S5 Ep. 4: Live From the Miami Book Fair 2021: Joshua Ferris on the Great Recession, Writing About Capitalism, and A Calling for Charlie Barnes

In this special episode, taped live at the Miami Book Fair, novelist Joshua Ferris joins hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel, A Calling for Charlie Barnes, which takes an often humorous look at the catastrophe of its protagonist’s life. When Charlie Barnes is simultaneously hit with a cancer diagnosis and the Great Recession, all he wants is to live within another story. Ferris talks about the lies we tell ourselves and the fictionalized accounts of the past that plague and define families.  

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected readings:

Joshua Ferris

• A Calling for Charlie Barnes
• The Dinner Party: Stories
• To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
• The Unnamed
• Then We Came to the End

Others:

• Always on Display: An Interview with Joshua Ferris
• Interview with Joshua Ferris, 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award Winner
• The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father by Geoffrey Wolff
• James B. Stewart, The New Yorker
• Capital by John Lanchester
• The Wall Street Journal
• Barron’s
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 
• Investor’s Business Daily
• Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary - 2021 M09 Results
• William Cohen
• “The Great American Bubble Machine” by Matt Taibbi
• Wallace Stevens
• John Ashbery
• Emily Dickinson
• The Washington Post
• Philip Roth
• Meyerowitz Stories, written and directed by Noah Baumbach

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