Marlon and Jake Read Dead People

We've heard them rave about their favorites and rant about their least favorites, but Marlon and Jake reveal in this episode their second favorite books by dead authors: the books they love that are the runners-up to the #1 spots in their hearts. From Amos Tutuola to Gabriel García Márquez to John le Carré and more, Marlon and Jake explore why one's favorite book by an author might not always be their best book, what separates an intellectual vs. an emotional response to a book, and the importance of being a promiscuous reader. (That’s right, promiscuous.) And what is the next book by a dead author Marlon and Jake will be reading together for the first time? Tune in to find out!

Select Titles Discussed:

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
• Darkness Visible by William Golding
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Shardik by Richard Adams
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
• Shōgun by James Clavell
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey
• The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carré
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
• The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carré
• Smiley’s People by John le Carré
• A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Blood on the Forge by William Attaway
• My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber

Marlon & Jake are back to discuss the most indelible and powerful female characters—those written by dead female authors and those written by dead male authors. From Sula Peace to the Wife of Bath, Scout Finch to Janie Crawford—these two gentleman celebrate some of literature’s most ferocious, complicated, guileless, unrepentant and commanding women.

• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Double Indemnity by James Cain
• There Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Kindred Octavia Butler
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
• Sula by Toni Morrison

In this episode Marlon and Jake ponder the tricky question of the last books by authors who’ve ... um ... left this mortal coil. Which last books are actually worth reading? (Not many, it turns out.) From Roberto Bolaño to Penelope Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath to Eudora Welty, Marlon and Jake discuss how an author's last book compares to their previous ones, how success and age changed how and what they wrote, and the wistfulness that comes when some last books are actually good and you wonder what the authors might have written next, if, you know, they hadn't died. Tune in for this and more, including Marlon and Jake’s surprising thoughts on James Thurber's humorous memoir, My Life and Hard Times.

Select titles discussed:

• Maurice by E. M. Forster
• Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• Passage to India by E. M. Forster
• Something Happened by Joseph Heller
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
• One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
• The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty
• The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
• “Where is the Voice Coming From?” by Eudora Welty
• My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber
• Typee by Herman Melville
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara

Literary speculation abounds as Marlon and Jake reveal which books they wish they had written and which they think would have been better if they’d been written by someone completely different. Listen in as they explore the questions you never knew you needed answers to. Would The Confessions of Nat Turner have been better if Zora Neale Hurston had written it? Who could have written a funnier Ulysses? Were members of the Bloomsbury Group actually total bores? And perhaps most important: Does Marlon’s mom still have his Tom Jones fan-fiction and if so, how much is Jake willing to pay for it? Tune in for all this and more, including a lively discussion about plays that are as enjoyable to read as they are to see on stage. (And spoiler: Jake is not a fan of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

Select title discussed:

• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Tai-Pan by James Clavell
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
• Airships by Barry Hannah
• Joseph Andrews by Henry fielding
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson
• The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Shōgun by James Clavell
• Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso
• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
• Terrorist by John Updike
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• The Two Gentleman of Verona by William Shakespeare
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
• His Girl Friday by Charles Lederer (screenplay), adapted from The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (play)
• Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer
• Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
• Endgame by Samuel Beckett

Marlon & Jake are back to discuss the narrators they love but can't trust. From the delusional to the uninformed, the sociopathic to the sympathetic, they explore the characters that charm as much as they trick, begging the question: is there such a thing as a reliable narrator? So tune in to hear if Jake has warmed to Great Expectations (spoiler alert: he hasn’t) and so much more!

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
• Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• "Charles" by Shirley Jackson (in The Lottery and Other Stories collection)