David, Nick, and Nathan dive into Bohumil Hrabal’s short novel Closely Watched Trains in this latest episode of the podcast. One part coming of age tale, one part (somewhat) epic tale of resistance, and one part celebration of life’s beautiful banality, this compact work will have you simultaneously smirking and wincing as Hrabal somehow weaves the lightness of youth in with the darkness of living under Nazi occupation in World War II. Grab a copy, give it a quick read, maybe even watch the bril...
Mar 09, 2022•50 min
It is a homecoming of sorts. Sixteen years after David made Nathan read Jorge Luis Borges, the two return to discuss the great Argentinian writer in an episode that has as many labyrinths (well, not quite) and is as infinite (also probably not true) as every one of Borges’ short stories. And while this episode does have a finite beginning and a finite end and can only focus on three of the hits ( Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius , The Library of Babel , and The Garden of Forking Paths ), the two stil...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Renata Adler’s Speedboat starts and stops, accelerates and leaps, soars and crashes just like some sort of . . . well, you get it. Join David, Nathan, and Nick as they discuss this compact novel filled with vignettes of 1970s life and all of the sardonic observations that come along with it. But do the vignettes combine to create something more impactful? Is the book funny? And how does one define humor in literature anyway? Listen in for our own starts and stops as we talk our way through this ...
Jan 20, 2022•41 min
Just because you bought a copy of W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants in the fiction section doesn’t make it fiction. Or does it? Join Nathan, David, and Nick for a conversation about fiction vs. non-fiction vs. creative non-fiction vs. journalism vs. memoir vs. Nick’s favorite genre of “who cares as long as you like it." Topics discussed also include: the way reading about memory triggers one’s own memory, the Nabokovian butterfly man, and a Sebaldian account of recommending Sebald to others. The Books...
Dec 28, 2021•53 min
Bay Area musician Taylor Vick of Boy Scouts joins the podcast this episode to share her love for George Saunders’ The Tenth of December. Listen in as Taylor and Nick talk about the book’s use of absurdist mechanisms to move the reader, the connections between Saunders’ work and Boy Scouts, and their own attempts to explore new areas of art, despite any existing contextual baggage. Listening to this episode whilst going on a long walk is not mandatory, but nevertheless highly recommended. Boy Sco...
Nov 15, 2021•40 min
In this episode, friend of the podcast and book club Eric Heiman joins David and Nathan to talk about W.G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn. The three get into the melancholic depiction of entropy eating away so much of human life, the sense of historical vertigo, and the (un)fictionality of the novel. Join the three as they discuss the style, form, and substance of Sebald's enigmatic work.
Oct 10, 2021•54 min
Aatif Rashid, author of the novel Portrait of Sebastian Khan , joins the podcast to profess his love for Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time . The one with, like, a million volumes? The one that’s jam-packed with the subtleties of human interactions, relationships, and communications (or lack thereof)? The one that you saw on all of those “great books” lists, but has since slipped away from the shelves of contemporary readers? Yes, that one indeed. Listen in as Aatif and David chat abo...
Aug 31, 2021•57 min
Ah yes, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha . You probably read it in high school or college as a young seeker of truth, but have you read it later in life? Do the messages change after you too have gone out into the world and been both drawn to and broken by its sweet, empty promises? And most importantly, have you been pronouncing Siddhartha properly all this time? (We haven’t.) Join Nathan and David as they take another spin through Hesse’s most known novel. But just remember — we could tell you what ...
Aug 21, 2021•54 min
Down with Napoleon! Long live Mother Russia! Ole Kutuzov and the gang aren’t the only winners here. Anyone who has read through the entirety of War and Peace — David, Nathan, and Nick now counting themselves as part of the club — knows that Tolstoy’s masterpiece and its ruminations on free will, history, and tragedy of both micro and macro proportions is and absolute joy and rather hard to stop thinking about. Join us for the fourth — and final — episode in our series on War and Peace and partak...
Jul 21, 2021•53 min
Novelist Mark Haber joins the podcast to talk about one of his underdogs: Santiago Gamboa and his excellent novel Necropolis. Necropolis is a novel full of narratives, soaked in storytelling, and driven by a cast of colorful characters seeking some kind of redemption. Mark and David dive into the novel's plots and craft, and Mark touches upon his own conversations with Gamboa and Gamboa's other works of fiction available in English. Mark Haber's novel Reinhardt's Garden was published by Coffee H...
Jun 29, 2021•41 min
Musician Ned Russin of Title Fight and Glitterer joins the podcast to share his love for Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and to also chat about his own latest creations: Glitterer’s new record Life Is Not a Lesson and his first published novel Horizontal Rust . It’s an all-encompassing conversation on experience, reality, and authenticity — all topics that get more elusive the more one tries to pin them down. In other words: the best kind of topics. Life Is Not a Lesson is available now ...
Jun 09, 2021•49 min
Third time’s the charm! David, Nathan, and Nick march on through Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace , having now conquered Volume 3. Listen in as they talk through Tolstoy’s increasingly direct commentary on the nature of history, Pierre’s Christ-like and/or quixotic vibes, and how it all relates to . . . cryptocurrency? If Tolstoy gets to include lengthy digressions on beehives, maybe we can make a few experimental analogies along the way, too, you know? Stick around for the final War and Peace episod...
May 21, 2021•55 min
In celebration of National Poetry Month, singer-songwriter and poet Valerie June calls into the podcast and chats with Nick about her love of The Gift: Poems by Hafiz (Renderings by Daniel Ladinsky) , the relationship between lyrics and poetry in her own work, and viewing the world through a positive lens. Additional topics include: Townes Van Zandt, time (i.e. what is it really ?), and whether we humans will ever grow out of our comfort in discomfort. Valerie has just released her new record, T...
Apr 29, 2021•31 min
David, Nathan, and Nick continue their journey through Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace , this time tackling Volume Two. Characterized by a little less war and a lot more peace, this volume offers plenty of saucy romance, costume-fueled shenanigans, and overly long hunting scenes. Listen in as we recap the many love triangles, discuss the nature of moral fiction, and reveal who most identifies with the character of Anatole. If you are reading along with us: Do not give up the good fight! Episodes on ...
Apr 12, 2021•52 min
Nick chats with Jesse Cash, guitarist and vocalist of the progressive metal band ERRA, about Cormac McCarthy on this latest episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast. The book at hand is Suttree , a tale of a troubled man who has left an affluent past to live in a dilapidated houseboat and hang out in the underbelly of society. The two discuss McCarthy’s masterful use of both complex and simple sentences, the vague origin of Cornelius Suttree’s deeply embedded pain, and also whether or not ...
Mar 24, 2021•44 min
David, Eric, and Nick discuss Volume 1 of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the first of four episodes on the heaviest of heavy books. Topics include: War and Peace as the ur-text for all war novels to come, the nature and role of translation, and how Tolstoy’s realism can be surprisingly light and humorous when dealing with dark subjects. But the question remains: Are there more casualties on the battlefields of Schöngrabern and Austerlitz or in the soirées of Moscow and St. Petersburg? Grab a fif...
Mar 12, 2021•47 min
George Salis, author of Sea Above, Sun Below joins David to discuss The Satanic Verses , the controversial, exuberant, magical, and magnificent novel by Sir Salman Rushdie. They discuss the poetry, the allusions, and the history of this "Everything" novel in their own labyrinthine and interconnected way.
Feb 28, 2021•58 min
Meet Alfred Brown IV, educator and vocalist of the LA hardcore punk band Dangers. He’s into Amy Hempel. Like, really into Amy Hempel. Listen in for a deep conversation covering everything from the unintended emptiness of slogan-heavy lyrics to Hempel’s short story rhythm to questioning the need to categorize any type of writing — fiction, non-fiction, memoir, et al. — as anything other than just prose. Make sure you check out Alfred Brown IV as well as his work in Dangers and Cultural Materials ...
Feb 11, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Dear World, Kōbō Abe sees your absurdity and raises you one box! A box to live in, specifically. And a box to meld with the psyche of the inhabitant. If it’s not clear, we’re talking about Abe’s 1973 novel The Box Man , a how-to guide on how to construct your own box in which to dwell and/or a challenging narrative (or, perhaps, narratives?) on the nature of voyeurism and anonymity in modern society. Don’t worry, it’s not quite clear to Nathan, David, and Nick either. Listen in for another rousi...
Jan 23, 2021•49 min
Clarice Lispector’s 1946 novel The Chandelier is the topic of fervent discussion for David, Nathan, and Nick in this latest episode. Not for the faint of heart (but perhaps for those near to wild ones), this modernist work probes a deep abyss of metaphysical questions including, but not limited to: What is anything? etc. etc. Forever dividing a single moment of time into increasingly smaller slices of moments in time, Lispector asymptotically approaches the concept of defining a single instant a...
Jan 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min
On this episode of the podcast, David is joined by author and translator João Reis, author of The Translator's Bride, to talk about lovable literary scamp, the warm and cuddly and optimistic Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard's Old Masters: A Comedy . They discuss the common aspects of Bernhard's style in general—a monologic riff rife with musical patterns of recursive invective as dark as it is humorous—and Old Masters in particular, which aims its hatred at, among other things: museum guides and ...
Dec 17, 2020•41 min
In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick chats with Alexis Marshall, vocalist of the noise rock band Daughters , about Jean Cocteau’s 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles (or as it is known in its English translation: The Holy Terrors ). Topics of discussion include: Marshall's own approach to writing poetry and lyrics, how The Holy Terrors is a direct allegory of Cocteau’s addiction to opium, and how the atmosphere of this book is both nightmarishly dream-like and kinda like the...
Dec 03, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Twenty years ago, Mark Z. Danielewski unleashed the labyrinthine horror novel House of Leaves, a work of fiction that would make both Daedalus and Derrida proud, a sprawling, convoluted, multi-narrative that pushes the bounds of reading and interpretation. But is there a minotaur of meaning lurking somewhere in the halls of the text? Or is it simply the narrative form of Nietzsche's maxim that "there are no truths, only interpretations"? Join David, Eric, and Nathan as they wander the ever-shift...
Nov 17, 2020•1 hr 3 min
In this episode of the Books of Some Substance Podcast, Nick chats with Brett Campbell of the Arkansas doom metal band Pallbearer about M. John Harrison’s Viriconium . They talk through how the themes of Viriconium made it into the band’s music, how Harrison’s use of shifting time and memory and place subvert expectations of genre fiction, and how it is an endless challenge as a human to try not to continually categorize and simplify complex things. And perhaps most entertainingly, the two embar...
Nov 02, 2020•59 min
In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick chats with Alex Edkins of the Toronto punk band METZ on the day that their latest record, Atlas Vending, came out. Alex highlighted J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise as a favorite, so we talk through the psychological, inner-space prophecies of the book and relate it back to our current technology-saturated landscape. Spoiler alert: we are all animals and the internet isn’t exactly helping. METZ’s latest full-length, Atlas Vending , is availabl...
Oct 20, 2020•40 min
In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick chats with Michael Berdan from the New York City noise-rock-slash-industrial-metal band Uniform about Hubert Selby Jr.’s The Room . We talk about the importance of tone and aesthetic in both vocal delivery and fiction’s prose, about Berdan’s deeply personal connection to Selby Jr.’s writing, and, perhaps most importantly, about how art can be coarse while still delivering a message of hope and compassion. Uniform’s latest full-length, ...
Oct 07, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Hey you there, you listener of substance! All full of the choice whether to listen to this podcast and/or the choice to do good or evil. We get you. John Steinbeck gets you too, as proven in his 1952 masterwork East of Eden . One part character epic, one part soap opera, and one part philosophical tract on the merits and challenges of individual agency, this book undeniably occupies a special place in American fiction. But are the characters maybe a little too one dimensional? Is it a little too...
Sep 23, 2020•56 min
In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick is joined by Steve Von Till of the seminal metal band Neurosis for a conversation about Ted Hughes’ Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow . Von Till’s prolific career now includes his latest solo record, No Wilderness Deep Enough , and his first published book of poems, Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics , both of which provide ample material for discussing his approach to songwriting, lyrics, poetry, and their endl...
Sep 10, 2020•44 min
In this episode of the Books of Some Substance podcast, Nick is joined by Dylan Desmond of the Seattle doom metal band Bell Witch for an in-depth discussion of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Listen in as we discuss what exactly Desmond connects with in Tolstoy’s writing, how this short novel was remarkably ahead of its time in documenting the emptiness of a materialist life, and how unique of a conundrum death is to us all. Grab some Tolstoy and/or some Bell Witch ( Stygian Bough Volume...
Aug 17, 2020•43 min
What’s that you say? Didn’t read Steinbeck in high school? Well then welcome to the safe space of Cannery Row , where one is not judged by achievements or accolades, but by the innate goodness found deep within. Ahhhh, just kidding, this one’s more about having a rollickin’ good time gettin’ into fights with fishermen, getting thrown into (and buying your way out of) jail, and sharing a snort here and there of the best kind of liquor known to man: free. Join Nick, Nathan, and David as they discu...
Aug 01, 2020•49 min
