Eugene Sheppard joins his Brandeis colleague John Plotz to speak with Joshua Cohen about The Netanyahus. Is the 2021 novel a Pulitzer-winning bravura story of the world’s worst job interview? Or is it a searing indictment of ethno-nationalist Zionism–and the strange act of pretense whereby American Jewish writers and thinkers in postwar America pretended thatContinue reading “5.2 Writing the Counter-book: Joshua Cohen with Eugene Sheppard (JP)”
Author Archives: plotznik
4.1 “Sometimes I’m just a little disappointed in English”: Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell, and Kate Briggs tackle translation (JP)
. A novelist, a translator and a theorist of translation walk into a Zoom Room……Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell, and Kate Briggs provide the perfect start to Season 4 of Novel Dialogue. Our first themed season is devoted to translation in all its forms: into and out of English and also in, around, and over the borders between criticismContinue reading “4.1 “Sometimes I’m just a little disappointed in English”: Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell, and Kate Briggs tackle translation (JP)”
3.6 Why are you in bed? Why are you drinking? Colm Tóibín and Joseph Rezek in conversation (TM)
Colm Tóibín, the new laureate for Irish fiction, talks to Joseph Rezek of Boston University, and guest host Tara K. Menon of Harvard. The conversation begins with Colm’s latest novel The Magician, about the life of Thomas Mann, and whether we can or should think of novelists as magicians and then moves swiftly from one big question to the next.Continue reading “3.6 Why are you in bed? Why are you drinking? Colm Tóibín and Joseph Rezek in conversation (TM)”
3.4 The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu speaks to Chris Fan (JP)
Charles Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for Interior Chinatown but some of us became fans a decade earlier, with How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010). He brilliantly uses SF conventions to uncover the kind of self-deceptive infilling that we all do every day, the little stories we tell ourselvesContinue reading “3.4 The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu speaks to Chris Fan (JP)”
3.2 Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut with Andrew van der Vlies (CH)
Guest host Chris Holmes sits down with Booker Prize winning novelist Damon Galgut and Andrew van der Vlies, distinguished scholar of South African literature and global modernisms at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Andrew and Damon tunnel down into the structures of Damon’s newest novel, The Promise to locate the ways in which a generational family story reflects broadly on SouthContinue reading “3.2 Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut with Andrew van der Vlies (CH)”
2.5 Stitching the Past to the Present: Caryl Phillips speaks with Corina Stan (JP)
Caryl Phillips, professor of English at Yale, world-renowned and prize-winning novelist (from The Final Passage to 2018’s A View of the Empire at Sunset) shares his thoughts on transplantation, on performance, on race, even on sports. Joining him here are John and the wonderful comparatist Corina Stan, educated in Romania, Germany, France and the US, authorContinue reading “2.5 Stitching the Past to the Present: Caryl Phillips speaks with Corina Stan (JP)”
2.3 Because I Couldn’t Be a Dancer: Sigrid Nunez and Tara Menon (JP)
The brilliant New York writer Sigrid Nunez‘s most recent novel is What Are You Going Through; her previous one, The Friend, (2018) won the National Book Award. She speaks with Tara Menon, of the Harvard English department, and author of a terrific article about Sigrid Nunez in the Sewanee Review. The conversation ranges widely andContinue reading “2.3 Because I Couldn’t Be a Dancer: Sigrid Nunez and Tara Menon (JP)”
2.1 Fiction as Streaming, Genre as Portal: Jennifer Egan and Ivan Kreilkamp (JP)
We are just delighted to welcome you back to the second season of Novel Dialogue, putting scholars and writers together to chew the fat, and spill secrets of the trade. It begins with a bang; who better to interview the prolific and prize-winning American novelist Jennifer Egan than Ivan Kreilkamp? The distinguished Indiana Victorianist showedContinue reading “2.1 Fiction as Streaming, Genre as Portal: Jennifer Egan and Ivan Kreilkamp (JP)”
1.9 Season Wrap: Aarthi and John Reflect and Ruminate
Our two hosts play guest, and dive into the season’s high and lowlights, starting with the role humor played on the show. We also talk through the affordances of the “virtual” studio as opposed to the brick and mortar one where John recorded podcasts in “the before time.” Literary critics that we are, we can’tContinue reading “1.9 Season Wrap: Aarthi and John Reflect and Ruminate”
1.7 Helen Garner is Hacking at the Adverbs (Elizabeth McMahon, JP)
Helen Garner sits down with John and Elizabeth McMahon, a distinguished scholar of Australian literature. Helen’s novels range from the anti-patriarchy exuberance of Monkey Grip (1977) to the heartbreaking mortality at the heart of The Spare Room (2008). She has also authored a slew of nonfiction, plus screenplays for Jane Campion’s Two Friends and GillianContinue reading “1.7 Helen Garner is Hacking at the Adverbs (Elizabeth McMahon, JP)”
1.5 Getting Into Other Worlds: James Robertson with Penny Fielding (JP)
James Robertson, brilliant author of The Testament of Gideon Mack, and University of Edinburgh’s top prof. Penny Fielding beam in from their respective corners of Scotland. Extensive reference is made to (John’s madly beloved) James Hogg and to Robert Louis Stevenson, especially his Jack-the-Ripperesque Jekyll and Hyde. The violence that underpins slavery–aye, even in Scotland,Continue reading “1.5 Getting Into Other Worlds: James Robertson with Penny Fielding (JP)”
1.4 Feral Fiction: Catherine Lacey and Martin Puchner (JP)
Novel Dialogue sends Martin Puchner (polymathic author of The Written World and most recently The Language of Thieves) out to speak with Pew author Catherine Lacey. They go a-wandering. Lacey’s earlier works include a 2018 collection of short stories, Certain American States, and two novels: The Answers in 2017 and 2014’s Nobody is Ever Missing, a delightful roadContinue reading “1.4 Feral Fiction: Catherine Lacey and Martin Puchner (JP)”
1.2x Bonus: Orhan Pamuk reads and glosses the end of Snow
Pamuk plays scholar and novelist both. He reads the cheekily postmodernist final page of his novel Snow, while also talmudically interspersing comments on the text. Listen to the Bonus here:
1.2 That Demonic Novelistic Impulse: Orhan Pamuk with Bruce Robbins (JP)
In Episode Two of Novel Dialogue, critic and scholar Bruce Robbins sits down with Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk. They have taught classes on the political novel together at Columbia for years, and it shows. They ask how the novel can ever escape its roots in middle-class sensibility and perspective: Joseph Conrad comes up, but so does modern BrazilianContinue reading “1.2 That Demonic Novelistic Impulse: Orhan Pamuk with Bruce Robbins (JP)”
Novel Dialogue 