Mediocrity!

This episode is for true Insufferable B*****d fans. We issue an important correction regarding the Granta/Commonwealth Prize A.I. scandal. We also discuss why we began the show, Roger Ebert, Lars von Trier, physically going to the damn movie theater, long-ass movies, the standards of art in our time, Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, commonplace books, Trumbull Stickney, poetry, “rote” memorization, Leonard Michaels, Alanna Schubach’s excellent first novel The Nobodies, the forgotten William Styron, Darkness Visible by William Styron, City for Conquest by Aben Kandel, cinnamon bears, attention spans, boredom, Miles Davis, Obsession. (If you missed episode 2, click here to listen.)Also: Howard Norman, hearing from listeners, Cass Sunstein’s weird review of Obsession, movie rental stores like Kim’s Video (NYC) and Videodrome (Atlanta), literary density, the short story ‘Many Worlds’ by Ayşegül Savaş, the stylistic weakness of contemporary New Yorker short stories such as ‘Many Worlds’ by Ayşegül Savaş, the stylistic weakness of past New Yorker short stories such as ‘Cat Person’ by Kristen Roupenian, major podcast success, the 1%, our 6000 listeners (!), the secret pessimism of southerners and the secret optimism of northerners, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin, magical realism, German expressionism, The Confessions of Nat Turner, the “ownership” of stories, sensitivity readers, the excellent editing of Meg Storey, wabi-sabi, ‘Evangeline’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘Live blindly and upon the hour’ by Trumbull Stickney. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Literarian Gazette at tliterarian.substack.com/subscribe