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Close Readings
Human Conditions: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ by Frantz Fanon
Begun as a psychiatric dissertation, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) became a genre-shattering study of antiblack racism and its effect on the psyche. At turns expressionistic, confessional, clinical, sharply satirical and politically charged, the book is dazzlingly multivocal, sometimes self-contradictory but always compelling. Judith Butler and Adam Shatz, whose biography of Fanon was released in January, chart a course through some of the most explosive and elusive chapters of the book, and show why Fanon is still essential reading.
Non-subscriber will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq
In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings
Read more in the LRB:
Adam Shatz: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n02/adam-shatz/where-life-is-seized
Megan Vaughan: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n20/megan-vaughan/i-am-my-own-foundation
T.J. Clark: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n18/t.j.-clark/knife-at-the-throat
Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Shatz is the the LRB's US editor and author of, most recently, The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.
Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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3. Love and Death: Elegies for children by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop
13:37||Season 14, Ep. 3This episode looks at four poems whose subject would seem to lie beyond words: the death of a child. A defining feature of elegy is the struggle between poetic eloquence and inarticulate grief, and in these works by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop we find that tension at its most acute. Mark and Seamus consider the way each poem deals with the traditional demand of the elegy for consolation, and what happens when the form and language of love poetry subverts elegiac conventions.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead the poems here:Ben Jonson: On My First Sonhttps://lrb.me/jonsoncrldAnne Bradstreet:In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreethttps://lrb.me/bradstreetcrldGeoffrey Hill: September Songhttps://lrb.me/hillcrldElizabeth Bishop: First Death in Nova Scotiahttps://lrb.me/bishopcrldRead more in the LRB:Blair Worden on Ben Jonsonhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-benBlair Worden on puritanismhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-benColin Burrow in Geoffrey Hill:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n04/colin-burrow/rancorous-old-sodHelen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishophttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/helen-vendler/the-numinous-mooseNext episode:Two elegies by Thomas Gray:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyardhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44302/ode-on-the-death-of-a-favourite-cat-drowned-in-a-tub-of-goldfishes3. Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift
15:41||Season 13, Ep. 3Jonathan Swift’s 1726 tale of Houyhnhnms, Yahoos, Lilliputians and Struldbruggs is normally seen as a satire. But what if it’s read as fantasy, and all its contradictions, inversions and reversals as an echo of the traditional starting point of Arabic fairytale: ‘It was and it was not’? In this episode Marina and Anna Della discuss Gulliver’s Travels as a text in which empiricism and imagination are tightly woven, where fantastical realms are created to give different perspectives on reality and both writer and reader are liberated from having to decide what to think.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Terry Eagleton:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n16/terry-eagleton/a-spot-of-firm-governmentClare Bucknell: Oven-Ready Childrenhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n02/clare-bucknell/oven-ready-childrenThomas Keymer: Carry Up your Coffee Boldlyhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n08/thomas-keymer/carry-up-your-coffee-boldlyNext episode: Marco Polo’s Il Milione and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014.3. Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Essence of Christianity' by Ludwig Feuerbach
10:29||Season 12, Ep. 3In The Essence of Christianity (1841) Feuerbach works through the theological crisis of his age to articulate the central, radical idea of 19th-century atheism: that the religion of God is really the religion of humanity. In this episode, Jonathan and James discuss the ways in which the book applies this thought to various aspects of Christian doctrine, from sexual relations to the Trinity, and consider why Feuerbach would never have described himself as an atheist. They also look at George Eliot’s remarkable translation of the work, published only thirteen years after the original, which not only ensured Feuerbach’s influence in the Anglophone world but invented a new philosophical vocabulary in English for German thought.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipFurther reading in the LRB:James Wood: What next?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n08/james-wood/what-s-nextTerry Eagleton: George Eliothttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n18/terry-eagleton/biogspeak2. Novel Approaches: ‘Mansfield Park’ by Jane Austen
31:53||Season 15, Ep. 2On one level, Mansfield Park is a fairytale transposed to the 19th century: Fanny Price is the archetypal poor relation who, through her virtuousness, wins a wealthy husband. But Jane Austen’s 1814 novel is also a shrewd study of speculation, ‘improvement’ and the transformative power of money.In the first episode of Novel Approaches, Colin Burrow joins Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones to discuss Austen’s acute reading of property and precarity, and why Fanny’s moral cautiousness is a strategic approach to the riskiest speculation of all: marriage.Non-subscribers will hear To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaClare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.Next episode: Clare Bucknell and guests on Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle.2. Love and Death: Milton's 'Lycidas'
12:31||Season 14, Ep. 2Milton wrote ‘Lycidas’ in 1637, at the age of 29, to commemorate the drowning of the poet Edward King. As well as a great pastoral elegy, it is a denunciation of the ecclesiastical condition of England and a rehearsal for Milton’s later role as a writer of national epic. In the first episode of their new series, Seamus and Mark discuss the political backdrop to the poem, Milton’s virtuosic mix of poetic tradition and innovation, and why such a fervent puritan would choose an unfashionable, pre-Christian form to honour his friend.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead more in the LRB:Colin Burrow (on the 'two-handed engine'):https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n05/colin-burrow/shall-i-go-onFreya Johnston (on Samuel Johnson's criticism):https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n08/freya-johnston/own-your-ignoranceMaggie Kilgour (on the young Milton):https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n20/maggie-kilgour/pens-and-heads2. Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘The Thousand and One Nights’
14:41||Season 13, Ep. 2The Thousand and One Nights is an ‘infinite text’: it has no fixed shape or length, no known author and is transformed with each new translation. In this first episode of Fiction and the Fantastic, Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin explore two particularly mysterious stories in the context of the wider mysteries and pleasures of the Nights. ‘The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad’ highlights the pleasures of dreaming, the power of language and the imagination’s essential role in eroticism, while ‘Abdullah of the Sea and Abdullah of the Land’ demonstrates how the fantastic can help us imagine new ways of living.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Marina Warner: Travelling Texthttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/marina-warner/travelling-textSteven Connor: One’s Thousand One Nightinesshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n06/steven-connor/one-s-thousand-one-nightinessesWilliam Gass: A Book at Bedtimehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n21/william-gass/a-book-at-bedtime Marina Warner: ‘The Restless One’https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/june/the-restless-oneNEXT EPISODE: ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift, out on Monday 10 February.Get the book: https://lrb.me/sealenightsffMarina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014.2. Conversations in Philosophy: 'Fear and Trembling' by Søren Kierkegaard
12:24||Season 12, Ep. 2The series begins with Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843), an exploration of faith through the story of Abraham and Isaac. Like most of Kierkegaard’s published work, Fear and Trembling appeared under a pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, and its playful relationship to the reader doesn’t stop there. Described as a ‘dialectical lyric’ on the title page, the book works through a variety of formats in its attempt to understand the nature of faith and the apparently unsolvable paradox that the father of the Abrahamic religions was prepared to murder his own son. James and Jonathan consider whether Kierkegaard thinks we can understand anything, and what Fear and Trembling has in common with the works of Dostoevsky and Kafka.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipFurther reading in the LRB:Jonathan Rée: Dancing in the Service of Thought https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard1James Butler: Reading Genesis https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard2Roger Poole: A Walk with Kierkegaard https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard3Terry Eagleton: A Long Way from Galilee https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard4James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.NEXT EPISODE: 'The Essence of Christianity' by Ludwig Feuerbach, out on Monday 3 February.LRB AUDIOBOOKSDiscover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre:https://lrb.me/audiobookscip1. Introducing ‘Novel Approaches’
07:57||Season 15, Ep. 1Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones introduce their new Close Readings series, Novel Approaches. Joined by a variety of contemporary novelists and critics, they'll be exploring a dozen 19th-century British novels from Mansfield Park to New Grub Street, paying particular (though not exclusive) attention to the themes of money and property.The first episode will come out on Monday 27 January, on Austen’s Mansfield Park.Clare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.The full list of texts for the series:Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane AustenCrotchet Castle (1831) by Thomas Love PeacockWuthering Heights (1847) by Emily BrontëVanity Fair (1847) by William Makepeace ThackerayNorth and South (1854) by Elizabeth GaskellAurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett BrowningAnthony Trollope (TBD)Mill on the Floss (1860) by George EliotOur Mutual Friend (1864) by Charles DickensWashington Square (1880)/Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry JamesKidnapped (1886) by Robert Louis StevensonThe Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) by Thomas HardyNew Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing1. Introducing ‘Love and Death’
05:13||Season 14, Ep. 1Mark Ford and Seamus Perry introduce Love and Death, a new Close Readings series on elegy from the Renaissance to the present day. They discuss why the elegy can be a particularly energising form for poets engaging with their craft and the poetic tradition, and how elegy serves an important role in public grieving, remembering and healing.The first episode will come out on Monday 20 January, on Milton's ‘Lycidas’.Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford.