First off: Congrats to Rodrigo Fresán & Will Vanderhyden for winning this year’s Republic of Consciousness Prize for Melvill!!! If you didn’t listen to our season on this novel, I suggest going back to it—and ordering a copy of the book from Open Letter.

This week, Chad, Brian, and Kaija go over the last part of James by Percival Everett and all love the ending and the philosophical challenges it presents. The whole book gets slightly reframed, and the appreciation of Everett’s craft deepens.

This week’s music is “Reset” and “How it Breaks” from Rich Aucoin’s America.

Next week we move on to Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless, a much more challenging book on a sentence by sentence, scene to scene level, but one that also explores the ideas of freedom and identity. We’re going over pages 1–62; you can find the whole reading schedule here.

All previous seasons of TMR are available on our YouTube channel and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. Please rate and review! It helps more than you know.

Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com