Literary speculation abounds as Marlon and Jake reveal which books they wish they had written and which they think would have been better if they’d been written by someone completely different. Listen in as they explore the questions you never knew you needed answers to. Would The Confessions of Nat Turner have been better if Zora Neale Hurston had written it? Who could have written a funnier Ulysses? Were members of the Bloomsbury Group actually total bores? And perhaps most important: Does Marlon’s mom still have his Tom Jones fan-fiction and if so, how much is Jake willing to pay for it? Tune in for all this and more, including a lively discussion about plays that are as enjoyable to read as they are to see on stage. (And spoiler: Jake is not a fan of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

Select title discussed:

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Dubliners by James Joyce
Tai-Pan by James Clavell
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
Airships by Barry Hannah
Joseph Andrews by Henry fielding
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Shōgun by James Clavell
Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Middlemarch by George Eliot
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
Terrorist by John Updike
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Ulysses by James Joyce
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The Two Gentleman of Verona by William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
His Girl Friday by Charles Lederer (screenplay), adapted from The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (play)
Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
Endgame by Samuel Beckett

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