Upper Middlebrow

Dukes and Bagg are taking a break from books to talk about Netflix’s Ripley created by Steve Zailian. Having watched the first episode, it’s obvious the series is beautiful, and stark. It’s NOT a remake of the 1999 Anthony Minghella movie; Zailian is going back to the 1955 Patricia Highsmith novel as his source material. But can his adaption hold our attention for eight episodes?

Arionne Nettles joins to talk about her new book We Are The Culture: Black Chicago's Influence On Everything, as well as to recommend a couple of novels she thinks Upper Middlebrow listeners would particularly enjoy. Jesse and Ari talk about their sadness over the recent news about layoffs at their former employer, WBEZ in Chicago, and explore the idea of a common thread between African culture, and contemporary African-American culture.

On our FOURTH EVER episode, Dukes and Bagg explore why they have different emotional responses to Tom Ripley, and how Patricia Highsmith might have raised the stakes more effectively in the second half of the book. Our (Fall of 2022) discussion has been back on our minds in the wake of Netflix’s new Ripley series. Tom Ripley is a persistent character in our day and age, and the new Netflix series has critics musing on why.

Netflix’s new Ripley series has critics musing on why Tom Ripley is such a persistent character in our day and age. Patricia Highsmith created a character that has endured and appeared in many (excellent) film and now TV adaptations. We thought we’d share our THIRD EVER episode, in which we consider the first half of Highsmith’s 1955 novel, which introduced Tom Ripley to the world.

The Sympathizer is brought to a powerful, if occasionally puzzling conclusion, with the narrator returning to his home country for a series of misadventures. The meaning of Ho Chi Minh’s slogan “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” is turned around and around in our narrator’s brain, until nothing comes to mean something.

Jason Herbert, from the Historians at the Movies community and podcast, joins us to talk about favorite baseball films. We share an uncomfortable moment when Chris learns who Jason’s favorite team is (hint: pinstripes), but settle into a rollicking, nostalgic, nerdfest. We discover a surprising shared affection for a certain Charlie Sheen film from the late 80s, and both Jesse and Chris hurl their picks from deep into Left Field.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s narrator tells us right off the bat that he’s a sympathizer. He can see any issue from “both sides,” he claims, a dubious virtue in the chaotic Vietnamese history following the fall of Saigon. Nguyen’s narrator faces situation after situation in which that quality of sympathizing with everybody, including his enemies, proves to be both a strength and a weakness. This wild novel surprises at almost every turn, asking us questions about what a real anti-hero might look like in the oddities of real life.

Theologian Beatrice Marovich reacts to our discussions of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, exploring the relationship between theology and fiction.

We talk about her book Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying, and consider personifications of death in literature and pop culture.

The second half of The Sellout does feature a MacGuffin and resolution of sorts, although the plot is minimal compared to the satire and world building. The UMBs struggle to understand the book, but ultimately conclude The Sellout is a takedown of the post-racial ideal of the 2010s. The brilliance of the prose is stunning, but does the structure of the book feature the same brilliance?

Chris and Jesse are thrown into Paul Beatty's 2015 Man Booker Prize Winner The Sellout, because this novel seems to try to take the upper hand with its reader. Our two heroes agree that it's beautiful, but is it a mess or not? We marvel at Beatty's prose, quickly sum up all of epic poetry, and finish with trivia about child actors from The Little Rascals and ovoid/cuboid watermelons.