Let's talk Lit!

Things to read…

C.K. — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 14:36:17 +0000

I’m going to actually record a new podcast soon. I swear. Here’s some of the books I’ve read / am in the process of reading that I plan on discussing:

Get to reading, you scalawags!

Chronic City

C.K. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:44:13 +0000

Sorry for the long hiatus here at Let’s Talk Lit! I have had a Fall full of weddings, work, and I’m a soon-to-be father having to prepare for the arrival of my son early next year. All that weight of life has precluded me from being able to devote any time to this podcast.

That being said, I’ve started reading Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City on my Kindle, I invite you to join me, and I’ll try to record a new podcast this weekend. If you’ve not read Motherless Brooklyn by Lethem, I highly recommend that you read it first (just because I think it’s his best work, an excellent read, and it’s also very much about New York and it’s being made into a movie starring Edward Norton to be released in 2010).

In the Shadow of no Towers

C.K. — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:25:37 +0000

Today’s Let’s Talk Lit! is part two of my discussion with my friend Trevor Dodge (you can find part 1 here), where we begin discussing Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of no Towers, 9/11, and a bit of Don DeLillo. It’s a long rambling discussion that stretches over forty minutes long, but we touch on some interesting bits, I think. The discussion will continue in another podcast episode to be released later this week where we’ll continue our 9/11 discussion and talk some about David Foster Wallace. Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Dante’s Inferno, the video game

C.K. — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:14:44 +0000

Today’s Let’s Talk Lit! is the first part of what is going to be a multipart conversation with my friend, Trevor Dodge. In this segment, Trevor introduces himself and then we discuss Dante’s Inferno, the video game, as a cultural artifact and its connection with The Divine Comedy. I decided to bring it up, as Trevor wrote an interesting essay about the video game over at First Wall Rebate: Dante’s Inferno: The Age Of Anti-Intellectual Property.

This leads into a discussion of Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers, which we will begin discussing in the next installment of this multi-part episode. The music I use in the intro to this episode is an excellent mashup of Jay-Z and The Cure.

“In the South” by Salman Rushdie

C.K. — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:00:58 +0000

Sorry about how completely rambling today’s podcast is, but I haven’t done one of these in a couple of weeks and wanted to get something up. I’m still plugging away at DeLillo’s Falling Man: A Novel, but I’ve been reading a lot of other things as well, including this short story by Salman Rushdie, “In the South,” which recently appeared in the New Yorker. Today’s podcast discusses this story.

Also, I’m going to have a few guests on the podcast soon (hopefully), including Trevor Dodge, whom I attended Illinois State University with and whom managed to avoid falling out of Academentia, as I did, and my former co-worker Chris Miller, the lead developer of Podiobooks.com and a Parsec-award nominated podcaster.

Subscribe to Let’s Talk Lit on iTunes.

The One in which C.K. rambles for 40 minutes

C.K. — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:30:30 +0000

So I started out today’s podcast thinking that I was only going to talk for a little while about what I had been reading and what I wanted to read, without really talking much at all about Don DeLillo’s Falling Man: A Novel. What ended up happening, however, is that I started going randomly through the notes of my reading journal and found more and more to talk about: DeLillo, 9/11 and the recent Airforce One fly over of New Jersey and Manhattan, Samuel Beckett, Mikhail Bulgakov, Ernest Hemingway, how to shock college students and grab their attention, and J.R.R. Tolkien and Norse Mythology.

So ignore everything I say at the beginning of the podcast about it being brief and skipping ahead, etc. Sit back and enjoy and let me know what you think of this 40 minute podcast. If you grow tired of it and it’s getting too long, make sure you jump to the very end to hear a little easter egg that I tagged on (especially if you know me personally). If you listen and do grow tired of it, please critique in the comments below and let me know when you stopped listening, what I should do to make it better, or how long you think is a reasonable length for a literature podcast.

Books mentioned in today’s Let’s Talk Lit! (subscribe via iTunes):

Subscribe via iTunes

C.K. — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:27:04 +0000

Let’s Talk Lit! is now available via iTunes. Here’s the direct link (will launch iTunes), and it is also linked to the picture in the sidebar.

DeLillo’s Falling Man, The Body Artist, performance art and perception

C.K. — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:22:51 +0000

After reading the first four chapters of the book, I decided to put together this quick discussion of some possible points of interest to focus on while reading Don DeLillo’s Falling Man: A Novel. Given that the “Falling Man” in the text is actually a performance artist, you may want to read DeLillo’s 2001 novella, The Body Artist, whose main character is, as the title indicates, a body artist. One theme that is already starting to jump out at me while reading, and which I discuss in the podcast, is the theme of perception. How do Americans—and perhaps even more specifically, New Yorkers—perceive both themselves and events in a 21st Century world post September 11th?

Introducing Let’s Talk Lit!

C.K. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:00:59 +0000

There’s nothing much to hear in this first podcast episode. It’s just me introducing the idea behind the podcast and the first book that I’ll be discussing in the next podcast, should you want to read along: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man: A Novel.

If you’re interested in participating in the podcast or joining the Let’s Talk Lit! book club, leave a comment.

Today’s episode: Let’s Talk Lit! Introduction