Three Percent #28: Books and Being Alone

This week’s podcast is remarkable both for its complete lack of curse words (not even kidding), and for its very professional discussion about Garth Hallberg’s recent essay Why Write Novels at All? that appeared in the New York Times Magazine. We were fortunate enough to get Garth in on this podcast so that he could expand on some of his ideas and observations about a few contemporary American novelists who tend to get lumped together: Franzen, DFW, Eugenides, Zadie Smith, etc.

Garth’s a very smart thinker, and this is a really interesting conversation about the “point” of writing novels (to make you feel less alone?) and weaves off into discussions about the American character-driven aesthetic, and why we read at all.

(As an entertaining complement to this podcast, you should check out this post describing the very humorous battle I had with Skype just to be able to call Garth’s phone. It’s well worth it. I promise. And further proves that Chloë letter-writing skills are inherited.)

This week’s music is Landline by Oberhofer, which has been getting some play on KCRW.

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