Literary Hangover

41 - Areopagitica by John Milton (1644) Jan 09, 2022

Grace (@GraceJackson) and Alex (@Alecks_Guns) join Matt once again to discuss John Milton as a polemicist over John Milton as a poet.

Milton's family background. Charles Deodati. Anti-Popery; the Gunpowder Plot, The Fatal Vespers. Virginity. The Trip to Italy. The English civil war and censorship/openness. Epic Poet tradition. Divorce Tracts. Areopagitica. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (ie Yes, We Should Actually Execute the King). Eikonoklastes (ie No, God Is Not Mad We Killed the King). The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a New Commonwealth (ie I Can't Believe We Are Going To Do Monarchy Again).

References:

Full Text of Areopagitica.

OpenYale Milton Lectures Areopagitica episode.

Bernstein, Eduard. 2000. Cromwell and Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English revolution. Nottingham: Spokesman.

Hill, Christopher. 1978. Milton and the English Revolution. New York: Viking Press.

Milton, John, and David Loewenstein. 2013. John Milton Prose: Major Writings on Liberty, Politics, Religion, and Education. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.

McDowell, Nicholas. 2020. Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton. Princeton University Press.

40 - The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon by John Filson (1784) Nov 08, 2021

Alex, Grace, and Matt discuss The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon by John Filson, the seminal text in the creation of the Daniel Boone myth of the American hunter. Who underwrote Boone's expeditions? This bas relief of Boone and why the US state would memorialize him as an "indian killer." Also this is Lord Dunmore.

Intro song: Daniel Boone by Pixies

Morgan, Robert. 2008. Boone: a biography

Faragher, John Mack. 1992. Daniel Boone: the life and legend of an American pioneer.

Slotkin, Richard. 2006. Regeneration through violence: the mythology of the American frontier, 1600-1860. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

39 - The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1712) Oct 23, 2021

Matt goes solo to finish off the first Byrd diary with the year 1712. Also, Michael Shermer's disgusting views on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings.

Buzzfeed article on Michael Shermer (see Jefferson comments here)

Brown, Kathleen M. 2012. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press

Hill, Christopher. 2021. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. Penguin Books.

Pettigrew, William A. 2016. Freedom's debt: the Royal African Company and the politics of the Atlantic slave trade, 1672-1752.

38 - The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1711) - Tuscarora War/Rebellion, Colonel Parke's Estate Aug 07, 2021

Get episodes a couple weeks early @ patreon.com/literaryhangover

Hey everyone! Before we get to Boone, Matt is going to finish William Byrd II's first diary, this time the year 1711. The Tuscarora War, to be viewed as both an indian war *and* a slave rebellion, looms large as does the assassination of Byrd's father-in-law/Governor in Antigua, Colonel Daniel Parke.

Sources

NC BOOKWATCH: David LaVere: The Tuscarora War

https://www.pbs.org/video/david-lavere-the-tuscarora-war-oifrkt/

The Michael Eure Show - Tri-Racial Identity of Tuscarora & Other Native Americans (12/17/20)

https://youtu.be/fTge5-us_BU

The Michael Eure Show - Tri-Racial Identity of Tuscarora & Other Native Americans - Part 2 (1/14/21)

https://youtu.be/_0KOxlu-6Xk

Linebaugh, Peter. 2003. The London hanged: crime and civil society in the eighteenth century. London: Verso.

Apologies for the crispy audio, tried my best to cancel out vacuum noise from the neighbors.

37 - The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1710) Mar 27, 2021

Alex, Grace, and Matt return with year 1710 in the diary of tobacco plantation master William Byrd II, a year marked by spooky mystical dreams, increasing attempts at escape from slaves, and Whig vs Tory political battle.

Sources

The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712, ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1941)

Linebaugh, Peter. 2006. The London hanged: crime and civil society in the eighteenth century. London: Verso.

36 - The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1709) Jan 25, 2021

Hello all! In this episode, we begin with Matt telling Grace and Alex about two books, Colonel Parke of Virginia: "The Greatest Hector in the Town" by Helen Hill Miller on Byrd's incredible father-in-law, Daniel Parke, and Perry of London: A Family and a Firm on the Seaborne Frontier, 1615–1753 on the Perry tobacco merchant family. Then, a discussion on the January 6 Capitol riots in the context of Bacon's Rebellion. Then we discuss the first year of William Byrd's Secret Diary, from 1709, with special attention to his behavior toward his slaves, servants, and other subordinates.

Sources

The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712, ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1941

Price, Jacob M. Perry of London: a Family and a Firm on the Seaborne Frontier, 1615-1753. Harvard University Press, 1992.

Miller, Helen Hill. 1989. Colonel Parke of Virginia: the greatest hector in the town : a biography. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Rice, James D. 2012. Tales from a revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the transformation of early America. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1957. The Governor and the rebel: a history of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg by the University of North Carolina Press.

Welcome to Season 2! William Byrd II Introduction, Historical Fiction, and Future Subjects Dec 31, 2020

Hey everyone,

Alex, Grace, and Matt have a catch up chat to kick off the new season. We discuss William Byrd II's secret diaries and example as a Virginia colonial gentleman, historical fiction, and preview what titles we'll be covering this year.

*UNLOCKED* Orwell|er - 5 - 'England Your England' - The Lion & The Unicorn Part 1 (1941) Jul 04, 2020

Originally released for patrons March 14. Part two will be unlocked soon and part three is available now for members at patreon.com/literaryhangover

Hey patrons! Social distancing has upended our scheduled plans for Aphra Behn's "Widow Ranter" with Grace, so Alex and I decided to return to Orwell|er with the first installment of Orwell's "The Lion and The Unicorn," titled "England Your England."

This is an essay written at the height of the WWII blitz bombing of Britain by Orwell from London. The first line, "As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me," begins an immediately controversial argument in response to nationalism prevailing across the world and attempts to reframe patriotism as compatible, and in fact a component of, a socialist revolution. This episode is particulalry relevent in our capitalism-discrediting pandemic. Is there really such a thing as "national character." Is bourgouis democracy the same as totalitarianism? The difficulty of working class international consciousness. The increasingly evident and decadent stupidity of the ruling class. Are they dumb or traitors? American billionaires as ruthless. The place of the intelligentsia in the empire. Orwell predicts the rise, but not fall, of suburbia.

Sources:

Main source: Alex Hyde-White's narration of "Essays" by Orwell, 2019 via Audible.

Bounds, Philip. 2009. Orwell and Marxism: the political and cultural thinking of George Orwell. London: I.B. Tauris.

Claeys, Gregory. 1985; "The Lion and the Unicorn", Patriotism, and Orwell's Politics. The Review of Politics, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr., 1985), pp. 186-211

35 - 'A Journal of the Plague Year' by Daniel Defoe (1722) Apr 26, 2020

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Also subscribe to twitch.tv/literaryhangover for the study hall sessions!

Hi everybody, Alex, Grace and I are back with an episode that will not really help you get your mind off of coronavirus! Today, Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year,' a fictionalized journal set in the 1665 plague in London.

Foucault's Political (order) and Literary (anarchy) "dreams" of the Plague. The surveillance state and public health. Fuedalism wasn't any better for workers than capitalism. The Defoe theme of the bourgeois barricading and provisioning himself in a dangerous environment. Daniel Defoe, Data Journalist. Killing watchmen. The economic pause of the plague. Rural/urban divides and cooperation.

Sources:

Wagner, Martin. "Defoe, Foucault, and the Politics of the Plague." SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 57, no. 3 (2017): 501-519.

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. Discipline And Punish : the Birth of the Prison.

Librivox narration.

34 - 'The Widow Ranter, or, the History of Bacon in Virginia' by Aphra Behn (1689) Apr 04, 2020

Best wishes to everyone dealing with pandemic bs.

Full play text here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27273/27273-h/widow.html

Grace, Alex, and Matt are back with another Aphra Behn work, this time her posthumously performed 1689 play "The Widow Ranter, or, the History of Bacon in Virginia." We discuss her role as a tory propagandist and as a spy rewriting recent history to glorify the heroic individual. The righteous Levellers and "delegating" the power of the people. Behn makes Bacon an Indian lover and not hater. Semernia and Cockacoeske. Bacon not a populist. The drunk colonial judiciary. Defending inheritances you recognize as unjust. The Widow Ranter as a feminist libertine ideal. Behn's lasting fidelity to hierarchy.

Sources:

Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker. 2000. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press.

Brown, Kathleen M. 1996. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia.

MOWRY, MELISSA. ""PAST REMEMBRANCE OR HISTORY": APHRA BEHN'S "THE WIDDOW RANTER", OR, HOW THE COLLECTIVE LOST ITS HONOR." ELH 79, no. 3 (2012): 597-621. Accessed April 4, 2020. jstor.org/stable/23256768.

Pulsipher, Jenny Hale. "The Widow Ranter and Royalist Culture in Colonial Virginia." Early American Literature 39, no. 1 (2004): 41-66. doi:10.1353/eal.2004.0016.

Rice, James D. 2013. Tales from a revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the transformation of Early America.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1957. The Governor and the rebel, a history of Bacon's rebellion in Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

33 - 'The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion' by Ebenezer Cook (1728) Feb 11, 2020

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and I return with another poem from the poet laureat of colonial Maryland, Ebenezer Cook, this time his narrative of Bacon's Rebellion(pdf).

How memory-holed is Bacon's Rebellion? The false promise of promotional literature and the headright system. Economic anxiety and indian hating. Trade disputes, theft, jurisdiction, and the start of the rebellion. Bacon seeing no difference between friend and enemy indians. The spectre of Cromwell. George Washington's great grandfather: war criminal. Nathaniel Bacon, failson, scammer, world-traveler. Defense spending boondoggles and paying your taxes in tobacco. Selling guns to indians. Bacon's alliance/battle with Posseclay and the Occaneechees. Who's side is Cook on? Bacon uses loyalist women as a human shield, is more "Blue Lives Matter" than DSA. Bacon's bloody flux and his surviving rebellion. The merchant, Captain Grantham's, dirty trick.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

References:

Rice, James D. 2012. Tales from a revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the transformation of early America. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Schmidt, Ethan A. 2016. The divided dominion: social conflict and Indian hatred in early Virginia.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1972. The Governor and the rebel; a history of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. New York: Norton.

Reading "Bacon's Rebellion" by Ebenezer Cook (1731) Feb 01, 2020

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

My narration of Ebenezer Cook's 1731 poem, "The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. Done into Hudibrastic Verse, from an old MS," which gives a pro-loyalist and anti-Bacon view common prior to the American Revolution, in the Hudibrastic style of his earlier "Sot-Weed Factor."

This will be the subject of the next episode.

Link to the text:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N02853.0001.001/1:3?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

Reading 'The Sot-Weed Factor' by Ebenezer Cook (1708) Jan 31, 2020

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Here's my reading of the satirical poem, The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland, by Ebenezer Cook (1708), as discussed in episode 32. Thanks for your support.

32 - 'The Sot-Weed Factor: Or, A Voyage To Maryland' by Ebenezer Cook (1708) Jan 11, 2020

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and I discuss Ebenezer Cook's 1708 poem "The Sot-Weed Factor." The scant documentation we have for Cook's life. Cooks use of hudibrastic tetrameter and couplets. Who were the Chesapeake tobacco proletariat? The cheap linen clothing of American workers. Nationalism and Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities." The Cain myth and racial othering. Queen Elizabeth I's racism and how England created a labor force for the colonies. America as a giant labor camp. Humanity's timeless love for dick jokes. The Annapolis legal swamp. "Going native." The imperial motivation for determining how Indians came to America. Card-playing witches. Hangover remedies. Getting scammed by a Quaker.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

References:

Full poem here: http://theotherpages.org/poems/cook02.html

Gregory A. Carey, "The Poem as Con Game: Dual Satire and the Three Levels of Narrative in Ebenezer Cooke's "The Sot-Weed Factor"," The Southern Literary Journal 23, no. 1 (1990), http://www.questia.com/read/1G1-89390389/the-poem-as-con-game-dual-satire-and-the-three-levels.

Ford, Sarah Gilbreath. "Humor's Role in Imagining America: Ebenezer Cook's The Sot-Weed Factor." The Southern Literary Journal 35, no. 2 (2003): 1-12.

'The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic' by Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000) Full book here:

( https://libcom.org/library/many-headed-hydra-peter-linebaugh-marcus-rediker/ )

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale Research

The censored line was ommitted in the collection "Shea's Early Southern Tracts, Vol 2" used by Project Gutenberg.

On which he sat, and straight begun

To load with Weed his Indian Gun;

In length, scarce longer than one's Finger,

Or that for which the Ladies linger:

His Pipe smoak'd out with aweful Grace,

With aspect grave and solemn pace;

31 - 'The Pilgrim's Progress' by John Bunyan (1678) Dec 21, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and Matt return this week to discuss John Bunyan's 1678 work of allegorical fiction, 'The Pilgrim's Progress.' The significance of Pilgrim's Progress in anglo mythology. Bunyan's proletarian background. Why does Pilgrim's Progress remind us to hate our family, John Bunyan vs. against and civility. Bunyan choosing prison over selling out for the sake of being with his family. Coolio and walking in the Shadow of the Valley of Death. More anti-Catholicism. Wanton women Vanity Fair and Bunyan's ability to write in prison. Bunyan's traumatic relationship with documentation.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

References:

Excellent narration of the full text from Aneko Press:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMtmnv84GxY&t=20433s

Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan. ''IntelliQuest World's 100 Greatest Books'' 1995

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZIgLVa9WkA

Seidel, Kevin. "Pilgrim's Progress and the Book." ELH 77, no. 2 (2010): 509-534.

Greaves, Richard L. ""Let Truth Be Free": John Bunyan and the Restoration Crisis of 1667-1673." Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 28, no. 4 (1996): 587-605.

30 - 'The Crucible' by Arthur Miller (1953) Nov 30, 2019

Today, Alex, Grace, and Matt talk about Arthur Miller's 1953 play 'The Crucible' and its Salem Witch Trial and McCarthyite contexts. Miller in 1992 on why the market is failing theater and why the state needs to sponsor it. Arthur Miller, fellow-travelling and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Early witch culture that likely influenced the girls' performances/delusions. Samuel Parris fails at life, squanders fathers' plantation fortune. Tituba was more indigenous than black, and didn't introduce witchcraft to the community. The Putnam family and the rural/urban, agricultural/commercial divide. Abigail and Marilyn Monroe. How his relationship with Marilyn Monroe made Miller a target for HUAC. Hale and the limits of ideology. Proctor and the propaganda value of a name.

@Alecks_Guns, @GraceJackson, @MattLech

@LitHangover

Act One of The Crucible here:

https://youtu.be/Dtr9RGeHnPM

References:

An Unofficial Cultural Ambassador - Arthur Miller and the Cultural Cold War. Abrams, N. D., Romijn, P. (ed.), Scott-Smith, G. (ed.) & Segal, J. (ed.), 1 Jan 2012, Divided Dreamworlds? : The Cultural Cold War in East and West. 2012 ed. Amsterdam University Press, p. 13-32

American Masters: None Without Sin documentary (2003)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cf9r94ZIyg

Baker, Emerson W. 2016. Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience. New York: Oxford Univ Press.

Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen Nissenbaum. 1974. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft.

Hill, Frances. 2002. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials. Cambrigde, MA.: Da Capo Press.

Arthur Miller with Charlie Rose in 1992

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coWRDfpqa6A

29 - 'Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave' by Aphra Behn (1688) Nov 16, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Grace joins Alex and Matt once again to discuss Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave, published in 1688. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to British colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Behn's text is a first-person account of his life, love, rebellion, and execution. Written by Aphra Behn, who was - in addition to being a spy, feminist, monarchist, and original tory - the first professional female writer.

@Alecks_Guns, @GraceJackson, @MattLech

@LitHangover

References:

BBC's In Our Time podcast on Aphra Behn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnVkzdCOu7Q&t=1822s

Oroonoko and the Rise of the Novel by William Smith on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htVteRU9450

Todd, Janet. 1998. The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn. Columbia, SC: Camden House.

Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave on Librivox:

https://librivox.org/oroonoko-or-the-royal-slave-by-aphra-behn/

28 - The Salem Witch Trials Oct 26, 2019

Alex and Matt return, this time to discuss the social, political and material origins of the Salem Witch Trials. Indian and imperial war trauma in the late 1600s. The Glorious Revolution and the coup of Andros by puritan leaders in Massachusetts. The economic divide between mercantile Salem Town and the agricultural offshoot that was ground zero for the outbreak, Salem Village. Increase and Cotton Mather's responsibility in spreading belief in witches. The difference between witch hunts and awakenings being in the interpretation of adults. Gender and witch accusations. George Burrough's perfect recitation of the Lord's prayer. Sleep paralysis, conversion disorder, and fraud as all explanations for the witch accusations. Cotton Mather's damage control for the Puritan theocracy, The Wonders of the Invisible World. European witch history.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

References:

Baker, Emerson W. 2016. Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience. New York: Oxford Univ Press.

Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen Nissenbaum. 1974. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft.

Hill, Frances. 2002. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials. Cambrigde, MA.: Da Capo Press.

Glorious Revolution by Jabzy on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g77WJU3aQEA))

27 - 'Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times' by Lydia Maria Child (1824) Sep 28, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Hey LitHangers! Matt's solo this week with an introduction to the first novel by one of the 19th century's "social justice warriors" named Lydia Maria Child. Hobomok can be seen as a precursor to Hope Leslie (1827), and is an interesting book in its own right that takes 'other' natives, deviant colonial men, and colonial women from the periphery to the center of the narrative.

References:

Dr. Cornel West on the Joe Rogan Experience (relevent portion at 1h02m)

Child, Lydia Maria; Carolyn L. Karcher. 2011. Hobomok and Other Writings on Indians. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Karcher, Carolyn L. 2012. The First Woman in the Republic A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham: Duke University Press.

The American History Podcast. Plymouth 7: The Lyford Affair. Posted on April 10, 2018

26 - 'The Pioneers' by James Fenimore Cooper (1823) - Part 2 Sep 07, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and Matt return to finish James Fenimore Cooper's "The Pioneers." The relationship between colonization and racism. Submerged nobility in Cooper's fiction. How American colonization really took off after 1776. Turkey shoots and how Natty calling Cooper's first non-slave black character the N-word illustrates the work of Frantz Fanon. Passenger pigeons as the east coast's bison and how cops like to useold military equipment. Natty's principled opposition to surplus. Marmaduke Temple's elite conservationism. Places not described in books. Economic espionage by the new sheriff. Kirby as the urban, proletarian Natty. Why jailbreaks were indeed common in the real life Cooperstown. Marmaduke Temple's double-dipping on behalf of the Effinghams.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

Sources:

Librivox's recording of The Pioneers

Buchholz, Douglas. Landownership and Representation of Social Conflict in The Pioneers. Presented at the 7th Cooper Seminar, James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art at the State University of New York College at Oneonta, July, 1989

de Fee, Nicole. The Postcolonial Paradox of a Re-imagined History in Cooper's The Pioneers. Presented at the Cooper Panel No. 1 (General Topics) of the 2008 Conference of the American Literature Association in San Francisco

Slotkin, Richard. 1973. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press.

Taylor, Alan. The Great Change Begins: Settling the Forest of Central New York. Published in New York History, Vol. LXXV, No. 3 (July 1995), pp. 265-290.

25 - 'The Pioneers' by James Fenimore Cooper (1823) - Part 1 Jul 27, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and I discuss the underrated first novel of James Fenimore Cooper's 'Leatherstocking Tales,' ***The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale. ***We discuss James' father 'self- made' landlord father, William, who settled central New York after obtaining massive amounts of land following the flux of the American Revolution. William and James, slaveowners. Coopers lamentable race science fixation and commendable proto-Marxist materialism. Judge Temple as the first Dick Cheney. The American frontier myth. Maple trees as short-term and long-term commodities. No settlements without commodification. Environmentalism as a test of gentility. Maple sugar: the market solution to carribbean sugar slavery.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

Sources:

Barbara Mann and Alan Taylor, April 23, 2001. Writings of James Fenimore Cooper on C-Span ( https://www.c-span.org/video/?163765-1/writings-james-fenimore-cooper )

Taylor, Alan. 1995. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. New York: A.A. Knopf.

The Pioneers read by Gary W. Sherwin ( https://librivox.org/the-pioneers-by-james-fenimore-cooper/ )

24 - 'Utopia For Realists' by Rutger Bregman (2016) Jul 06, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

This week, Chris and I take a look at Rutger Bregman's "Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World." We revisit Bregman's two viral moments: telling Davos the answer is to raie taxes and telling Tucker Carlson he's part of that problem. The need for imagination and AOC. Good UBIs and trash UBIs like Andrew Yang's. "Non-reformist reforms." Nationalism and basic incomes. Bregman's open borders argument. 15-hour work works. Nationalistic rhetoric.ch

References:

Bregman, Rutger, and Elizabeth Manton. 2017. Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World.

Battistoni, Alyssa. "The False Promise of Universal Basic Income." Dissent Magazine. Accessed July 06, 2019. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/false-promise-universal-basic-income-andy-stern-ruger-bregman.

Chavez, Aida. "Tucker Carlson on Rupert Murdoch in 2010 Radio Segment: "I'm 100 Percent His Bitch"." The Intercept. March 12, 2019. Accessed July 06, 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/03/12/tucker-carlson-tapes-rupert-murdoch/.

Davos 2019 - The Cost of Inequality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mG-r_3eRCw

Bernie Sanders Endorsed by "Gordon Gekko"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wAa9DqHZtM

How To: Academy: Rutger Bregman - How to Build a Better World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aDelnwNmDQ

23 - 'The Blithedale Romance' by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852) Jun 22, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and Matt discuss Nathaniel Hawthorne's third major novel, inspired by his time at the Transcendentalist/Fourierist Brook Farm Commune in West Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1841. A deeper introduction to utopian socialist Charles Fourier, who is mentioned in both this novel and The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne's fear of mesmerism and political reform. Coverdale's incel energy. Hollingsworth's fascist misogyny. Women's work. Marx and Engels dunk on utopian socialists.

Follow: @Alecks_Guns @LitHangover @MattLech

References:

Beauchamp, Gorman (2002). Hawthorne and the Universal Reformers. Utopian Studies. 13 (2):38 - 52.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, and Richard H. Millington. The Blithedale Romance. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.

Jennings, Chris. Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. New York: Random House, 2017.

Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature.1923. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP6wDm8WHGk

Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and A. J. P. Taylor. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

22 - 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' by Margaret Fuller (1845) May 25, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and access the premium episodes on George Orwell (Orwell|er), become a Patron at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex, Grace, and Matt are back to discuss the extraordinary (for structural reasons!) life of Margaret Fuller, a feminist and later socialist who is often mentioned in relation to the Transcendentalists. We talk about her time as a professional conversationalist in Boston, her self-sacrificing editorship of 'The Dial,' the Transcendentalist magazine. The tuopian community Brook Farm. Fuller the columnist/foreign correspondent at Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Her Orwell-like radicalisation in Europe during the revolutionary 1840s.

@Alecks_Guns, @GraceJackson, @MattLech

@LitHangover

Sources:

Librivox narration by Elizabeth Klett:

https://librivox.org/woman-in-the-nineteenth-century-and-kindred-papers-relating-to-the-sphere-condition-and-duties-of-women-by-margaret-fuller/

Interlock Media, Jorge Alonso Maldonado Performances and Films. Margaret Fuller Documentary.YouTube. July 20, 2017. Accessed May 25, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQgQHj_CeNo.

Kennedy, J. Gerald. Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe. New-York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Marshall, Megan. Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Matteson, John. The Lives of Margaret Fuller: A Biography. New York, NY: W.W. Norton &, 2013.

Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne: A Life. Knopf, 2003.

21 - 'The Song of Hiawatha' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) May 11, 2019

This is the free Literary Hangover feed. To support the show and get occasional premium content, become a member at patreon.com/LiteraryHangover

Alex and Matt are once again joined by Grace, this time to discuss 'The Song of Hiawatha' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an epic poem published in 1855. We discuss: trochaic tetrameter!, Native American Christ, Longfellow's timidity and desire to speak out on issues like slavery, The New York Times' racism, Edgar Allan Poe's racism, inevitablism, video game bosses, pestilence comes from the wealthy, and why "civic nationalism has always been a lie to apologize for race-based violence.

A+ narration by Peter Yearsley at Librivox

Sources:

Lepore, Jill. How Longfellow Woke the Dead. The American Scholar. March 2, 2011.

McClatchy, JD. “Bookend; Return to Gitche Gumee.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Oct. 2000.

New York Times. 1855 December 28. "Longfellow's Poem": The Song of Hiawatha, Anonymous review.

Slotkin, Richard. 1973. Regeneration through violence: the mythology of the American frontier, 1600-1860. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press.

Ziskin, Laura, Avi Arad, Alvin Sargent, Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, et al. 2004. Spider-Man 2. Culver City, Calif: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment.

Charles Calhoun on his book, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life https://youtu.be/f7QsL_7SEcQ

@LitHangover

@mattlech

@Alecks_Guns

@gracejackson