To end the year on a festive note we discuss a Christmas classic by one of the most highly esteemed writers in the English language. We talk religion, politics and corpse eating rats, so basically the same topics as at Christmas dinner with your family.
We live in the end times, so it's only fitting that we talk to dytopian fiction scholar Annika (https://twitter.com/mydystopias) about Margaret Atwood's groundbraking novel, its chilling realism, its flaws, and why some merch is just in bad taste.
Many people call Fitzgerald's magnum opus THE Great American Novel. Reason enough for us to talk about its treatment of its female characters, the American Dream and why we can’t stop saying “old sport”, old sport.
We discuss whether Ripley is evil, and if yes why Highsmith’s portrayal of his evil is so remarkable. We also talk about queerness, la dolce vita and Boris Johnson.
We discuss the book that kept Jonas away from the podcast for two years. It features Henry VIII, rises to power, falls from grace and fluids from unspecified orifices.
After a very, very minute break, we are back to discuss Emily Brontë's storm-tossed novel and the unreliability and unlikability of its characters.
In our next minisode, we talk about Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, their sadness, their indebtedness to H.C. Andersen, and their autobiographical nature.
As we are reunited in Dublin's fair city, we discuss the works of one of its most famous literary sons, its morals, its aestheticism and why Wilde rulez.
A brief appraisal of Edgar Allan Poe's classic spooky poem.
We dive into Pynchon's paranoid world of conspiracy, madness and of course... mail delivery.