95: The Way We Live Now
In a large bag, combine shady financiers, dissolute aristocrats and marriageable heiresses; spice with lower-class stereotypes and brash Americans to taste; add one improbable paragon of old-fashioned virtue; shake vigorously for 800 pages; serve with comic relish, sentimental syrup and…
94: Alien Hearts
What happens when the “modern woman” of the late 19th century takes a lead role in one of the oldest plots on the planet? How does social history finds its way into romantic psychology, and vice versa? The Sometime Seminar…
93: The Moonstone
Valuables vanish, comic/gothic stereotypes abound, the plot twists and the repressed returns as The Sometime Seminar discusses The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins, which is by some accounts the first detective novel. Download this episode
92: Norstrilia
Whiz-bang pulp exuberance + witty, inventive style + just the right amount of psychological depth and moral/political seriousness = ???. The Sometime Seminar discusses the midcentury science-fiction stories of Cordwainer Smith, the best of which are selected — along with…
91: Algernon Blackwood
What’s so scary about trees, shrubs and untamed landscapes? How come so many turn-of-the-20th-century weird fiction writers were reactionary bigots? And why are they now being summoned from the crypts of genre history and niche publication to walk the earth…
90: Concerning the Angels
Emotional intensity: plenty. Haunting and evocative symbolist/surrealist imagery: in spades. Conceptual organization of the footnotable, explicatable variety: who needs it? The Sometime Seminar discusses Concerning the Angels (Sobre los angeles, 1929), a book of poems by the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti. Download this…
89: Omensetter’s Luck
Tormented interiority squares off against dumb luck, in prose as sparkling as the stream of consciousness is muddy. The Sometime Seminar discusses Omensetter’s Luck (1966), William Gass’s first novel. Download this episode
88: The Last Man
It’s the end of the world as we know it! It’s the end of good writing as even the 1820s knew it! But we feel fine: it’s the beginning of science fiction. The Sometime Seminar discusses The Last Man (1826), a…
87: The Schooldays of Jesus
Your favorite troubled quasi-messiah returns, with all the philosophical conversation and enigmatic meta-allegory you can handle…and a grisly murder subplot, too! Featuring special surprise guests from literature and history. The Sometime Seminar discusses J.M. Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus, the…
86: The Passion According to G.H.
Modernist novel meets mystical treatise, psychological self-investigation meets self-annihilating via negativa, smashed cockroach meets tongue. The Sometime Seminar discusses The Passion According to G.H. (Portuguese 1964/English 1988, 2012) by Clarice Lispector. Download this episode
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