The Shit Show

In this special episode, Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman discuss the current political quagmire we find ourselves in through the frame of Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics. Moving from the 1990s to the present, Jäger's new book charts how the US has moved away from the mass political movements that defined the early- and mid-twentieth century. Though voter turnout reached a record in 2020, why do so many in the US feel atomized and disconnected, enmeshed in successive waves of political sentiment and agitation that never resolve? Medaya, Kate, and Eric discuss Jäger's argument, if the US's two party system offers any real choice, and if we'll ever move out of this hyperpolitical phase.

Kate Wolf is joined by veteran journalist Jonathan Shainin, who has worked at The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Caravan, among other publications. Most recently, he is one of the founding editors of Equator, a new magazine covering politics, culture and art, launched as a response to what the editors see as the dominant mode of Western media: "boilerplate journalism," "facile binaries" and an "invincible ignorance of other societies and cultures." The magazine's mission feels even more urgent in light of the U.S.'s recent, overt acts of international aggression. Shainin speaks about the war in Iran and Lebanon, and how that conflict is being covered by the press.

In this special episode, host Eric Newman is joined by LARB Film Editors Annie Berke and Elizabeth Alsop and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a look back at the year in film and the current crop of Oscar nominees ahead of this year's awards.

Kate Wolf speaks to Vigdis Hjorth about her latest novel, Repetition. In the book, the narrator, a novelist in her 60s, returns with an almost trancelike intensity to an episode from her youth in which she had her first sexual experience. Leading up to her encounter with the young man she loses her virginity to, she is subjected to extreme scrutiny by her mother, who questions her daughter's every move, tracking her whereabouts, and later, even reading her diary. As the narrator unfolds the events of her past further, the true reasons for her mother's attention comes to light, and the power of retelling and rexaming stories we think we know becomes even more clear. A novel about the power of memory, as well as writing, empathy, and imagination, Repetition enacts the kind of reckoning with our past selves that we might have should we be brave enough to return to them.

Eric Newman speaks with Lauren Groff about her latest story collection, "Brawler," an intimate and tender exploration of the all-too-human struggle to balance a life between compassion and hatred, love and vengeance. Groff shares her approach to writing stories, from the inception of a gossamer idea or mood through to the editorial grunt work of arranging and sharpening characters and sentences, all while trying to let the work emerge organically. Groff also discusses Flannery O'Connor, the possibility of redemption, the importance of avoiding a moral judgment on your characters, and how she tries to balance the lightness and darkness of life on the page. 

Kate Wolf and Eric Newman are joined by the novelist and critic Namwali Serpell to discuss her latest book, On Morrison. Through close readings of Toni Morrison's many novels, as well as her plays, short stories, and early work as a book editor, Serpell's book appraises how critics, scholars, and the public received Morrison across her career and beyond. The book rigorously examines Morrison's writing from a plenitude of contexts and angles, including Black aesthetics, history, literature, race, gender, philosophy, and craft. Though Morrsion has long been considered a titan of American literature, and was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, On Morrison proves that there is still plenty more to be gleaned from the complexity and achievement of her work. Serpell discusses what makes Morrison a difficult writer, how she is often misread, and why her books speak, as ever, to the present moment.

Richard Hell joins Kate Wolf to speak about the reissue of his novel, Godlike. Originally published in 2005, Godlike transposes the relationship of the 19th century poets Arthur Rimabaud and Paul Verlaine to 1970s New York. Told from the hospital room of poet Paul Vaughn, the story centers on his meeting of a wily and charismatic 16-year-old punk named R.T. Wode decades earlier. Their attraction is instant, and it becomes a kind obsession for Paul that is as clarifying and creatively fruitful as it is deluding. The novel is steeped in the poetry of the New York School and captures the scene around St. Mark's Church that Hell came to know when he was just a teenager himself. An anti-nostalgic remembrance, the book reflects on aging, death, belief, and the power of the word to transform the detritus of the everyday into something holy and lasting.

In this week's episode from the archives, Eric Newman and Kate Wolf speak to the author Kristin Ross about her book, The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life, a collection of essays that examine how everyday life emerges as a vantage point for understanding and transforming our social world. The book represents three decades of Ross's writing about the everyday in French political, social, and cultural theory and history, including the commune form and current autonomous zones in France, the romance and memory of the May 1968 protests, and the present predicaments both faced and created by the Macron government. Featuring a long interview with the pioneering philosopher Henri Lefebvre, the book also invokes the work of Fredric Jameson, Jacques Ranciere, Emile Zola, and many others, to explore the intersections of political transformation and cultural representation as resources for thinking opposition and liberation in the present.

A double header show on sculpture, public art, communal space, and gaps and omissions in American history. First, Kate Wolf speaks to Hamza Walker, co-curator of "Monuments," an exhibition currently on view at the  Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and The Brick. The show presents a series of decommissioned Confederate monuments from cities across the US alongside contemporary pieces by Karon Davis, Stan Douglas, Kara Walker, Julie Dash and more. Next, Kate is joined by legendary artist Senga Nengudi to discuss a new career-spanning book of her work, "Populated Air." Published in conjunction with Nengudi's exhibition at Dia Beacon, the book charts the many forms of her practice, including performance, sculpture, dance, and poetry. Nengudi talks about collaboration and her role in the Studio Z collective; being someone who relishes in "thinking" things rather than "making" them; organizing a performance under an LA freeway; and following her own intuition. She is joined by the curator of the Dia exhibition, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi.

Medaya Ocher is joined by writer Lauren Rothery to discuss her novel Television, which follows an aging movie star named Verity, his on and off lover Helen, and Phoebe a screenwriter and filmmaker. One day, on a whim, Verity decides to hold a lottery, giving away his earnings from a massive superhero movie to one lucky filmgoer. Rothery discusses the relationship between failure and success, the current state of Hollywood and why she thinks television is a good metaphor for romance.