The History of Literature

After spending decades in Europe, the American Henry James felt haunted by the idea that he'd given up something essential. Inspired by a trip home to New York City, the place of his birth, he wrote an astonishing story about a man who creeps through his childhood home late at night, searching for ghosts, and one in pa

Although the writer Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York City's Washington Square, he spent most of his adulthood in Europe, where he wrote such masterpieces as The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. Late in life, he returned to New York after a thirty-three year absence to find the

Jacke's been trying to come to grips with Portuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa ever since Harold Bloom named him one of the 26 most influential writers in the entire Western canon. But it's not easy! As a young man, Pessoa wanted to be, in his words, "plural like the universe," and he carried this out in his poetr

Dylan Thomas: brilliant poet or self-indulgent blowhard? In this episode, Jacke talks to John Goodby, co-author of the biography Dylan Thomas: A Critical Life, about the misconceptions swirling around the famous Welsh poet, and the approach that he and fellow author Chris Wigginton took in presenting a revealing and fr

Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins Jacke for a reading and discussion of "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" by Sui Sin Far. The story, which takes place against a backdrop of waves of immigration to America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (and the racist anti-Asian laws that fo

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was the most published African American woman writer of the first half of the twentieth century; her signature novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is still read by students, scholars, and literature lovers everywhere. In this episode, Jacke talks to Hurston biographer Cheryl R. Hopson (Zor