In this free bonus episode, we meet up with poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert on the floor of the AWP conference in Los Angeles. We talk with her about what kind of poetry goes over well at bars, navigating the overwhelming AWP bookfair, her advice column for Electric Literature and whether being an SEO expert and content marketer is a good gig for a poet.
Welcome to the Spring of Success! During these seasonal episodes we'll be reading writers' breakthrough stories or essays and talking about how they achieved success. We'll also talk about various aspects of artistic success. This week we're talking about Wells Tower, who broke through with the story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Also: people who didn't find success until after their death, and why we're so obsessed with those stories. For more, visit us online at bookfightpo...
This week we're reading the first novel in C.S. Lewis's beloved Narnia series, which Mike loved as a child and somehow Tom missed out on entirely. Will the book hold up to the scrutiny of two skeptical, sometimes cynical adults? Will the Christian elements feel too heavy handed? Or will Mike and Tom find themselves filled with earnest, childlike wonder? Only one way to find out! For more visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
It's the last week for our Winter of Wayback episodes this year, and we're investigating 1975. We've got a Harry Crews essay from Playboy about a day spent with some local grits in Johnson City, Tennessee. Plus the beginnings of the men's rights movement, Philadelphia's mayor giving the press the silent treatment, and the inventor of the Pet Rock. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. And if you're going to be AWP, come by the Barrelhouse table and say hello!
This week's book is actually two New Yorker profiles of a famous bohemian, writer, poet and all-around Greenwich Village eccentric. Mitchell first wrote about Gould in 1942, then wrote a much longer follow-up in the early 60's about his further dealings with Gould and his growing suspicion that the long book Gould had been working on for years didn't, in fact, exist. We debate the ethical dimensions of the writer-subject relationship, and whether Mitchell was fair in his treatment of Gould, who ...
We've zoomed back in time to 1935, a year in which Philly politics got ugly, and monkeys ran wild on the streets of New York City. It was also the "golden age of detective fiction," so we read two stories by John Dickson Carr, considered a master of the form, particularly what's known as "locked room mysteries." For more, check us out online at bookfightpod.com .
Guest Jason Fagone (Horseman of the Esophagus) picked Lillian Ross's famous work of embedded Hollywood journalism, PICTURE, for which the writer followed along as John Huston tried to bring Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage to the silver screen. We talk about the lessons writers and other creators can take from the book, and why it was such a formative reading experience for Jason. Plus: Philadelphia politics, the Wing Bowl, and what it takes to make it as a freelancer. For more, visit us...
On this week's episode we're discussing Alfred Chester, whose life took enough bizarre twists and turns to inspire this 2008 Blake Bailey-penned profile in Vice . We also take a deep dive into the music of 1958, including the first breakthrough girl group and lots of goofy novelty songs. Who wears short shorts, indeed? For more, including pictures and videos of what we talked about on today's episode, visit us online at bookfightpod.com ....
Join us as we talk earnestness versus cynicism, Philly vs. Dallas, and owning a Himalayan salt block versus maintaining your dignity! We're joined by Andrew Brininstool, author of Crude Sketches Done in Quick Succession (Queens Ferry Press), to talk about Chris Bachelder's episodic novel about an assistant professor, his young child, and his daily struggles with himself and the world around him. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
This week we're zooming back in time to 1883, where we read a story by Sarah Orne Jewett, noted chronicler of New England life, and discuss so many other things: art theft, drinking the water of the Schuylkill, and the time one of Mike's ancestors maybe committed a murder. For more, including links to some of what we talked about this week, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
This week we're talking about the blockbuster thriller Gone Girl, and whether it's a feminist masterpiece or a men's rights activist's wet dream (or both? or neither?). For more, including links and videos about some of the stuff we talked about in this week's episode (raccoon news! Ray Pruitt!) visit us online at bookfightpod.com . Thanks for listening!
We're time-traveling back to 1922, where we check out an early edition of Best American Short Stories, including a story by Ring Lardner and another that, in a review of the collection, was called "possibly the worst short story ever written." We've also got a variety of news items from 1922: monkey dinners, idle wives, a tugboat tragedy, the Wannamaker organ, the still-unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, and much much more! Visit us online for more, including links to some of the stuff w...
This week we're talking about Sarah Shotland's 2014 novel Junkette, about a young woman trying to escape both heroin addiction and a seriously codependent relationship--maybe two codependent relationships, actually: one with her boyfriend and one with the city of New Orleans. We talk about what makes writing feel honest, and how good writers are like tour guides to places you've never been. In the second half of the show, Mike tries out a new, South Philly-centric segment, and Tom talks about li...
Back by popular demand, we're embarking on another Winter of Wayback, in which we pick a year, then read a story or essay from that year and research a variety of literary and non-literary happenings going on at the time. This week: 1914! We check out back issues of The Smart Set, a lit mag that aimed to reach high-minded New Yorkers (and those who wanted to emulate them). We also go down a couple of internet wormholes researching forgotten authors, including a mentee of Theodore Dreiser's who w...
Welcome to the new year, Book Fighters! This week we're talking about an Elizabeth Hardwick book that is something of a cult classic, though at least one of us is decidedly not in the cult. Also: Idle chit chat! Rate My Professor chili peppers! Spills! Thrills! Hoverboards! For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
It's the most wonderful time of the year! A time for gathering with family, drinking lots of egg nog, and reading some absurdly terrible Christmas-themed books. First up this year is Christmas Letters, a delightful little romp from Debbie Macomber about a woman who finds love in the last place she thought to look (her own apartment building). Then there's The Christmas Thief, co-written by the mother-daughter team of Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark, about a Bernie Madoff type who hide...
In celebration of the holidays, this week we're talking about an Isaac Fitzgerald essay, originally published by Buzzfeed in 2013 , about a Christmas trip in which he scaled Mount Kilimnjaro with his estranged family. In the second half of the show, we discuss a listener-submitted story of authorial spite, plus a new installment of Fan Fiction Corner in which we explore the Grinch's sexuality. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com ....
Penelope Lively has written more than thirty books, and Tom picked this one, for some reason. The novel purports to explore the line between fiction and nonfiction, but it does so in a way neither of us found particularly interesting. We talk about what separates a "novel" from a purposeless series of writing exercises. In the second half of the show, we delve into the world of Christmas-themed fan fiction, with stories about the characters from Love, Actually, Law and Order: SVU and Veronica Ma...
This week we're discussing the title story of Scottish writer Elspeth Davie's 1980 story collection. Though her story collections were well-reviewed, Davie is far from a household name. We talk about what separates literary writers who are remembered from those who aren't, and whether the writers themselves have any control over their own legacies. Also, as it's the end of National Novel Writing Month, we take one final dive into the NaNoWriMo forums, where we make a shocking discovery that migh...
A long episode about a short book: it's the Book Fight way! In the first half of the episode we try to figure out Adler's 1976 novel, which has been cited as a touchstone by many writers, including David Shields and David Foster Wallace. In the second half of the show we talk about Adler's famous takedown of movie critic Pauline Kael, and consider a recent case of an author stalking someone who gave his book a negative customer review. Plus we take another dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to see w...
For today's episode we read this essay from The Toast, about the author's trip to Jerusalem, her religious parents, and the rift in her family following her sister's sexual assault. We've also got more from the NaNoWriMo forums, plus hot takes on Baby Hitler! For more, as always, you can visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
This week's book is both a detective story and an academic satire. We talk about the genre conventions of noir novels, and some of the more frustrating and ridiculous aspects of academia. In the second half the show we've got a new installment of Raccoon News that includes some historical raccoon news, plus more questions from the NaNoWriMo forums. For more, you can visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
This week we talk about a story by the crime writer Dennis Lehane (author of Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and lots of other stuff). We also dip back into the NaNoWriMo forums to offer our advice on character names, bayou witch doctors, and whatever in the world a "Nano jar" is. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
Everyone's been talking about Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume series of autobiographical novels, My Struggle. But we're reading the doorstop of a novel that won him acclaim in his home country before he turned his lens on his own life. A Time for Everything is part historical novel, part Biblical reinterpretation, part faux-theological study of the long evolution of angels. It's a book that's pretty tough to pin down. But we'll try! For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com ....
This week we're hitting the road, recording while driving to the Barrelhouse-sponsored Conversations and Connections writers' conference in Pittsburgh. To make our conversation thematically appropriate we chose an essay by Paul Theroux called " Taking the Great American Roadtrip ." We talk about what separates interesting travel writing from boring travel writing, our varying tastes for long drives, and why central Pennsylvania is both a beautiful and frightening place. You can read Mike's piece...
We discuss Jeff Sharlet's Instagram essay, created with the hashtag #Nightshift and later featured on Longreads ( you can check it out here ). We also talk more generally about the possibilities of using social media for storytelling. In the second half of the show we answer a listener question about cover letters and, in preparation for National Novel Writing Month, we visit the NaNoWriMo forums to see how we should be prepping for next month's fun. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com...
This week we've got a pair of guests, Kelly Phillips and Claire Folkman, editors of Dirty Diamonds: An All-Girl Comics Anthology , and recent winners of a Philly Geek Award. They've chosen Emily Carroll's Through the Woods for us to read, and they try to teach us how to approach comic stories. We talk about the relationship between text and image, ambiguous endings and spooky stories. In the second half of the show we talk to Claire and Kelly about their work with Dirty Diamonds, their own comic...
This week's reading is an essay about college binge drinking from a recent issue of Okey-Panky. We contemplate what an un-themed season of Book Fight might look like, plus Tom talks about his recent arguments with his publisher over the title of his book. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
This week's book was a donor pick, and man it sure was weird. Jelinek won the Nobel Prize just before this novel came out, though the award was not without controversy (one committee member actually resigned his post in protest). We try to make sense of the book's structure and prose, as well as its views on male sexuality. Then we talk about fan fiction for a while, since that's kind of our thing. For more, check us out online at bookfightpod.com ....
Summer is coming to an end, and so is our Summer of Love feature. Join us for one final lap in the pool as we discuss this second-person story about how you're a real creep who should maybe stop treating women like objects. Also this week: hot takes on Kim Davis and the Duke freshman who won't read Fun Home because of boobies. For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com .
