Good Books By Terrible People

Marlon and Jake Read Dead People

Marlon & Jake weigh in on the age-old “artist versus art” debate, as they examine good books by problematic dead authors, as well as the bad and sometimes problematic books by great dead authors. From Flannery O’Conner to Roald Dahl, Vladimir Nabokov to the surprisingly challenging Charles Dickens, Marlon & Jake explore the thorny questions surrounding the books worth fighting for and the ones worth fighting over. How exactly do we define terrible books? Is there a statute of limitations on being offensive? Can we enjoy a book at the same time that we recognize its failures? Do people and ideas ever evolve beyond books? And what does it mean to have the freedom to choose what to read? Tune in for a provocative, nuanced conversation that might just make you rethink, revisit, or totally let go when it comes to your own reading of dead authors.

Selected works discussed

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone
• The Breast by Philip Roth
• I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
• Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
• The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

And the writing of:

• Charles Dickens
• Knut Hamsun
• Jack London
• HP Lovecraft
• William S. Burroughs
• Norman Mailer
• Enid Blyton