Fan's Notes

It's a transitional period pod today, as we find ourselves midway through the first round of the playoffs, and reading Transit, the middle book in Rachel Cusk's proposed trilogy centered around an absurdly passive protagonist. We parse the limits of recessive narrators and marvel at Cusk's intelligence and knack for turning out well-crafted sentences. Please note: we'll be podding weekly throughout the playoffs! In the off weeks between novels, we'll choose a short story to read and discuss. So track down a copy of Alice Munro's Carried Away online and join us for the discussion next week!

The playoffs are finally here! And we figured there was no better book to help us understand the psychological tedium of the NBA season than the first volume of My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard's epic of Scandinavian brooding. We discuss the structural use of deep boredom on the reader, whether the book is artful or artless, and ponder why it became such a hit worldwide. At the ~40 min mark, we switch over to preview the various matchups in the first round of the playoffs, which are mostly dismal. But hey, it's the playoffs! Join us in two weeks to discuss Rachel Cusk's Transit and look ahead to the second round of the playoffs.

It's a young man's pod today, as we delve into the often unpleasant psyche of Nathaniel P, the protagonist of Adelle Waldman's debut novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. We perform a full asshole autopsy on Nate to see if he's got any redeemable qualities. On the basketball side, we wax effusive on the surprisingly high level of basketball in this year's NCAA tournament and look ahead to the Final Four matchups. Join us in two weeks to talk about Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle in conjunction with the start of the NBA Playoffs.

After weeks of judicious editing, we've finally managed to get our epically long and rambling gabfest with our good friend and former UNC Tarheel Basketball player Lynwood Robinson down to a publishable length. We had to leave lots of great stuff on the cutting room floor this time around, but Lynwood has generously agreed to return at a later date to pick up right where we left off. Until then, enjoy this free-flowing conversation about basketball's alien test, what it was like playing with Michael Jordan on the 1982 title-winning team, and why Chapel Hill needs a better class of seafood restaurant.

We recorded this episode on Edward St. Aubyn's cycle of Patrick Melrose novels before the news broke this week that Benedict Cumberbatch will be playing him in an upcoming Showtime series. (Spoilers aplenty herein.) We ostensibly focused on Never Mind, the first of these novellas, but found it hard not to refer to the full scope of the series in our discussion of St. Aubyn and his fictional alter ego. On the basketball side, we break down the blockbuster trade that sent DeMarcus Cousins to join Anthony Davis in New Orleans and express our frustration at Boston's refusal to make any moves to strengthen their squad at the deadline. Please note: we are still editing our lengthy basketball chat with our friend Lynwood Robinson, but look for that to come out soon, and our next book will be Adelle Waldman's The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

Today we go all the way upriver into the depths of madness/basketball greatness with a look into Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella about depravity moral decay in turn-of-the-century Congo. Our discussion touches on what Conrad really means by the phrase 'heart of darkness' (and why he seems afraid to say so), whether Apocalypse Now has sapped the book's power in our culture, and if it's possible to square its anti-colonialist streak with its reprehensible depictions of Africans. Then we pivot to the NBA, where we continue to be amazed night-in and night-out by the individual performances of Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Kevin Durant, and others. Who among them deserves to be MVP, if the season ended today? Or should it go to LeBron or Giannis or Chris Paul? The list goes on and on.

No basketball talk today, as we devote the full hour to one of the big books of 2016, Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. We are joined by our friend Ben Felton to unpack the ways in which Whitehead re-imagines America during the time of slavery, and what this book has to say about the America we're still living in. For our next pod, we'll be returning to our normal format, with a discussion of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, as well as a look at the state of the MVP race in the NBA as we near the midpoint of the season.

There's a lot to like in this installment of the pod, as we celebrate the exciting start of the NBA season and gush over our favorite stories in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. We recommend you read some of Wolff's stories before listening--at least do yourself a favor and track down Bullet In The Brain--since we go into the plot details of a few as we try to figure out where he fits in the firmament of short story writers. On the NBA side, we make a list of some of the players who've been really fun to watch so far this season and marvel at how great the NBA's "product" is overall at the moment. NB: we decided to postpone our discussion of The Underground Railroad, but we'll be tackling it in our next installment, along with a look at what to expect from the college basketball season as it moves into conference play.

We recorded this "emergency" pod a few weeks ago, back when the word "emergency" had a quaint, ironic connotation in American culture. It's about America's relationship with the sometimes icky, sometimes wildly entertaining sport of football. We're thankful to our friend, the writer Chris Drangle, for joining us for the discussion. A programming note: our next book will be Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, winner of the 2016 National Book Award. Look for it in the next couple weeks.

To close out our offseason cities series, we're focusing on George V. Higgins' slim 1970 book The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which Elmore Leonard called the greatest crime novel ever written. Ostensibly set in Boston but with a reach that expands out to all points in Massachusetts, not to mention New Hampshire and Rhode Island, this books packs a ton into 183 pages of mostly dialogue. Don't miss Jesse's live reading of the final two pages in two baroque Boston accents! On the basketball side, we discuss the Celtics' free agency grab of Al Horford and what they still need in order to get past the Cleveland Cavaliers. (NB: Basketball talk begins around the 32 minute mark.)

It's a disappointment pod this week, as Jesse, a Saul Bellow fan, admits to being underwhelmed by Seize The Day, Bellow's short 1956 novella, and calls on Adam to make a case for its durability. On the basketball side, they discuss the bizarre offseason for the Chicago Bulls, and whether their Frankenstein roster has any chance of succeeding. (NB: the book discussion runs for the first 41 minutes. Next up is the last of our summer series linking books to NBA cities, and we'll be looking at the Boston Celtics and George V. Higgins' wonderful little crime novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle--grab a copy and join us next week!)

For our New York episode, we looked at Paula Fox's strange, slim novel from 1970, Desperate Characters, about a Brooklyn couple whose marriage may or may not be disintegrating. A marvel that fell out of print for a few decades, we highly recommend readers seek this book out. On the basketball side, we discuss the chances for a new-look Knicks team, which brought in ex-Bulls Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah this summer. Will they be good and for how long, and what does this mean for the long-term development of Kristaps Porzingis? (NB: We discuss Desperate Characters for the first 38 minutes of the podcast, then move on to the Knicks. And feel free to pick up a copy of Saul Bellow's Seize The Day and read along for our discussion next week--it clocks in at a breezy 114 pages! Also, we now have a twitter account (@fansnotespod) as well as an email address (fansnotes@gmail.com) so hit us up with any books you'd like us to read and discuss or other ideas for literature & sports discussions you'd like to see us u

The novelist, short-story writer and noted sports-agnostic J. Robert Lennon drops by the pod for a conversation about whether sports and literature can ever make nice, or if they'll just keep circling each other warily and talking shit behind each other's backs. Along the way we bemoan the utter disposability of most sports writing as well as the obsequiousness of dude writers who deploy sports in their work as a signifier of working class credibility. We may not have achieved a cease-fire between the warring factions yet, but we thank John for coming on and offering his reasoned repartee. In addition to winning the coveted prize of being the first guest to appear on the Fan's Notes podcast, J. Robert Lennon's newest novel, Broken River, is being published by Graywolf Press in May, 2017. Pre-order it y'all!

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends." That is Joan Didion, from her essay "On Keeping a Notebook,' from her classic collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We chose this book because we thought it might shine some light on the plight of the Lakers--things fall apart; the centre cannot hold--but in point of fact all it did was make us think of other Didion lines. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." "We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce." "Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself." Chock full of some of the greatest essays ever committed to paper, Slouching Toward Bethlehem begs to be read and read again. Our apologies if our discu

In the first of our city/author mashups we'll be doing this summer, we picked Elmore Leonard and Miami. Yes, we are aware that Leonard is most closely associated with Detroit, but we've selected one of his Palm Beach/Miami books, 1995's Riding The Rap, which features his flinty lawman Raylan Givens, a hippie-dippie psychic and a botched ransom plot. We discuss Leonard's genius for quick-sketch character and razor-sharp dialog, as well as whether he should be considered a "genre" or a "literary" author. Then we keep things in South Florida with a look at the Miami Heat's offseason and potential for 2016-2017. Were they right to let Dwyane Wade walk? Will Chris Bosh ever play again? Can their youthful core of Tyler Johnson, Josh Richardson, Justise Winslow and Dion Waiters make the leap this year? All that and more in this episode of the Fan's Notes podcast. (NB: we talk about Riding The Rap until the 35 minute mark, then the Miami Heat talk begins. Also, for our next episode, we'll be reading Joan Didion's se

In this episode we look at the thin line between genius and fraud, as embodied by Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith's terrific 1955 thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley. We then pivot to the NBA's Summer League, that week of barely watchable basketball that takes place in the Nevada desert. Who looked promising, who looked like a bust, and is it possible to draw any firm conclusions from these performances at all? (NB: We discuss the Highsmith book for the first 41 minutes, then spend the rest of the pod on Summer League. Also, as a programming note: for our next episode we'll start our occasional summer program of specific teams' upcoming season previews, paired with a book set in that city. First up is Miami. We'll be discussing where they're at after the D-Wade trade and where they go from here, as well as reading Elmore Leonard's Riding The Rap. Look for it in the first week of August.)

Well, we intended for this to be a long meandering journey through the epic story of the 2015-16 NBA season, paired with the wanderings of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus around Dublin on June 16th, 1904 in James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses. But Kevin Durant's jaw-dropping decision to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder in favor of the Golden State Warriors was too monumental to avoid, so we wound up talking about that, and its repercussions for the league. (NB: We discuss Ulysses for the first 30 minutes, then jump over to the NBA.)

There's disagreement in the pod today, as we square off over who should go #1 in the Draft. The conversation gets sullen, juvenile, and decidedly anti-phony, in keeping with the tone of this week's book: J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. It's worth tuning in just to hear Jesse compare Holden Caulfield to Donald Trump, as well as Adam's paean to 7-foot-2 Chinese prospect Zhou Qi. (NB: We discuss the book for the first 25 minutes, and then talk Draft stuff for the rest of the hour.)

Game 7 of the Finals is upon us, and to celebrate the last night of the 2016 NBA season, we've chosen a harrowing short story by James Salter, called, appropriately enough, Last Night. We've been wrong about almost everything in this series so far, so why not laugh at our useless predictions one last time before we say goodbye to this season once and for all. (NB: we discuss the Salter story for about the first 21 minutes or so of the podcast. It's available online and you should definitely read it! After that, from ~21:00 to ~45:00, we talk about the game.)

In Episode 2, we look at J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, as well as the first four games of the NBA Finals. To what extent does David Lurie seem chastened or changed by his fall into disgrace in the novel? For their part, the Cavs seem to have redeemed themselves after the disgraceful way they played in Games 1 & 2, but do they have a chance to win the series? And if not, what changes will they make to their roster? All this and more in Episode 2 of Fan's Notes.