For our Season 4 finale, we watched the new Nicholas Cage movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Elena’s idea) and talked about it for almost three hours. Also: acting methods, Michael Syrah, Bob Dylan, email signatures, Goodreads, bad date movies, David’s recent experience on a TV set, the Nic Cage of sports, knuckleballs, Nick Cave, Elena sings some hits, Dracula, Elena’s going on tour, Justin drops his laptop near the end, Elvis hair, and (lots) more!
This week we’re talking about revision. We discuss a chapter of Stephen Koch’s The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop that’s one of the better nuts-and-bolts revision guides, common drafting issues, the role of feedback and workshops, why revision is often taught poorly or not at all, and what our processes look like. Also: our recent appearance on a more professional podcast, some sports talk, Mary Karr, Ecco Homo, Van Halen, and more!
This week we’re checking in with March Faxness again, now that the field has narrowed to four songs/essays (including David’s!). We discuss the recent games, preview the semifinals, and make our picks for who’s going to win. Also: Elena takes up a new instrument, we’ve met a lot of Xness writers since our last episode—one of whom, Tim States, we include a mini-interview with—some AWP Philadelphia/Tucson Book Fest talk, a long tangent about the worst movies we’ve ever seen, David’s day on the Indigo Girls tour bus, Neil Gaiman’s wardrobe, and more!
This week we’re talking about possibly the best essay-related week of the year: March Faxness round 1, in which 64 essays about cover songs faced off in a tournament. We try to touch on our favorites—although we probably missed some—and discuss the bracket and upcoming games. Also: Elvis Costello gets spicy on Twitter, we all get spicy about the Mountain Goats, dork rodeos, community college bowl, Denry’s back(!), Drake’s reading list, Kamp Kilmer, Justin tries to understand NFTs, Elena explains the Chicken Van, some country music talk, is the shopping cart a dance?, roof-raising techniques, and Elena does mini-covers of Evan Dando, Snow’s “Informer,” and Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb.”
This week we’re talking about essays that aren’t in the first person. Elena picked one example, Eliot Weinberger’s “The Rhinoceros,” and Justin picked another, an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. Also: the new Macbeth, the acting role Elena was recently offered, Elena recites some Lady Macbeth, more March Xness previewing, some Arnold Palmer talk, and a mini-spelling bee.
This week we’re talking about this year’s edition of the Pushcart Prize anthology. We compare it to Best American, discuss the important differences, and focus on a few selections from the anthology. Also: Build-A-Bears, Paint & Wine, Burt Reynolds, male pattern baldness, egg donation, BoJack Horseman, some March Faxness warmup talk, and more!
This week we’re talking about this year’s edition of Best American Essays. We compare it to previous years (spoiler: this one is a bummer), discuss the new subgenre of pandemic essays, and focus on a few selections from the anthology. Also: David makes us a pandemic cocktail, Justin’s dog makes a few barky cameos, we (well, one of us) question the entire Best American Essays enterprise, and we do a year-end lightning news/round. See you next year!
(Note: we don’t mention Joan Didion’s death because it occurred the morning after we recorded, but if you’d like to hear some of our previous thoughts on Didion, we did an episode about her latest book earlier this year: http://www.essaypodcast.com/s3-e2-didion-on-writing/)
This week we discuss our first listener pick, Sophie Calle’s “The Address Book,” which was suggested by Will Howard. Also: lots of “Succession” talk (including a couple of potential spoilers), John McPhee’s inscrutable diagrams, more Chekhov, the kids’ music these days, whether we’d want to be address-booked, what we’d say about each other if it happened, Elena makes up a song about the 1985 Chicago Bears, and more! (Also, send us your favorite essays of 2021 for Pushcart nominations.)
This week we discuss our feelings, how to write about feelings, our feelings some more, and two essays about feelings: Jerald Walker’s “Breathe,” and Chris Offutt’s “Trash Food.” (Sorry about the rough audio quality, we had some tech issues this week.)
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