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This month marks the fifth anniversary of Unsound Methods - thank you to everyone who's joined us along the way, and hello to any new arrivals... In this episode we speak to Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey about the writing of their collaboratively composed novel 'Macbeth, Macbeth' (available from Boiler House Press, here: https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/macbeth-macbeth-by-ewan-fernie-simon-palfrey)  'Macbeth, Macbeth' is described by its authors as a critical fiction. A sequel, critique, and repetition of Shakespeare’s play. Slavoj Žižek has described it as: ‘a miracle, an instant classic… as close as one can come to a quantum physics literary criticism’. A video trailer for the book is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru-seZCr3Ho Ewan Fernie is Director of the 2-million-pound lottery-funded ‘Everything to Everybody’ Project (everythingtoeverybody.bham.ac.uk), which is reviving the world’s first great Shakespeare library and Birmingham’s broader reputation as a pioneering modern city. It was a major influence on the Cultural Programme and the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. His day-job is as Chair, Professor and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and Culture Lead for the College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham. Ewan's books include: Shame in Shakespeare, The Demonic: Literature and Experience, Shakespeare for Freedom, Spiritual Shakespeares, Redcrosse: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today’s World, Thomas Mann and Shakespeare: Something Rich and Strange, and New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity. For many years, he co-edited the groundbreaking ‘Shakespeare Now!’ series with Simon Palfrey. In 2018, he hosted Radical Mischief: Inviting Experiment in Theatre, Thought and Politics with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Deputy Director, Erica Whyman at The Other Place. He is now leading a new project, Serious About Comedy, with Sean Foley, Artistic Director of Birmingham REP, as well as an ambitious cross-cultural initiative with the Birmingham-based artist and curator, Mohammed Ali of Soul City Arts.  He is writing a book about the Scottish writer and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, provisionally entitled The Dirty History of Hope. Simon Palfrey is Professor of English at Brasenose College Oxford University. His recent work explores the unique kinds of life generated by dramatic, poetic, and fictional forms, and the opportunities this opens up for more imaginative, philosophically adventurous, and politically engaged critical work. His books include Doing Shakespeare (Arden, 2004; 2nd ed. 2011), a TLS International Book of the Year; Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford, 2007, with Tiffany Stern), the MRDS Book of the Year; Poor Tom: living King Lear (Chicago, 2014); Shakespeare's Possible Worlds (Cambridge, 2014) Simon’s current projects are inspired by Spenser’s Faerie Queene, including a new bestiary, A Poem Come True, and the twice AHRC-award winning Demons Land, a mixed media event (film, drama, dance, paintings, sculptures, soundscapes, text) that imagines an island built in the image of Spenser’s epic poem (demonsland.com). Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan Or at jaimiebatchan.com and lochlanbloom.com We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

In a slight shift from our literary fiction focus, we caught up with writer and script editor Jenny Landreth - one of the driving forces behind the brilliant children's animated TV show 'Hey Duggee'. Having both become fathers only weeks apart in the summer of 2018, Hey Duggee was one of the most joyful discoveries in the often barren wastelands of our young daughters' TV choices... We learnt about how script editing works and how a show like Hey Duggee is put together, as well as speaking a little about Jenny's work on the upcoming reboot of the Magic Roundabout. Jenny also spoke about balancing non-fiction writing with children's TV and the feast and famine nature of freelance work. WARNING: for those of you who might want to listen with Duggee loving children around, there is a small sprinkling of the kind of language you wouldn't hear in the Squirrels' clubhouse... Jenny is on Twitter (although she uses it more for her personal life than professional): @jennylandreth Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan Or at jaimiebatchan.com and lochlanbloom.com We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

In this episode with chatted with Etgar Keret, writer of short stories, comics, a children's book and a memoir. Etgar's books have been published in fifty languages. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope. He is currently a Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He has received the Book Publishers Association's Platinum Prize several times, the St Petersburg Public Library's Foreign Favourite Award (2010) and the Newman Prize (2012). In 2010, he was honoured in France with the decoration of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2007, Keret and Shira Geffen won the Cannes Film Festival's "Camera d'Or" Award for their movie Jellyfish, and Best Director Award of the French Artists and Writers' Guild. His latest collection "Fly Already" won the most prestigious literary award in Israel, the Sapir prize (2018), as well as the National Jewish Book Award of the Jewish Book Council. Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan Or at jaimiebatchan.com and lochlanbloom.com We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

Our guest in this episode is Australian writer Daniel Davis Wood, author of Blood and Bone (2014) which won the Viva La Novella Prize and At the Edge of the Solid World (2020), which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Our chat with Daniel covered unconventional composition techniques derived from artistic practice, the difference between writing novellas and novels, reading your work out loud and plenty more. We also briefly covered Daniel's work as a publisher with his press Splice. The Garielle Lutz essay that Daniel references can be found here: https://culture.org/the-sentence-is-a-lonely-place/ You can find out about Daniel, his writing and his publishing via his website: https://danieldaviswood.com/ Daniel is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DanielDavisWood And his books (aside from At the Edge of the Solid World) are available via Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/daniel-davis-wood - or your local bricks and mortar book shop... Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

Episode 51 with Claudia Durastanti. This month we speak to writer and translator Claudia Durastanti. We cover the importance of travel and geography in writing, mapping fictional spaces, translation and the overlap of metaphor between languages. Claudia is the author of Strangers I Know and Cleopatra Goes To Prison, translated to English, as well as well as Un giorno verrò a lanciare sassi alla tua finestra and A Chloe, per le ragioni sbagliate. Claudia is on twitter here: https://twitter.com/CDurastanti And her books are available via Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/books?keywords=claudia+durastanti - or your local bricks and mortar book shop... Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

Hitting the half century, we speak to British-Argentine poet and journalist Miguel Cullen, author of collections including Wave Caps (2014), Paranoid Narcissism! (2017) and, most recently, Hologram (2022). Miguel's work has involved integrating sound chips and video-screens into the bound collections, raising some interesting blends of form. He has been published by Caught by the River, Abridged, Lunar Poetry, Magma Poetry, Purple Fashion Magazine and Stand. He was shortlisted for the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Award 2020. Ambit magazine wrote about his latest book, Hologram: "Is this the first ever poetry book with a film screen? Psychedelic modernity, embracing London meets LatinX, a collage of myths in language medium and form."   Our chat (somewhat truncated by some sound issues) covered the factors that lead to pieces becoming a collection, the confrontation between competing attitudes towards the canon (whatever that means!), what artists from other forms can bring to written work, and the potential fire risk of pushing formal boundaries. Miguel's collections are available through Odilo Press: https://www.odilopress.com/ - Hologram is also available through Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/miguel-cullen - or your local bricks and mortar book shop... Miguel's website is here: https://miguelcullen.com Miguel is also on Twitter: @MiguelCullen2 Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

This month we speak to writer and artist Sara Baume. Sara is the author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015), A Line Made by Walking (2017), the non-fiction handiwork (2020) and Seven Steeples, which is released this month on Tramp Press, who have published all of her work so far. Amongst much else, we cover: living a creative life that combines writing and visual art; learning narrative from arthouse cinema; finding a form from the original idea; writing slowly; abandoning work that doesn’t feel right. Sara's Instagram is: @saraofthebaumes Sara's books are available directly from Tramp Press: https://tramppress.com/writer/sara-baume/ or through Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/sara-baume - or your local bricks and mortar book shop... Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

In this episode we speak to writer Richard Beard. Richard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead, Dry Bones and Damascus, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and he is the author of five works of narrative non-fiction. His memoir The Day That Went Missing won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography and in the US was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. His latest memoir/polemic is Sad Little Men. Subjects covered include: tricking yourself into starting a writing project, how Richard's approach has changed over the course of nearly a dozen books (is 11 'a writer's dozen?'), youthful experimentation with squared paper, and knowing if the proportions of a novel feel right at the end of the first draft. Richard has a website: https://www.richardbeard.info/ And he's on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeardRichard Richards's books are available through Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/richard-beard - or your local bricks and mortar book shop... Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We have loosely teamed up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. You can find out about the IES here: https://ies.sas.ac.uk/

In our latest episode we had a chat with novelist Sam Byers, author of Idiopathy (2013), Perfidious Albion (2018) and last year's Come Join Our Disease. We talked about needing to write ideas down and how they eventually demand it, using a journal while writing a novel, getting the voice right before venturing too far and the vast gulf between dialogue on the page and in the real world. Sam has a website: http://sambyers.co.uk/ Sam's books are available through Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/sam-byers - or your local bricks and mortar book shop... Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We have loosely teamed up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. You can find out about the IES here: https://ies.sas.ac.uk/

Our first guest of 2022 is the novelist Keith Ridgway, author of, among other works, 'the Long Falling' (1998), 'the Parts' (2003), 'Animals' (2006), 'Hawthorn and Child' (2012) and, most recently, 'A Shock' (2021), which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Keith was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2001. Our chat with Keith took us through the daily fight with the concept of routine, specificity of place, giving up writing and returning, and experiencing a reading crisis - followed by being knocked off the wagon by Georges Simenon. Keith's books are available through Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/contributors/keith-ridgway - or your local book shop... Keith is on Twitter: @rid9way Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We have loosely teamed up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now that some form of normality has (possibly temporarily) returned to the U.K., why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

Our guest this month is Jenn Ashworth, author of A Kind of Intimacy (2009), Cold Light (2011), The Friday Gospels (2013), Fell (2017) and the non-fiction work Notes Made While Falling (2019). Her latest novel is Ghosted: A Love Story out now with Sceptre. She lives in Lancashire and is a Professor of Writing at Lancaster University. Amongst much else we talk about: getting through lockdown with the support of an online writing group, 100 days of writing, how to trick yourself into writing, not being a morning person, interrupting the previous day's writing and stopping in a good place, drowning in post-it notes, describing your writing problems as a way of solving them, and how the novels you’re writing make you sit in the nastiness of your own filth for several years... You can find out more about Jenn and her writing at her website: https://jennashworth.co.uk/ Jenn is on Twitter: @jennashworth And Instagram: @jennashworth82 Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We have loosely teamed up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now that some form of normality has (possibly temporarily) returned to the U.K., why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

This month we are joined by Lucie Elven, short-story writer and author of the Weak Spot, the debut novel published earlier this year by Prototype in the UK. Lucie has written for publications including the London Review of Books, Granta and NOON.   Our chat took us on an Alpine tour through topics including: how notes demand to be put into short stories or novels, developing a long-term relationship with an editor, the function of ambiguity in fiction, and plenty more. The Weak Spot is available through Prototype: https://prototypepublishing.co.uk/product/the-weak-spot/ Lucie is on Twitter: @lucieelven And Instagram: @lucieelven Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We have loosely teamed up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now that some form of normality has (possibly temporarily) returned to the U.K., why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

As we roll into autumn, we're joined by Rebecca Watson, novelist and arts writer. Rebecca's debut novel, Little Scratch, grew from a short story that was shortlisted for the White Review short story prize and the novel itself was shortlisted for this year's Desmond Elliott Prize.  Among all the other talking our chat took us through: expanding a short story into a novel. Investigating how writing can replicate the immediacy of thought. Playing with fiction and reality, and much more. You can find out more about Rebecca and her writing at her website here: https://www.rebeccawatson.co.uk/ Rebecca is on Twitter: @rebeccawhatsun And Instagram: @rebeccawhatsun Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We are teaming up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now that some form of normality is cautiously being introduced in the U.K., why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

For our August '21 episode we're joined by Natasha Brown, the author of Assembly, which is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and will be released in the U.S. on 14th September 2021 by Little, Brown. Our discussion with Natasha includes workshopping at different stages, making speech real on the page, liberal use of index cards, and being in the enviable position of having a novel translated into other languages while it was still being edited. You can find out more about Natasha and her writing at her website here: https://npbrown.com/ Natasha is also on Instagram: @wordsbynatasha Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We are teaming up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now that some form of normality is cautiously being introduced in the U.K., why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

In this month's episode we're joined by the novelist Sophie Mackintosh, who is the author of 'the Water Cure' (2018) and 'Blue Ticket' (2020). Topics covered with Sophie include (alongside much more): the shift to writing full time, the importance of music and having a bespoke playlist for each book, and writing a synopsis at the very beginning to help visualise the shape of a project. You can find out more about Sophie at her website here: https://www.sophiemackintosh.co.uk/ Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We are teaming up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. With (almost certainly reckless) unlocking on the horizon, why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

“If Adorno was alive today, he’d be writing about football. I don’t think he’d like it… but he’d be writing about it. And Gramsci for sure” In this, our 40th episode, we've got a special Euro 2020 edition of Unsound Methods, where we speak to writer and academic David Goldblatt. David is the author of non-fiction works which cover sport, particularly football, through a fascinating lens of history, sociology and politics. His books include the Ball is Round (2006), the Game of our Lives (2014) and, most recently, the Age of Football (2020). Our discussion takes us on a path through football and the Frankfurt school, the Colonization of the Life-world, the roots of Anthony Powell’s antipathy to sport, the growth of interest in football from Britain’s literary culture, and sport as an entry point to Bretton Woods, the IMF and Globalisation. The Age of Football is published by Picador - you can find out more here. You can find more about David Goldblatt at his website here: https://davidstephengoldblatt.com/ David is also on Twitter: @Davidsgoldblatt Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We are teaming up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. With the current uncertainty in the world, why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

In this episode we speak with DBC Pierre, author of Vernon God Little (for which he won the Booker Prize in 2003), Ludmila's Broken English (2006), Lights Out in Wonderland (2010), Breakfast with the Borgias (2014) and most recently, Meanwhile in Dopamine City which was published in 2020. Pierre joined us fresh off a bout of working on a non-fiction work and we discussed how this writing differed from fiction, how constantly reworking sections is a gift that provides intimacy with the text rather than drudgery, the perils of using two columns per page in a novel, using lockdown as a chrysalis for the next chapter and much more besides. Meanwhile in Dopamine City is published by Faber - you can find out more here. You can find more about DBC Pierre, including his writing and some of the finest book-related merch we've seen in a long while, at his website: http://www.dbcpierre.com/ Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We are teaming up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. With the current uncertainty in the world, why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

In this month's episode, we speak to Jon McGregor, whose latest novel Lean, Fall, Stand is published by Fourth Estate on 29th April. Jon joined us in the midst of full fat lockdown to discuss how he constructs his novels, his writing residency in Antarctica and the research with people who suffer from aphasia and their carers that informed Lean, Fall, Stand. Jon's novels include: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), So Many Ways to Begin (2006), Even the Dogs (2010) and Reservoir 13 (2017). Jon has won the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, the Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham awards, been longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Photo credit: Jo Wheeler Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We are teaming up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. With the current uncertainty in the world, why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown

In episode 37 we're joined by Douglas Robertson to celebrate the publication of his brand new translation of Thomas Bernhard's Die Billigesser (the Cheap Eaters) and to discuss our favourite Austrian monologuing misanthrope. Douglas is a writer and translator based in Keystone, Florida. He studied British and American Literature at the New College of Florida and Johns Hopkins University. He has translated works from German into English by authors including E. T. A. Hoffmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Christian Morgenstern, Novalis, and Ludwig Tieck, and he has studied Thomas Bernhard’s work for over ten years. Thomas Bernhard was one of the most important and unique writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1931, Bernhard published numerous novels and autobiographical writings, as well as short stories, plays, and poetry, including The Loser and Extinction. After years of chronic lung illness, Bernhard died in Austria in 1989. Douglas would like to give a shout out to his friend flowerville, a native German speaker who proofread the entire rough draft of the translation and was particularly helpful in offering pointers on register; particularly the level of formality or informality of specific expressions in the original German. The Cheap Eaters by Thomas Bernhard, translated by Douglas Robertson, is published by Spurl Editions, and is available here: https://spurleditions.com/cheap-eaters Douglas has a blog, The Philosophical Worldview Artist (http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com). And he's also on Twitter: @shirtysleeves Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ Image of Thomas Bernhard: By Monozigote - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85846453

Something a little different for the first pod of 2021: Lochlan and Jaimie get together (remotely) and have a couple of drinks to celebrate the launch of Jaimie's debut novel 'Siphonophore' - which is out now through Valley Press. The chat covers Jaimie's approach to writing, a bit of his history, sacrilegious suggestions of cuts to Finnegans Wake and a discussion of the fundamental weakness of analogies highlighting unnecessary cruelty to both cats and frogs. If you are interested in reading Siphonophore (and huge thanks if you are - JB), then you can find the book here: https://www.valleypressuk.com/book/154/siphonophore - by using the discount code 'SAVEMACG' listeners can get 10% off the price. The documentary that Jaimie refers to is called 'Nothing Changes: Art for Hank's Sake' (2018, dir. Matthew Kaplowitz) about the artist Hank Virgona. We have a store page on Bookshop, where you can find our books, as well as those of previous guests: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/unsoundmethods Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods - @JaimieBatchan - @LochlanBloom Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/ We have teamed up with the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. With the current uncertainty in the world, why not check out their Literature in Lockdown page? : https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ies-virtual-community/literature-lockdown