TMR 13.3: “Lettrocalamity” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Chad and Brian cover a ton of topics in this relatively short episode including: Adam and Eve, botany, butterflies, the Wild West, enchantment, incest, codes, and Bosom Buddies. It's a fun episode filled with lyrical Nabokovian passages and speculation about what's to come in this sprawling novel. And Isak, Brian's ...
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TMR 13.2 “Hammock and Honey” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Rodrigo Fresán (The Invented Part, The Dreamed Part, Bottom of the Sky) joins Chad and Brian to talk about the only Nabokov book he hasn't read. In addition to talking about all the reasons to love Nabokov, about how this book is the one where he actually seems to be measuring himself against the all time greats, they talk ...
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TMR 13.1 “All Happy Families” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Chad and Brian try their best to unpack the first three chapters of Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor, in an attempt to find some solid footing for this sci-fi (?), ambitious, reference-laded masterwork of one of the greatest writers of our times. Lots of questions about where we are (Terra or Anti-Terra?); mirrors; the ...
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TMR Season Thirteen: “Ada, or Ardor” by Vladimir Nabokov
The public has spoken, and the next book to be featured in the Two Month Review is Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov! Which is kind of perfect. We follow the thread of Anna Karenina from The Book of Anna by Carmen Boullosa to this novel, originally written in 1969, which opens: "All happy families are more or less ...
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TMR 12.12 “Finale” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
Carmen Boullosa joined Chad and Brian this week to talk about The Book of Anna, memories of watching baseball, why she (today) supports Karenin and thinks Anna K made a mistake with Vronsky, the origin and structure of the novel, her system of having a book in the queue before the previous one is published, and much ...
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TMR 12.11 “The Book of Anna” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
Translator and Words Without Borders co-founder Samantha Schnee joined Chad and Brian this week to talk about Anna's "opium-fueled" fairy tale that was referenced in passing in Anna Karenina, and a centerpiece of Boullosa's "sequel." A lively conversation about language, various Tolstoy translations, the book's origin, ways ...
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TMR 12.10 “Karenina’s Portrait” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
After talking a bit about Women in Translation Month and the voting process for choosing the Season 13 title, Chad and Brian get into the twisty nature of Part III of The Book of Anna, in which Anna's portrait is given to the tsar, and Leo Tolstoy appears in the dreams of two characters, both to berate them and make a case ...
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