Writer and critic Vivian Gornick joins us to discuss My Father and Myself, a memoir written by J. R. Ackerley. We explore the mysteries of family life, the search for "the Ideal Friend" and the ethics of writing about relatives.
Poet and writer Alina Stefanescu joins us to discuss her own pantheon of "tortured poets" in the wake of a pop star's adoption of...
Dylan and Kassia unpack Stefan Zweig's Chess Story translated from German by Joel Rotenberg. They toy with some chess pieces, discuss the psychological effects...
Professor of Russian José Vergara recommends a dark story of family betrayal. Shchedrin's 1880 novel follows the fall of a miserly matriarch and the...