Category: Uncategorized

Episode 48: “So Long, and Thanks for All The Squid,” or Viet Than Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Part I

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s narrator tells us right off the bat that he’s a sympathizer. He can see any issue from “both sides,” he claims, a dubious virtue in the chaotic Vietnamese history following the fall of Saigon. Nguyen’s narrator faces situation after situation in which that quality of sympathizing with everybody, including his enemies, proves to be both a strength and a weakness. This wild novel surprises at almost every turn, asking us questions about what a real anti-hero might look like in the oddities of real life.

Episode 46: “Yelling ‘Racism’ in a ‘Post-racist’ World,” or Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Part II

The second half of The Sellout does feature a MacGuffin and resolution of sorts, although the plot is minimal compared to the satire and world building. The UMBs struggle to understand the book, but ultimately conclude The Sellout is a takedown of the post-racial ideal of the 2010s. The brilliance of the prose is stunning, but does the structure of the book feature the same brilliance?

Digression: Demented Whimsy with Joshua Mohr.

Writer Joshua Mohr joins us to talk shop about his recent book Farsickness. The idea began with watching his daughter and her friends create short dramatic productions for his neighborhood, during COVID. He talks about the virtues of supposedly “hapless” protagonists, collaborating with his daughter, and how COVID should have taught us to pursue the art we crave the most. 

Mark your calendar:

Details to follow! This will be a virtual event, in which we agree to watch the movie at the same time, and then a video discussion to follow.

Boulet du Mouton

Fill out our LISTENER SURVEY!!! If you listen to our episode on Babette’s Feast, you will understand why Jesse felt compelled to create a recipe for something called “Boulet du Mouton”. We don’t want to spoil it exactly, but Babette might say “Il a fait du mensonge une vérité.” Jesse INVENTED this recipe, although it has… Continue reading Boulet du Mouton

Season Two Trailer!

We are almost one year old! Our first episode, on Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, launched almost exactly a year ago, and we are so excited to be heading into Season Two of Upper Middle Brow. This season we’re kicking things off a little differently, with a tour of “Foodie Films,” beginning with Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, followed shortly thereafter by Peter Greenaway’s harrowing The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. We’ll talk to Monica Eng of the Chewing podcast and listen to some classic audio podcasts. We’ll keep it literary and connect with some old classics (Dickens, Austen, and Flaubert), and finally look at ways that authors examine (critically) their own cultures.

Draft Results!!

Thanks to everybody who joined our first ever live event last night. Here are the results for our next series (after we finish Neuromancer, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and The Forever War). We’ll publish the audio from last night’s event in our podcast feed in the coming weeks. See below for our plan… Continue reading Draft Results!!

Upper Middlebrow Live DRAFT!

On Wednesday, August 2nd, at 7:30pm EDT, we will select our next FOUR series using a ranked choice voting system we like to call “DRAFT DAY”. If you want to join, watch this space for a youtube live link, around 7:15pm EDT. Here is a rando Creative Commons image we found searching “Draft Day”. It’s…… Continue reading Upper Middlebrow Live DRAFT!

Episode 11: “The Utopia of Fresno” or Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Part II

Dukes and Bagg wonder about the length of the middle section of the book, which as far as they can tell, only establishes one major plot point. And they wonder at the stakes of the novel? Who cares if a couple of comfortably well off tech guys find some old gold? But Stephenson’s insight into the little told impacts of technological development during the War remains impressive. What if the Germans HAD developed a “Rocket Sub?”