Feeling Bookish Podcast
Roman talks with José Vergara about Joyce's influence on Soviet and post-Soviet Russian literature. We talk literary heritage, the dangers of translating Ulysses under Stalin, the birth of Social Real
We're in a moment of rapid, disorientating change: the fourth industrial revolution, Web 3.0, machine learning, unregulated capitalism, climate change--the list is long and challenging. Roman and Rob s
We talk with Sergio Pitol translator George Henson, who is the first translator of the Mexican master's work into the English language. We discuss why Pitol is largely unknown in North America (somethi
We chat with Greg Gerke, the writer and founder of the literary journal "Socrates on the Beach," about his new essay (link below), a cri de coeur about the state of publishing today and why information
We talk Thomas Mann and "The Magic Mountain," and agree (oh boy) to start reading the work Mann considered his masterpiece, "Joseph and His Brothers."
We're back with a truly new episode, wherein Roman introduces his theory of "Roaming Entropy," to describe the unplanned, inspired meanderings of a unprogrammed reading life. Rob is also thinking about
A conversation from March that we only now just published. We're a bit over-read, over-worked and feeling the general wear-and-tear of COVID-19 and related challenges. We talk about the Philip Roth bio
In our latest episode, we talk with writer, director and producer Daisy Eris Campbell, a leading counter-cultural voice in the U.K. We explore the legacy of Robert Anton Wilson and Ken Campbell, the cu
We talk about the "The Diaries of Emilio Renzi" by the Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia with Piglia translator Robert Croll and the publisher of Restless Books Ilan Stavans. We discuss how these books f
Robert Fay's newest audio essay is inspired by an Alexander Theroux piece titled: “Theroux’s Metaphrastes: An Essay on Literature." Robert tries to understand why American fiction remains so lingui
We welcome special guest Mauro Javier Cárdenas, the author of the novels "Aphasia" and "The Revolutionaries Try Again." We discuss his place in the Latin American literary tradition alongside Roberto
We speak with Finnish translator Douglas Robinson about his "transcreation" of the unfished manuscript "Gulliver’s Voyage to Phantomimia" by Finland's modernist master Volter Kilpi. We talk about Fin
We talk with Robert Musil translator Genese Grill about her new book "Theater Symptoms," which features the first ever English translation of Musil's theatrical criticism and new translations of two pl
We talk with critic Steven Moore, the world's leading scholar on William Gaddis and the man who helped edit David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." We talk about his approach to criticism; his "hierarc
The total or encyclopedic novel remains a rare and allusive find in this age or any other. In this audio essay, Robert Fay describes it as "the everything novel," and muses on Joyce, S. Yizhar, Tolstoy
We discuss a number of books from Roman's library, including 'Ferdydurke' by Gombrowicz; 'Under the Volcano' by Malcolm Lowry; 'The Mass Psychology of Facism' by William Reich; 'The Letters of Rainer M
We examine the problem of great writers who were bad men, why Louis-Ferdinand Céline is a compelling, important writer for 2020, the paradox of Roman's essentialism versus relativism view of literatur
In the second installment of our Audio Essay podcast, Robert Fay remembers August of 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. In that time of epic political turmoil, the Czech playwright Vác
We launch our new "Audio Essay Edition" with Robert Fay's meditation on the writer-diplomat tradition. The list is illustrious, and includes Stendhal, Chaucer, Octavio Paz, Washington Irving and Pablo
We report back on various reading projects; marvel at Isaac Babel's Red Calvary stories; Rob is disappointed with Agustin Fernandez Mallo; and Roman remembers his first brush with Stendhal. We also won
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