Best Scott Yarbrough and Kirk Curnutt Podcasts (2024)

1
Episode 27: Filtering the Static in Don DeLillo's WHITE NOISE 1:14:34

3d ago1:14:34

1:14:34

Often hailed as the quintessential exemplum of Reagan-era postmodernism, Don DeLillo's eighth novel, White Noise (1985), is part academic satire, part media excoriation, and part exploration of the "simulacrum" or simulated feel of everyday life. With its absurdist asides on the iconicity of both Elvis and Hitler, the unrelenting stress of consumer…

1
Episode 26: Seekers of the Lonely Heart: Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 1:03:21

2M ago1:03:21

1:03:21

The 26th episode of the Great American Novel Podcast delves into Carson McCullers’ 1940 debut novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Published when the author was only 23, the novel tells the tale of a variety of misfits who don’t seem to belong in their small milltown in depression-era, 1930s Georgia. Tackling race, disability, sexuality, classism, s…

1
Episode 25: Surmising the Motives in Henry James's THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 1:08:20

3M ago1:08:20

1:08:20

Published in 1881, The Portrait of a Lady was Henry James's seventh novel and marked his transition away from the novel of manners that only three years earlier had made his novella Daisy Miller a succès de scandale toward the more meticulous, inward study of individual perception, or what would come to be known as psychological realism. The story …

1
Episode 24: Speeding Down the Highway with PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan Didion 1:16:10

6M ago1:16:10

1:16:10

Great American Novel Podcast 24 considers Joan Didion’s 1970 novel Play It as It Lays, which shut the door on the 60s and sped down the freeway into the 70s, eyes on the rearview mirror all the while. In a wide-ranging discussion which touches not only upon Didion and her screenwriter husband but also John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, the Manson cult, …

1
Episode 23: Hearing Voices in William Faulkner's AS I LAY DYING 1:25:48

7M ago1:25:48

1:25:48

William Faulkner's fifth published novel, As I Lay Dying (1930), is a self-described tour de force that the author cranked out in roughly two months while working as the night manager at the University of Mississippi power plant in his hometown of Oxford. This dark tragicomedy about a family on a quest to bury its matriarch helped win the author hi…

1
Episode 22: Rambling Along the REVOLUTIONARY ROAD 1:12:52

9M ago1:12:52

1:12:52

In Great American Novel Podcast Episode 22, we wrestle with the old Thoreau quote "The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation" as we delve into the soul-sapping mid-century suburbs in Richard Yates' 1961 novel Revolutionary Road. Join the hosts for a conversation that considers other suburban chroniclers such as Updike and Cheever and othe…

1
Defining Dignity through Service in Ernest J. Gaines' A LESSON BEFORE DYING 1:06:23

11M ago1:06:23

1:06:23

Only thirty years old this year, Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying (1993) is a powerful testament to social justice and to the search for individual dignity in an oppressive legal system. Set in the late 1940s in a small Louisiana community, the book tells the story of two men, one a convicted murderer on death's row (Jefferson) and the other…

1
Episode 20: Cracking Through the Scrub with THE YEARLING 1:10:02

1y ago1:10:02

1:10:02

In Great American Novel Podcast Episode 20, your fearless (or is it feckless) hosts find themselves in the damp swamps and thick scrublands of north central Florida in the post-Reconstruction era as we struggle to survive with the settlers of the brush country in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' Pulitzer Prize winning 1938 novel, The Yearling. We discuss …

1
Episode 19: Riding the Rocket with Thomas Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOW 1:03:40

1y ago1:03:40

1:03:40

Season three kicks off with a fiftieth anniversary celebration of Thomas Pynchon's postmodernist whirl-a-gig Gravity's Rainbow. Originally published on February 28, 1973, this encyclopedic inquiry into the systematicity of existence, power, and technology was just this week described by Esquire as "one of the weirdest, richest, most frustrating, in…

1
Episode 18: We Want to Fly Away with Chopin's THE AWAKENING 52:21

1+ y ago52:21

52:21

In Great American Novel Podcast Episode 18, our final Season 2 episode, we plunge ourselves into New Orleans of the fin de siècle in Kate Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening. Edna Pontellier wrestles with a life she never chose, beset by a bore of a husband, a flimsy excuse for a lover, and a patriarchal society which has tried to restrain her choice…

1
Ep 17: Pursuing the Picaro in Saul Bellow's THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH 1:03:25

1+ y ago1:03:25

1:03:25

Saul Bellow's 1953 breakthrough novel The Adventures of Augie March is perhaps, of all the great American novels we've discussed, the one whose cultural imprint has faded the most. Even among Bellow fans this freewheeling exploration of American identity tends to take a backseat to subsequent classics such as Herzog (1964) and Humboldt’s Gift (1975…

1
Episode 16: Classics of American Noir 1:20:29

1+ y ago1:20:29

1:20:29

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
Searching for the Ghost of Tom Joad in John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1:21:19

1+ y ago1:21:19

1:21:19

John's Steinbeck's 1939 tale of an "Oakie" family who crosses Route 66 seeking to escape the Dust Bowl only to discover California isn't the paradise it's been advertised as is one of the most iconic Great American Novels in our literary history. Its impact was profound and immediate: rarely has a novel been so viciously denounced simply for promot…

1
Episode 14: Ride into the sun--Cormac McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN 1:40:30

2y ago1:40:30

1:40:30

The 14th episode is a ride into the evening redness in the west as your hosts consider one of the more notorious books on our short list: Cormac McCarthy’s epic subversive western, BLOOD MERIDIAN, or, The Evening Redness in the West. This 1985 tome of McCarthy’s has engaged constant discussion and speculation due to the high poetry of its language …

1
Homing in on the Prairie with Willa Cather's My Ántonia 1:04:49

2y ago1:04:49

1:04:49

Willa Cather's most famous novel was published only two months before the Armistice ended the bloodshed of the Great War, and in its powerfully imagistic portrait of Midwestern homesteading, it offered readers an emotional connection to the nation's founding myth of pioneer fortitude. Yet My Ántonia wasn't just a story about pilgrims' progress acro…

1
Episode 12: Hitting the Road with LOLITA 1:28:51

2y ago1:28:51

1:28:51

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
The Everyday Ecstasy of Marilynne Robinsone's GILEAD 1:24:57

2y ago1:24:57

1:24:57

Our eleventh episode explores the most recent novel on our list of celebrated Great American Novels, Marilynne Robinson's 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of Christian humanism, GILEAD. Set in a fictional small Iowa town in 1956, this deceptively lowkey narrative about a dying minister, John Ames, and the sudden reappearance of the town's pr…

1
Episode 10: Finding the Lost Generation in Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES 1:31:50

2+ y ago1:31:50

1:31:50

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
Episode 9: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1:22:01

2+ y ago1:22:01

1:22:01

In this installment we look at another of the most iconic of GANs, Mark Twain's 1885 "bad boy" novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Written over an eight-year period, what began as a sequel to the mischievous "bad boy" book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) steepened into a caustic interrogation of racism in the United States. Twain's depiction…

1
Episode 8: Beloved and Ghosts of the Past, the Present, and Possibly the Future 1:13:46

2+ y ago1:13:46

1:13:46

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
Episode 7–All that Jazz: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby 1:35:33

2+ y ago1:35:33

1:35:33

In our seventh episode we explore a Great American Novel that's so ubiquitous it's almost hard to believe there was a time when the media wasn't full of contrast, random references to The Great Gatsby. The story of a mysterious millionaire who turns up on Long Island, throwing lavish parties and spinning fables as transparently invented as they are…

1
Episode 6: Watching the Horizon in THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD 1:08:40

2+ y ago1:08:40

1:08:40

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
Episode 5: Blending Black and White in ABSALOM, ABSALOM! 1:22:40

3y ago1:22:40

1:22:40

William Faulkner's dizzyingly complex, Lost Cause-dismantling 1936 novel about the rise and fall of a Southern plantation owner who "outraged the land" amid the Civil War is perhaps the most formidable Great American Novel one can tackle: it has the distinction of making Moby-Dick look accessible! But Absalom, Absalom! is not only a tour-de-force o…

1
Episode 4: Returning to THE AGE OF INNOCENCE 1:07:37

3y ago1:07:37

1:07:37

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
Episode 3: Seeing Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN Clearly 1:24:20

3y ago1:24:20

1:24:20

On the eve of its seventieth birthday, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) occupies a unique place in the American canon. On the one hand, it was instantly heralded as a Great American Novel---indeed, as Lawrence Buell notes in his study of GANs, it was the first novel by an African American to be universally admitted to the pantheon of important …

1
Episode 2: Diving with MOBY DICK 1:19:55

3y ago1:19:55

1:19:55

The Great American Novel podcast is an ongoing discussion about the novels we hold up as significant achievements in our American literary culture. Additionally, we sometimes suggest novels who should break into the sometimes problematical canon and at other times we’ll suggest books which can be dropped from such lofty consideration. Your hosts ar…

1
Definitions and Debates: What Exactly is a GAN? 43:21

3y ago43:21

43:21

Ever since J. W. DeForest popularized the phrase "Great American Novel" in 1868 commentators have debated the limits of all three of its components. Does "great" necessarily mean a big "doorstop" book or is concision a worthy goal? Whose version America are we talking? And why the novel not a poem, play, or short story? In our inaugural episode we …

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Scott Yarbrough And Kirk Curnutt Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

1
Great American Novel

Scott Yarbrough and Kirk Curnutt

1
Episode 27: Filtering the Static in Don DeLillo's WHITE NOISE 1:14:34

1
Episode 26: Seekers of the Lonely Heart: Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 1:03:21

1
Episode 25: Surmising the Motives in Henry James's THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY 1:08:20

1
Episode 24: Speeding Down the Highway with PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan Didion 1:16:10

1
Episode 23: Hearing Voices in William Faulkner's AS I LAY DYING 1:25:48

1
Episode 22: Rambling Along the REVOLUTIONARY ROAD 1:12:52

1
Defining Dignity through Service in Ernest J. Gaines' A LESSON BEFORE DYING 1:06:23

1
Episode 20: Cracking Through the Scrub with THE YEARLING 1:10:02

1
Episode 19: Riding the Rocket with Thomas Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOW 1:03:40

1
Episode 18: We Want to Fly Away with Chopin's THE AWAKENING 52:21

1
Ep 17: Pursuing the Picaro in Saul Bellow's THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH 1:03:25

1
Episode 16: Classics of American Noir 1:20:29

1
Searching for the Ghost of Tom Joad in John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1:21:19

1
Episode 14: Ride into the sun--Cormac McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN 1:40:30

1
Homing in on the Prairie with Willa Cather's My Ántonia 1:04:49

1
Episode 12: Hitting the Road with LOLITA 1:28:51

1
The Everyday Ecstasy of Marilynne Robinsone's GILEAD 1:24:57

1
Episode 10: Finding the Lost Generation in Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES 1:31:50

1
Episode 9: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1:22:01

1
Episode 8: Beloved and Ghosts of the Past, the Present, and Possibly the Future 1:13:46

1
Episode 7–All that Jazz: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby 1:35:33

1
Episode 6: Watching the Horizon in THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD 1:08:40

1
Episode 5: Blending Black and White in ABSALOM, ABSALOM! 1:22:40

1
Episode 4: Returning to THE AGE OF INNOCENCE 1:07:37

1
Episode 3: Seeing Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN Clearly 1:24:20

1
Episode 2: Diving with MOBY DICK 1:19:55

1
Definitions and Debates: What Exactly is a GAN? 43:21

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