Jimmy you are such a good interviewer. The best on booktube

So I was in and out during the live and had to step out right as you guys were getting into the Le Guin chat 😭 I enjoyed getting to rewatch it! I have to be a productive citizen and get back to work, but I look forward to watching the rest later!

Only caught the 2nd half live so jumped right back in to catch what I missed. Been watching Brian for years now so excited to see him here. What a great conversation!

Had not ‘met’ Brian yet on BookTube but shall have a look at his channel. Just finished Tigana and really liked it, and although one element didn’t work as well for me (characterisation), I do want to read more of his work. As it happens, I have Master & Commander on my TBR for this year and looking forward to it. I’ve been on the fence about Wolf Hall, and still want to give it a try, one day. Like both of you, I don’t subscribe to this literary hierarchy, and find myself forever defending a title from some prejudice. Thank you, both of you, for the great conversation 😊

Another awesome episode of CWN! I hadn’t come across Brian’s channel before, so am glad I got to discover it here- Subscribed!Thank you both for a great discussion 🙌🏻

Don't think I've ever quite understood the concept thinking a work is great but not liking it. My mind can't fathom it. If I don't like a work, I think it's not very good. If I can appreciate a work then that always means I like it. Sometimes variations on appreciation are harder to talk about. For instance, I found much of The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano to be very boring, but finding it boring doesn't mean I didn't like it. A lot of what the book was trying to do, what made it impactful, was enhanced by the aspects of it that are long-winded and mundane. I enjoying thinking about The Savage Detectives more than I enjoyed reading it, but I also think having experienced it as a whole now, rereading it would also be more enjoyable, and as a whole I do very much like the book, I think it's a great book. I can't think of a book I'd consider great that I'd also say I didn't like. I think perhaps it's because I think of "enjoyment" in different ways to other people. Like people will say The Room is a "bad" movie, but I don't agree. Because I like it! I like The Room. And most people do. How can you like something that's bad? The way I view it is by modifying the way we concpetialise "good" and "bad". So for The Room we can point immediately to the acting for instance, we say the acting is very bad. But why, if it is actually enhancing our enjoyment, is it then bad? It's not good because it's so bad, it's good because it's so unconvincing, it's very bombastic and unconvincing acting. And that aspect of it tied to the attempted drama of the narrative makes it so enjoyable. In my view that makes it good acting, it's entertaining acting. The Room remade exactly the same but with very professional and serious acting would not work nearly as well, in that way would probably be quite bad. There's a reason when we talk about "so bad they're good" films we don't just talk about movies that are bad without any notable aspects that elevate them. Does that make sense? Anyway that's just my longwinded way of saying I don't get saying a book is great but you didn't like it. Maybe it's just something I've never actually experienced but sometimes I also think people can sometimes be afraid of just saying to do or don't like something outright. I think it's okay to consider something bad. It's never objective (even if someone thinks they're being objective when they're saying it...they're not! They can't be!) This comment really got away from me. Fun chat, as always! P.S. no big 3 of American literature is complete without Melville - I'd definitely move Steinbeck out for Melville, keep Faulkner, and then perhaps I'd change Hemingway for Toni Morrison but she might be slightly too contemporary, in which case Hemingway is an understandable pick. My personal 3 would probably be William Gaddis, William H. Gass, and Thomas Pynchon, though! P.P.S. or make it a big four of Williams-William Gaddis, William Gass, William Faulkner, and William Vollmann!

Sorry to double comment but I've also been thinking about the topic of snobbery, and honestly as someone who firmly has their footing both in niche literary circles and genre, I think the well is poisoned a lot more by anti-intellectualism and reverse-snobbery. Most litfic readers acknowledge how much lit fic is itself genre, and so much of the most beloved lit fic steps heavily into horror, fantasy, and sci-fi especially. Most lit fic readers don't find themself concerned much with splitting the difference between the two, or even drawing a divide, I find. I think when it comes to litfic circles, the deeper divide is between commercial and non-commercial fiction, especially since the term "literary fiction" is almost weaponised by publishers these days to push any popular contemporary fiction. Especially with things like the Booker Prize which is basically funded / run / selected by all the Big Publishers, it's not a particularly prestigious prize so much as it is a commercial one (prizes in general are kind of hooey, but if any live up to their prestige, the Nobel definitely does it better than the others, especially when it comes to highlighting foreign-language authors that aren't well-known in the West). But that sort of derailed. As I mentioned, I think reverse snobbery is a greater issue. There's a real strain among genre readers to fight back against "snobbishness" and "pretentiousness" with anti-intellectualism (I mean just count the amount of people who use Ulysses as a target for their takes against pretentious, humourless, or unfun reading when it's literally a book full of fart and sex jokes), and I think ultimately that lack of curiosity towards "literary" works is more harmful than the reverse thinking. Genre readers love to act persecuted for reading for fun, but the simple fact is that they're the majority! Nobody is legitimately suffering for their enjoyment of Harry Potter and Marvel movies. It makes the most money, appeals to the largest audiences, and its production steps on the toes of indie / niche publishers and booksellers and writers whose works that are in less demand are stunted by the market demand for genre. Mass-printed, commercial works on a deadline push back against small literary printings, cause paper supply shortages, up financial costs across the board, and generally cause a hard time for everybody but commercial and genre readers. Small, independent bookstores suffer these consequences, writers who attempt any type of formal experimentalism suffer from this, indie publishers suffer from this, and still there are so many cries from genre readers about snobbery, but where is it??? All I ever see are people trying to feel validated for NOT reading anything literary, inventive, experimental, or different. Translations of fundamental works of foreign literature go unpublished because no publishers who are willing to fund them can afford to fund them, meanwhile Fourth Wing gets 30,000 printings and special editions and runs the literary world to the edge of existence. I can't read Alberto Laiseca's epic LOS SORIAS because it's not financially viable to publish in English, I have to travel 6 hours to a niche used bookstore to find a copy of Joshua Cohen's Witz because it only ever got a single printing, and Dalkey Archive pushed back the reprint of Miss Macintosh My Darling for like 3 years because of these sorts of issues, and it's still almost impossible to get an affordable copy in Australia! Anyway. I love genre. I love litfic. I'm reading Harry Potter right now and I'm also reading Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher. There is the capacity for both. But it isn't literary fiction or snobbishness that is ruining reading. It's commerciality and anti-intellectualism that is weaponised against art, hard.

I'll have to finish this next week. Currently reading In Ascension on the beach, which feels appropriate. Enjoying it a lot so far!

This was so fun! 🎉 I love Brian’s channel so it was a good surprise to see you were interviewing him 🤓 I’m so glad you recommended GGK lol, I was dying for someone to recommend him 😂

Another great episode and another Booktuber I get to subscribe to! Your talk about Appalachia being a great place for a story setting reminded me of Manly Wade Wellman and his Silver John series. It is a horror/fantasy series that takes place in the 1960s in Appalachia. You follow John the Balladeer, a Korean War vet. They are great, short novels. You talked about great American novels, reading Pulitzer Prize winners, and books that people don't like but can appreciate. So I have to mention A Confederacy of Dunces. It is still April after all 😂. I'm hoping I can make time to read a David Mitchell book this year. I need to get back to reading more lit fic. This has been a very motivating episode. Bookish was great!

Subbed to this nice gentleman. ❤ Thanks Jimmy ❤

Catching the rewatch! 🤘

Just to clarify things: Burrich does not kill a dog in Assassin’s Apprentice. Fitz is an unreliable narrator, and he misinterprets the situation. Maybe this will let Brian continue with the books.

27:56 Jimmy if you want some great short works, check out some from Gene Wolfe, a master of the short form. Hes got well over a hundred and a bunch are better than many of his novels. Some of the better known are The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, The Death of Doctor Island, or Seven American Nights. New Sun is justifiably his opus, but he was versatile