Our Struggle

It's a repulsively glorious fall day in Brooklyn. Seeking respite from his upstate rustication, Greg Jackson comes to the city to ask us, "Who are you guys?" In trying to answer him, we discuss Conrad, infantile ejaculation, polite literary readings, and nested storytelling. We take frequent breaks. Drew becomes rather maudlin. Lauren eats Port Salut and tries not to talk about auto-fiction. Greg gives us a reading of some of his greatest hits. His prose is metaphysically propulsive, humanely experimental. Do you like our blurb, Greg? We love you, bro.

We're so back, as they say, and we've recruited some struggle favorites to join us for a most unseemly return. We gather in Park Slope with 3 microphones, 4 dudes, and 1 Lauren. We talk about the text, for once. We talk about sojourns abroad and encounters with Kentuckian gastronomy. We perform close readings then forget our reading entirely. We sing at the end, too, which you'll hear if you make it all the way there.

In this episode with cult fave 6'4" writer SAM KRISS, all motifs are on the table - literally. Drew has been heroically managing dry January by replacing alcohol with weird food and on the Wednesday evening we gathered at the Park Slope Manse, he presented Sam and Lauren with the most deranged assortment of snacks imaginable. As we loudly munched our way through the spread (to the great delight of audiophile listeners, we're sure), the madness of the snacks began to infect us, resulting in folie a trois to remember. cheat sheet: 2:00 - Drew itemizes our meal and Sam explains how it's possible to be British and Jewish at the same time.  46:00 - Sam delivers a startlingly lucid lecture on Kristeva's the sign and the symbol and explains how, hopefully, literature is headed back to the Middle Ages. This has to do with Knausgaard! 1:30:00 - We declare Sam to be the UK's new Blurber in Chief and Sam flawlessly impersonates American TikTok teens. 2:00:00 - Complete madness sets in at this point; not sure what we were talking about here. Many thanks to Sam for joining us!  Listeners: Feedback about the audio quality is NOT welcome. PLUGS: Subscribe to Sam's substack Help us enliven our snack budget with mischief

Love is boring and breakups are banal. Flight attendants are gay and have extraordinarily high body counts. We’re calling for a New Sensualism! Have you read The Line of Beauty? Drew’s getting into astrology and martinis, Lauren’s still running the show. Alex Dimitrov is, in fact, a respected poet–published in The New Yorker, no less. He likes getting his haircut once a week, to feel in control. He likes keeping a diary, he likes the camaraderie of a handjob. Lauren’s been reading a lot about AIDS and Quebec. Drew’s been forcing people to take shots of Pepto Bismol. Dimitrov doesn’t like lunch, but he likes Hemingway. Lauren knows where to find the best steak tartare in New York. Drew still hasn’t found a father. Dimitrov is writing a novel but it’s not a queer novel. Karl Ove is falling in love. No one’s beautiful, we’re all going to die, and Our Struggle is back from an accidental hiatus. Eat this episode with cranberry sauce. 

As that haunting summer feeling takes hold, Lauren and Drew languidly reflect on another year of podcasting and readerly fellowship. Along the way they read some KOK and respond to calls from the usual band of dilettantes, devotees, and detractors. A goblin-schnozzed Czech puppet called Mickey makes a special appearance as well. 

Good news: it's our first in-person recording in half a year. Bad news (a la Teddy St. Aubyn): Audio interface ran out of battery so it cuts off sorry Buy Jon's book: Body High We'll get back to Karl Ove soon we promise. Have brain damage? Consider donating to our Patreon: patreon.com/ourstruggle

We're back! We're talkin schlong! We're on Patreon, finally! It's season 4....after taking a month and half off from the show to work on their tans, Lauren and Drew return, joined, this time, by the beloved novelist Gary Shteyngart, zooming in from his Rolex-stuffed country estate in the Hudson Valley. Knowing that many of our listeners are fans of Gary's work for its wit, humor and aching portrayals of soviet jewish anxiety (cosplaying a lit critic today lol), we decided to engage Gary exclusively on the subject of his penis. Gary, whose penis's travails began at the age of 7 when we underwent a botched circumcision inflicted by singing Hasids, was more than happy to discuss his New Yorker story about the trials and tribulations of his mangled member (his Bildongsroman, if you will). What followed was a congenial discussion of not only his fucked up penis but also his decadent forays into watches, ant larvae, and more; Phillip Roth's sex advice to a young starstruck Gary; and a truly overwhelming raft of dick jokes that all seemed to point in the same direction: a serious consideration of the limits of humor's liberating properties and the delicate process of transforming real ongoing pain into art (I told you I was cosplaying a lit critic today lol). Thank you Gary! Hope to see you at the tinned fish restaurant soon. To the rest of you - patreon.com/ourstruggle. Reach out - [email protected]; [email protected]

We're back! And joined by Felix Biederman, a promising young podcaster recently arrived in Los Angeles whom we condescended to let on the show. Although by no means a "bookhead" -- to appropriate his charming coinage -- Felix is a longtime fan of Karl Ove Knausgaard. The Norwegian author became a source of strength for Felix when he first encountered the Struggle books in 2017 amidst an increasingly cloying digital media landscape. With startling lucidity, Felix articulates how Knasugaard, with his undifferentiated and unselfserving stream of thoughts, served as a welcome anecdote to the insanely hypertargeted and overdetermined first person essay boom of the time (should she have pitched a piece about what it's like to be a quarter Portuguese woman in America? Lauren wonders). Then we get into the text: specifically pages 88-94 of book 2, which cover about five minutes of Knausgaard stalking around Stockholm with the stroller and having thoughts. We try to understand Knausgaard's aversion to being recognized as a "regular" as a coffee shop (and utter mortification at being presented with a free croissant) and Felix recounts his stint in cafe society (the LES Dunkin Donuts) as a young man. Also: we discover Knausgaard to have invented main character/NPC discourse, and consider the 2005 fashion trend of knee high black boots for women, which Knausgaard wishes "would last forever" (cruel hindsight: it didn't). If you enjoyed this episode with Felix, make sure to check out his podcast, "Chapo Trap House" As always we can be reached at [email protected]; [email protected] LIVE SHOW IS THURS JUN 2 @ KGB BAR. Tickets are not available yet but will be soon. We'll send out an email blast! Mugs are available at ourstruggle.store. Discount code MISTAKE valid for one week! Oh and congratulations to our baby Joshua Cohen (novelist) on his Pulitzer win, which we like to think we are in some part if not all responsible for.

A lot of people when they realize that Drew is not on this episode are going to say I betrayed him but what you need to know is that we're actually POLY now and I can podcast with any man I choose. Also Drew was supposed to show up to this recording and didn't.  WE HAD A LOT OF FUN WITHOUT DREW! My good friend Alec Niedenthal and I went to see The Northman at Nitehawk (prospect park location), sampled a viking burger (which we review in this episode), and podded about the experience back at my place over gluten free beer and mixed olives (garlic stuffed and kalamata). Weirdly enough we had a number of surprise guests show up to my living room: literary critic Christian Lorentzen; Alec's friend Seth from his MFA,  who's promoting his self-published book 'Communal Feelings Spaces'; and the Northman himself! It was a wild time!! This episode contains what some losers would call spoilers. Don't listen if you can't handle the details of a story that didn't even happen in real life!  Thank you for listening and shout out to my homie Alec!  Until next time-

Finally! It's Rhythm Time! To discuss one of the most notorious and worst written passages of Book 2, we invited back our homie James Griffiths, the Welsh warrior and three-time struggle King, who told us that these pages made him "want to get a vasectomy." Also in this episode: A "lover's quarrel" between Lauren and Drew (saga to be cont.); we uncover the true meaning of Nico's 'These Days'; James and Drew get vulnerable about their hair loss journeys; Lauren reports on her experience of a real-life Rhythm Time in south Brooklyn. James has a new book out which Lauren will definitely read if he sends her a copy! It's called "Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language" and takes up the subject of vanishing marginal languages (we love them folks!) and it's been getting great reviews! As always, we can be reached at teixeira.lauren@gmail; [email protected] Live show is June 2 at KGB Bar in New York! Mark your calendars! (Tickets are not available yet but they will be, at some point) Oh and stay tuned for our Patreon lol Oh and I still have mugs please buy one? ourstruggle.store Until next time!