Book Fight

Tom and Mike dig into a book the New York Times named as one of the top five novels of 2011, in which an academic with his career on the rocks travels to Antarctica to (among other things) unlock the mysteries behind Edgar Allen Poe's sole novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Discussing the book leads to a larger conversation about why we read, and what we want from fiction.

Tom and Mike welcome their first guest to the Book Fight basement to help them revisit Judy Blume's YA novel Forever. Topics include: sex ed, awkward teenage romance, and the relative merits of naming one's genitalia.

Mike and Tom try to figure out what separates this novel from the thousands of others that traffic in bleak, amoral human landscapes. Tom shares a story about his 14-year-old self he’s never told anyone, including his wife. Mike admits that, as a young person, he romanticized a certain dark worldview that seems kind of silly, even embarrassing, to his 35-year-old self. And they both agree that this novel is a pretty good argument in favor of continuing to fund Planned Parenthood.

Buddy Bolden was a jazz pioneer in turn-of-the-century New Orleans who at the age of 30 suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized. Topics include: the line between fact and fiction, the romanticism of mental illness, how hard it is to write well about music, and why teenagers continue to think Jim Morrison was a hero, rather than a giant asshole.

For the first episode of Book Fight, Tom and Mike gathered in the Book Fight Basement to talk about Sam Lispyte's 2010 novel The Ask. Topics include: the limitations of ironic detachment, whether Holden Caulfield would be a tender lover, and why Tom can't be happy even at The Happiest Place on Earth.