#season3 – Novel Dialogue

14. That Art Life

Are authors ever as interesting as their books? Usually not. Yet writers today are compelled to promote not just their work but themselves.

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)”

13. Inventing an Archive

One of the first things marginalized researchers in the humanities discover is that the choices about who and what materials are important enough to include in archives, and how that material will be presented, actively works to nullify non-whiteness and queerness.

12. Our Bodies, Our Time Machines

I’ve become aware of the fuzziness of my experience of time. Days slide together or drift apart, making the present feel elastic and stretchy. This elasticity—part of getting older and living through a global pandemic—is also the bread and butter of time travel narratives…

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)”

11. A Good Day at the Old Sweatshop

How can a narrative locked in place register the sprawl of global supply chains?

3.3 In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans (EH)

Ruth Ozeki, whose most recent novel is The Book of Form and Emptiness, speaks with critic Rebecca Evans and guest host Emily Hyde. This is a conversation about talking books, the randomness and serendipity of library shelves, and what novelists can learn in the editing room of a movie like Mutant Hunt. Ozeki is an ordained ZenContinue reading “3.3 In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans (EH)”

10. Salome, Your Silence is Too Loud for This Noisy Place

Putuma and Galgut explore the persistent negation of Black subjectivity and how this negation continues to haunt South African public life. What happens when laws change but hearts don’t?

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)”

9. Dining in With Chang-rae Lee

“Food is about being human.” There is an undeniable link between food and mood, but isn’t it odd for a literary critic to take an interest in culinary matters?

3.1 On Being Unmoored: Chang-rae Lee Charts Fiction with Anne Anlin Cheng (SW)

Season three of Novel Dialogue launches in partnership with Public Books and introduces some fresh new voices into the mix. John and Aarthi welcome Chris Holmes, Emily Hyde, Tara Menon, and Sarah Wasserman into the ND pod as guest hosts. And have they brought a series of scintillating conversations with them! In our series premiere,Continue reading “3.1 On Being Unmoored: Chang-rae Lee Charts Fiction with Anne Anlin Cheng (SW)”