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The Big Book Project
The Big Book Project is a multi-venue reading experience for bibliophiles fascinated by long or dense works of fiction and interested in discussing them with others, one novel at a time.
The works selected will be capacious novels from the mid-nineteenth century through today that possess an abundant writing style or complexity in structure and themes.
The notion that reading need not be a solitary activity has special resonance with these novels given that there is much to discuss, elaborate upon and question in the authors’ expression of ideas. I like to think of these novels as abundant because I appreciate their richness and volume, characteristics bestow a sort of grace to luxuriate with the text.
The critic and scholar Alexander Nehamas writes that when a work of art beckons, it is because we do not fully understand it but feel the strong desire to do so. And it is this deliberative process, the journey, of trying to understand why a novel is extraordinary that I want to explore with fellow readers at The Big Book Project.
We discuss books like Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
The Big Book Project
Latest Episodes
Effingers by Gabriele Tergit, with Nick During (NYRB)
https://substack.com/@thebigbookprojectEffingers by Gabriele Tergit is an 800-page German Jewish family saga published by New York Review of Books Classics, and this week NYRB publicist Nick During joins me to talk about what ma...
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Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, with Chad Post | Big Book Project
Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus is a puzzling novel, and in this episode of The Big Book Project host Lori Feathers and guest Chad W. Post take on the first two hundred pages featuring an unreliable narrator, an unorthodox musical prodigy...
Steven Moore on "Last Time Around," William Gaddis & the Future of the Big Novel
https://substack.com/@thebigbookproject(Lori recorded this interview on a different device, and we apologize for the poor quality of her audio.)For five decades Steven Moore has been one of the most thoughtful champions of the...