Books of Some Substance

That day they discoursed in a cool and oft solitudinous basement. Eric and Nick and Dean Rader of the University of San Francisco examined Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West and inquired what Cormac McCarthy had in mind. Sulphurous and detached and surgically endeavored as that mind may be. They passed through the beauty and bleakness of the prose and the ruinous afterimage of the bloodstained vacancies of emotions firestoked and withheld. They glanced upon the ragged edges of representations of history and race and staccato swells of animalistic fervor. The judge! His judgeness! Gunpowder manufactured in a swatch of Miltonlike fury. Bloodslaked heart strings pulled by feats of erudition and eloquence. Interpretations laggard and dusty slithered out of flattened enormity. Agecurled pictures of America at its genesis and at its present left naked and creaking to wrench a somnolent populace from dreams into harsh plumes of introspection and reckoning.

A man sits down at a cafe. Pauses. Thinks. Writes a sentence. Pauses. Thinks. Writes another sentence. Pauses. Thinks. Will that next sentence be about solving an age-old puzzle of a pirate’s submerged treasure? Or perhaps it will be about cloning Carlos Fuentes? Or maybe it will just be about an attack of giant, shimmering silk worms. Only César Aira knows, but he ain’t looking back and neither should you. On this episode of the podcast, join David, Nick, and Frida as they embrace the constant flight forward of Aira’s The Literary Conference. If your wholly unique collection of life experiences and consumption of art have led to an overlap of experimental fiction, surrealism, and B-movies, this one’s for you.

  Is there anything beneath the iceberg of Ernest Hemingway's status than the Hemingway Lifestyle Brand™, with its hyper-masculinity, pared-down prose, and a shirtless, boozy, gun-toting Papa?  On this episode of the podcast, join Nick, Eric, and Stephanie as they find the answer to that question by analyzing the second best piece of war-time art after Top Gun: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms   As always you can find us here: On Instagram & Twitter: @booksosubstance On the ole interwebs: www.booksofsomesubstance.com 

You know the feeling. Or, perhaps, the lack thereof. It can happen to even the strongest human, the greatest writer, the toughest leopard capable of climbing the highest heights. But is it stagnation? Boredom? Regret? Or just your average case of gangrene? Only time (or one's continued sense of consciousness before the ultimate blackout) will tell. Bust out your hiking boots and climb to Ngaje Nga, you life-wasting fools! It's the conclusion of Hemingway Short Story Month!  Join Nick and Stephanie as they dissect one of Harry Hemingway's most prophetic short stories: "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." BYOB.  As always you can find us here: On Instagram & Twitter: @booksosubstance On the ole interwebs: www.booksofsomesubstance.com 

On this episode, the third in our Hemingway Short Story Month, David and Nick are joined by Stephanie to discuss the oft-anthologized "Hills Like White Elephants," an anis-soaked, dialogue-heavy, purgatorial little number in which two characters talk around the possibility of an abortion and a doomed relationship.  Find the story, and give us a listen.  Follows us on Instagram & Twitter: @booksosubstance Check out our homepage: www.booksofsomesubstance.com   

Hola Nada! On this episode, our second in the Hemingway Short Story Month, join David and Nick as they discuss the story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."  Ernest Hemingway was born in nothing in Oak Park, nothing.  As a young man he worked as a nothing for The Nothing City Star until nothing, when he volunteered as a nothing on the nothing front.  He was severely wounded and decorated for nothing.  In nothing, he joined the nothing nothing nothing in nothing.  With the encouragement of such fellow nothings as Nothing Nothing, Nothing Nothing, and F. Scott Fitznothing, Hemingway published his first book, Three Nothings and Ten Nothings. With The Nothing Also Rises, published in nothing, Hemingway gave a voice to the "lost nothing" and was immediately recognized as the leading nothing of his nothing. 

Howdy bright boys and girls!  Roll over in bed, face the wall, and forget the wrong people you double-crossed in Chicago with a new episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast.  This month we are reading four of Papa Hemingway's short stories. First up: The Killers, an elevated piece of noir with all the Hemingway trimmings.  Follows us on Instagram & Twitter: @booksosubstance Check out our homepage: www.booksofsomesubstance.com 

Ah yes, Sabbath’s Theater. Perhaps you remember that one uncle of yours reading it at family Thanksgiving ’96. Or maybe you noticed a dash of judgment in the eye of your local librarian upon recently checking out a quality hardcover edition.  (Don’t worry, everyone’s just pumped that you still go to the library.) Maybe you, a literary-minded baseball fan, picked it up after reading The Great American Novel and encountered a different kind of curve ball. Is Philip Roth’s filthiest tome anything more than just that? Is it not safe for work or is it not safe for 2018? If one tallies the profanities in the book, can the felt bias against women be numerically and categorically proven? Or is this grotesque tale a warning against the inherent emptiness and damaging consequences of letting the male id run free—and thus a surprisingly topical lesson—despite the high frequency of bodily fluids discussed therein? Join David, Eric, and Stephanie as they navigate these uncomfortable territories with grace, with depth of thought, and with more than a few audible shudders. Follows us on Instagram & Twitter: @booksosubstance Check out our homepage: www.booksofsomesubstance.com 

For Books of Some Substance’s 25th episode, Nick is joined by San Francisco State American Literature Professor Sarita Cannon to discuss Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Listen in for insight into 1970s politics, writing books like songs, the importance of myths and ancestry, and Morrison’s knack for asking all of the right questions while not giving any of the answers.  And, oh yeah, that whole flying thing.

In preparation for next month's reading of Song of Solomon, Nick is joined by bookclub mainstays Frida and Eric to discuss Toni Morisson's key work of literary criticism Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.  Listen along as they discuss otherness, reading race, the inherently political, and their own confrontation with ways in which we read.