The Projectionist's Lending Library
By The Projectionist's Lending Library
The Projectionist's Lending LibraryFeb 06, 2024
2.11 Chester Himes and COTTON COMES TO HARLEM
Erik and Nathanael are joined by special guest Will Murray to discuss Chester Himes' novel Cotton Comes to Harlem. Discussion includes the nature of reclamation and revolution and historical shifts in discussing racial issues.
Please note that there are substantial audio issues with this episode. We do think that the conversation is well worth listening to.
02.10 James Joyce and "The Dead"
In this special holiday episode, Kline and Booth discuss James Joyce's short story "The Dead" from his 1914 collection DUBLINERS, as well as the 1987 adaptation, John Huston's last film, and starring Anjelica Huston and Donal McGann. As they parse out the complexities of Joyce's style and what makes the story so quintessentially modernist, they also examine how it fits into the holiday literary tradition in its framings of home, family, love, and human connection.
Listen to Joyce himself read from his final novel FINNEGANS WAKE here.
02.09 Ellery Queen and TEN DAYS' WONDER
Booth and Kline tackle Ellery Queen's Ten Commandments themed novel Ten Days' Wonder and the 1971 adaptation of it by Claude Chabrol. What do you do with a God who makes impossible demands and enacts disproportionate judgement? How should humans press forward in a world shattered by war? And how old, after all, is Ellery Queen? These questions and more are addressed in this episode.
If you are interested in this conversation, check out Booth's book God and the Great Detective: Ellery Queen's Struggle with the Divine, 1945-1965, now out from McFarland.
02.08 Capote, IN COLD BLOOD, and the Biopics
Part 2 of 2. Booth and Kline discuss the movie adaptation(s) of In Cold Blood and the biopics covering its writing: Capote and Infamous. Topics covered include the ethics of adaptation, the use of source materials, and the way Capote's structure informs all subsequent adaptations.
Join us for our most controversial episode yet! Will Kline and Booth agree on the relative merits of Capote and Infamous? There is, after all, only one way to find out....
02.07 Truman Capote and IN COLD BLOOD
Kline and Booth revisit Truman Capote in the first of a double-episode covering In Cold Blood and the movies inspired by it and by Capote's experience writing it. Episode 1 covers the book itself and its themes of masculinity and American violence. It also asks the question--is this book a great book or merely a good one?
02.06 Borges and "Death and the Compass"
Kline and Booth discuss Jorge Luis Borges' "Death and the Compass" and the 1992 film adaptation. But the discussion is itself a labyrinth, covering (among other topics) metaphysical detective fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, Alan Moore, and Batman.
02.05 Dorothy B. Hughes and IN A LONELY PLACE
Erik and Nathanael are once again joined by Dr. Matthew Wells, who last appeared in "The Swimmer" episode of season one. This time, the three discuss Dorothy B. Hughes's 1947 thriller novel, IN A LONELY PLACE, and the 1950 film adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.
02.04 John Berendt and MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL
Booth and Kline are joined by special guest Steph Parker to discuss John Berendt's 1994 book and the 1997 Clint Eastwood movie based on it.
Note that Booth misidentifies a podcast he listened to featuring John Berendt. The podcast is Queer We Are and can be listened to here.
02.03 William Lindsay Gresham and NIGHTMARE ALLEY
Nathanael and Erik dive into William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley and Guillermo del Toro's 2021 adaptation. Topics include: freakishness, tarot, whether authors get any say on what their symbolism does.
For further information see:
Abbot, Megan. "Megan Abbot on the Difference between Hardboiled and Noir."
Adams, Rachel. Sideshow U.S.A. Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination.
Pollack, Rachel. Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom.
Discussion of Nightmare Alley & Use of Tarot [YouTube Video]
02.02 James Dickey and DELIVERANCE
Erik and Nathanael are joined by Jennie Lightweis-Goff to discuss James Dickey's 1970 novel Deliverance and the film based on it. Topics include: masculinity, nature, and freakishness.
Please be aware that due to the graphic nature of the content of this episode, listener discretion is advised.
02.01: William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS (and KILL YOUR DARLINGS)
Erik and Nathanael begin a new season of PLL. This year we will be looking at books dealing with crime and criminality of all sorts. And to kick things off, we return to the Beats and discuss the collaboration between William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks. This novel is a fictionalized account of a very real murder that took place in 1944--a murder that proved to be important for the developing Beat Generation. We pair this novel with the 2013 film Kill Your Darlings, which approaches the same case from a different perspective. Along the way, we talk about life on the homefront during WWII, the ways this novel anticipates the mature work of both Burroughs and Kerouac, and the ways in which some responses to the movie suggest that issues raised by the case might still be with us today.
12. Charles Dickens and the Muppets' CHRISTMAS CAROL
Join Nathanael and Erik for this special holiday season episode! They are joined by two special guests and talk about the Dickens novella as well as its many adaptations, including the Muppets classic.
11. John Ball and IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
Will Murray joins Erik and Nathanael to discuss John Ball's novel In the Heat of the Night and the 1967 movie based on it. Join us as we discuss the idea of the American South as branding and as scapegoat, interrogate the limits of generic forms, and answer the question of whether In the Heat of the Night is a feel-good movie.
[Production note: there are some issues with sound here and there in the episode; we don't think this detracts from the overall flow of the discussion]
10. Franz Kafka's THE METAMORPHOSIS (1915) and Cronenberg's THE FLY (1986)
It's spooky season! In their October episode, Nathanael and Erik discuss the figurative and literal body horror seen in Kafka's absurdist novella THE METAMORPHOSIS and Cronenberg's visceral cult classic THE FLY.
09. Joan Didion and PLAY IT AS IT LAYS
In this episode we take a trip to midcentury California and into the lives of the bored and desperate. It's Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion.
This movie is not easy to find, but it is on YouTube.
Youtube Videos:
The American Experience as told by Joan Didion (2003) (Source of our first intersegment bumper)
Katarzyna Nowak McNeice - "Joan Didion’s California and the Melancholic American Identity"
Further Reading
Daugherty, Tracy. The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion. St. Martin's, 2015.
Nowak-McNeice, Katarzyna. California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion's Novels. Routledge, 2019.
Vandenberg, Kathleen M. Joan Didion: Substance and Style. SUNY 2021.
08. John Cheever's THE SWIMMER
A guest joins Nathanael and Erik to untangle midcentury malaise. Tune in for suburban flotation.
07. Carson McCullers and REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE
Caitlan Sumner joins us to discuss Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) and the 1967 John Huston movie based on it.
Further Reading:
Carr, Virginia Spencer. The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers. U of Georgia P, 2003.
Gleeson-White, Sarah. "Revisiting the Southern Grotesque: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Case of Carson McCullers." The Southern Literary Journal, Volume 33, Number 2, Spring 2001, pp. 108-123
Hoang Tan Nguyen. A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation. Duke UP, 2014. [Booth apologizes for butchering Hoang's name multiple times during this podcast. It's a good book and worth checking out]
06. Jack Kerouac and ON THE ROAD
In this episode, Erik and Nathanael discuss Jack Kerouac's 1957 monumental Beat novel, ON THE ROAD, as well as the 2012 film adaptation.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. Penguin.
—. Desolation Angels. Penguin
—. Dharma Bums. Penguin.
Charters, Ann. Kerouac: A Biography. St. Martin’s.
Johnson, Joyce. Minor Characters. Washington Square P.
Leland, John. Why Kerouac Matters. Viking.
Miles, Barry. Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats: A Portrait. Virgin.
Penner, James. Pinks, Pansies, and Punks: The Rhetoric of Masculinity in American Literary Culture. Indiana UP.
05. Gore Vidal and MYRA BRECKINRIDGE
Guest Carl Watts joins us to discuss Gore Vidal's troubling novel Myra Breckinridge. Check out Carl's book I Just Wrote This Five Minutes Ago, newly out from Gordon Hill Press
In light of the ongoing attacks on trans communities throughout the US and the world, we would like to direct listeners to the GLAAD transgender resource page: https://www.glaad.org/transgender/resources
Further Reading:
Blanchard, Sessi Kuwabara. "In Defense of the Trans Villainess."
Booth, Nathanael Thomas. "The Queer Utopianism of Myra Breckinridge." Utopian Studies, vol. 32 no. 2, 2021, p. 167-185.
Diffrient, David Scott. ""Hard to Handle": Camp Criticism, Trash-Film Reception, and the Transgressive Pleasures of Myra Breckinridge." Cinema Journal, vol. 52 no. 2, 2013, p. 46-70.
Hoare, Liam. "Was Gore Vidal the Real Crypto-Nazi?"
YouTube Links:
Raquel Welch discusses Myra Breckinridge:
Blatant: a stage production inspired by Myra Breckinridge
04. Patricia Highsmith and THE PRICE OF SALT/CAROL
In this episode we discuss Patricia Highsmith's landmark lesbian novel The Price of Salt as well as its 2015 film adaptation.
Works Cited:
Hesford, Victoria. “Patriotic Perversions: Patricia Highsmith’s Queer Vision of Cold War America in ‘The Price of Salt’, ‘The Blunderer’, and ‘Deep Water.’” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3/4, 2005, pp. 215–33, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40004425.
James, Jenny M. "Maternal Failures, Queer Futures: Reading The Price of Salt (1952) and Carol (2015) against Their Grain." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 24 no. 2, 2018, p. 291-314. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/696683.
Perrin, Tom. “Rebuilding ‘Bildung’: The Middlebrow Novel of Aesthetic Education in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 44, no. 3, 2011, pp. 382–401, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41289263.
White, Patricia. “Sketchy Lesbians: Carol as History and Fantasy.” Film Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 2, 2015, pp. 8–18, https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2015.69.2.8.
Seitz, Matt Zoller. “Directors of the Decade No. 9: The Sensualists.” Salon, 17 Dec. 2009, https://www.salon.com/2009/12/17/sensualists_seitz/.
Interview with Phyllis Nagy: https://youtu.be/xSX7hqKIw7k
03. Truman Capote and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S
Join us as we discuss Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's and the later film adaptation with Audrey Hepburn's iconic role as Holly Golightly
02. Christopher Isherwood and THE BERLIN STORIES Part II: I AM A CAMERA and CABARET
In part II of our inaugural episode, we discuss I am a Camera and Cabaret and the changes they rang on Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories
01. Christopher Isherwood and THE BERLIN STORIES Part I
Welcome to the Projectionist's Lending Library. In this episode, we discuss The Berlin Stories, which were later adapted as I am a Camera and Cabaret.