59 Recall This B-Side #4: Pardis Dabashi on “My Uncle Napoleon” (JP)

Recall This Book

Iraj Pezeshkzad‘s My Uncle Napoleon is a slapstick and at times goofy love story, but it is also in the best tradition of sly anti-imperial satire. Scholar Pardis Dabashi came to it late, but she has all the convert’s zeal as she links it to a literary tradition that’s highly theoretical, but also delightfully far-flung. Plus, it makes her parents laugh….

Pardis’s talk with John is our last “Recall this B-Side,” drawn from the column John edits at B-Side Books and the book that collects 40 of these columns. It has been an unalloyed pleasure to spend June with this set of acoustic variations on the theme.

Surprise Announcement:

Humanities Podcast Network: Recall this Book is a founding member of a new organization designed to bring together scholars teachers and students who think that the future of the humanities is oral and aural. If you have always dreamed of starting your own podcast, or if you are an educator who has thought about using podcasting in a classroom–either by teaching episodes or by encouraging students to make their own!–please consider attending our inaugural Humanities Podcasting Symposium this October 15-16.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759-1767)

Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl ( 1936)”something kind of too much about it”; like Alain Robbe-Grillet and in some sense a continuation of the nouveau roman, but also expressionistic in a godless/abandoned world.

Listen and Read:

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Upcoming Episodes:

In two weeks, Elizabeth sits down with Brandeis’ own Elizabeth Bradfield and her fellow poet Sean Hill to chew the lyrical fat.

Later in the summer comes a new series, which stems from our conversation with Thomas Piketty about the surprising political weakness of what he calls the “Brahmin Left”: parties that no longer command the allegiance of the working class or underclass, but instead rely on a highly educated base of support. Is this a fatal political error, a new development that holds potential for progressive politics, or something else altogether? We speak with experts on the left/right divide of both American and European politics, among them Matt Karp (This Vast Southern Empire) and Jan-Werner Muller (What is Populism?).