LA Review of Books

This week co-hosts Kate and Medaya are joined by author Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, whose latest book is the collection of short stories Likes. Sarah discusses the magic of childhood, the difficulties of family life in the current political climate, and ways to see the quotidian in new and unexpected ways. Also, Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine, returns to recommend Benjamin Taylor's Here We Are, My Friendship with Philip Roth.

Co-hosts Kate and Eric speak with filmmaker Alexander Nanau about his stunning new documentary Collective about corruption in the Romanian Hospital system, government, and the broader society.  Alexander discusses the terrifying story at the heart of the film, the state of politics in his home country, and how he produced the film.  If a tale like Collective might have seemed from a far off land, or a bygone Eastern Bloc era; the Trumpian mismanagement of the ongoing pandemic - with shortages of PPE's and the unnecessary deaths of thousands of essential workers - delivers the film's unbearable tragedy right to our doorstep. Also, Bryan Washington, author of Memorial, returns to recommend Rachel Khong's novel Goodbye Vitamin

We’re joined by Tom Zoellner, award-winning author and the LA Review of Books Politics Editor. Tom and the co-hosts talk about the election, the tenor of the online political debate, and the future of patriotism. We also discuss Tom’s new book, The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America, a collection of essays from Tom’s travels throughout the country. Also, former LARB intern Jenna Beales returns to recommend Starting Point 1979-1996, a collection of essays by Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary animator and co-founder of Studio Ghibli.

This week's show opens with Kate, Eric, and Medaya sharing their thoughts on the morning after Election Day. At the time, Joe Biden seemed to have a pathway to victory; but the trauma of the previous evening when, for a few hours, Trump seemed destined to repeat his improbable feat from four years earlier. The conversation revolves around a shared sense of incredulity that Trump's outrageous, nightmarish Presidency could be embraced by half the country; which leads to the observation that Bryan Washington's Memorial is a perfect book for this moment. Indeed, when Washington joins the show to discuss his new novel, Memorial, the conversation focuses upon the necessity of building bridges between people who can seem so far apart. Certainly, a poignant theme for our time.

This week, we have filmmaker Garrett Bradley discussing her new documentary Time, which follows a larger-than-life matriarch, fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. Bradley discusses the idea of time in her film — time served, the slowness of justice and the accumulation of grief and joy. Later in the episode, we have one of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, alias Kathe Kollwitz, on to discuss the legendary Guerrilla Girl movement, misogyny and racism in the arts, the battles ahead and the battles won.

Richard Seymour, author of The Twittering Machine,  joins Eric and Kate to discuss the “social industry" — online platforms that monetize and manipulate our need to share our lives online. Seymour moves beyond the negative effects social media has on us as individuals and as a community, bringing into view a bigger picture: the social, economic, and political perils that are now at our fingertips. Also, Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies, returns to recommend Saul Bellow's Ravelstein.

Suzanne Nossel, of PEN America, on the decimation of the local news landscape.

A special episode, featuring Alain Mabanckou, author of "Black Moses," our latest pick for LARB’s members-only Book Club. Mabanckou is an award-winning Francophone novelist who was born in Congo-Brazzaville in 1966 and grew up in a time of political upheaval and repression. Mabanckou joins LARB editors to discuss his novel, his childhood, and his experience of religious schooling and revolution. He also discusses his relationship with the French language, his move to the US, and his thoughts on contemporary American politics. Also, former LARB intern and writer Yi Wei returns to recommend Emily Jungmin Yoon's collection of poems, A Cruelty Special to Our Species.

Akhtar talks about his new book Homeland Elegies, a hybrid of memoir, cultural criticism, psychological study, and loosely plotted novel that uniquely responds to the chaos and confusion of contemporary American life. The hosts also talk with Akhtar about the political, social, and affective entanglements of diaspora consciousness and experience (in this case, for Muslims from Pakistan living in the US), and about the Whitmanian fantasy of a diverse nation. Also, Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, returns to recommend a collection she has returned to her entire life, Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues.

This week, we’re joined by acclaimed writer and critic Vivian Gornick. Gornick began her career in 1969, as a staff writer for The Village Voice. Since then she has published a number of nonfiction books, like The Situation and the Story, the memoirs Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman in the City, as well as essay collections The End of the Novel of Love and The Men in My Life, which were both nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her latest book is Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader. Gornick looks back on her long writing career, and talks to us about how feminism oriented her life and her reading habits. Also, Arundhati Roy returns to recommend Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler.