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The debut novel from Tommy Orange has been on almost every Best Of 2018 list, but does the Literary Disco trio agree? In this week’s episode, Julia, Rider, and Tod discuss the complex and multifaceted approach to identity—and how Orange avoids the usual MFA clichés—as There, There follows a collection of Native American characters in the build-up to a powwow in Oakland, California. From the episode Rider Strong on gaining perspective on Native identity If you’re going to write a book that tackles Native American identity—and this goes for every Native American writer, I guess—are you going to make it a book about traditional stories, in the way I think Leslie Marlon Silko inserts those stories into her novels and into her writing, or are you going to avoid all that and just focus on contemporary Indian life and what it means to be an urban Indian in Oakland? I feel like Tommy Orange really manages to spread a wide net by focusing on… I mean, there are so many characters in this book—I guess there are twelve main characters—with their own point of views and every single one of them wrestles with the question of how native they are and what that means. I thought it was incredibly refreshing to have every character conscious and aware of that issue. For somebody like me who grew up white, in a very privileged situation, in white privileged society, being able to have an access point where it’s like, What does that mean to not feel native enough or to feel too native or to be embarrassed. There are so many angles. Then there are the characters who feel too white or not white enough. Each chapter has a person with their own history, their own life, and their own concept of nativeness and native identity. In every chapter you have to hit the reset button on what that means and what you think that means. By the end of the book, you’re exhausted and it’s taken a lot of work, but you do also feel there is something you walked away with that means something, the layering and the literal intersection of these characters meeting at this powwow, it’s beautiful and meaningful. * Tod Goldberg on a big novel that “looks out” This is a novel that looks out. This is why it’s on the “Best Of” lists this year. This is why it goes beyond the rushed quality of the shooting at the end, and it is something larger because it is asking huge fundamental questions about society and where Native Americans belong in the world today and how they can disappear in an urban landscape like Oakland. I grew up in Northern California. I had absolutely no sense of a Native American population in that area whatsoever other than the missions and that Junipero Serra enslaved all of them. But I didn’t know anything about urban Indians living essentially 15 minutes away from me my entire life. Here in Palm Springs it’s part of the fabric of the city. Every street is named for a Native American. The bands and the tribes are a part of every day life here. Even today, I’m recording from my office at UC Riverside and down the hall we have the Native American college that rents space here. For There, There, I feel this book transcends all the sort of normal “staring at my belly button” MFA fiction because it is about something larger and Tommy Orange has something more important to say than how sad people are. There’s something bigger. Episode 137: There, There on Literary Disco Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

No better way to start the new month than with some of Literary Disco’s classic games. First, Rider presents “Judge a Book By Its Cover,” where he reads the first lines of a book and Julia and Tod must guess what the book is with no other context. Then, Tod presents a new game, Rock Paper Scissors, where Rider and Julia must decide what is a real poem, lyrics from a pop song, lines from a Rupi poem, or a poem written by our very own Tod Goldberg. Let the games begin! Some of the books discussed in this episode include: Ben Lerner, 10:44 A lot of it is about art and reflections on different forms of art, and writers versus. visual artist. It’s really good, and slightly pretentious. T.H. White, The Once and Future King It becomes this great look at the value of experiential education as opposed to book learning. George W.S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context It is a crazy manifesto about the dangers of television and the dangers of what he saw—I guess he was writing this in the seventies—where this country was heading . . . I want to re-read it in the age of Trump because a lot of his predictions and his assessments have proved to be true. Episode 138: Let The Games Begin! on Literary Disco Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Welcome to 2019, the perfect year to dive into the classic tale of… Tarzan! Ok, the first Tarzan was published in 1912, but this year marks the hundredth anniversary of The Jungles of Tarzan, in which a teenage Tarzan grapples with being a teenager. Seriously. We all know the story: after the death of his parents a boy is raised by apes, and encounters humans again years later when an expedition enters the jungle. How has this story aged over time? Will Tarzan be Rider’s next project? Join Julia, Rider, and Tod this week to find out! Rider Strong: It’s so important that [Tarzan] achieves literacy. He goes through so much work and teaches himself how to read, even though he doesn’t speak English, which actually doesn’t make any sense. If he doesn’t have words to begin with, why would he? He reads what he calls the bugs on the pages in the books that form themselves into letters that then tell the story. It’s so absurd, but then you realize literacy is what Edgar Rice Burroughs had to insert in order for his hero to be better than the savages. If he doesn’t have literacy, then he’s just like the tribal people of Africa that, of course, the book takes such pains to separate him from. ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT It reminded me that in the 19th century there were a lot of books that revolved around this idea, like Frankenstein, right? He learns language (these noble savages that teach themselves how to read!)… a trope that had to get worked in here even though it makes no sense. Julia Pistell: But he’s not a noble savage, he’s a savage noble. He has to learn how to read. * RS: Can you insert a white person into an African landscape without it being a colonialist fantasy? Or do you tell the story of Tarzan from the perspective of an African kid that was raised by gorillas, and what is that story about? Julia really nailed it when she said so much of this seems to be based on “nature vs. nurture,” and playing that out in story. And obviously the point of playing that out for Edgar Rice Burroughs was to assert the authority of Western white men, and I don’t even know if you can approach this story without it. That’s why I’m surprised that Disney still makes versions of it. How do you avoid that problem? In a way I think there is probably a lot of racist, colonial stuff in King Kong too, but there’s something so fantastical and otherworldly about that story that you can approach it in an interesting way, or a new way. But the very basis of Tarzan is steeped in something awful. Episode 136: Tarzan King of the Apes on Literary Disco Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina is the first graphic novel to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize. It’s also a beautiful and heartbreaking rendering of the contemporary American psyche and a pointed commentary on how media has allowed conspiracy and paranoia to run absolutely rampant in the absence of answers. Join Literary Disco‘s Julia, Rider, and Tod as they discuss this very important work, along with the graphic novel’s realistic depiction of the male human body (mostly in underwear), feeling empathy for those with views unlike ours, and a brief tangent on the recent Springsteen on Broadway Netflix special. From the episode: Julia Pistell: I was so riveted by how many of these panels [in Sabrina] were about silence, especially the boyfriend [Teddy] sitting alone in a home that isn’t his and not knowing what to do with himself and deciding to listen to this conspiracy theory radio, and how little of this novel is spoken words or thoughts of the character, but just zoomed in on them, isolated. Tod Goldberg: It touches on the isolation, desperation, malaise, and fear that the American experience has become. And also the interconnectivity that media has allowed conspiracy and paranoia run absolutely rampant in the absence of answers for something that are definitive, chaos and conspiracy always going to be the thing that certain parts of fringe society holds onto. Rider Strong: An important part of the art is that it focuses on the body. This people are real, leading boring, banal lives, being naked and being unattractively naked and being depressed and sitting on couches … To be in the presence of another human being wearing a Snuggle is something you don’t plan on, especially something you don’t plan on reading in a comic book, right? That’s the antithesis of comic books. Comic books are supposed to make the visuals exciting, with violence if anything, sex maybe, and supposed to spice up real life and make it the most interesting read you can. This book does the exact opposite. It starts with blank faces, people getting coffee, people carrying their cats from room to room, people starting out of windows, people listening to a radio show. There are like 20 pages of a radio, just a close-up of a radio and a guy naked listening to it. That’s anti-comic book writing. It is so profound because so much of the message of this book is these people have bodies, these people have lives, they have lovers, they have thoughts, they have friends, they have childhood friends and shitty jobs, and if you take that away from them, if you remove their personhood and physical reality, it is so easy to say they are crisis actors or they are manipulating or lying. We all as a culture, we are so easy to dismiss other human beings. I know I do it on the level of Trump voters. It’s so easy for me to think the average Trump voter as someone I don’t understand, who I have a couple images in my head and it’s out there and I don’t really think about them. And these people lead real lives and everyday experiences and their shitty jobs, and this book is such a little empathy bomb. To say whichever side in any situation, whether it’s a murder that gets politicized in this case or something you’re hearing about on the radio, there’s a human being on the other side of that experience that’s having to live that. That message, I haven’t felt that more in years than I did with this book. Episode 135: Sabrina, Men in Underpants, and Bruce Springsteen on Literary Disco Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

This week, Julia, Rider, and Tod discuss the best books they read in 2018, including Tara Westover’s Educated, Arthur Krystal’s This Thing We Call Literature, and Jonathan Weisman’s (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.  Episode 134: The Books We Loved in 2018 on Literary Disco Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

It’s the holidays! A time to deck the halls, grab some eggnog, and curl up with the SCARIEST book you can find… That’s right. Christmas horror. It’s a real thing. And Blumhouse and editor Christopher Golden have put together a collection of short fiction just in time to fill you with holiday fear. Join us as Tod, Rider, and Julia have fun with this bonkers set of stories.

A couple months ago, Vulture published this crazy, crazy list. It’s an admittedly premature attempt to create a literary canon for the last 18 years. In this episode of Literary Disco, we discuss the titles we were surprised by, the ones we were disappointed didn’t make it, and — mostly — how few of these books we’ve actually read. Get ready to feel like you have a lot of catching up to do…

It’s getting cooler, the leaves are changing, time to curl up with a good book. It’s our Bookshelf Revisit for Fall 2018, an eclectic conversation that covers: 1. Wild children and cults. 2. WWII and China. 3. Robertson Davies. It makes no sense, except that it’s Literary Disco!

Hunter S. Thompson became a legend the moment he published this novel of a drug-fueled trip into the desert. Packed with mind-altering chemicals, extreme paranoia, and claiming to be a scathing journey to “the heart of the American Dream,” Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas established Thompson’s particular style, and purported to give voice to the disillusionment of a generation. But who was included in that generation? Has the book aged well? And what kind of effect did this story have on the city of Las Vegas itself? We explore these questions and more. Buckle up. This is bat country.

You read it in high school. You remember the conch, Piggy, and a boar head on a stick… But do you remember the Beast? That a child disappears the first day on the island? How about the fact that this novel is set during an atomic war? And did you know this book was written in direct response to a 19th Century children’s book that had the same character names? It’s time for us all to re-read William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies. Join us.

Today we dive deep into a single poetry collection: Digest, by Gregory Pardlo. Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer, and with good reason. This is one of the most universally loved books we’ve had on the show. It’s incredibly personal, and yet it has enough intertextuality and historical references to keep you re-reading for days. Between bouts of effusive praise, we manage to read and analyze a couple of these magnificent poems.

In the 1920s, a disproportionate amount of people within the Osage nation were dying. The US government had forcibly relocated the Osage to a section of Oklahoma with some of the largest deposits of oil in North America. This quickly made the Osage the wealthiest people, per capita, in the world. And now they were being murdered. Corrupt local “lawmen” were incapable of producing any suspects, and any time a person claimed to have information, they wound up dead. It was up to the Federal government, with its newly formed Bureau of Investigation, to step in and try to solve the mystery. Journalist David Grann has produced the definitive account of this remarkable true story in Killers of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. As we quickly discovered here at the Disco, there’s something in this book for everyone. If you love history, crime stories, Westerns, family sagas, stories of social justice, courtroom dramas, or just downright good writing: this book is for you. So, uh, you should read it.

(Are we time traveling? Yes, a technical glitch set this episode back a few months…) Kristen Roupenian’s short story “Cat Person” appeared in December 2017 issue of The New Yorker, and promptly became an internet sensation. Some critics pounced, some critics praised, some men were offended, some women were offended that men were offended…and on and on it went, as these things do in this day and age. It seems there is something about this story — something about its point of view and its depiction of gender relations —  that struck a nerve in the midst of #MeToo. We decided to read and discuss the story in addition to some older, and truly great, short story comps that work with similar themes. So if you read and loved (or hey, even if you read and hated) Cat Story, these are for you. “Stitches” by Antonya Nelson. And “A Real Doll” by AM Homes.

We didn’t mean for these episodes to be “timely,” but these days in America, that seems unavoidable. Between posting our two-parter about Dave Cullen’s Columbine, there has been another school shooting at Sante Fe High School in Texas. Our hearts are breaking, again. We can only hope to contribute to the conversation and help move our country away from this insanity. Join us for Part Two of our discussion on Columbine. We talk with Rob Bowman, the incredible English teacher who brought us the students from Part One.

Dave Cullen’s book Columbine is an exhaustive and brilliant examination of the infamous school shooting that stunned the country in 1999. It is also one of the first books that Tod, Julia, and Rider discussed as friends. Bonding over our love for Cullen’s work is one of the reasons Literary Disco exists. In light of the fact that school shootings have only become more common, we decided to do something different with the next two episodes of the podcast. Tod reached out to his friend Rob Bowman, a high school English teacher, and asked if he had any students who might want to read Columbine. This episode, Part 1, is our discussion with the the three remarkable teenagers Rob assembled. Aiden, Renaissance, and Jada were kind enough to read Cullen’s book and come on our show to share their thoughts. Part 2 will be the follow up conversation that we had with Bowman. Guns. High School. Books. Get ready…

I know, it’s a bit confusing, but some tech issues with Episode 123 means we’re skipping it for now. Instead, we zoom to the future! It’s a Bookshelf Revisit episode with a game — a new game Tod is insisting we call “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” As if there isn’t already a game called that. But first, we get to hear all about Julia and Tod getting catfished, what children’s book Julia has rediscovered, Rider’s descent into the Empire of Illusion, and Tod’s recent interview with a very successful novelist who also happens to be his brother.  

Elif Batuman’s novel was a critical darling of 2017. We try to figure out why.

Our fantasy and sci-fi correspondent Will Friedle returns! And he’s picked a doozy for us to read. Piers Anthony has written dozens of hugely popular fantasy novels, and many of them are set in the magical, pun-filled land of Xanth. Will asked us to read A Spell for Chameleon, the novel that began it all. And boy, has it not aged well… We thought Sweet Valley High was rapey. There’s literally a rape trial in the first 30 pages of this book, which seems aimed squarely at 12 year old boys. Join us for this hilarious and disturbing episode, as we marvel at what was acceptable for kids to read 30 years ago.

Our fantasy and sci-fi correspondent Will Friedle returns! And he’s picked a doozy for us to read. Piers Anthony has written dozens of hugely popular fantasy novels, and many of them are set in the magical, pun-filled land of Xanth. Will asked us to read A Spell for Chameleon, the novel that began it all. And boy, has it not aged well… We thought Sweet Valley High was rapey. There’s literally a rape trial in the first 30 pages of this book, which seems aimed squarely at 12 year old boys. Join us for this hilarious and disturbing episode, as we marvel at what was acceptable for kids to read 30 years ago.

Jennifer Egan’s a favorite author here on the Disco. But does her latest novel, the New York period piece Manhattan Beach, keep up the winning streak? It made a lot of Best Of 2017 lists, but the Disco trio is a bit divided. Are these characters realistic? Is the dialogue cliched? Even as he rambles on and on about how much he likes it, Rider admits he might be crazy…