Books About Control: Season 2
Control fills the pages of literature, as a force of divine order in Dante’s Inferno, as a cold and cruel capriciousness that is both bureaucratic and existential in Kafka; control is felt in all the greedy, inescapable, and ever-present tentacles of “they” that slowly shatter Slothrop in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, just as its absence renders a shattered visage of Ozymandias in Shelley’s great poem.
Control is the theme this season. In addition to control, we selected these six books using the following criteria: (a) not your typical dystopian sense of control found in a high school English class or a freshman lit seminar, (b) something neither one of us has read or at least has not read for a good long while (c) keeping with the aim of the podcast from the beginning: it should be a work of substance.
B.O.S.S. Season Two Reading List:
Each episode will be released on the first Wednesday of every month. Buy the books via our bookshop page.
The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector
Our second Lispector and definitely not our last. A sorceress of surreal prose, oblique turns, and metaphysical inquiry brings a slim and powerful book that plays and grapples with narrative control. We are huge fans.
Release Date: November 1
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Finally tackling one of the greatest books of the 20th century. David will be joined by Seth from W.A.S.T.E. Mailing List for these two episodes. Control is everywhere, in everything: mind, nature, spirit, psychic, physiological, sexual, governmental, corporate, narrative, erectile…
Episode 1 (an approach): December 6
Episode 2 (an understanding): January 3
Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
The complacent life of the magistrate of a remote Empirical outpost cracks and crumbles when faced with the evils of State violence and colonial control.
Release Date: February 7
Malina - Ingeborg Bachmann
An intense and fragmented novel exploring the psychological and existential through the female narrator’s examination of two important relationships.
Release Date: March 6
The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
A journey through the desolate desert of North Africa: ethereal, foreboding, alienating, and melancholic (just our cup of tea).
Release Date: April 3
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
It ends with a book about a man, by a man, who (seemingly) took control of his life: cynical, serene, crass, insightful, experimental, and irreverent. Should be a blast.
Release Date: May 1
Call in to Share Your Thoughts
We appreciate you listening and watching the episodes, and we’d love to hear from you.
Have an opinion on the book? Thoughts on how control plays into a character, plot, or narrative? Want to share a quote from one of the books? Call our voicemail to have your voice appear on an episode: (331) BOSS-BOT / (331) 267-7268.
