Recall This Book By cover art

Recall This Book

By: Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today's world.
    Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
    Show more Show less
Episodes
  • 129* Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP)

    129* Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP)
    Jun 6 2024
    The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently published Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Harvard UP, 2019), centered on a group of enslaved West Africans, known under the term “Coromantees” who were the chief protagonists in this war. Tracing the vectors of this war within the Caribbean, the North Atlantic, and West Africa, Vince shows us how these particular enslaved Africans, who are caught in the gears of one of human history’s most dehumanizing institutions, constrained by repressive institutions, social-inscribed categories of differences and brutal force, operate tactically within and across space in complex and cosmopolitan ways. Vince locates his interest in warfare (as an object of study) in emergence of new world order and disorder through the Gulf Wars. His attention to routes and mobilities he credits to an epidemiological turn of mind–perhaps inherited from his father Willie Brown, a medical microbiologist now retired from UCSD. The idea of the vector shaped his first book as well. Vince’s “cartographic narrative” “A Slave Revolt in Jamaica: 1760-1761” and the film he produced with director Llewellyn Smith, Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (which traces African studies and anthropology’s understanding of cultural movements from between Africa and the Americas) also explore these burning questions. Along the way, Vince discusses C.L.R. James’ notion of conflict, war and global connectedness in The Black Jacobins and the ways that categories of social difference both are constituted by global capital (reminding us of our conversation on caste, class and whiteness with Ajantha Subramanian) and those bumper stickers from the early 1980s in which the Taliban were the good guys. Mentioned in this episode: Rambo III (1988) The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself (1789) Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688) Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 (2002) C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938) John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic World-1400-1800 (1992) Derrick ‘Black X’ Robinson on his advocacy to make Tacky a national hero in Jamaica Black X walks barefoot across Jamaica to make Tacky a national hero  Recallable Books: Marlon James, The Book of Night Women (2009) John Tutino, Making a New World (2011) Angel Palerm, The First Economic World-System (1980) Listen and Read Here: 34 The Caribbean and Vectors of Warfare: Vincent Brown Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Show more Show less
    46 mins
  • 128 Steve McCauley excavates John Cheever's "The Five-Forty-Eight" (JP)

    128 Steve McCauley excavates John Cheever's "The Five-Forty-Eight" (JP)
    May 9 2024
    We debut a new feature: Recall This Story, in which a contemporary writer picks out a bygone story to read and to analyze. Surely there is no better novelist to begin with than RTB' shouse sage, Steve McCauley. And not just because he's got the pipes to power through a whole fantabulous John Cheever story. "The Five-Forty-Eight" (published in The New Yorker 70 years ago) is about sordidness uncovered, a train, and a face in the dirt. It ticks almost every Cheever box, evoking an infinitude of lives unled elsewhere while ostensibly documenting nothing more than the time to takes to down a couple of drinks, scuttle feverishly through some midtown streets, and take a lumbering commuter train out of the city. Steve feels that in our own century, things have changed for the American short story and there's no going back to Cheever's mode. After Raymond Carver, it would be hard to embrace the proliferation (sometimes dizzying, sometimes delightful) of solid details that Cheever deploys. The two try out a final comparison to E M Forster who also quasi-fit into this society, but, Steve opines, could project himself into his female characters in a way that Cheever cannot or will not. John Cheever works mentioned: "The Swimmer" (also a Gregory Peck movie) "The Jewels of the Cabots" "Oh Youth and Beauty" and other stories that nest multiple lives within a single frame, like "The Day the Pig Fell into the Well" Works by others: Sloane Wilson's 1955 novel, Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (and the 1956 film) Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" ("she would have been a good woman if there had been someone there to shoot her every day of her life.") Anton Chekov, "Lady with the Lapdog" Richard Yates and mid-century office nihilism (eg his 1961 Revolutionary Road) Jean Stafford's novels (The Mountain Lion, Boston Adventure) do get reprinted and re-read, Steve points out. Raymond Carver, only partially minimalist, but reduced still further by Gordon Lish in e.g. the story "Mr Copy and Mr fix-it" Listen to and read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 14 mins
  • 127* Helena De Bres on Life-Writing (JP, EF)

    127* Helena De Bres on Life-Writing (JP, EF)
    Apr 18 2024
    How does the past live on within our experience of the present? And how does our decision to speak about or write down our recollections of how things were change our understanding of those memories--how does it change us in the present? Asking those questions back in 2019 brought RTB into the company of memory-obsessed writers like Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. Discussing autofiction by Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Karl Ove Knausgaard, John and Elizabeth begin to understand that the line between real-life fact, memory, and fiction is not quite as sharp as we had thought. Joining Recall This Book for this conversation is philosopher Helena De Bres, author of influential articles including “The Many, not the Few: Pluralism about Global Distributive Justice”, “Justice in Transnational Governance”, “What’s Special About the State?” “Local Food: The Moral Case” and most recently "Narrative and Meaning in Life". (Her website contains links to her many fine articles for fellow philosophers and for the general public). She has recently begun to work on moral philosophy, especially the question of what makes a life meaningful, and on philosophy of art. John ranks his favorite anthropologists, while Elizabeth wonders whether autofiction necessarily takes on the affect of an academic department meeting--and what that affect has to do with Kazuo Ishiguro. Discussed in this episode: "A Sketch of the Past," Virginia Woolf "Finding Innocence and Experience: Voices in Memoir," Sue William Silverman The Outline Trilogy, Rachel Cusk My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life, Sheila Heti An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro The Moth The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief, Renato Rosaldo Memoir: An Introduction, G. Thomas Couser The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell Or Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism, Alex Woloch Listen and Read Here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Show more Show less
    41 mins
Art World Literary History & Criticism Social Sciences
Show more Show less

What listeners say about Recall This Book

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available