The Shakespeare and Company Interview
Arts:Books
Our guest this week is Brandon Taylor, whose new book The Late Americans is a stark retooling of the campus novel for the 21st century. Taking a university town in Iowa as his canvas, Taylor depicts the lives of a loose group of friends and associates: Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima—students of writing and dance—as time barrels them towards the end of their studies and the harsh realities of the so-called “real” world beyond. The novel lives in Taylor’s delicate and perceptive handling of the complicated interplay of money, class, race, art and sex—the bonds each of these can form between us and the divides they create. It is a book rich in ideas and reflections about contemporary life, contemporary America in particular, but these would all be for nothing without the meticulously wrought human comedy—in all its beauty and ugliness—at its core.
Buy The Late Americans: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-late-americans
Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals, a national bestseller, was awarded The Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He was the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-england
Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w
Get bonus content on PatreonHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Viet Thanh Nguyen on Memory, Migration and Model Minorities
Ottessa Moshfegh on bringing Eileen to the screen
Percival Everett on James, his subversive reimagining of Huckleberry Finn
On Allen Ginsberg: His life, his work and his archives, with Pat Thomas and Peter Hale
Bidding adieu to Freeman’s literary journal, with Jakuta Alikavazovic, Deborah Landau, Juan Gabriel Vazquez, and John Freeman
On Friendship, with Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen
Annabelle Hirsch, A History of Women in 101 Objects
☕Proust Questionnaire: Holly McNish & Michael Pedersen☕
BLOOMCAST | HOLIDAY SPECIAL | THE DEAD
😱On Witold Gombrowicz’s The Possessed, with Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Adam Thirlwell😱
👭🏼Naomi Klein on Doppelgangers, Conspiracy Theories, and the Shadowlands we all inhabit…👭🏼
Claire-Louise Bennett on Nightflowers, her immersive installation at Museum of Literature Ireland
🥘On Eating through the Endtimes, with C Pam Zhang🥘
🐕On Life, Art and the Line Between the Two, with Jo Ann Beard🐕
👁️Sandra Newman on Julia, her re-imagining of George Orwell’s 1984 👁️
⛵Bidding adieu to a literary journal, with John Freeman (Feat. readings from Sandra Cisneros, Aleksandar Hemon, Rebecca Makkai, and Mieko Kawakami read by translator Hitomi Yoshio)⛵
🛏️On Not Sleeping, with Marie Darrieussecq🛏️
🐖On Populism, Post-Truth, and Piggybacking George Orwell. Adam Biles in conversation with Rob Doyle.🐖
💎Sunday Poetry: Emilie Moorhouse reads from Emerald Wounds, her new translation of the poems of Joyce Mansour💎
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Anne of Avonlea
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends