Overdue

When you talk about a witch-hunt, you aren't normally referring to sane, procedural, and fair trials. You're talking about a fear-driven investigation driven by suspicions rather than facts, where personal agendas can be more influential than alibis and evidence. That's the thrust of Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, which Andrew read this week. We also talk about how the events of the play reflect the then-current Red Scare, and how witch-hunt mentality continues to persist even today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ernest J. Gaines' Pulitzer-nominated novel A Lesson Before Dying takes place in 1940s Jim Crow Louisiana, where a black schoolteacher is asked to visit a young man on death row. Similar to last week's episode, the discuss leans toward the serious - racism, cultural divisions, and one's duty to his community - but our fervent desire to remain politically correct should help lighten the mood.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Breaking a three-show "books from circa 1900" streak, Andrew tackles Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex, a tale of love, incest, time-jumping, emigration, and hermaphroditism. Like the book itself, this show tackles some fairly heavy topics while still keeping things light and conversational. Join us for a discussion of duality, transformation, and just why "normal" isn't really a thing.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

H. G. Wells' classic "scientific romance" The War of the Worlds is perhaps the earliest known example of Martian invasion fiction. Of course, it's more than just early science fiction. Wells uses the invaders to put Humanity in its place, zapping them with a heat ray of humility right at the height of European colonialism.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You've probably seen the movie, but have you read the book? L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz certainly follows the same basic pattern as the (much later) Judy Garland film, but there are lots of differences. Did you know how the Tin Man came to be? Oh man. Just you wait.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What makes a good ghost story? If you said creepy children, gothic architecture, and unreliable narrators, then Henry James has you covered The Turn of the Screw. This week Andrew mangles words, Craig gets lost in James' Victorian prose, and the two solve the mystery surrounding the ghosts of Bly.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Good science fiction uses fantastical characters, locations, and technology to comment intelligently on problems that we face in the real world, but the best science fiction can also do this in a suspenseful, entertaining, adventuresome way. Frank Herbert's Dune gets most of the way there, but Andrew can't help but wish he had read it for the first time as a teenager instead of an adult. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Billed as "The Greatest War Novel of All Time" on many a book jacket, All Quiet on the Western Front chronicles one soldier's harrowing experience in World War I. Our conversation tends toward the serious this week as we touch on the horrors of trench warfare, the issues soldiers face coming home from the Front, and the dehumanizing effects of modern warfare. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How would you and your family react if you awoke one morning changed into a huge bug? In our kafkaesque discussion of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Craig and Andrew talk about communication issues, the ties that bind human beings together, and why explaining how things happened can actually make a story less meaningful. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What book could possible be more overdue for a read than Beowulf, one of the oldest extant works of Anglo-Saxon literature? Join us as we revel in Beowulf's heroic deeds, discuss the finer points of oral tradition, and wonder just who infused this Old English tale with a triple-shot of Christianity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Here on Overdue, it's definitely not going to be multi-layered critiques of religion and missives on love and cholera every week. Take this book as a case in point—Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has long been a favorite punching bag of Andrew's, but in the interest of trying new things and keeping an open mind, he's giving this decade-old potboiler a try. His reactions are many and complicated. Join us for a conversation about why pop-lit is, well, popular, whether it's OK to judge a book by its cover, and some of Dan Brown's less successful sentences.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When first performed on Broadway in 1964, Edward Albee's Tiny Alice frustrated and discomfited audiences with its metaphysical critiques on faith and religion. It is no less opaque today (at least for Craig), and reading rather than seeing it performed certainly makes things more difficult. The play's density aside, we do manage to discuss cantankerous authors, symbols within symbols, and staging the supernatural.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Florentino Ariza, the ostensible protagonist of Gabriel García Márquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, has had 622 distinct sexual partners in the 51 years, nine months, and four days that he has waited for Fermina Daza, his true love. We talk about each and every one of them in this week's episode. Well, no, not really. But we do have a long and sort of disjointed conversation about cholera, geography, aging, and the nature of love, which befits the disjointed nature of the story itself.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did you pay attention in ninth grade English? Craig did, sort of. This week he reads – or rereads, he’s not sure – John Steinbeck’s classic tale of Depression-era migrant workers. Topics of conversation include foreshadowing, hoosegows, and male camaraderie. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.