Writer Isaac Butler joins co-hosts Kate Wolf and Eric Newman to speak about his new book, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act which was published this month by Bloomsbury. The Method traces the dissemination of a style and way of thinking about acting that’s so prevalent, it’s hard to imagine the performing arts without it today. Originally envisioned by the great actor and textile heir Konstantin Stanislavski, in Moscow, in the late 1800s, the Method, originally known as the System, stressed the importance of emotional realism, research, a character’s motivation, and the actor's organic experience. Stanislavski believed actors were meant to be truth tellers and to this end, he developed empathic and imaginative exercises to enhance the authenticity of their performances such as “affective memory” and the “Magic If.” When the Moscow Arts Theater, which Stanislavski co-created, toured its productions in Europe and the US in the early 1920s, it inspired a whole new generation of actors and teachers, including Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, who would go on to teach the Method to much the acclaim and controversy in the United States.
Also, Lewis R. Gordon, author of Fear of Black Consciousness, returns to recommend three books: Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde; Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma by Guilaine Kinouani; and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

Lewis R. Gordon, head of the philosophy department at the University of Connecticut, joins Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher to talk about his latest book, Fear of Black Consciousness. The book explores contemporary racism and the long historical movement from black consciousness with a lower-case “b” to capital “B” Black consciousness, an active and more liberatory mentality that sees through the lies of white supremacy and works to build a better and more democratic society. Gordon examines these weighty topics through sustained readings of popular film and culture, including Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.

Also, Sheila Heti, author of Pure Colour, returns to recommend Elif Batuman’s Either/Or.

Sheila Heti joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to speak about her latest novel, Pure Colour. A mythical and tender telling of the life of a woman named Mira, Pure Colour imagines our present day as taking place in the first stages of God’s creation. The world as we know it is but God’s first draft, and the complaints of human beings about its difficulties are being logged by him as input for his second. In this first draft world, people come in three categories: birds, fish, and bears. Mira is a bird — she relates to the world aesthetically and studies writing and criticism — while the woman that beguiles her, Annie, is a fish — a pragmatist who believes in justice for all of humanity. Mira’s father, meanwhile, is a bear, devoted most to the people he loves. When he dies early in the novel, questions of how to reconcile these different positions, how and at what distance to love someone, and how much to let go of that love, take the fore, as do other deeply philosophical inquiries about time, the future, art, and the universe as we know it.

Also, Francesco Pacifico, author of The Women I Love, drops by to give a glowing recommendation for Gertrude Stein’s classic The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

Italian author Francesco Pacifico talks with hosts Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher about his latest novel, The Women I Love, which follows an editor and poet named Marcello who is trying to write a novel about the women in his life. The relationships he explores are sexual and romantic - there’s a young editor Elenora, with whom he is having an affair; Barbara, his girlfriend and later his wife - as well platonic and familiar, he writes about his sister Irene as well as his mother. The book is about love and sex, as well as gender, power, and literature. How well can we know each other, even our most intimate partners?
Also Neel Patel, author of Tell Me How To Be, returns to recommend Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala.