Great American Novel
Few literary terms are more hotly debated, discounted, or derided than the "Great American Novel." But while critics routinely dismiss the phrase as at best hype and as at worst exclusionary, the belief that a national literature commensurate with both the scope and the contradictions of being American persists. In this podcast Scott Yarbrough and Kirk Curnutt examine totemic works such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Toni Morrison's Beloved that have been labeled GANs, exploring their themes, forms, and reception histories, asking why, when, and how they entered the literary canon. Readers beware: there be spoilers here, and other hijinks ensue...
Podcasting since 2021 • 33 episodes
Great American Novel
Latest Episodes
Episode 33: Pulling Out the Mote in Flannery O'Connor's WISE BLOOD
More celebrated for her dark, satirical short stories, Flannery O'Connor nevertheless burst on the literary scene in 1952 in her mid-twenties with her debut novel, Wise Blood. The story of a would-be preacher resistant to God's grace, ...
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Episode 33
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1:17:12
Episode 32: Watching the Flames from Slaughterhouse-Five
In Episode 32 of the Great American Novel podcast, we slip through time with Billy Pilgrim as we shuffle between the character’s experiences as a prisoner of war and first hand witness to the Dresden firebombing in World War II and the...
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Season 3
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Episode 32
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1:27:31
Episode 31: Crossing the Country with Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD
Few novels have had the cultural impact of Jack Kerouac's speed-fueled mad dash across the continent in search of kicks as On the Road. One doubts the 1960s ever would have happened had Kerouac's Beat Generation coterie not inspired a ...
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Season 3
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Episode 31
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1:21:48
Episode 30: Sailing on the SHIP OF FOOLS
A couple of weeks ago—after this episode was recorded, but before it was edited and posted—the famous author Stephen King posted online his top ten novels of all time—and among them was Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools. ...
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Season 3
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Episode 30
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1:09:13
Episode 29: Rallying Around the Flag in Stephen Crane's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a singularly unique war novel: whereas most depictions of the horrors of combat and the trauma of the battlefield are naturalistic, attempting to inflict upon the reader the violence the prose describ...
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Season 3
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Episode 29
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1:35:44