Hero.
Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting: Velvet.
Isabel Greenberg: Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the
Brontës.
Mary Szybist: Incarnadine.
Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron 6.10: Friar
Cipolla shows off relics.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
1 hr
April 01, 202027. The Decameron.
“Let us therefore do as I suggest… We can move from place to place, spending
one day here and another there, pursuing whatever pleasures and entertainment
the present times will afford. In this way of life we shall continue until
such time as we discover (provided we are spared from early death) the end
decreed by heaven for these terrible events.”
It’s 1348, and plague has broken out in Florence. Ten affluent people decide
to escape the city for a bit, and over the course of two weeks they travel
from one villa to another, trying to have a nice time of it. Amongst the
singing, dancing, and feasting, every day includes a round of story-telling.
Ten storytellers, ten days of storytelling: The
Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio is a collection of
one hundred stories told by people trying to get their minds off the
disruption of disease.
Chris and Suzanne look at the frame tale and five of their favourite stories,
picking out some of the more interesting features of the book, enjoying how
funny or sexy or strange the stories can be, and considering the work stories
might do in a pandemic.
Show Notes.
Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron.
[Bookshop.
Gutenberg.]
We’re using the G.H. McWilliam translation, and we’re looking at these
stories:
2.7 Alatiel marries the King of Algarve, eventually
3.1 Masetto tends to the gardens of a nunnery
3.10 Alibech sends the Devil back to Hell
10.9 Messer Torello shows hospitality to Saladin
10.10 Griselda suffers her husband, the Marquis of Saluzzo
Kalila wa-Dimna.
Decameron Web
has lots of useful information, including some details about the Decameron
manuscripts.
The autograph manuscript of the Decameron (i.e., in Boccaccio’s
own handwriting).
A fully digitized Decameron manuscript from around
1400.
Some projects turning to the Decameron right now:
The Decameron Project.
The Modern Decameron Project.
100 Days of Decameron.
Next: Jane Austen, Emma.
[Gutenberg.
LibriVox.
Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon if you
can, and tell us what you’re reading!
53 min
March 27, 2020 26b. Bonus: Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi on Persepolis.
The Iranians of the post-Revolutionary generation are the probably the most
secular of not only Iranians—I would dare to say, the most secular of their
contemporaries worldwide.
Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi
is Professor of History and Near and
Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. He is the Editor of
the academic journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East, and he has written two books: Refashioning Iran: Orientalism,
Occidentalism and Nationalist Historiography (Palgrave, 2001) and Tajaddud-i
Bumi [Vernacular Modernity] (in Persian, Nashr-i Tarikh, 2003). He is
currently working on Pathologizing Iran, which explores the medicalization of
historical narratives and political discourses.
Mohamad joins Chris and Suzanne to help put Persepolis into further context.
How idiosyncratic is its portrayal of the 1979 revolution and where does
Satrapi’s graphic novel fit into traditions Iranian diasporic writing? They
also reflect on the celebration of Nowruz (Persian New Year) in a time of
crisis.
Show Notes.
Mohamad’s website, which offers a free pdf of his
book Refashioning Iran.
Leila Abu Lughod: Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle
East.
Women Writing Novels Emerge as Stars in
Iran.
Mystical poets Rumi, Hafez, and
Saadi.
Nowruz and haft
sin.
The 2500 year celebration at the tomb of Cyrus the Great at
Persepolis.
The 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad
Mosaddegh.
Some images from the children’s newsmagazine Keyhan
Bacheha.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
(Thanks!)
40 min

About The Spouter-Inn

From the publisher's feed

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).