Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture

Latest Episodes:

Episode 336 — Michael McGriff & J.M. Tyree Dec 10, 2014

Show notes

Michael McGriff and J.M. Tyree are the guests. Their new story collection, Our Secret Life in the Movies, is now available from A Strange Object. The Washington Post says "This beautiful, devastating little book is quite unlike anything else I've ever encountered, and if you grew up in a small town in the 1980s feeling even remotely marginal, it's specifically engineered to break your heart." And the BBC calls it "Brilliant." Monologue topics: the move, exhaustion, the new home studio, schedule changes.

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Episode 335 — Mike Bushnell Dec 03, 2014

Show notes

Mike Bushnell is the guest. His latest poetry collection is called OHSO, and it's available now from Scrambler Books. Scott McClanahan says "OHSO is revolutionary. It has seen death. Mike Bushnell is a ghost of the classics." And Beach Sloth says "Mike Bushnell is a tornado of a person. Everything around him gets sucked into his vortex. What comes out are some of the single best lines I have encountered. The energy he possesses with live readings translates extremely well into the written word. OHSO has been a long time a coming but thank goodness it is finally here." Monologue topics: moving, schedule changes.

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Episode 334 — Dmitry Samarov Nov 30, 2014

Show notes

Dmitry Samarov is the guest. His new memoir, Where To?, is now available from Curbside Splendor. Rick Kogan calls it "Funny, touching, observant, philosophical, sad, world-weary, artful and wonderful are the stories that pepper this book. There has never been a cab driver like Dmitry Samarov and, since he's given up for keeps late-night for-hire driving, there never will be." And Wendy MacNaughton says "With his gorgeous pen and ink drawings and funny, tragic, and all too true stories, Samarov's chronicle of his adventures as a Chicago taxi driver is by far the best ride you'll ever take in a cab." Monologue topics: mail, recent episodes.

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Episode 333 — Dorothea Lasky Nov 26, 2014

Show notes

Dorothea Lasky is the guest. Her latest poetry collection, Rome, is available now from Liveright. Maggie Nelson says “Dorothea Lasky is one of the very best poets we've got. Her poems radiate weirdness and raw power; you can feel your mind grow new folds as you read them. They lay waste to milquetoast notions of poetic longing or melancholy, and instead go in for the vibrating, bloody facts of sadness, anger, desire, bare life, all returned to us more intensely, strangely, and sometimes comedically, by her words. The line is Lasky's measure, and she wields it like an axe she's been carrying through several lifetimes, that kind of wisdom. Her Rome is huge and intrepid and perfect, a total gift.” And Fanny Howe says “Rome is a trip with the wheels engaged to land at every line ending, then flipped up again. A wholly open-hearted book bringing me back to Bernadette Mayer, Maureen Owen and the suffragettes. True life.” Monologue topics: holiday gift ideas, support the show, Dorothea reads a poem.

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Episode 332 — William Giraldi Nov 23, 2014

Show notes

William Giraldi is the guest. His latest novel, Hold the Dark, is now available from Liveright Publishing. The New York Times Book Review calls it “[F]ierce, extraordinary…. Hold the Dark is an unnerving and intimate portrayal of nature gone awry. It’s all but bereft of levity, spectacularly violent and exquisitely written.” And the Boston Globe says “Maybe it all began with Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock in 1938, but there is a variety of modern thriller, created these days by Robert Stone and Denis Johnson at their best, that delivers narrative thrust and beautifully composed sentences by the pageful even as it peels away the thin membrane that separates entertainment from art, and nature from civilization. Here’s Boston writer William Giraldi adding to the slender ranks of such masterly fiction… [Hold the Dark] certainly stands out as one of the decade’s best books of its kind, and one that deserves, because of its stylish flaunting of some of our darkest fears, a future readership.” Monologue topics: holiday gift ideas, the holidays, capitalist orgies, bad attitudes.

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Episode 331 — Atticus Lish Nov 19, 2014

Show notes

Atticus Lish is the guest. His debut novel, Preparation for the Next Life, is available now from Tyrant Books. It is the official November selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. The New York Times calls it “Perhaps the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade.” And Joy Williams says "So much of American fiction has become playful, cynical and evasive. Preparation for the Next Life is the strong antidote to such inconsequentialities. Powerfully realistic, with a solemn, muscular lyricism, this is a very, very good book." Monologue topics: TNB Book Club, mail, transcribing this podcast, Dear Sugar, advice.

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Episode 330 — Meghan Daum Nov 16, 2014

Show notes

Meghan Daum is the guest. Her new essay collection, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, is available now from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Hilton Als says “I think it’s fair to say that I can’t tell you what Meghan Daum’s remarkable book means to me—the exceptional often denies verbalization. Her diverse subject matter aside—Mom, Joni Mitchell, the fetishization of food—it’s Daum’s galvanizing energy that one finds so attractive; nowhere in her work is there evidence of the ‘trance’ that Virginia Woolf said characterized so many women’s lives. Instead, Daum builds her various worlds out of great presence and imagination, and who wouldn’t want to live in her new city?” And Geoff Dyer says “The Unspeakable is a fantastic collection of essays: funny, clever, and moving (often at the same time), never more universal than in its most personal moments (in other words, throughout), and written with enviable subtlety, precision, and spring.” Monologue topics: mail, dead animals, sleep, naps.

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Episode 329 — Hannah Pittard Nov 12, 2014

Show notes

Hannah Pittard is the guest. Her new novel is called Reunion, and it is available now from Grand Central Publishing. Emily St. John Mandel calls it "A nuanced and intriguing study of family and love, money and debt, failure and success, starring one of the most likeable flawed narrators to come along in some time." And Publishers Weekly calls it "Emotionally astute...When this family of sorts gathers in Atlanta for the funeral, there is tension, pain, comedy, and finally, some healing and resolution. Kate is a winning narrator, whose insights into herself and her family keep the pages turning." Monologue topics: wheat, internet holes, movies, Birdman, Gone Girl.

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Episode 328 — Bich Minh Nguyen Nov 09, 2014

Show notes

Bich Minh Nguyen is the guest. Her new novel, Pioneer Girl, is available now from Viking. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it "[A] sincere and moving novel... a surprising synthesis of the personal and the public, the intimate and the epic, the historical and the fictional. Nguyen takes two disparate strands of our national mythology and weaves them into a powerful and wholly original American saga." And Kirkus Reviews says "Nguyen has a perceptive understanding of the tension between mothers and daughters and the troubling insights to be gained from digging into the past. An unexpected pleasure, with a well-drawn and compelling narrator." Monologue topics: Las Vegas, pot, gambling, losing, winning, ethics.

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327. Frederick Barthelme Nov 05, 2014

Show notes

Frederick Barthelme is the guest. His latest novel, There Must Be Some Mistake, is available now from Little, Brown & Co.

David Shields says "Very nearly alone among his peers, Frederick Barthelme has, over the last thirty-five years, written fiction about what it actually feels like to live in contemporary post-religious, hyper-mediated America. And—even more of a rarity—he works hard to find a way to somehow tolerate/celebrate, with enormous subtlety and without an ounce of sentimentality, our bare-bones existence. In There Must Be Some Mistake, Barthelme has distilled his brutal, crucial vision into useable essence." And Publishers Weekly says "Barthelme, a master of minimalist suburbia-set fiction, returns with a buoyantly offbeat murder tale that doubles as a meditation on everything from contemporary art to Google to mortality... Throughout the novel, his narration provides punchy, wry commentary on the banality of pop culture, but the tone is, ultimately, infectiously optimistic."

Monologue topics: mail, food, animal rights, Sarah Gerard, not voting, apathy, George Carlin.

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Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

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