Elise Riley, an accessioning archivist at the Beinecke Library, offers us an expert's perspective on In The Freud Archives, Janet Malcolm's nonfictional exploration of archival infighting. The book concerns three psychoanalytic scholars who come to epistolary blows over the scattered remains of Freud's legacy. But unlike most niche academic debates, this one resulted in a $13 million dollar lawsuit. In this episode, we discuss Malcolm's narrative distance, the role of fantasy versus reality, and some things the Sigmund Freud Archives could have done to avoid all this Oedipal drama.
For more on archives and obsession, join our Patreon to hear next week's episode on Henry James' The Aspern Papers.
In this clip, we discuss the power of words versus images and compare Colette and Clébert's notions of vagabondage. To hear the full episode,...
Writer Zito Madu joins us to discuss Jean-Paul Clébert's Paris Vagabond translated from French by Donald Nicholson-Smith. In a series of vignettes, the book...
Novelist Amit Chaudhuri joins us for a wide-ranging conversation as his first three books (A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag, and Freedom Song)...
