Video

My hundredth would be Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

Well done, guys. I grew up in California a few hours from LA, but I had relatives that lived in and about the basin and could have appeared in Chandler's works. I didn't read Chandler until a middle-aged adult, and the only crime fiction I'd read to that point was Conan Doyle. For whatever reason I joined Folio books some time in the 80's, and on a whim I purchased their edition of Chandler's Marlowe novels. I read them all in order and within about a week. Not knowing much of anything about Chandler criticism, I arrived at this one, The Long Goodbye, as my favorite. It is the longest, but it IS different. Chandler had a different motive and worked on a broader canvas here. There are actually THREE beautiful women in this one, and two end up dead. Chandler obviously had an odd relationship with women, which you have explored here. He was compelled to be attracted to them but did NOT really like them. Anyone holding to knightly attitudes toward women is presented either as fool or jaded cynic, and often a drunk. Lennox is a weak drunk. His own dear Cissy left her first husband to cleave to Raymond. She was a soiled dove. Perhaps that's why he also loved that Persian cat of his. He knew her true nature but loved her anyway.

Her name ends in "'ch" not "-k"

A question - why the fascination in the books with occultism? Eardliegh [Obviously Dion Fortune] Dr Trelawney [less obviously Aleister Crowley and Scorp Mirtlock [Possibly Kenneth Grant]. Why?? It seems so clearly out of step with the dance. Was Powell an Occultist?

Odo Stevens and Ted Jeavons and Quiggin are all definitely of humble origins surely! Mark Members as well if we are to believe Sillery! And Sillery makes claim to humble origins as well.

Hi can you please share the name of the music at the beginning at the video ?

I enjoyed this so much, and thanks for luring me to Green!

Great analogy, FW is night and Ulysses is day.

I'm currently reading Pavane for the first time and I think it is well written, has some interesting ideas, but is a difficult read for a non-British person who has little knowledge of England's history and geography. There is so much slang and so many references to places I've never heard of (but that I'm sure British people know of), I find myself just accepting that I'm missing a lot. I do like the structure of the novel as each chapter...or "measure" as they are referred to in the book...is its own separate story but there are characters related to characters from previous stories. I read Canticle for Leibowitz many years ago and would say that it was easier for me to read and understand.

did not expect a Rambo reference in this series

08:40 Good discussion, I just hate it when people put the stress on the wrong part of 'aristocrat' and say it the American way, like this is a Disney cartoon. Stress is on the first A, like in aristocratic. English is a stress-timed language, so when people put the stress in the wrong part of the word, native-speakers find that jarring.

Barth and Burgess were the first contemporary authors I fell in love with, great interview, many thanks. Morrell's shoptalk is gold.

Such an amazing podcast. Thank you for all your work!

💪 *Promo sm*

Gravitys rainbow breaks my mind every time i attempt it.

RIP john barth

Personally enjoyed the novel more, but the film is nothing short of brilliant. I have love for both literature and cinema.

Thank you for this post. I can't agree with everything your guest says about the book. The book is difficult, but it is so because of the grand hallucinatory state that Lowry brings to the English language. I don't think your guest understands what the poetry in this great novel does for the reader. It is my favorite novel.

I’ve owned all of Burgess’s published journalism in book form. I know he praised Lanark but disliked 1982, Janine. I wonder what he thought of Poor Things?

Great another bloody southern student coming to Manchester telling us how and what we were, ditto Dave Haslam. Tedious commentators of our real lives but we did it all quite happily without student analysis or presentism. They never came over to East Manchester that’s for sure. Manning never offended anybody until thirty years later , get your facts right!

Question: was Burgess a good novelist? Murdoch invested in the novel form and explored ideas of goodness and desire. Burgess was experimental , exploring through language more than content, his experiences, but could he write a good novel? Like Flann O'Brien he attracts lots of outsiders to English fiction, a new way of looking at things. I think Murdoch inhabits a greater place in fiction. Burgess was a better critic of fiction.

On my fourth read (and one listen) since 1973. I will always come back to this novel. One morning in the Curry Company cafeteria in Yosemite Valley I spotted a young woman wearing a Byron the Bulb tee-shirt. Can't have been many people who caught that.

Henry Green is terrific. I just finished reading Back, and I'm hooked. I'm gonna read em all now.

My favorite Burgess novel is "nothing like the sun" , fictitious take on Shakespeare's sex life.

I've independently researched the origins of "A Christmas Carol" for almost 15 years, now. My results suggest that it was originally written by an American couple named Mathew and Abby Whittier, and that Charles Dickens merely re-worked it to appeal to the broadest spectrum of the public, when he was in need of money.

Thank you so much for this. I have learned a lot and enjoyed greatly.

Having read the book many times before getting a chance to see the movie, I have to say the movie was a disappointment. Kubrick added nothing to it. His camera is distant from the characters contrasting with the sense of being very much in Alex's mind that the novel gives you. Burgess' world is a very gritty, shabby, and poor working class Northern town in an alternative postwar England. Kubrick's world looks a tacky yet prosperous outer London, like a 1970s Habitat catalogue. Apart from some rubbish strewn around Thamesmeade estate he doesn't make a convincing case for anarchic youth. Great soundtrack album though.

Really enjoying this podcast series.

Entertaining and enlightening! Nick Birns offers both a scholar's wisdom and a reader's enthusiasm.

I've had a PMC copy of this book for years that I have never read. I will now read it, thank you.

The to-read list continues to tower into the heavens.

Great podcast, now I feel a lot better about struggling massively with the book!

What did Anthony expect....when you create something....it can now be seen.....or imagined ....you are responsible...as the author are you..proud ? Guilty? Ashamed?

I've read the book numerous times, and seen the movie a couple of times. The movie was rather faithful to the tome. This video finally taught me why Burgess was disturbed by the flick.

Guy sounds like a bore

Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!

In fairness, I understand why authors get pissed when someone else alters their hard work, especially when Hollywood does an awful job adapting the book. But to also be fair, they did voluntarily sell the rights, sign a contract and get paid for it. So they shouldn't totally complain when filmmakers change and adapt the work. It's like complaining about someone altering your old car after you sold it to them. If you don't want Hollywood altering your book, then don't sell them the film rights. It's that simple.

*... and that's how the film became banned*

This is exactly why I've never really gotten on board with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. The book forces you to essentially learn a new dialect, so by the end of the book you're very immersed in the world. The language obfuscates the horror, and kind of acts as a misdirect: you're so busy trying to decipher the words that you can't fully focus on how terrible Alex's actions are; by the time you're well-versed in the language, you've already been brought into the fold. It makes you part of Alex's gang. In the movie, without that level of commitment from the viewer/reader, it's mostly just cool imagery whizzing by. You don't have to work for it, it just washes over you. Don't get me wrong, Kubrick's movie has some great stuff going for it visually. But on the whole it's always seemed like a perfunctory thing to me.

I would urge anyone - not just Muriel Spark fans - interested in the novel - as art form, as social critique - to listen to this podcast and the rest of the series. This one is exemplary - two articulate experts in conversation, bringing out the many layers of both works, contextualising them and sharing their obvious enthusiasm for the novels and Spark's oeuvre as a whole. And if the result is getting you (re)read the works then job done. Like many of my generation, watching the film of '...Jean Brodie' lead me to the novels, and 'Spark-ed' (sorry) a life long interest. I'm too scared to say how long ago I read 'The Girls of Slender Means' but still remember its impact - so much wit, so much intelligence, so much emotion in such a slim volume. When I was reading about Spark's novels 'Mandelbaum Gate' was always classed as 'a failure' so I put off reading it probably until about a decade ago. It is certainly no failure - different in some aspects from other Spark novels (not only its length) but typical in its ability to tackle serious philosophical/ theological /ethical issues in a seemingly light-touch style. 'Girls...' is a good place to start for new readers, I think.

Great discussion. Can't believe that academics at Reading University burned this prize-winning book in the library. Burgess praised its "worthy divigations of a more monkish Rabelaisian tradition." Nye's mock memoir of the real-life Fastolf merges him with some glutinous aspects of the fictional Shakespearian Falstaff. Fastolf had more in common with the traditional idea of a knightly warrior and was in command for some part of the 100 years war against France when England was the army of Occupation. Nye has Fastolf -one of many versions of the name - present at Agincourt but he had been invalided out a few weeks before.

Kubrick was never big on subtlety. Burgess makes a good point here. Not everything has to be in your face. I always thought this film was almost unwatchable too.

David does a great job of turning this podcast into a postmodern piece in and of itself. Really enjoyed this one.

Very glad to have found this series. Always held onto Burgess' ninety-nine list.

Thoroughly enjoyed that, excellent.

The Spire, kind of a "do you know the story behind that" kind of book.

Did the guest think Julius was making a serious attack on Simon and Axel? I always wondered how much to believe his telling Tallis that was only a blind to distract Morgan as he pushed her into involvement with Rupert.

Volume is not consistent. Hard to hear at times

Here's a link to the only movie I've ever been able to find based on the novel. czcams.com/video/Y2o61zJrrss/video.html It's worth a watch if you're a fan of Joyce.

I met Enrico Terrinoni at the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University a few years ago.. My PhD thesis is on an Hegelian reading of 'Finnegans Wake'. So if he sees this I say 'Hi'.