We’re delighted to share with you this audio conversation reflecting on the six essays in our Symposium on the Novel that we published this autumn, featuring our guest contributors Phil Christman and Trevor Cribben Merrill. Below the divider are show notes for the conversation, with links to the essays in the Symposium, recent books by the participants, and the other books and media mentioned along the way. We hope you enjoy this new format and welcome your thoughts and responses in the comments below.
The Symposium on the Novel
Recent Work by the Participants
Tara Isabella Burton, Here in Avalon (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Phil Christman, How to be Normal: Essays (Belt Publishing, 2022)
Trevor Cribben Merrill, Minor Indignities (Wiseblood Books, 2020)
Books and Other Media Mentioned
Adam Roberts, Lake of Darkness (Orion, 2024)
Phil Christman interview with Adam Roberts for The Tourist
Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory, trans. Gavin Bowd (Vintage, 2012)
Michel Houellebecq, Submission, trans. Lorin Stein (William Heinemann, 2015)
Dhananjay Jagannathan lecture on Houellebecq’s Submission for the Morningside Institute
Trevor Cribben Merrill review of Houellebecq’s Annihilation for Compact
Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods (New Directions, 2011)
Tim Parks, The Novel: A Survival Skill (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Michel Lévy Frères, 1857)
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (Harper & Row, 1984)
Daniel McInerny, Beauty and Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts (Word on Fire Academic, 2024)
Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End (Duckworth, 1924–1928)
Hermann Broch, Dichtung und Erkennen, ed. Hannah Arendt (Rhein Verlag, 1955)
Pride and Prejudice, dir. Simon Langton (BBC, 1995)
Walker Percy, “Another Message in a Bottle” in Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays (Bellew, 1991)
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980)
Phil Christman essay on Marilynne Robinson for The Tourist
Share this post