Thought Portal

ia Corthron, who won our 2016 First Novel Prize for her debut novel The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, talks about writing dialect, creating empathy in her readers, and how her playwriting experience influenced her book.

The author of more than fifteen plays produced nationally and internationally, Kia Corthron came to national attention in the early nineties with her play Come Down Burning. Portraying characters who live in extreme poverty or crisis and whose lives are otherwise invisible, her plays paint a disturbing picture of American history and its repercussions on our most intimate relationships. Corthron’s most recent awards include a Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, the Simon Great Plains Playwright (Honored Playwright) Award, the USA Jane Addams Fellowship Award, and the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, and she has developed work through various international residencies. She has also written for television, receiving a Writers Guild Outstanding Drama Series Award and an Edgar Award for The Wire. She grew up in Cumberland, Maryland, and now lives in Harlem, New York City.

Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi is Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. He is the Editor of the academic journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and he has written two books: Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Nationalist Historiography (Palgrave, 2001) and Tajaddud-i Bumi [Vernacular Modernity] (in Persian, Nashr-i Tarikh, 2003). He is currently working on Pathologizing Iran, which explores the medicalization of historical narratives and political discourses.

Mohamad joins Chris and Suzanne to help put Persepolis into further context. How idiosyncratic is its portrayal of the 1979 revolution and where does Satrapi’s graphic novel fit into traditions Iranian diasporic writing? They also reflect on the celebration of Nowruz (Persian New Year) in a time of crisis.

Marjane Satrapi was ten years old at the start of the Iranian Revolution, and her comics memoir Persepolis explores what it was like to grow up in that environment. It’s a story of the Iranian Revolution, which began in 1979, but it’s also the story of one individual life in a time of great crisis, moving into the Iranian diaspora. Chris and Suzanne discuss this personal story of revolution, how a child’s understanding of events can be useful for introducing topics to readers, and the difficulties of talking about comics on podcasts.

It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. (38)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a story that seems familiar to everyone—even people who haven’t read the novel (or seen any of the movie adaptations). But the novel fleshes out the story that everyone is familiar with (a scientist creates a creature out of dead parts, releasing a force of havoc and destruction upon the world) in a number of intriguing ways. Suzanne and Chris discuss how the novel tackles creation, parenting, corporeality, nature, and death—as well as how thoroughly it is connected to Paradise Lost, and why it has inspired so many adaptations.

Show Notes.

We read the original 1818 text of Frankenstein. It‘s also available on Project Gutenberg or as a free audiobook on Librivox.

The New Annotated Frankenstein.

Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds.

The Strange and Twisted Life of Frankenstein, which includes some information about racialized imaginings of the creature.

The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Next time: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Also on Gutenberg and Librivox.

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Mr Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change color every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips. He can make chewing gum that never loses its taste, and candy balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely little blue birds’ eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little pink sugary baby bird sitting at the tip of your tongue.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic work of children’s literature by Roald Dahl. It tells the story of Charlie Bucket and his visit to the fantabulous chocolate factory run by the reclusive Willy Wonka. Chris and Suzanne explore how the book distinguishes between hunger and gluttony, how it marks the bodies of children with their sins like some medieval morality tale, and how parts of the story are tied up with colonialist fantasies. All in time for (American) Thanksgiving!

Show Notes.

Roald Dahl: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Roald Dahl box set that Chris has been gorging on. Includes, in particular, Matilda and Boy.

His short story “Royal Jelly” is found in Cruelty (among other collections).

Our episodes on Little Women, the Metamorphoses, the Inferno, and How to Cook a Wolf and A Moveable Feast.

An interview with Joseph Schindelman, who illustrated the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Roald Dahl was apparently not a great person.

Prudentius: Psychomachia. [More info.]

Early (racist) versions of the Oompa-Loompas.

Next time: Toni Morrison: Beloved.

Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon if you can, please. Thanks!

Laroque, Lar-Son and Ball say with increased Indigenous representation in publishing, writing and storytelling, priorities in the publishing world might shift and practical changes could be made, including increased scholarships, mentorship and consultation, and addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls To Action.

And that all begins with more Indigenous people in the industry, they said.

“There’s so few of us out there that it’s hard. Even if somebody gets in through the cracks, even if they’re the most resilient person ever, if they don’t have a support group or a mentor, their chances of surviving and actually doing a good job are minimal,” said Ball. “With more people you can support each other.”

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945. A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay sprung from Orwell's experiences fighting Fascists in Spain: he thought that all on the left were on the same side, until the dominant Communists violently suppressed the Anarchists and Trotskyists, and Orwell had to escape to France to avoid arrest. Setting his satire in an English farm, Orwell drew on the Russian Revolution of 1917, on Stalin's cult of personality and the purges. The leaders on Animal Farm are pigs, the secret police are attack dogs, the supporters who drown out debate with "four legs good, two legs bad" are sheep. At first, London publishers did not want to touch Orwell's work out of sympathy for the USSR, an ally of Britain in WW2, but the Cold War gave it a new audience and Animal Farm became a commercial as well as a critical success. With Steven Connor Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge Mary Vincent Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield and Robert Colls Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University

‘In spite of the curly crop, I don’t see the ‘son Jo’ whom I left a year ago,’ said Mr. March. ‘I see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. Her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety, but I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower; she doesn’t bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied. I don’t know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep, but I do know that in all Washington I couldn’t find anything beautiful enough to be bought with the five-and-twenty dollars which my good girl sent me.’ (ch. 22)

Little Women has Suzanne and Chris tackling new territory: a novel, a children’s book, and something written within the last two hundred years. They discuss this tale of four sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy), the possibilities it offers young women (but eventually takes from them), its complex exploration of gender, and its fascination with death.

Show Notes.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (also on Project Gutenberg).

Avidly, on the Los Angeles Review of Books, had a great cluster of articles about each of the sisters.

“How Little Women Got Big” at the New Yorker, which draws upon a recent book about Little Women, Anne Boyd Rioux’s Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters.