A great literary podcast is Bookworm on KCRW, featuring the insightful Michael Silverblatt interviewing authors about their work. One memorable episode is with Tom McCarthy, author of C, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2010. |MP3|
The novel C follows the story of Serge Carrefax, who has grown up around an environment of invention, at a school for the deaf run by his father. From there he travels through a period of drug-ridden military service toward his own realization of his abilities that I wouldn’t want to spoil. The style of the writing makes the novel read as venturing into speculative fiction, maybe alternate history, without ever fully embracing either genre. Each quarter of the book self-references other authors, which you don’t have to understand to appreciate the novel, but the interview Michael Silverblatt has with Tom McCarthy is very illuminating in that regard.
More than anything, I appreciate Michael Silverblatt’s exuberance about books and learning.
Podcast Feed: http://www.kcrw.com/podcast/show/bw
Posted by Jenny Colvin
Tom McCarthy and T. C. McCarthy are 2 different people, right? They seem to both like war and drugs.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/09/review-germline-by-t-c-mccarthy/
Listening now. This is so very meta!
What does this mean: “do you like the liking of war?”
I’m more halfway through and I’m not sure what either Michael Silverblatt or Tom McCarthy is talking about.
What does C stand for?
Are they disciples of Marshall McLuhan? Everything McLuhan says sounds nonsense sentences.
I say “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves.” and you say “Ah yes, it did gyre and gimble, thank you very much and twice on Tuesday.”
As far as I can tell they are different people.
Jesse, you’d have to read it to understand what C stands for…. there is no simple answer. I had picked up on the Pynchon references but missed the rest. I like to end up in a book where I’m not exactly sure what is going on… sometimes.