3 episodios
The Casual Academic: A Literary Podcast As I Lay Reading
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5,0 • 6 valoraciones
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Literature podcast based in Madrid, Spain. We provide in-depth literary discussion without the pretence. Consulting secondary literature and unafraid to tackle great works and their ideas, we compress in-depth discussion of literature into a digestible format that won't cost you $60,000 and soul-crushing debt.
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Episode 36 - Structural Tricks, Disintegration & Ghosts in Valeria Luiselli's "Faces in the Crowd"
Episode 36 features Valeria Luiselli's "Faces in the Crowd," a novella we loved and can't recommend enough. Our discussion includes a bit of her non-fiction, especially her essay "Relingos," as well as various interviews in which she shares her approach to writing and structure. Luiselli allows shifts in point of view and temporality to intermingle and eventually blend together in a story of a writer writing of her days obsessing over a poet in New York City.
The novella is both dark and funny, and subtly deals with the way in which our pasts integrate and thus disintegrate our presents, and how identities shapeshift when lost in foreign lands and art.
Episode 36 concludes our miniseries on Mexican authors, but rest assured it shall be continued! Let us know what you thought of the episode and the novella via social media, or email us at thecasualacademic@gmail.com.
Stay casual,
Alex & Jake -
Episode 35 - Memory, Self & La Revolución in Carlos Fuentes' "The Death of Artemio Cruz"
Rising out of the depths of a busy summer and unreliable internet, we're back to finally put out a miniseries on Mexican literature that's been long in the making. We hope you all have had a wonderful past couple months, and that you've been able to read a few good books.
Speaking of good books, Episode 35 on Carlos Fuentes' "The Death of Artemio Cruz" is a discussion on Mexican identity via the writings on Fuentes and Octavio Paz; the good, the bad and the ugly of modernist formal experimentation, and a rehashing of how History as told by the victors is challenged in Latin American fiction. Fuente's novel is a modernist retelling of Mexican history through the life of a revolutionary turned robber baron.
As always, we hope you enjoy the episode and be sure to let us know what you think about our discussion via whatever internet superhighway medium you deem your favorite.
Thanks for listening and stay casual,
Alex & Jake
Music credits:
"Laid Back Guitars" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ -
Traveler, Writer, Soldier, Spy: Lit & Context in Patrick L. Fermor's "The Violins of Saint-Jacques"
After several editing and technical hiccups, we're happy to present episode 34 on beloved travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor and his only novel. A soldier who led the resistance in Crete during WWII, a spy posing as a shepherd who captured a German general, an insatiable traveler (lest we forget heartthrob), Fermor was a jack-of-all-trades whose travel writing is known the world over. His novel "The Violins of Saint-Jacques," however, presents a West Indies that both gilds and destroys a European presence that reflects, perhaps, more the devastation caused by WWII than decolonization.
Check out our discussion on art and context, WWII and British Literature, and the work travel writing does in the wake of quickly disappearing cultures.
Happy Listening
Alex & Jake
Music credits for this episode:
"Lost Frontier" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
"Magic Forest" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Reseñas de clientes
¡Por fin un podcast con calidad!
The Casual Academic es un canal perfecto para poder desconectar y disfrutar de la literatura de las manos de dos jóvenes expertos en la materia.
El de Franz Kafka es sin duda mi podcast favorito, pero estoy con muchas ganas de seguir escuchándoles.
Además, ¿quién no ha estado indeciso en una librería porque no sabe qué libro comprarse?, Gracias a The Casual Academic ya sé que libro cogerme todas las semanas. Y si hay alguna semana que no he tenido tiempo de leérmelo, ellos hacen un resumen genial al principio.
Strong & True show
I don’t usually rate things from the grave, but when I do, I choose The Casual Academic. The work done here is good and true. The moon was so bright and cold and the Parisian goats were walking along the windless banks of the Seine and you knew you would write this review and you would always right this review and you knew that if you stayed one step ahead of this review that you would right it and it would be well and good but you went to the racetrack and you bet on the mare that you knew had been stimulated and she rode so true and hard but she broke her leg coming round the last track and you were there when they put her down behind the barn where she was born and you were again back on the slopes of Dolomites where the man was buried alive. Anyway - highly recommended.