Great American Novel

More celebrated for her dark, satirical short stories, Flannery O'Connor nevertheless burst on the literary scene in 1952 in her mid-twenties with her debut novel, Wise Blood. The story of a would-be preacher resistant to God's grace, the plot features some of the most bizarre and twisted left turns in American literature: self-blindings with lye, underaged ingenues named Sabbath, stolen mummies and gorilla suits, and enough vehicular homicides and car wreckage to make one renew one's AAA membership. For most readers, Hazel Motes's struggle to reconcile divine providence with the desire for free will is a tough conservative theology lesson to swallow. In this episode we explore how O'Connor employed the trope of the grotesque in Southern fiction to make her dogmatic point, asking whether the sheer weirdness of her characters distracts from her message.

In Episode 32 of the Great American Novel podcast, we slip through time with Billy Pilgrim as we shuffle between the character’s experiences as a prisoner of war and first hand witness to the Dresden firebombing in World War II and then trip the light fantastic to the far flung planet Tralfamadore.  Or…do we?  Yes, this episode has your intrepid explorers hiding in Kurt Vonnegut’s masterful 1969 post-modern novel SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. We ponder the author’s central questions: are all war novels doomed to sensationalize war?  Can you capture such a horrific experience realistically? Must we become automatons to survive wars?   The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture.  Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration.  Your hosts are Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough, professors with little time and less sense who nonetheless enjoy a good book banter.  All opinions are their own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants.  Brief correction: in the episode Scott states that the protagonist of The Forever War is frozen cryogenically; this is incorrect.  He is sent to places at relativistic speed and upon returning a great deal of time has passed. All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/ [https://locolobomusic.com/].  The trailer clips are from the film adaptation, Slaughterhouse-Five, adapted in a screenplay by Stephen Geller, dir. George Roy Hill. We may be contacted at greatamericannovelpodcast (@) gmail.com.

Few novels have had the cultural impact of Jack Kerouac's speed-fueled mad dash across the continent in search of kicks as On the Road. One doubts the 1960s ever would have happened had Kerouac's Beat Generation coterie not inspired a mass embrace (and mockery) of bohemian jazz culture rebelling against the conformity of Eisenhower-era conservatism and Atomic Age anxieties. This episodes explores the background of Kerouac's famous experiment in spontaneous prose, noting its affinities with both the picaresque and the roman a clef. We talk such pivotal influences as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady and the steep price of fame the increasingly embittered Kerouac paid as he became the guru to the hipsters and hippies. And we do it all while snapping our fingers, Daddio.

A couple of weeks ago—after this episode was recorded, but before it was edited and posted—the famous author Stephen King posted online his top ten novels of all time—and among them was Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools.  This 1962 book was the first novel by Porter, a great American writer who had mostly worked in the short story genre and as a journalist and editor.  The novel tells of a German passenger liner traveling from Mexico to different ports of Europe in the 1930s.  It presents a multinational, highly varied cast of characters.  Ship of Fools received rave reviews at first, before then suffering through the obligatory critical backlash. The film rights sold for what at the time was a kaboodle of money and the movie was nominated for and received a number of Academy Awards. Hosts Kirk Curnutt and Scott Yarbrough wrestle with these questions: is this work a great American novel after all?  Are we all fools bound on an eternal quest for understanding or relevance or fares with inclusive food and drinks?  Why did the author take thirty years (almost) to finish the book? Come steam away with us as we sort it out.  Listeners are warned as always: there be spoilers here! The film audio clips are from the trailer to Ship of Fools, directed and produced in 1965 by Stanley Kramer and starring Vivien Leigh and Lee Marvin, among others.  Released by Columbia Pictures.  The show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/ [https://locolobomusic.com/].

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a singularly unique war novel: whereas most depictions of the horrors of combat and the trauma of the battlefield are naturalistic, attempting to inflict upon the reader the violence the prose describes and terrifying us with the prospect that humans do not rise to heroic occasions, Stephen Crane's novel is impressionistic, blurring detail at the edges and giving scattershot glimpses of confusion, guilt, regret, and even envy and resentment. Through the story of Private Henry Fleming (aka "The Youth"), Red Badge is arguably the novel that best encapsulates the phrase "the fog of war," a term credited to the 19th-century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. In this episode we explore how Crane---who was not yet born when the battle of Chancellorsville that is the setting occurred---managed to capture the experience so authentically that Union veterans assumed he had worn the blue alongside them. The novel launched its twenty-four-year-old author into the type of fame few writers experience: as a journalist, pulp writer, and celebrity observer of international conflagrations (not to mention fan of bordellos), Crane epitomized the image of the author as a globetrotting adventurer---an image only elevated to tragic irony when he died from tuberculosis in 1900.