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TMR 24.5: “Very Charming.” [Confidence-Man]

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] Chad, Brian, and Kaija venture into the darkness and turn off the light on Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, one of the oddest, most slippery books to be included in the Two Month ...

TMR 24.4: “How Unreal All This Is!” [Confidence-Man]

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] Opening with a couple of rants, this week's podcast is spicy and also tries to make sense of a few of the more perplexing parts of the book. There's a wonderful interlude in this section from ...

TMR 24.3: “You Are a Punster” [Confidence-Man]

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] "Grifters Gonna Grift" merchandise coming soon! This episode exposes just how useful footnotes can be as we transition from dusk to darkness, with the confidence-men being replaced by the ...

TMR 24.2: “Trust Me, Nature Is Health” [Confidence-Man]

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] Chad and Kaija go it alone this week, talking about some of the more uncomfortable parts of the book to read in 2024, the Goneril story and the "evil touch," how almost every beat in this novel ...

TMR 24.1: “May I Ask if You Have Confidence?” [Confidence-Man]

Not the happiest day in which to record a podcast, but Chad, Brian, and Kaija speak their fears and then dive into Melville's Confidence-Man, talking about grifters, the value of footnotes, and just how modern and amazing Melville's prose is. They guess at who the "confidence man" might be, the burnt over district of western ...

TMR Supplement #2: “Joytime Killbox” by Brian Wood

After referencing Joytime Killbox on hundreds of TMR episodes, we finally break it down with the author himself! Conversation includes ideas about short stories and how they function, the nature of endings, and how Brian has grown as a writer since this collection first came out, while also examining the intent behind a ...

TMR Season 24: “The Confidence-Man” by Melville & “Mevill” by Rodrigo Fresán

First off, if you're reading this post, I highly recommend you go sign up for the Three Percent Substack. In order to increase engagement and better share all the goings on here at Open Letter—podcasts, reviews, stats from the Translation Database, pieces on publishing, excerpts—in a fashion more in keeping with 2024 than ...