Canonical
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Episodes of Canonical
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What can we as readers do to change which books the world considers 'important'? Three years ago, we started this podcast with a mission to create a more inclusive, contemporary canon. Were we successful? In our final episode we take a look bac
Everyone is talking about the multiverse these days. Why do we so often hear about alternate histories and alternate worlds in the fiction we see in novels and on television? In today's episode we try to answer these questions by taking another
We've discussed how Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go both is and isn't about cloning. So what is it about? We talk this week about other concerns that come into play and how the vague nature of the novel might allow the reader to overlay such e
Never Let Me Go is an unusual novel: Can there be a book about clones that isn't about cloning? In this episode we discuss the genre of this novel and how that genre influences the way it treats its themes. We expect science fiction to show us
Spoilers abound in this review of Kazuo Ishiguro's alternate reality classic Never Let Me Go. One of us found it engrossing. One of us found it bland. The third was of two minds. Who would have guessed? Our discussion includes a deliberati
We wind down our discussion of Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld with the question of how much sidestepping of the facts should be permissible in alternate history fiction. Also, is this book a push back against the importance of likability in politi
We continue our discussion of Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld by examining its political point of view (or lack thereof). Despite taking on one of the most famous politicians in the world as its subject, Rodham feels pretty light on political inten
A surprising pick from Eyad is this week's read and review. Sittenfeld's Rodham, an alternate history what-if about Hilary Clinton, spurs discussion of the ethics of Real Person Fiction, what it means to be a "book club book", and our reaction
In our last week with George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, we talk about whether it matters if some of the "quotations" from supposedly contemporary sources are fictional, and if it would matter if all of them were made up. From there, we di
In our second look at George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, we examine whether his book has more to say about history or theology, its mixture or Buddhist and Christian ideas about the afterlife, and whether Saunders really cares about the aft
This week we start our new series Alternate Histories/Alternate Realities with a novel from a master of the short story George Saunders. We loved Saunders's short stories-- does his debut novel measure up? For this series we will review and d
Today we conclude our series Life under Communism by taking a second look at all three novels, The Passport, Satantango, and The Garlic Ballads. We talk about whether there are any takeaways about Communism for us here, or whether that's even s
For our last week with Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads, we question whether the writer deserves the cold treatment he gets from others in the literary community and beyond. Is he a CCP stooge, or is there more to his writing? Can his crude language
In our second look at Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads we examine the complicated publication history of this novel: bannings, unbannings, swapped chapters, and a dubious quotation delivered by the ghost of Stalin in Mo Yan's dreams. If the novel ha
This week, we review Mo Yan's novel The Garlic Ballads. Mo's work is intertwined with the politics of his country but we do our best to focus on the book itself (the political discussion will come in future episodes). We also try to determine
László Krasznahorkai's Satantango is a book with a distinct, challenging style that can annoy some readers, so why is it written that way? Join us as we try to solve that mystery, discuss whether novelists need to follow rules, which styles can
We're back with more of László Krasznahorkai's grim world in Satantango. We keep the giggles going a little before delving into whether László offers us any hope in the novel and whether this book really is devoid of politics. We also discuss
This week we shine a light onto the bleak world of László Krasznahorkai with a review of his prize-winning debut novel Satantango. We discuss whether or not the plot is important to this book and whether the European literati is more intellige
We're concluding our look at Herta Müller's The Passport by examining it as a feminist novel. How does the novel's exploration of sexual exchange interact with the the way Müller presents 1980s Romania? And what exactly does it mean to be a gre
We're back to discuss more of The Passport by Herta Müller. This week, we talk about the German concept of heimat, as well as Müller's criticisms of the concept as introduced in her 2003 essay "Der König verneigt sich und tötet" ("The King Bows
We kick off our new series Life Under Communism, with a review of The Passport by Nobel prize winner Herta Müller. In a terse prose style, Müller uses surreal imagery to tell the story of ethnic Germans living in 1980s Romania and what they mus
Today we conclude our series Rich Country/Poor Country by taking a second look at all three novels, The Disaster Tourist, The Sympathizer, and Paradise. We'll take a closer look at how forcefully these authors present their political views, the
We're concluding our discussion of Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise by taking a look at what it has to say about justice and colonialism. We connect this novel to the ethical debate about the origins of justice. Can Eyad successfully make the case
We're continuing our discussion of Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise, today exploring whether a comparison to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is fair, and what the purpose of the religious subtext might be. Does it hurt the novel to have hidden me
We're concluding our series Rich Country, Poor Country with Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise, a quiet but surprising novel that is at turns perhaps a hero's journey, a travel narrative, a historical fiction, a bildungsroman, and a philosophical exp
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