Open Source with Christopher Lydon

George Saunders on Life and the Afterlife

We’re going off script out here in the afterlife, in the imagination of the triple-threat novelist George Saunders. He’s eminent as a writer of stories and novels, as a critical reader, and as a teacher of modern fiction, and how to write it in the great Chekhov short story tradition. He’s also a man and an artist in a moment of ecstasy that he’s recently written about in his newsletter, describing a moment of overwhelming joy and sense of connection that reminded me of Emerson finding himself suddenly, he wrote, “glad to the brink of fear.” Vigil, the latest novel by George Saunders. He was looking into a puddle by the road and feeling an incredible thrill of insight into daily life. And George Saunders was writing about something like it about his last few days—on Stephen Colbert’s show, seeing best friends in New York, former students also in Philadelphia. The post George Saunders on Life and the Afterlife appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Pico Supreme

Pico Iyer is the global citizen and now, inadvertently, the movie star—in the winter’s hot movie, Marty Supreme. Across a hundred conversations over the years, we thought we knew everything about him, the transcendentalist Buddhist who grew up with the Dalai Lama as a sort of third parent in and out of his father’s house. He’s been the personal friend, almost, of our transcendentalists in this neighborhood, Emerson and Thoreau. He wrote a book about having the great novelist Graham Greene in his head. So who is this guy with the cameo role in Marty Supreme, standing athwart Timothée Chalamet’s raging drive to be the ping-pong champion of the universe? The post Pico Supreme appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Age of Hemispheric Empires

We’re getting our heads around the invasion of Venezuela and what feels like a rough new rule book for the so-called world order. Cue Greg Grandin, the hemispheric historian who wrote that big book America, América just in time last summer. Greg Grandin. The big theme in Grandin’s book is the very dicey business of sovereignty historically between North and South America. And Donald Trump has been teasing at that instability of borders and labels ever since he renamed the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf Of America.” He’s teasing us again this week when he says Cuba could be next, even Colombia on the list for invasion or regime change. The post Age of Hemispheric Empires appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

A Thousand Years of Capitalism

We’re talking about capitalism this time, trying to reckon the power of big money to shape—even rule—the human species. Capitalism is the one-word name given to a thousand-year-old force. It’s not a science or doctrine or mere politics. It’s a thoroughly human and ever-changing arrangement of affairs that can produce rapid and vast expansion of wealth in private hands. Sven Beckert. And Capitalism is the title of our guest Sven Beckert’s new thousand-page history of the whole thing. A thousand pages covering a thousand years. The opening line in his book is, “We live in a world created by capitalism.” How did it happen? Is it still happening, for better or worse? Did it have to happen? The post A Thousand Years of Capitalism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

John Updike’s Vocation

We’re rediscovering John Updike in the afterlife of a great writer. The Selected Letters of John Updike, just published, come to 800 pages of unguarded messages to his wives and lovers, to his mother and his editors. We’re turning to his kids for a fresh measure of the artist who cracked open the sexual revolution of the 1960s and lived it his own way. Miranda Updike, Michael Updike, Elizabeth Updike Cobblah, and David Updike. Photograph by Jameson Sempey, Reading Eagle, courtesy of A.A. Knopf. Couples was his breakthrough novel and bestseller in 1968. His second son, Michael, and his second daughter, Miranda, were adolescent witnesses to the story. We’re gathered in Michael’s house on the North Shore of Boston, the heart of Updike Country, to resurface the glow in John Updike’s prose and the pleasure in his company. The post John Updike’s Vocation appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.