Willy Vlautin and Dashiell Hammett

Willy Vlautin and Dashiell Hammett

We were excited to have novelist and musician Willy Vlautin join us for a discussion about his career in both fields and his newest novel, The Left and the Lucky, which John Mulaney called “electric [https://x.com/mulaney/status/2061212293204156886?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet].” Willy covered his influences, why it was great to learn that some random lady hates him, and the interplay between his career as a songwriter and writer of fiction.   Then, what’s it like to read everything a single author wrote over just one summer? For us, of course, this means tackling crime fiction master Dashiell Hammett’s entire output. Hammett might not be on the New York Times’ “Best Summer Reads” list, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t curl up on a beach towel with his highly polished stories of violence, irony, and bootleg whiskey.   Works cited this episode:   Don’t Skip Out on Me, Willy Vlautin "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Joyce Carol Oates The Night Always Comes, Willy Vlautin Lean on Pete, Willy Vlautin Northline, Willy Vlautin A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin The Deverry Cycle, Katharine Kerr The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan The Sopranos, created by David Chase The Millennium trilogy, Stieg Larsson The Space Trilogy, C.S. Lewis The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien iCarly, created by Dan Scheider Executive Orders, Tom Clancy Dombey and Sons, Charles Dickens Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Jazz, Toni Morrison Sula, Toni Morrison The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett Spade and Archer, Joe Gores The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum

Episode 24: Deals with the Devil (with Ed Simon) and Firing Holden Caulfield

We’re going to Hell with literary man-about-town Ed Simon, founder of the Pittsburgh Review of Books [https://pghrev.com/] (with which our podcast is affiliated) and author of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain. Ed helps us figure out why the legend of Faust still feels fresh in our world today, where nobody ever makes short-sighted deals that turn out badly in the end.   Then, we put Catcher in the Rye on trial. Does it deserve its vaunted position in the high school curriculum? And what do we want high schoolers reading, anyway, you big phony?   Ed Simon has several books [https://edsimon.org/books/] out now.   Works cited this episode:   “Hypergraphia: On Prolific Writers and the Persistent Need to Produce [https://lithub.com/hypergraphia-on-prolific-writers-and-the-persistent-need-to-produce/],” Ed Simon, LitHub “The New Fabio is Claude [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/business/ai-claude-romance-books.html],” The New York Times The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe “Bart Sells His Soul,” The Simpsons Hellraiser, dir. Clive Barker Morphology of the Folk Tale, Vladimir Propp “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Charlie Daniels Band “Theophilus,” The Book of Drama, Hrotsvitha On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy D. Snyder “High School English and the Making of American Readers [https://academic.oup.com/alh/article/37/4/1033/8482978],” Alexander Manshel, American Literary History The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger “Texts Most Frequently Taught in U.S. Secondary Classrooms are Nearly Identical to List from Decades Ago [https://ncte.org/blog/2025/07/literature-use-in-secondary-english-classrooms/],” National Council of Teachers of English Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Crucible, Arthur Miller Macbeth, William Shakespeare Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Night, Elie Wiesel Hamlet, William Shakespeare Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury Frankenstein, Mary Shelley King Dork, Frank Portman The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain Tom Brown’s School Days, Thomas Hughes The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton 1984, George Orwell Brave New World, Aldous Huxley Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

Episode 23: Alice Martin and Is Exposition Gendered?

Women everywhere have an indescribable urge to get up and go west. That would be weird if it was real; in the hands of Alice Martin, author of the novel Westward Women, it’s not only weird but an incredible conceit for a thoughtful work of literary fiction that’s among the best books we’ve read this year. We were lucky to get Alice as a guest. This was followed by some deep thoughts about exposition in fiction, such as “what is it” and “is it for girls?” Turns out it’s for everyone, but there may be some expectations about how manly men writers don’t do much of it, because it’s not masculine to tell people what you’re thinking, I guess? Westward Women [https://alicejmartin.com/westward-women-page] is out now.   Works Cited this episode:   A New Home, Who’ll Follow? Caroline Kirkland On the Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle Bunny, Mona Awad The Husbands, Holly Gramazio Once and Again, Rebecca Serle The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy Brighton Rock, Graham Greene One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov The Housemaid, Freida McFadden Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins Legends of the Fall, dir. Edward Zwick

Episode 22: Nina McConigley

We had a great time with Nina McConigley, author of the new novel How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, which hits all the beats you want from a book where a character named Agatha Krishna says, “We blame the British.” Nina shared with us her thoughts on how colonialism divided not only countries but selves, and where characters (and real people) find themselves within those divides. Then, how can you tell if a translated work is good when you don’t know the author’s language? Maybe the translator created something great that isn’t really true to the original version, or brought down a great work with their bad translation. (Note to translators: We think you are cool and the above scenario is purely hypothetical.) How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder [https://ninamcconigley.com/fiction/how-to-commit-a-post-colonial-murder/] is available now.   Works cited this episode: Angels in America, Tony Kushner Cowboys and East Indians, Nina McConigley Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto by Mark Polizzotti The Odyssey, Homer, translated by Emily Wilson Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell On the Soul (De Anima), Aristotle, translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Episode 21: PEN/Bingham Prize winner Jared Lemus

We were fortunate to have Jared Lemus, author of the story collection Guatemalan Rhapsody, join us to discuss masculinity and empathy in fiction. Jared recently won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut story collection, and he was also once Nate’s co-worker. (Which is also a noteworthy achievement.) Plus, what if the author was peering over your shoulder while you read their book? They aren’t, but what if you intentionally imagined that they were, and it was up to you to figure out what they’re doing with their writing? This is all just hypothetical and not a real topic from our podcast. Works cited this episode: How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, Nina McConigley Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin Paradise Lost, John Milton “The Death of the Author [https://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes],” Roland Barthes “The Intentional Fallacy [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27537676],” W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and M.C. Beardsley The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett The Epic of Gilgamesh Beowulf