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Insufferable Bastards

T&A Productions

Snobby commentary on contemporary literature.

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  • 5 episodes
  • monthly
  • Avg 1 hr 17 min
  • English

Episodes 5

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  • August 13 · 1 hr 9 min

    Censorship!

    Topics: Did you know that since 2021 PEN America has documented 23,000 book bans, more than at any other time in US history? In July, Ottessa Moshfegh’s short story “Bettering Myself” caused a stir at South Florida State College when a professor was suspended for teaching it by college president and inbred moron Fred Hawkins. We also discuss online pile ons, rightwing v. leftwing censorship, the Moral Majority, the PEN America banned book list, JoAnn Wypijewski, people we’d like to ban, A Clockwork Orange, Tony Soprano, unlikable narrators, anti-heroes, suckers, orphans. After chatting about censorship, we discuss Clarice Lispector and decide to ban her and her terrible books. Also discussed: poisoned solidarity, Roger Lancaster, Orhan Pamuk, Jon Ronson, Ryan Boudinot, Quentin Tarantino, Barbara Ehrenreich, Judy Blume, Mark Twain, Bret Easton Ellis, Anthony Burgess, Harold Bloom, Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center, Leonora Carrington, the recent death of John Crowley, his novel Little, Big, le wokisme, outlaws, violence, dissidents, dimwits, nonces, moralists, ninnies, whiners, losers. The concluding poetry reading is Dylan Thomas’s “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” and the concluding music is Debussy’s “Beau Soir.” Get full access to The Literarian Gazette at tliterarian.substack.com/subscribe

  • July 27 · 1 hr 8 min

    Ambition!

    Are you fighting enough? Are you centering yourself? Are you making enough? Hitting the gym? Cracking the whip? Are you high status enough? Are all your enemies dead? Are you cool enough? Are you elite enough? Are you killing it, serving c**t, whipping ass, beating down doors, turning over desks, clasping your dreams by the balls and slaying, crushing, mogging, destroying, annihilating? This episode is about you and your ambition. We don’t like what we see. We think you need to step it up. In this episode: Morgan Bassichis, his one-man show Can I Be Frank, about Frank Maya and ambition, also Latronico’s Perfection, Georges Perec’s Things, Oulipo, tortured geniuses, Philip Roth, Gen Z and cringe, Honor Levy, writing with feeling, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, Madeline Cash, Geese, envy, Deresiewicz and The Death of the Artist, careerism, haiku, Kobayashi Issa, masochism, Edward Bernays’s Propaganda, and Ted Hughes. If you missed our last episode, click here. Get full access to The Literarian Gazette at tliterarian.substack.com/subscribe

  • July 6 · 1 hr 43 min

    Mediocrity!

    This episode is for true Insufferable B*****d fans. We issue an important correction regarding the Granta/Commonwealth Prize A.I. scandal. We also discuss why we began the show, Roger Ebert, Lars von Trier, physically going to the damn movie theater, long-ass movies, the standards of art in our time, Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, commonplace books, Trumbull Stickney, poetry, “rote” memorization, Leonard Michaels, Alanna Schubach’s excellent first novel The Nobodies, the forgotten William Styron, Darkness Visible by William Styron, City for Conquest by Aben Kandel, cinnamon bears, attention spans, boredom, Miles Davis, Obsession. (If you missed episode 2, click here to listen.) Also: Howard Norman, hearing from listeners, Cass Sunstein’s weird review of Obsession, movie rental stores like Kim’s Video (NYC) and Videodrome (Atlanta), literary density, the short story ‘Many Worlds’ by Ayşegül Savaş, the stylistic weakness of contemporary New Yorker short stories such as ‘Many Worlds’ by Ayşegül Savaş, the stylistic weakness of past New Yorker short stories such as ‘Cat Person’ by Kristen Roupenian, major podcast success, the 1%, our 6000 listeners (!), the secret pessimism of southerners and the secret optimism of northerners, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin, magical realism, German expressionism, The Confessions of Nat Turner, the “ownership” of stories, sensitivity readers, the excellent editing of Meg Storey, wabi-sabi, ‘Evangeline’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘Live blindly and upon the hour’ by Trumbull Stickney. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Literarian Gazette at tliterarian.substack.com/subscribe

  • June 24 · 1 hr 4 min

    Scandal, Part Deux!

    To my subscribers: I’ve been working on a few essays. One of them is, in fact, already out at The Republic of Letters. Go have a read. Otherwise, I’m soon to be pitching some book reviews and pieces elsewhere. By the way, The Insufferable B******s is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Enjoy! Episode the 2nd Though we had a different recording ready to go, Alanna and I quickly got together for an emergency episode regarding yet another literary A.I. scandal. This one involves UK fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which awarded Kavyta Kay a prize for her story Back and Forth. We also discuss prize judge Ruth Ozeki, gatekeeping, the 86 (!) countries in which we have listeners, poetry, Jamaica Kincaid, Joseph O’Neill. Also Derek Walcott, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, curry leaves, the diaspora, Kenneth Koch, more culture pots, wood damp and trousers, school bullying, teaching in prison, the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program, cricket, Jewishness, Lawn Guyland, The Tenants by Bernard Malamud, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, I Married a Communist by Philip Roth, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick, Gina Berriault, memento mori, “Ode to my Twenties” by Kenneth Koch. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Literarian Gazette at tliterarian.substack.com/subscribe

  • May 26 · 1 hr 21 min

    Episode the 1st: Scandal!

    My friend Alanna Schubach and I have done the impossible: we got Jamir Nazir, winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2026, in the studio for a reading and an interview on our very first podcast. This presentation has been over a year in the making and has involved megamillions in angel investor funding, so we’re banking on you tuning in and hearing from Nazir himself. Please share and comment. We also discuss Pan by Michael Clune, Milkman by Anna Burns, Paul Theroux, VS Naipaul, the rise and fall of wokism in lit, Long Island, New Hampshire, that amazing Guardian Best Books List, hot bowls of culture, the libs, the leftists, the rightists, Vance v. Rubio, jasmine, Michael Derick Hudson and Best American Poetry, dirty creeks, artificial intelligence (AI), Salinger, who we really are, world travel, Asia, Trinidad, parenting, Ocean Vuong, how to save the children, the meaning behind names, publishing, literature, books and having the courage to say the thing. Get full access to The Literarian Gazette at tliterarian.substack.com/subscribe

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