6.1 Desolation Tries to Colonize You: Jeff VanderMeer and Alison Sperling (CH)

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Our season of the weird starts off with a conversation between the writer The New Yorker called “the weird Thoreau”, Jeff VanderMeer, and a scholar of the modernist weird, Alison Sperling (FSU). With ND host Chris Holmes, Jeff and Alison delve into how the ugly politics of Lovecraft’s “old” weird gives rise to the stylistic panoply of the New Weird movement. Jeff discusses the ways in which nature writing’s sublime and ecstatic moments are their own category of the weird. The three consider ways to represent unrepresentable species, the limits of human intelligence in perceiving animal intelligence, the nonhuman narrative perspective, and the infinite weirdness of government bureaucracy. Along the way, Alison and Jeff dig into the “Florida man” trope and investigate Jeff’s attempts to outwit Florida zoning to re-wild his backyard with native plants. And if you harbor any suspicions about the temperaments of penguin researchers, you won’t want to miss Jeff’s answer to this season’s signature question.

Mentioned in this Episode:

China Miéville
Clive Barker
H.P. Lovecraft
–The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Annihilation
Dead Astronauts
Sunshine State Biodiversity Group
Rachel Carson

Listen and Read:

Audio: Desolation Tries to Colonize You

Transcript: 6.1 Desolation Tries to Colonize You

7.2 You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW) – Novel Dialogue

Although Katie Kitamura feels free when she writes—free from the “soup of everyday life,” from the political realities that weigh upon her, and even at times from the limits of her own thinking—she is keenly aware of the unfreedoms her novels explore. Katie, author of the award-winning Intimacies (2021), talks with critic Alexander Manshel about the darker corners of the human psyche and the inescapable contours of history that shape her fiction. Alexander and Katie explore how she brings these tensions to “the space of interpretation, where the book exists” and places trust in her readers to dwell there thoughtfully. They also discuss the influence of absent men (including Henry James), love triangles, love stories, long books, and titles (hint: someone close to Katie says all her novels could be called Complicity). Stay tuned for Katie’s answer to the signature question, which takes listeners from to the farmlands of Avonlea to the mean streets of Chicago. Mentioned in this episode By Katie Kitamura: Intimacies A Separation Gone to the Forest Japanese for Travelers The Longshot Also mentioned: Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation” Henry James, Portrait of a Lady Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Novels Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables John Steinbeck, East of Eden Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  1. 7.2 You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW)
  2. 7.1 Etherized: Anne Enright in Conversation with Paige Reynolds (JP)
  3. 6.6 Overtaken by Awe: Sheila Heti speaks with Sunny Yudkoff
  4. 6.5 Attention is Love: A Discussion with Lauren Groff and Laura McGrath (SW)
  5. 6.4 “We All Relate to Each Other’s Dystopias”
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