Episode 31: Paige Lewis and Posthumous Crime Novel Backwater

The inimitable Paige Lewis, “poet who wrote a novel,” joins us to discuss their critically lauded and popular-with-this-podcast’s-hosts epic prose poem Canon, as well as their writing processes and Simpsons fanaticism. You don’t want to miss this one, unless you dislike good things.

Then, Mason reviews the late author James Sallis’s final novel Backwater, and our hosts ponder whether it subverts subversive expectations or is just a meandering story of small-town cop life that doesn’t do much of anything, but does it pretty well.

Canon by Paige Lewis is out now.
Backwater by James Sallis is out now.

Works cited this episode:

The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, Sim Simon, and James L. Brooks
The Odyssey, dir. Christopher Nolan
Book of Judges, the Bible
Annie Allen, Gwendolyn Brooks
The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley
Inferno, Dante Aligheri
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
Rejected, dir. Don Hertzfeld
It’s Such a Beautiful Day, dir. Don Hertzfeld
Peep Show, created by Andrew O’Connor, Jesse Armstrong, and Sam Bain
The Iliad, Homer
Babylon, South Dakota, Tom Lin
Drive, James Sallis
The Killer is Dying, James Sallis
The Departed, dir. Martin Scorsese
Taxi Driver, dir. Martin Scorsese
Goodfellas, dir. Martin Scorsese
Boogie Nights, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
There Will Be Blood, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
One Battle After Another, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon