Great American Novel
Great American Novel
Latest Episodes
Ep 39: Going Berserk in the American Pastoral
In 1997 Philip Roth entered a brilliant late phrase of a career that no one really saw coming. While certainly one of the greats of later twentieth century American fiction, he was widely seen as spinning variations on his favorite fixations, s...
Ep. 38: Now for Something Completely Different: the Great American Short Story Cycle
And now for something completely different. In its 38th episode, the Great American Novel Podcast throws away its foundational genre with no more regard for decorum than cats and dogs shacking up in sheer defiance of the apocalypse. In th...
EP 37: Engaging the Existential in Walker Percy's THE MOVIEGOER
Walker Percy's 1961 debut novel The Moviegoer---which shocked the literary world when it came out of nowhere to win the National Book Award against some stiff competition---may strike contemporary readers as an elusive novel. The first...
Episode 36: Burning Down the Days with THE FLAMETHROWERS by Rachel Kushner
It’s 1976. A woman named Reno in leather motorcycle gear descends upon the Bonneville Salt Flats on a state of the art Moto Valera motorcycle. Is speed her goal? Is it the land art created by her tracks across the flats? Is her roll...
Episode 35: Escaping War for Love in Ernest Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS
Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms is probably the most famous war novel in American literary history. Inspired by his own wounding on the Italian front shortly before his nineteenth birthday, Hemingway tells th...