A Small, Good Thing

Around 1950, the short story genre in America was at the highest and at the same time most delicate moment of its history. While the number of magazines publishing short fiction and of short story collections reached its apex, political and ideological pressures sought to undermine the prestige of the short story in order to promote other literary forms. In this episode, Sam Reese tells the fascinating story of four writers who in those years used the short story as an outlet for countercultural expression. Sam Reese is Senior Lecturer at York St. John University, a short story writer and a jazz music critic. 
 
 
Works cited: 
Sam Reese, The Short Story in Midcentury America: Countercultural Form in the Work of Bowles, McCarthy, Welty, and Williams (Louisiana State University Press, 2017). 
Sam Reese, ‘Only anecdotal: Diane Williams, loneliness and short story form.’ Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 12.1 (2022), pp. 19-30. 
Sam Reese, ‘Eleven Kinds? Loneliness and Reading for Type with Richard Yates.’ American Literature, 94.2 (2022), pp. 357-380. 
Sam Reese, Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness (LSU Press, 2019). 
Sam Reese (ed.), The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins (NYRB, 2024). 
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Random House, 1952). 
William Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (Grove Press, 1959). 
Mary McCarthy, The Group (Harcourt, Brace, 1963). 
Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps (Simon & Schuster, 1942). 
Tennessee Williams, One Arm and Other Stories (New Directions Publishers, 1948). 
James Salter, Last Night: Stories (Vintage, 2006).

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Infinite Jest, arguably David Foster Wallace’s most famous and celebrated book. In this episode, Professor Marshall Boswell, one of the leading scholars in the field of David Foster Wallace’s studies, discusses Wallace’s three brilliant short story collections: Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), and Oblivion (2004). 
 
Works cited: 
Marshall Boswell, Understanding David Foster Wallace. Revised and Expanded Edition (University of South Carolina Press, 2020). 
Marshall Boswell and Stephen J. Burn (eds.), A Companion to David Foster Wallace’s Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 
Marshall Boswell, David Foster Wallace and the Long Thing (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 
Marshall Boswell, The Wallace Effect: David Foster Wallace and the Contemporary Literary Imagination (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). 
David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair (Norton, 1989). 
David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Little, Brown, 1999). 
David Foster Wallace, Oblivion: Stories (Little, Brown, 2004). 
David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (Viking, 1987). 
D. T. Max, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (Granta, 2013). 
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Little, Brown, 1996). 
David Foster Wallace, ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (Little, Brown, 1997), pp. 21-82. 
John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (Doubleday, 1968). 
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1973). 
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (Vintage, 1991). 
David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (Little, Brown, 2005). 
John Updike, Problems and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979). 
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (Little, Brown, 2011). 
John Updike, Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). 
Lauren Groff, Florida (Penguin, 2018).

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

In this episode, Naomi Kanakia (a.k.a Woman of Letters on Substack) tells the fascinating tale of the New Yorker Short Story. Since the times of Harold Ross and editor Katharine White, the New Yorker has been the most renowned literary magazine publishing short fiction in the US. Does a “New Yorker short story” really exists? And if it does, what does it look like?
Naomi Kanakia is the author of a hugely popular blog on Substack (link below), has an upcoming non-fiction book with Princeton University Press (What’s so Great about the Great Books?) and is working on a collection of short stories to be released by Random House in 2028. 
 
Works cited:
Naomi Kanakia, What’s so Great about the Great Books? (Princeton University Press, 2026). 
John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever (Random House, 1981). 
Amy Reading, The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024). 
Sally Benson, ‘Lady with a Lamp’, New Yorker, January 18, 1947. 
The New Yorker, 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker (Simon & Schuster, 1949). 
Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). 
John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra (Harcourt Brace, 1934). 
Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (Random House, 1948). 
Mavis Gallants, Collected Short Stories (Everyman’s Library, 2016). 
 
Naomi’s Substack blog: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/ 
You can read Naomi’s Substack post about the New Yorker short story here: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/money-and-prestige.

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Richard Brautigan is most famous for his iconic novel Trout Fishing in America (1967), but he was also a prolific short story writer and poet. Whether you are a hardcore Brautigan fan, or you have never heard of him, this episode is for you! Chris Gair is the director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of Glasgow, and one of the greatest Brautigan experts! He is the author of The American Counterculture (Edinburgh University Press), of The Beat Generation: a Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld), and of numerous articles on American literature.
 
Works mentioned:

Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (Four Seasons Foundation, 1967).
Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur (Grove Press, 1965).
Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (Four Seasons Foundation, 1968).
Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971).
Richard Brautigan, Tokyo-Montana Express (Delacorte Press, 1980).
Richard Brautigan, ‘The Post Offices of Eastern Oregon’ in Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971), pp. 72-79.
Richard Brautigan, ‘The Scarlatti Tilt’, in Revenge of the Lawn (Simon & Schuster, 1971), p. 37.
Lionel Trilling, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, in The Liberal Imagination (Secker and Warburg, 1951), pp. 104-117 (p. 106).
Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (Boni & Liveright, 1925).
 
Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies (University of Glasgow) https://surreylearn.surrey.ac.uk/d2l/le/lessons/283532/topics/3511681

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Chigozirim Nwaosu is a PhD candidate in English Literature in the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Surrey (UK). Her research focuses on the intersectionality between race, gender and sexuality and how it affects contemporary societies. In this episode, Chigozirim discusses the representation of gender and sexuality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Listen to find out what role colonialism played in shaping the narrative surrounding Africa, African women and the African queer community. 
 
Works mentioned:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (4th Estate, 2009). 
Devon W. Carbado, ‘Privilege’ in Johnson, Patrick E., and Henderson, MAE G. (eds.) Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 190-212.
Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (Zed, 1987).
Sylvia Tamale, African Sexualities: A Reader (Pambazuka Press, 2011).
Judith Butler, Who's Afraid of Gender? (Allen Lane, 2024).
Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Pluto Press, 1986).
M. Epprecht ‘Africa and African Homosexualities: An Introduction’ in Murray, S. O. & Roscoe, W. (eds.) Boy-Wives and Female Husband: Studies in African Homosexualities (State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 1-16.
BBC Africa, Theresa May ‘deeply regrets’ UK’s colonial anti-gay laws (2018). Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-43795440.

Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.