S5 Ep. 33: The Politics of Craft: Charles Baxter on How His Essays on Writing Respond to a Changing World

fiction/non/fiction

Writer and professor Charles Baxter joins Fiction/Non/Fiction hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his new essay collection Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature, and how his thoughts on craft are linked to the times in which we live. He defines concepts he has used, including “wonderlands,” “Captain Happen,” “request moments,” and “toxic narratives,” and offers illustrations from literature and the world around us to show how these can inform the writing of fiction. For example, he explains, Donald Trump rejects his loss in the 2020 presidential election as a toxic narrative because it would change his understanding of who he is.

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This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Charles Baxter

• Wonderlands
• Gryphon
• Burning Down the House
• There’s Something I Want You to Do
• The Art of Subtext
• Behind Murakami's Mirror | The New York Review of Books

Others:

• Is the World Really Falling Apart, or Does It Just Feel That Way? by Max Fisher - The New York Times
• S4 Episode 6: Hope on the Horizon: Charles Baxter and Mike Alberti on Despair and Renewal in Fiction
• S1 Episode 4: We're All Russian, Now
• World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Haruki Murakami
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• Either/Or by Elif Batuman
• The Lighthouse
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Wicker Man
• Bennett Sims
• Lacy Johnson
• Get Out
• Mike Alberti
• Jamaica Kincaid
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• Stacey D’Erasmo
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Dog Day Afternoon

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