Tapestry Radio Network Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of suicide.

Michael and Ethan continue their discussion of The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy, while drinking Bunnahabhain 12yo single malt.

In this episode:

Concise answers, reining it in, etc

Is this book JD Salinger’s (incest) Franny and Zooey?

Is McCarthy’s body of work just him taking previous works and adding greater shock value?

Are these books Catcher in the Rye? If so, can Ethan deal?

Is Bobby socially inept or socially VERY ept?

Is Bobby Oedipus Rex?

Is Alicia the Virgin Mary, or Medea, or both?

Will Ethan get distracted by how overrated he finds Oppenheimer?

How did you get here?

Are you the passenger? Are we all the passenger?

Did Oswald kill JFK? And whether he did or not, why do we spend 30 pages of this book discussing it?

Does the climax of this book occur 100+ pages before the end of the text?

Is The Thalamide Kid a hallucination, an alien, a quantum agent of some kind, an angel, a demon, or a broken-off shard of Alicia’s consciousness?

Given every single thing these books are about, why are they such a delight?

Next time Michael and Ethan will begin to discuss Stella Maris, by Cormac McCarthy! Join the discussion! Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line. We'd love to hear from you! And submit your homework at the Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch page.

Join us on GoodReads!

Donate to our Patreon!

BUY A NIHILIST BLANKET!

Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and

Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett)

MUSIC & SFX:

"Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco. Used by permission.

"The Grim Reaper - II Presto" by Aitua. Used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

"Thinking It Over" by Lee Rosevere. Used under an Attribution License.

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of suicide.

Michael and Ethan begin their discussion of The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy, while drinking Bunnahabhain 12yo single malt.

In this episode:

Some hot takes on The Road to start us off

A reading group guide

It takes a really long time to answer the extremely simple question of who the title character is

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in a work of fiction (also, obligatory Gene Wolfe reference)

As Likely to End the World as to Save it: Knowledge and Science in Cormac McCarthy, by Philip Bunn

Shifting and fuzzy definitions, somewhat intentionally

The Passenger of this book is literally this book

Is this book an 18th-century novel?

A NEW THING: Join us on GoodReads!

Next time Michael and Ethan will begin to discuss The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy! Join the discussion! Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line. We'd love to hear from you! And submit your homework at the Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch page.

Join us on GoodReads!

Donate to our Patreon!

BUY A NIHILIST BLANKET!

Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and

Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett)

MUSIC & SFX:

"Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco. Used by permission.

"The Grim Reaper - II Presto" by Aitua. Used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

"Thinking It Over" by Lee Rosevere. Used under an Attribution License.

Michael and Ethan continue their discussion of Beloved, by Toni Morrison, while drinking Jura 12yo single malt.

In this episode:

The essay under discussion at the beginning is “Literary Conjure Woman,” by Stanley Crouch, which still doesn’t seem to be online, but is maybe in one or more of his essay collections?

Definitely see American Fiction if you’re like, at all interested in the things on this podcast

What are we if not self-deprecating?

Is the meta-narrative of this podcast “doing criticism in a way that is fair and not stupid”?

Listen, in the middle of this ep we say a lot of things about sex and trauma and whatnot that is all relevant, but not funny to make a bullet point about

Bamboozled, also very much worth watching

Next time Michael and Ethan will begin to discuss The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy! Join the discussion! Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line. We'd love to hear from you! And submit your homework at the Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch page.

Donate to our Patreon!

BUY A NIHILIST BLANKET!

Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and

Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett)

MUSIC & SFX:

"Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco. Used by permission.

"The Grim Reaper - II Presto" by Aitua. Used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

"Thinking It Over" by Lee Rosevere. Used under an Attribution License.

Michael and Ethan begin their discussion of Beloved, by Toni Morrison, while drinking Jura 12yo single malt.

In this episode:

Immediately the ghosts/vampires thing again, we promise we’re not Vamps and Mers

Michael said “The ghosts have business to do” and Ethan didn’t even chortle—the boys are growing up

The seeds of vampires (but not like that)

Main characfter vs central character—a potentially not very interesting debate (which we have eventually anyway, sort of)

Ghost stories as modern incarnations of classical tragedy

Pulp stories as reckoning with the unexpurgated guilt of the culture that produces them

What Viking history has to do with vengeance, what vengeance has to do with justuce, and what any of this has to do with Beloved (hopefully)

Beloved as whirlpool vs Denver as Odysseus

Michael names with Michael

Why are Americans taught so little about history between the end of the Civil War and the start of WWI?

Next time Michael and Ethan will begin to discuss Beloved, by Toni Morrison! Join the discussion! Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line. We'd love to hear from you! And submit your homework at the Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch page.

Donate to our Patreon!

BUY A NIHILIST BLANKET!

Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and

Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett)

MUSIC & SFX:

"Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco. Used by permission.

"The Grim Reaper - II Presto" by Aitua. Used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

"Thinking It Over" by Lee Rosevere. Used under an Attribution License.

Michael and Ethan continue their discussion of The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, while drinking Jura 12yo single malt.

In this episode:

Who is the real fool: the fool or the fool who edits him?

A bespoke toast, or, the most work anyone has ever done to prep for this podcast

Does the adjective “ghost” actually indicate simply the inclusion of a ghost, or does it mean something more?

Is a ghost actually a vampire? Are novels vampires? Is COVID a vampire? Is COVID a ghost? Is a novel a ghost? Is this podcast a ghost? Will Michael slip and say “vampire”? If he does, will Ethan notice?

Parameters of author self-insert technique

Paradoxes of being essential

Unparsability: a definitely real word

Obligatory Hamlet reference (but this one’s pretty good)

Ghosts as political actors

Next time Michael and Ethan will begin to discuss Beloved, by Toni Morrison! Join the discussion! Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line. We'd love to hear from you! And submit your homework at the Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch page.

Donate to our Patreon!

BUY A NIHILIST BLANKET!

Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and

Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett)

MUSIC & SFX:

"Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco. Used by permission.

"The Grim Reaper - II Presto" by Aitua. Used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

"Thinking It Over" by Lee Rosevere. Used under an Attribution License.

Michael and Ethan begin their discussion of The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, while drinking Jura 12yo single malt.

In this episode:

This podcast is a haunting

Other covid novels:

Sea of Tranquility

America Fantastica

Sentence Sentencing Sentences

Ethan is unprepared to answer a basic question about the text, but he affirms that there IS an answer

The grace of babies

Please tell us that Ethan is wrong

Michael does a bad thing right at the end

Next time Michael and Ethan will continue to discuss The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich! Join the discussion! Go to the Contact page and put "Scotch Talk" in the Subject line. We'd love to hear from you! And submit your homework at the Michael & Ethan in a Room with Scotch page.

Donate to our Patreon!

BUY A NIHILIST BLANKET!

Your Hosts: Michael G. Lilienthal (@mglilienthal) and

Ethan Bartlett (@bjartlett)

MUSIC & SFX:

"Kessy Swings Endless - (ID 349)" by Lobo Loco. Used by permission.

"The Grim Reaper - II Presto" by Aitua. Used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

"Thinking It Over" by Lee Rosevere. Used under an Attribution License.