After these next two episodes, will Megan manage to convince Katie and Tristan that our novel in question is hysterically funny and good indeed, or will we remain a Pod Divided? We know you jerks have just been up nights waiting for this one--we’ll be spending two episodes tackling James Joyce’s big-ass 1918 or 1922 novel Ulysses . We talk about form and structure, poo jokes, Irish history, day drinking, the little magazine, and King F*ckboy Stephen Dedalus. We propose that James Joyce would alm...
Nov 10, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 19
Was Horace Walpole a second-grader when he wrote The Castle of Otranto (1764)? “And then a big helmet squished the guy, and then grandpa walked out of the painting, and then the statue had a nosebleed, and there were boogers and and and.” Nope! He was the 40-something failson of Britain’s first prime minister! (God, who knew failsons would be such a theme of the pod -- not us.) It’s the “first Gothic novel” in English this week, and we’re talking epistemology, gender, the nation, and why this bo...
Nov 03, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 18
We’re back to one of our usual themes this week--creepy babies! We take on Ira Levin’s 1967 genre novel Rosemary’s Baby , which asks if pregnancy, neighbors, or husbands are the most creepy (they’re all creepy AF.) The DEVIL HIMSELF shows up in the form of a tin whistle in this episode, and there is much discussion of (maybe poison) smoothies, the terror domestic, and HIPAA regulations (turns out they’re useful). We read the Pegasus Books edition, with an introduction by Otto Penzler. We mention...
Oct 27, 2019•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 17
There are few things Better Read than Dead enjoys more than owning dipsh*ts/watching dipsh*ts get owned, which is why we were so psyched to read Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820). Irving’s spooky (no, hilarious) short story is about a tall dipsh*t who gets owned by a Headless Horseman. Or a pumpkin? Or, really, just the Dutch version of Gaston. Also, did you know Irving was the OG flat-earther?? He sure was! Chemtrails -- google it, folks. We’re talking genre, colonial his...
Oct 20, 2019•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 16
Put your crying pants on, because it’s time for Little Women (1868)! We talk about why Jo is so cool, whether it’s bad to steal a lady’s glove so you can sniff it in private (it is), and whether Beth—the shy sister who suffers from noted 19th-century ailment “paleness”—is actually the biggest psycho of them all. We get deep into how Megan lost her soul and ability to feel, as she found herself unmoved by the many touching and ennobling scenes in this book. We also discuss class (boy are they cla...
Oct 13, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 15
We’re such goths (apparently), we didn’t even realize we were doing a Halloween month when we recorded this episode on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Stevenson’s novella is about an insufferable prick who invents a potion that turns him into a tiny psychopath -- and then he gets stuck like that. What did your (deranged, race-sciencey) grandmother tell you about the dangers of making a face of THE CRIMINAL TYPE? Lots of great discussion on Victorian anxieti...
Oct 06, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 14
We follow one of literature’s least-impressive boats up the Belgian Congo in our discussion of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). It’s yet another magazine novella, this time about how our “hero” Charles Marlow journeys up the Congo seeing some truly horrifying effects of European colonialism, and how he encounters the ivory trader and Big Thoughts Guy Kurtz. We talk about empire, space, doubling, gender, and Marlon Brando. We read the Norton Critical Edition edited by Paul B. Armstrong. ...
Sep 29, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 13
If you're trying to decide whether to reconnect with your creepy old childhood friend who lives in a fungus covered mansion deep in the woods with a secret twin sister, this episode is for you!* We're talking about “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which is goth icon Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story about twincest. We dig into the uncanny, phrenology, family trees, and olde timey doctoring...and while we were digging we just may have found someone buried alive under these many layers of ninete...
Sep 22, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 12
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) may indeed be the “goofiest book that was ever written,” which is why it’s so fun to talk about! We get into all the nitty-gritty of Jonathan Swift’s scathing, sprawling, scatalogical satire -- its historical contexts, its politics that range from pretty good (empire is bad!) to terrible (it thinks women’s bodies are gross), and how its horses seem like they’re probably murderous eugenicists. Also, just FYI for a certain kind of tankie -- satire need not be some self-in...
Sep 15, 2019•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 11
This week we read Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening (1899). Chopin’s short work is about a tall lady who doesn’t want to listen to her husband (hetereosexuality! the best!), but she also doesn’t really want to do anything else either. We talk about bourgeois malaise, women’s suicide, atmospherics, and being a lady f*ckboy. We read the Norton edition, edited by Margo Culley. While she doesn’t directly mention Chopin, we recommend Jacqueline Rose’s On Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis and ...
Sep 08, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 10
Slightly less snark than usual in this episode on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966). Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (sure) is about the investigation of a 1959 murder of a family in Kansas and the trial and execution that followed. We discuss midcentury magazine culture and why The New Yorker sucks, how awful it must be to be a prodigy like Capote, and the fact that true crime is both the most fun and the most reactionary genre of them all. We read the Vintage International edition. We mention ...
Sep 01, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 9
All aboard, it's time to sail the high seas with Herman Melville's Billy Budd (1924)! Melville's posthumously published tale is about a very hot dumb guy who is kidnapped into the navy, then executed for reasons that involve mutiny, gossip, and soup. We talk about how a lot of things on this ship are described as erect, which is definitely just a coincidence, and what hundreds of sailors sleeping in hammocks would have smelled like. (Good!) We also discuss all the bodily fluids released in a 19t...
Aug 25, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 8
We have conflicting opinions about Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Megan for some reason finds a book about a dude making lists of every single item he builds, finds, or otherwise encounters on a desert island boring, while Tristan and Katie recognize that as a hallmark of Very Fine Literature (™). There’s lots of good conversation about empire, race, and the novel’s fraught and often quite bad politics. We also discuss Puritans again (we have problems, we know). And goats. SO MANY GOATS....
Aug 18, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 7
A slight verge from previous eps in that we spend a lot of time on this one talking Bad Takes. We’re still not sure why neoliberals, conservatives, and libertarians spend so much time citing the work of literal ANTIFA George Orwell, but hey--we’re just average book-loving sh*theads, not psychologists. We debate the merits of coveralls and yet again encounter child monsters. There is some discussion of RATS on this one, folks. Prepare yourselves. On the show we read the Plume edition with forewar...
Aug 11, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 6
It’s Pride and Prejudice ! Jane Austen’s beloved 1813 novel about two jerks who discover that they’re hot for each other. We talk about character and the novel, as well as economies of desire and of the social, and we discuss the relative awfulness of the bourgeoisie vs. the aristocracy. We also wonder who even is Mary Bennet and grow concerned that Kitty Bennet might be secretly alt-right. On the show, we read the Oxford edition edited by James Kinsley with notes and introduction by Fiona Staff...
Aug 04, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 5
We discuss Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and everyone’s favorite religious extremists — Puritans! We’re talking adultery, history and the novel, and whether children are evil. (Of course they are. How is this a question?) We also talk about how much Hawthorne hated work and how that makes us love him even more. On the show, we read the Norton edition edited by Leland S. Person. For more on Hawthorne (and Melville!), colonial history, and American imperial ideology, read Myra Je...
Jul 28, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 4
Are you sick of novels that are way too chill with their symbolism? Do you want a novel that has no chill at all? That blasts its symbolism on pretty much every page? Then Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) may be the book for you. We talk masculinity and the phallus, the First World War, bullfighting, and whether Hemingway was for real with this thing. (Answer: yeah, probably?) Also, Megan thinks “the fishing stuff is dope.” We read the Scribner edition. For more on American modernism...
Jul 21, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 3
We continue our Creature Feature and discuss Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). We get to the important stuff here, trying to figure out why blood transfusions are so very sexy and who you should pick if your dating choices are doctor, lawyer, lord, cowboy, or insane Dutch scientist. We wonder what it might take to transform any one of us into a “train fiend.” We read the Oxford edition, edited by Roger Luckhurst. Nina Auerbach’s Our Vampires, Ourselves is a great cultural history of the vampire in 1...
Jul 14, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 2
Frankenstein On the inaugural episode of Better Read than Dead, we talk about why three jerky socialist academics wanted to do a books podcast. We also talk about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and answer every leftist’s burning questions about it. What does this novel have to do with political revolution? Why is the 1831 edition so much more anti-science than the 1818 edition? And is this novel (as Katie puts it) “19th-century Human Centipede (only less creative)”? For a terrific discussion...
Jul 09, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 1
