Some people just want to watch the world burn, but this episode of The Book Report proves that Janet and Mike are not those people. They read Paul Murray’s The Mark and the Void, a tragicomic novel about the Irish financial crisis, and couldn’t quite bring themselves to laugh gleefully while the Emerald Isle imploded, despite the fact that Paul Murray is a charming devil of a genius and they love him.
Discussed in this episode: The Mark and the Void, Skippy Dies, horror movies, Masters of the Universe levels of evil, the early days of Janet’s writing career, time travel, the term “madcap,” when it’s okay to throw someone out of your house (namely, when they drink your champagne).
Say what?! The Marriage Plot is about DFW, JE, and Mary Karr? I really need to go back and reared it. Really like this series. — reaching for the Beowulf directly.
Great episode! I had heard about the Wallace character in The Marriage Plot (and it was pretty obvious when I read it), but didn’t know about the triangle with Mr. Eugenides. Loved the book. Bold choice of Nixon as likable villain. He did like bowling. So he’s got that going for him.
Janet scores empathy points for Frankenstein & the Romanovs.
Mike makes an inspired choice with Nixon who, coincidentally, played a helluva piano.
But nobody picks Raskolnikov? Come on! DFW but no RRR? He’s like a 3rd-year MFA’er going into debt and…murder!
Re: Grendel–Mike should check out hot-shot 70s author John Gardner’s “Grendel,” which is an examination of 12 big ideas of civilization from the perspective of the “monster” who channels J. P. Sartre. Gardner was a short-lived literary lion back then, sort of a cross between John Irving, Robert Pirsig and Robert James Waller (!)
He died young (late 40s) in a motorcycle accident, which may have kept him from being as well-remembered as he deserves to be.
How about Count Fosco in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. He is so charming, witty and enlivens every page he is on, as opposed to the cardboard hero and heroines. And speaking of Counts, there is another I can think of who also brightens up the story he is in by his rare but very entertaining presence.