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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Category Archives: History

Episode 501: Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar!

11 Saturday Dec 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Feminism, History, Literary Criticism, Philosophy, politics

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Episode 501 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

On today’s show, legendary scholars Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar discuss the history of feminism and women’s studies, and the turns of current events that make activism more necessary than ever.

Sandra M. Gilbert

Susan Gubar

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

ScribophileTDO listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Go here to sign a petition to save Purdue’s creative writing program.

Today’s interview was done in cooperation with Miami Book Fair.


Episode 501 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Episode 483: Tim Parks!

31 Saturday Jul 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, History

≈ 1 Comment

Episode 483 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

In this week’s show, I interview a writer I’m obsessed with, the prose writer Tim Parks.

We talk about walking and its relationship to composition, plus the historical vision of Garibaldi, and the provoking contradictions of historical record.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

Scribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

    Episode 483 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Episode 475: Kathleen Rooney!

05 Saturday Jun 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode, History

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 475 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

In this week’s show, I talk to the novelist Kathleen Rooney about finding the spark to begin stories, the shape for long-form narratives, and the whimsy to make discoveries along the way.

Photo by Beth Rooney.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

Scribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Episode 475 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Episode 463: Raphael Cormack!

13 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, History, Music, Theater

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 463 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

In this week’s episode, theater scholar Raphael Cormack and I discuss the allure of Arabian music, the revolutionary times in Egypt between the world wars, and the women who dominated Cairo’s entertainment scene in the 1920s and 30s.

Photo by Nina Subin.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Women of Egypt

NOTES

Scribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Check out this site for The Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research.

Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research

  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Episode 463 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

28.538335 -81.379237

452: Grace Elizabeth Hale!

26 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, History, Music

≈ 1 Comment

Episode 452 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

This week, I talk to historian Grace Elizabeth Hale about how Athens, Georgia helped launch an indie music revolution with the B52s, REM, Pylon, and other bands, and the art and college scene that spawned them.

TEXT DISCUSSED

NOTESScribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Register with Miami Book Fair Online in order to stream its free events, including a debut poet panel moderated by yours truly.

  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Episode 452 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #102: Maid in Le Mans

23 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Graphic Novels, History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Katie Skelly, Maids

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #102 by Drew Barth

Maid in Le Mans

Comics are well suited to depicting historical events. In her most recent work, Maids, Katie Skelly brings us the story of the Papin Sisters—two women who murdered the mother and daughter of the Lancelin family in 1930s France.

Maids is the story of former nuns and current maids, Christine and Lea Papin, and their lives before murder has crossed their minds. Or, at least, before we’re aware that murder has crossed their minds. Growing up with an absent father and alcoholic mother, the sisters had little choice in joining a nunnery. From there, the sisters are split as Christine is hired as a maid for the Lancelin family, leaving Lea alone and desolate. Soon, the sisters reunite as maids for the same family—one of the only moments we see the sisters truly happy together.

That moment, and after they’ve murdered the family they work for.

But even as the Papin Sisters are covered in the blood of the two women they’ve murdered, we still feel a certain kind of sympathy for them. For they most part, they are women with a bond who had nothing else in the world but each other. They were alone and any mistake as maids would have landed them on the streets. It’s that kind of tension that Skelly works with so well throughout Maids. Those anxieties link right into how Skelly displays the roots of those feelings as well. With only a handful of panels, she is able to establish the Papin Sister’s previous home life and their time at the convent—all of which were fraught with alcoholism and abuse by the very people you would expect to harbor some compassion.

The final two pages of this graphic novel are going to sit with me for a while. Christine and Lea get ready for bed after the murder, speak in unison, and sit in the bed in the dark with their eyes open. It’s a testament to the uncanny nature of the story. As real as this event was, it gives the readers enough distance to still be shocked by the text at the end outlining the sisters’ deaths after being arrested. It is an obscure point in history not many are familiar with, but it’s the kind of event that works so well in the uncanny medium of comics.

Get excited. Get that blood off your blouse.


Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 447: Candacy Taylor!

21 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, History, Journalism, Memoir

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 447 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Photo by Katrina Parks (Assertion Films).

On this week’s show, Candacy Taylor and I discuss her new book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America. We talk about how research can transform a project, and how our understanding of our family’s histories give us windows into understanding our nation’s history, including our own precarious, sometimes alarming moment in it. We also discuss how instrumental color-coded index cards can help us balance the complex work of presenting the long threads of history.

TEXT DISCUSSED

NOTES

How to stay organized when your project has a lot of moving parts: Candacy Taylor’s color-coded index cards for Overground Railroad.


Scribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Register with Miami Book Fair Online in order to stream its free events, including a debut poet panel moderated by yours truly.

  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Episode 447 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #44: Slipping Through the Cracks

13 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, History, Science Fiction

≈ Leave a comment

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #44 by Drew Barth

Slipping Through the Cracks

Throughout the year, hundreds of comics are released. Dozens of new series begin. Sometimes those new series escape the eye of even eager readers. This happens to me every few months—a series just doesn’t appear on the new release calendar or I simply don’t hear any talk of it from the comic crowd I follow. And that almost happened this last month with the release of issue two of Strange Skies Over East Berlin by Jeff Loveness, Lisandro Estherren, and Patricio Delpeche.

ber1

But the strange irony of Strange Skies Over Berlin almost slipping through the cracks is how its story deals with the lies and spies that slipped in and out of East and West Germany in the early 70s. As a story, it is diving deep into the idea of things that are unseen even in a meticulously watched area. When we meet our main character, Herring, we see him trying to slip people through the Berlin Wall as he masquerades as a Stasi operative. The story is so ingrained in the tensions of the era that it’s no wonder the story would shift from the streets of East Berlin to an underground bunker by the end of the first issue.

And then the twist.

ber2

During that escape attempt, a massive stream of light flashes above Berlin, landing somewhere on the eastern side. All anyone knows of the strange light is that no one knows what it could be or how it came to fly over Berlin. And of course, with the extreme secrecy of the time, anyone who would know anything about the strange light is maintaining silence.

Until the mystery of the strange light begins to reveal itself to Herring as he is sealed into that underground bunker. The light itself infects people—takes over their minds and bodies until they split open in a blaze of electric light. And for now, that’s all we as the audience know.

ber3.jpg

Strange Skies Over East Berlin is one of the only series I can think of that sits in the space of sci-fi/historical fiction/political thriller/noir, and I’m still amazed that I only happened upon it on the rack of my local comic shop. Strange Skies fills that hyper-particular niche that isn’t seen all that often but feels necessary when many other series stick to only one or two genres. To experiment with genre is always what comics need to do as a medium. A series like Strange Skies lives and dies on the word-of-mouth around it—even if it comes from a larger publisher like Boom!—and I don’t want to see something so fantastically crafted by Loveness and Estherren to disappear before anyone gets the chance to read it.

Get excited. Try something new.


drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 385: Gilbert King!

21 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beneath a Ruthless Sun, Devil in the Grove, Gilbert King

Episode 385 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

GKHiRes

In this week’s episode, I talk with historian and crime writer Gilbert King about the history of justice and journalism, the role of luck in research, experimenting with presentation until a passage feels right, and how to manage one’s doubts when pursuing a writing project.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Beneath a Ruthless Sun.jpg

Devil in the Grove

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my first interview with Gilbert back on episode 60!

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 385 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Buzzed Books #65: 1776

17 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, History

≈ Leave a comment

Buzzed Books #65 by Chuck Cannini

1776

For Serialbox.com, the Associated Press collaborated to write an episodic series about the lives of farmers, accountants, teachers, and high school dropouts from a certain thirteen colonies in the fateful year of 1776. This is one for history buffs, but the readership should not stop there.

1776

The chapters are published episodically, a monthly dose of history until, finally, you turn the last digital page twelve months later. It’s a great idea to encourage reluctant readers who shy away from large reads. Book groups could also share fun, in-depth discussions about that week’s chapter instead of hoping everyone read the whole book. A friend of mine likened it to a comic book series: one issue a month, except you preorder all the upcoming installments.

It’s also like reading a proper newspaper: packed with the Five Ws of hard, fact-based journalism, some sections with a little more flair than others.

There are the expected cameos from the Revolution’s major players: Washington, Adams, Arnold, Revere, Franklin, and Jefferson. Most received individual attention, some with less familiar details:

Jefferson actually took the knife to the New Testament, ridding it of passages that described ‘unscientific’ miracles. He believed that by this editing, the Bible became a kind of code of conduct to encourage Christian ideal behavior instead of inexplicable divine visions.

It’s no surprise that the Founding Fathers hog the spotlight, integral as they were. While I appreciated those little tidbits like Jefferson going full on editor on the Bible, what pulled me in were the everyday citizens – these farmers and teachers and high school dropouts. By Episode Six, it became apparent that these dropouts and farmers were just the Founding Fathers before they were Founding Fathers. It’s a little misleading. That isn’t to say there is no mention of ordinary colonists. Some of that information was delivered in broad strokes:

Toothless grins were common across the colonial landscape. Colonists did brush their teeth with frayed dogwood twigs using salt and water. Native Americans had splendid teeth, most likely because they were not eating vast quantities of sugar from the West Indies … Bathing was still thought risky, which was fine with the lice.

And

Knowledge of fundamental science was scarce, but there were glimmerings.

And

The poor drowned themselves in rivers of gin.

This is the real juicy meat of history. 1776 offers context. It answers how we as people developed psychologically and therefore sociologically over time. Whether the genre is history or fantasy, I want to understand a person, and in doing so a society, deeply.

Differing colonial customs made each colony fearful of entangling alliances with the others. They were suspicious of each other. A New Englander found Virginia an odd place and its “hospitality and politeness” exaggerated. Virginians found Pennsylvanians “remarkably grave and reserved, and the women remarkably homely, hard-favoured and sour.” A Connecticut man complained of “frauds and unfair practices” by New York merchants, while a New Yorker said he would not send his son to school in Connecticut lest he pick up the “low craft and cunning so incident to the people of that country.

Note the word “country.”

In Pennsylvania, the Quakers were vehemently opposed to slavery on moral grounds—as were the Germans, for economic reasons—steadfast against the competition of cheaper labor. John Woolman, a minister from Mount Holly, New Jersey, would not eat sugar because it was a product of West Indian slave labor. Anthony Benezet of Philadelphia, another Quaker, proposed in 1762 that slaves be freed by law and given homesteads. “Ye men of SENSE and VIRTUE —YE ADVOCATES of American liberty, rouse up and espouse the cause of Humanity and general Liberty,” cried Benjamin Rush. “The plant of liberty is too tender a Nature that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery.”

There are also broader topics, such as territorial disputes, the strain between cultural heritage and assimilation, and the back-and-forth over states’ rights and the federal government.

It’s hard not to juxtapose some of today’s Americans into a world that perhaps led to these very Americans. I just wish there had been a greater focus on Joe or Jane Schmoe and what he or she felt and thought, what drove them to their way of thinking and their allegiances – perhaps the beginnings of long-reaching ideologies in our society today.

The series is not yet finished. Unlike most of Serial Box’s weekly series, 1776 drops new installments once per month. Episode Seven just debuted in July, with five additional episodes after that. Since 1776 is historical and the episodes are self-contained, I don’t think it will be difficult to pick up where they left off a month prior. So there is promise for more insight to a time that I think is important to reflect on and be provided some context, especially given the current climate in America. Until then, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this revolution ends.


Chuck Cannini

Chuck Canninigraduated with a B.F.A. in Creative Writing for Entertainment. History and social studies classes were his favorite courses when in school, especially American history, except when he learned about the Industrial Revolution. Explaining how the spinning jenny was built is exactly how you put him to sleep.

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