Western Thought

This felt pretty good after we'd finished. The format Jonah always had in mind for the function of the podcast. A lot of Will talking with some pointed questions and secondary material thrown in. Some other secret magic may also have been involved. Come sit in the bookstore for a while.

We are joined by a cool painter in a Canadian tuxedo named Sydney who plays the good sport. This one is rambling and reaching with a lot of laughter and Will tells me in the second half we get very un-PC. Jonah remembers a certain amount of belligerence ... but that's usually the most fun one can have with a podcast. So come sit in the bookstore and try to figure out what's the deal with William Faulkner.

www.patreon.com/westernthought

This one starts a little bit slow. Jonah wanted to do an examination of what potential writer's festivals have become in this world of many other distractions. This kinda gets done? But basically commits the same sin that was meant to be avoided. Namely, dropping info that most of you wont really have that much context for. Reminder that we have a Western Thought Patreon now. Why would anyone pay for this? I mean I've never subscribed to anyone else's Patreon, why should you? I hate being a hypocrite in this fashion - but there's only so much better that we can hope to be. Yes, like any novelist one should at the very least consider the serious limitations of ones immediate relevance. When one creates artifacts they lack dynamism, the kind of happy go lucky self congratulation and pivoting that comedy podcasts do so well. It might be kinda funny for me to go on in this fashion - but I guess I'm no comedian, really.www.patreon.com/westernthought

The middle of this discussion features an interview about Human Rights - and how to make money from them. Jonah tries his best to discuss Ralph Ellison's life in essays but mainly reflects on the one which tickled him the most. Come sit in the bookstore for a while. Oh yeah, and Western Thought has a Patreon now. Check it out for episodes removed because of server storage costs that our number of listeners doesn't really justify paying as of yet.

Warning: this episode contains irony. (To ruin the fun: It's actually about Henry Miller. Wait ... is that technically irony? It's not what I mean, and it's intended for comedic affect - I think it counts. Wallace was more concerned with Irony on a large scale cultural level which is obviously what this podcast will never have - so we get to have fun with the irony instead of wringing our hands.)

Come sit in the bookstore for a while.

www.patreon.com/westernthought

A cold open song, disrupted by thoughts on nihilism and and wisdom. Will talks about a biography he read on Eva Gardner. Some loose ends of the podcast are discussed. Jonah ends with a rant about an awful foreword to a collection of Stanislaw Lem's Ijon Tiichy cycle. Check Lem out if you haven't already.

A purposeful labyrinthine title for an episode that starts with a real world mystery.You will know if you're in the know who JLB is -  the famously blind and brilliant librarian of the imagination.Honestly there was something of a miscommunication for this episode. We started with an idea of doing Borges and then Jonah gave Will a supplementary text titled the Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories just to round out the conversation. But Will seemed so enamored with a few of these that he kind of pivoted in his mind to doing the episode on that. Consequently some of Jonah's JLB conjectures fall into the ears of someone mightily prepared for a different conversation. Still it's the same podcast in the bookstore. Come sit with us for a while. (Are all of our podcasts like labyrinths? Eh, screw off you with your pretentious conjecture.)

Capote's MUSIC for CHAMELEONS and Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces" are discussed.

Jonah discovers after the fact that he is wrong about much of Toole's biography. This well written article is probably worth more than his words. https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-uneasy-afterlife-of-a-confederacy-of-dunces

Yet the virtue of the medium allows for the display of ignorance-par-excellance. 

Pretty breezy discussion with perhaps a touch too many personal stories, but hey, we're not getting paid.

Come sit in the bookstore for a while.