Reading Writers

Reading Writers' first season draws to a close. To celebrate, Charlotte and Jo speak with the wise, bold, and original Merve Emre, who brings news of a secret Plautian aspect to Erich Segal's 1970 novel Love Story—the big book so bad it wrecked its author's career. Or was it?Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. Her books include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, The Personality Brokers (selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and The Spectator), The Ferrante Letters (winner of the 2021 PROSE award for literature), and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. She has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker.Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She writes semi-regularly in newsletter form, with additional work linked on charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.comLearn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jo greets the universal subject in Rebecca Renner's Gator Country and Charlotte attacks and is attacked by Jane Eyre. Then they're joined by matchless prose stylist and beloved genius Daniel M. Lavery to discuss Anthony Hope's 1894 swashbuckler, The Prisoner of Zenda.Daniel Lavery is the author of Something That May Shock and Discredit You and The Chatner newsletter. His forthcoming debut novel Women's Hotel is available to preorder!Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She writes semi-regularly in newsletter form, with additional work linked on charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.comLearn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo and Charlotte throw their souls into a conversation concerning C.S. Lewis, Narnia, medievalists, and Christianity before the luminous Hanna Phifer (36:20) joins to bring listeners back to the present moment (of polyamory and food delivery apps) with Raven Leilani’s Luster.Hanna Phifer is a critic and journalist who can be found at hannaphifer.com and on all social media platforms at @writtenbyhannaSend questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She writes semi-regularly in newsletter form, with additional work linked on charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.comLearn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charlotte speculates on why Prep is still Curtis Sittenfeld’s best novel, and Jo (17:46) endorses Jeff Sharlet’s sensitive, surprising The Undertow. The scintillating Nicolás Medina Mora (24:05) then joins to revolutionize autofiction discourse with his theory about Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station.Nicolás Medina Mora is a Mexican writer. He currently works as an editor at Revista Nexos, a monthly magazine of culture and politics published in Mexico City. Before that, he lived in the United States for ten years, where he worked as a financial reporter for Reuters and as a police reporter for BuzzFeed. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. His first novel, América del Norte, is forthcoming from Soho Press in May 2024.Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She writes semi-regularly in newsletter form, with additional work linked on charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.comLearn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo (The Shipping News) and Charlotte (“Brokeback Mountain”) share notes on Iva Dixit-endorsed Annie Proulx before incendiary fiction writer Tony Tulathimutte (22:30) shocks by revealing that Alasdair Gray has written more books than just Lanark.Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and the forthcoming Rejection. He has received an O. Henry Award and Whiting Award, and teaches the independent writing class CRIT in Brooklyn.Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo recommends Augusto Higa Oshiro’s restrained The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu, while Charlotte’s encounter with the first Twilight book (13:00) leads ineluctably to the Black Eyed Peas. Decorated journalist Connie Wang (26:30) joins to share the delights of Sanmao, the prolific Chinese memoirist who puts Joan Didion to shame. Connie Wang is a journalist and writer based in Los Angeles. She was born in Jinan, China and raised in Minnesota. She’s the recipient of several Front Page Awards for her fashion reporting at Refinery29, and an Online Journalism Award for a multimedia essay with the NYT about a generation of Asian American women named after Connie Chung. My book, Oh My Mother! A MEMOIR IN NINE ADVENTURES is with Viking Books, and you can buy it now (please buy it now).Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The writers cast a wide net today as Charlotte goes meg gaga for M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Jo (15:00) expounds on the many pleasures of Iris Yamashita’s Village in the Dark. The hosts also touch upon Sally Hepworth, J.M. Barrie, Telluria, their beloved Lanark by Alasdair Gray, and the entirety of French literature. The brilliant Osita Nwanevu (29:10) brings some dignity to the proceedings as he shares his experience of reading Walt Whitman’s strange and beguiling Democratic Vistas.Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist at The Guardian. He was previously a staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Gawker, In These Times, and the Chicago Reader. He is the former editor in chief of the South Side Weekly, a Chicago alternative newspaper.Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo finds surprising depth to Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth and Charlotte (8:35) fantasizes that her nonexistent celebrity romance novel is better than Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You, with a brief bonus discussion of Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry. The great mind and Mobility author Lydia Kiesling (25:40) then joins to reflect on Lucky Jim and the ways our parents’ book collections shape us as readers. Read Jo's review of Asymmetry from 2018 here.Lydia Kiesling is a novelist and culture writer. Her first novel, The Golden State, was a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her second novel, Mobility, a national bestseller, was named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Time, and NPR, among others. It is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her essays and nonfiction have been published in outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, and The Cut. Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo’s spent the weekend on two books that have their seal of approval—The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright and The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War by Chad L. Williams—while Charlotte (12:35) has been getting Edna O’Brien-pilled. The inimitable Iva Dixit (25:00) stops by to share the remarkable story of her spite-buy of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, a much-loved novel that has “rewired her brain.”Read Iva’s work on Sean Paul, Oppenheimer, and Retin-A.Read the Andrea Dworkin essay mentioned in this episode here.Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo recommends Tomorrow, Perhaps the Future, by Sarah Watling, while Charlotte (14:00) has some deep thoughts about The Bridges of Madison County and bad books in general. At (32:00), they’re joined by New York magazine’s finest, Rachel Handler, who has a fraught relationship with Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend.Read Rachel’s writing and find her on Twitter at @rachel_handler or on Instagram at @rachlyha. Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com. Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.comJo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.