Otherppl with Brad Listi: Books & Culture

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Episode 131 — Ned Vizzini Dec 16, 2012

Show notes

Ned Vizzini is today's guest. He is the award-winning author of It's Kind of a Funny Story (also a major motion picture), Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah.... In television, he has written for MTV and ABC. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Salon. He is the co-author, with Chris Columbus, of the fantasy-adventure series House of Secrets, due out in April 2013. And his latest novel, The Other Normals, is now availalbe from Balzer & Bray. Lev Grossman raves "The Other Normals is wildly imaginative, incredibly funny, and weirdly wise. I don’t know where Vizzini gets this stuff —it’s like he’s tapped into the collective unconscious of alienated adolescents everywhere." And Kirkus says "With a deft sense of humor and a keen ear for funny and realistic teen dialogue, Vizzini explores one teen everyman’s quest to become a hero, one roll of the six-sided die at a time …. Great geeky fun." Monologue topics: flu, mail, doubt, self-sabotage, cannabis.

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Episode 130 — Zena el Khalil Dec 12, 2012

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Zena el Khalil is the guest. She is an installation artist, curator, cultural activist, and author. During the July 2006 attacks on Lebanon, her blog, beirutupdate.blogspot.co/uk, was published on CNN and the BCC. In 2008, she was invited to speak at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, and earlier this year she was named a TED fellow. Her memoir, Beirut, I Love You, is now available in the United States in e-book format from NYRB Lit. Gwyneth Paltrow raves "Zena El Khalil brings the city and its current events to life through personal anecdotes about loss, tragedy, friendship, life as a young woman in a polarized city, and love for this conflicted, beautiful place she calls home." And Publishers Weekly says "Part love letter and part memoir, el Khalil’s work employs her artist’s eye and ear to depict Beirut during and after the Israeli attacks on the country’s south and the Lebanese civil war. No simple chronological narration, this is rather a highly personal, impressionistic depiction of events and emotions…. Her unflinching inside view of Beirut’s tragedy and of ‘Amreekan’ duplicity underscore why her 2006 blog beirutupdate.blogspot.com received international attention." Monologue topics: Entertainment Capital of the World, iTunes ratings, Board, tweets.

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Episode 129 — Salvatore Pane Dec 09, 2012

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Salvatore Pane is the guest. His chapbook, #KanyeWestSavedFromDrowning, was published by NAP in October, and his debut novel, Last Call in the City of Bridges, is now available from Braddock Avenue Books. Stewart O'Nan raves “Like his post po-mo Facebook generation, Michael Bishop, the manic narrator of Last Call in the City of Bridges, has reached the end of his irresponsible youth. Stuck and unsure, he looks back at those eight-bit Nintendo years with tender nostalgia while trying to feel his way forward. Like The Moviegoer, Salvatore Pane’s debut novel is a romantic ironist’s plea for authenticity in a fantastic age. It’s telling–and hilarious–that his hero’s model for male adulthood isn’t William Holden but Super Mario.” And Tom Bissell says “Quite obviously, Salvatore Pane’s mind has been dunked in video games, social media, comic books, the WebNet, and everything else our august literary authorities believe promote illiteracy. I’d like to hand the authorities Pane’s novel–a funny, moving, melancholy, sad, and immensely literate book about what being young and confused feels like these days–and tell them, ‘See? Things are going to be fine!’” Monologue topics: worldview, jackhammering, to-do lists, mental lethargy, flying dinosaurs, palm trees.

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Episode 128 — Lydia Millet Dec 05, 2012

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Lydia Millet is the guest. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a past recipient of the PEN-USA Award for Fiction, and her story collection, Love in Infant Monkeys (2009), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest novel, Magnificence, is now available in hardcover from W.W. Norton and Company. Jonathan Lethem raves “[Magnificence is] elegant, darkly comic. . . with overtones variously of Muriel Spark, Edward Gorey and JG Ballard, full of contemporary wit and devilish fateful turns for her characters, and then also to knit together into a tapestry of vast implication and ethical urgency, something as large as any writer could attempt: a kind of allegorical elegy for life on a dying planet. Ours, that is.” And Salon calls it "Flawlessly beautiful." Monologue topics: chest colds, tuberculosis, the consumption, agent, manuscript, uncertainty, reading, the concept of "good" art, self-perception.

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Episode 127 — Eric Raymond Dec 02, 2012

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Eric Raymond is today's guest. His debut novel, Confessions from a Dark Wood, is now available from Sator Press. Sam Lipsyte raves "The world of Eric Raymond's winning novel may be the 'post-idea economy,' but rest assured, the book is never post-smart, or post-funny. It's a rollicking and inventive corporate (and cultural) satire—get in now at the ground floor, people." And Blake Butler says "In a world where cash has become language, Eric Raymond's Confessions from a Dark Wood wastes no syllable in converting cultural mechanisms into a well-oiled, wise-cracking machine. Smart as Saunders, tight as Ellis, but banking waters of its own, after this one we'll no longer 'forget they built the Magic Kingdom on swamps.'" Monologue topics: December, The Piñatas, the waiting game, seasonal affective disorder, the holidays, gift ideas, TNB Books.

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Episode 126 — Erika Rae Nov 28, 2012

Show notes

Erika Rae is today's guest. Her debut memoir, Devangelical, will be published by Emergency Press on December 11, 2012. Laurie Notaro, author of The Idiot Girl's Action-Adventure Club, raves “I'm a believer that Erika Rae will make you cackle with heathen-like delight throughout Devangelical.” And Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God, says "Devangelical strikes a darkly funny blow at the central nervous system of evangelical Christianity delivered by a former insider.” Monologue topics: chest colds, worries, can you imagine me?, bad music, Jack Wagner, cultural tornados.

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Episode 125 — Michael Kardos Nov 25, 2012

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Michael Kardos is the guest. His debut novel, The Three-Day Affair, is now available from Mysterious Press. The New York Times says Michael Kardos’s first novel, THE THREE-DAY AFFAIR (Mysterious Press, $24), is so disturbing it makes you wonder what he might have in mind for his second book. The plot is original, if distinctly bizarre: three friends who met at Princeton have left their wives at home and are headed for a golf club to celebrate their annual reunion when one of them — the self-made millionaire who lost his fortune in the dot-com crash — impulsively robs a convenience store and kidnaps the cashier. In a panic, Will Walker, who narrates this nightmare, drives them all to the independent recording studio where he works. What follows is a carefully calibrated study of how even the most highly evolved members of our species can become feral under pressure. (“I was an animal in the woods and I was making this other animal go away” is how one of them describes it.) Surprisingly, the violence proves less shocking than the purely vindictive acts of cruelty even the best of friends can inflict on one another. Monologue topics: Thanksgiving, illness, Disneyland, the Romneys, Black Friday, holiday misery, bitterness, attitude.

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Episode 124 — Karen Engelmann Nov 21, 2012

Show notes

Karen Engelmann is the guest. Her debut novel, The Stockholm Octavo, is now available from Ecco. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says "Neatly mixing revolutionary politics with the erotic tension and cutthroat rivalry of the female conspirators...Engelmann has crafted a magnificent, suspenseful story set against the vibrant society of Sweden’s zenith, with a cast of colorful characters balanced at a crux of history.” And Library Journal, in a starred review, calls it “Fantastic . . . This rollicking adventure story reads at times like a fairy tale, with Good Guys and Bad Guys and obstacles to be recognized and overcome. It’s all quite fun. As either historical novel or adventure story, this clever first novel should appeal to a broad range of readers." Monologue topics: mail, Sam Pink, Disneyland, Thanksgiving, exhaustion, The TNB Book Club.

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Episode 123 — Sam Pink Nov 18, 2012

Show notes

Sam Pink is the guest. He is the author of several books, including the novel Person. And his latest novel, Rontel, is due out from Lazy Fascist Press in February 2013. Electric Literature raves "Reading Sam Pink may make you a danger to society. The voice here in Rontel, as it was in Pink’s previous novel Person, is invasive. It will burrow its way deep into your brain and then echo through your gray matter. You will find yourself thinking the way his narrators think, and will then wonder if those fucked up thoughts tunneled in recently or if they were always there just waiting to be dug up." Monologue topics: email from a listener, elevator theater, reality television, Board.

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Episode 122 — T.C. Boyle Nov 14, 2012

Show notes

T.C. Boyle is the guest. He is the author of twenty-three books of fiction, including The Tortilla Curtain, Drop City, and World's End, for which he won the PEN/Faulkner award. His latest novel, San Miguel, is now available from Viking. Publishers Weekly raves "Boyle’s epic saga of struggle, loss, and resilience tackles Pacific pioneer history with literary verve…[he] subtly interweaves the fates of Native Americans, Irish immigrants, Spanish and Italian migrant workers, and Chinese fisherman into the Waters’ and Lesters’ lives, but the novel is primarily a history of the land itself, unchanging despite its various visitors and residents, and as beautiful, imperfect, and unrelenting as Boyle’s characters." And Terry Tempest Williams calls it "A saga of women, three women brought to the island by men…Boyle has carved out a beautiful, damp, atmospheric novel, sharp and exacting…[his] spirited novels are a reckoning with consequence laced with humor, insight, and pathos." Monologue topics: finishing the novel, extremely personal psycho-spiritual tweets, Board.

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