687: Schloctoberfest 2025 #2: A Discussion of The Sword of Doom, with Jeff Shuster!

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and John King delve into an existentially strange antihero story that feels a bit crazy and not entirely complete.

In October, The Drunken Odyssey crams Literature aside to consider wild, dark fun cinema with our curator of Schlock, Jeff Shuster! This year, John and Jeff discuss 4 black-and-white films from the 1960s. First up is this chili pepper of a film that arose the year before the Summer of Love.

Sylvia Plath is legendary for being a tragic poet mostly known for her novel, The Bell Jar. John and Rachael are fans of Plath's poetry and The Bell Jar, but hereby set out on a historical project to read Plath's work as the world would have known it first, and as she would have known it herself, without the legend imposing its darkest meanings onto every possible opportunity. 

This conversation with Samantha Nickerson, Brian Salmans, and Rachael Tillman will give you some idea of the mischief you are missing out on, and the pain John is putting himself through.

This week, John speaks with the fiction writer, cartoonist, and musician Eugenio Negro about his new novel, Despair Priorities, the long term project, and figuring out what will be deeply satisfying as a writer and reader.

Sophia Ferrara joins John down the rabbit hole of Charlotte Brontë's early private storytelling.

In this week's show, John teams up once again with his friend Matt Peters to discuss the second book of William S. Burroughs's original quartet of novels. They also discuss the recent film adapation of the same.

On today’s show, I speak with the essayist Katharine Coldiron about how the way we watch movies are sometimes our autobiographies, sometimes our philosophies, and sometimes our humanity.

On 679, John speaks with the novelist Keith MacKenzie about how to plan an unplannable thriller, and how body horror and comedy and existentialism are awfully close neighbors.

On 678, John speaks with recent Kerouac Project of Orlando resident Zach Zimmerman about memoir, memories, childhood, comedy, tragedy, the problems of authenticity, and other vital literary matters.