Upper Middlebrow

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a speculative near future that feels disturbingly familiar. The lads marvel at Atwood’s ability to vividly describe a speculative world without any obvious expository passages. Offred’s observations, musings, and memories effectively build the world, without ever taking the reader away from her point of view.

Bagg and Dukes finally get around to reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and both are impressed by Morrison's craft, purpose, and ability to keep both functioning at a high level while delivering an eminently readable yarn. They stop to smell the dandelions and begin discussing why and how this book has ended up on banned and challenged lists all over the United States.

We spend a few final minutes with Steve Zaillian's Ripley, wondering if the resemblance between Inspector Ravini and Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau is intentional, and considering what the overall effect of the luscious high-contrast black and white footage has for viewers. Dukes posits that this style is a new way of shooting, rather than a throwback, but Bagg thinks that there is a disconnect between the visual and narrative effects.

Dukes and Bagg wonder if Tom Ripley’s “disguise” (as himself) is meant to be as clumsy as it appears and if the show is wandering too close to the (admittedly wonderful) Pink Panther series. Nonetheless, the omniscient desk clerks, grumpy dog walker, and appearance of a delightful fellow “art dealer” provide the second half of the Netflix series enough delightful moments to make it worth the time.

Bagg and Dukes return to the source material that launched Upper Middle Brow, in the production of Ripley, directed by Steve Zaillian and (quixotically) available on Netflix. The mini-series is unspeakably beautiful to look at and, as we analyze in this episode, listen to. We think it may rise to the level of cult classic, but wonder if Netflix is the right space for this deliberate psychological portrait.

Dukes and Bagg are taking a break from books to talk about Netflix’s Ripley created by Steve Zailian. Having watched the first episode, it’s obvious the series is beautiful, and stark. It’s NOT a remake of the 1999 Anthony Minghella movie; Zailian is going back to the 1955 Patricia Highsmith novel as his source material. But can his adaption hold our attention for eight episodes?

Arionne Nettles joins to talk about her new book We Are The Culture: Black Chicago's Influence On Everything, as well as to recommend a couple of novels she thinks Upper Middlebrow listeners would particularly enjoy. Jesse and Ari talk about their sadness over the recent news about layoffs at their former employer, WBEZ in Chicago, and explore the idea of a common thread between African culture, and contemporary African-American culture.

On our FOURTH EVER episode, Dukes and Bagg explore why they have different emotional responses to Tom Ripley, and how Patricia Highsmith might have raised the stakes more effectively in the second half of the book. Our (Fall of 2022) discussion has been back on our minds in the wake of Netflix’s new Ripley series. Tom Ripley is a persistent character in our day and age, and the new Netflix series has critics musing on why.

Netflix’s new Ripley series has critics musing on why Tom Ripley is such a persistent character in our day and age. Patricia Highsmith created a character that has endured and appeared in many (excellent) film and now TV adaptations. We thought we’d share our THIRD EVER episode, in which we consider the first half of Highsmith’s 1955 novel, which introduced Tom Ripley to the world.

The Sympathizer is brought to a powerful, if occasionally puzzling conclusion, with the narrator returning to his home country for a series of misadventures. The meaning of Ho Chi Minh’s slogan “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” is turned around and around in our narrator’s brain, until nothing comes to mean something.

Jason Herbert, from the Historians at the Movies community and podcast, joins us to talk about favorite baseball films. We share an uncomfortable moment when Chris learns who Jason’s favorite team is (hint: pinstripes), but settle into a rollicking, nostalgic, nerdfest. We discover a surprising shared affection for a certain Charlie Sheen film from the late 80s, and both Jesse and Chris hurl their picks from deep into Left Field.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s narrator tells us right off the bat that he’s a sympathizer. He can see any issue from “both sides,” he claims, a dubious virtue in the chaotic Vietnamese history following the fall of Saigon. Nguyen’s narrator faces situation after situation in which that quality of sympathizing with everybody, including his enemies, proves to be both a strength and a weakness. This wild novel surprises at almost every turn, asking us questions about what a real anti-hero might look like in the oddities of real life.

Theologian Beatrice Marovich reacts to our discussions of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, exploring the relationship between theology and fiction. We talk about her book Sister Death: Political Theologies for Living and Dying, and consider personifications of death in literature and pop culture.

The second half of The Sellout does feature a MacGuffin and resolution of sorts, although the plot is minimal compared to the satire and world building. The UMBs struggle to understand the book, but ultimately conclude The Sellout is a takedown of the post-racial ideal of the 2010s. The brilliance of the prose is stunning, but does the structure of the book feature the same brilliance?

Chris and Jesse are thrown into Paul Beatty's 2015 Man Booker Prize Winner The Sellout, because this novel seems to try to take the upper hand with its reader. Our two heroes agree that it's beautiful, but is it a mess or not? We marvel at Beatty's prose, quickly sum up all of epic poetry, and finish with trivia about child actors from The Little Rascals and ovoid/cuboid watermelons.

A rebroadcast of our Live recap and discussion of Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004). The UMB’s admire Miles’ Saab, la costa perdida, and enjoy the rustically simple cinematography, and marvel at the chemistry and performances of Paul Giamatti, Thomas Hayden Church, Sandra Oh, and Virginia Madsen. Was there ever such an acting quartet?

Writer Joshua Mohr joins us to talk shop about his recent book Farsickness. The idea began with watching his daughter and her friends create short dramatic productions for his neighborhood, during COVID. He talks about the virtues of supposedly “hapless” protagonists, collaborating with his daughter, and how COVID should have taught us to pursue the art we crave the most.

The UMBs went in expecting a quietly great film, and their expectations were exceeded. Big Night is at times BIG and LOUD, even though the characters spend much of the film not saying what they mean. Big Night combines excellent kitchen scenes (especially the memorable timpano preparation) with family drama and the central dilemma of all artists: When to compromise vision for the sake of practicalities.

On Thursday, January 11th, join Upper Middlebrow for a live (independent) watch party. We'll all watch the movie starting at 4:05PM PST, and then our live video episode will begin promptly at 6:30 PST.

Sandra Nettlebeck’s 2001 film is beautifully shot and carries its narrative in a bucket effectively, following its fiery protagonist into the thickets of surrogate parenthood. Martha is a brilliant chef who struggles to take both compliments and criticism, and she’s been dragooned into therapy by her boss. This unstable stability is complicated by the arrivals of Martha’s niece, Lina, and a charismatic but erratic Italian sous chef. The UMBers admire the performance of Martina Gedeck and talk about where this film sits in our roster of foodie films.

Ang Lee’s 1994 family drama/comedy is a sprawling epic, set in 1990s Taipei, about an aging chef, his three daughters, and the big themes of love, loneliness, loss, and togetherness. It’s full of gorgeous intimate images of cooking, and the film is punctuated by occasional family dinners. We wonder if Ang Lee has a discernable style, and whether this counts as a “foodie film.”

Juzo Itami’s brilliant 1986 film combines elements of Greek theater, the American Western, vaudeville, silent movies, French Noir, and other eclectic elements as it explores the myriad relationships with food humankind can experience. The central stem tells the story of a widow’s attempt to serve sublime ramen at a small roadside stop, aided by two truckers, and a ragtag posse of helpers. The film plays with and subverts expectations in a way the UMBs find wildly charming. Also, it will make you hungry.

Peter Greenaway’s film feels like an opera. It even features some operatic singing, but more to the point, its pleasures are more sensual than story driven. It’s not an easy film to watch, and may not inspire you to cook, but it is beautifully disturbing and meticulously crafted. Starring Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon in their primes, ˆThe Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,” will haunt you for a long time.

Axel Gabriel’s 1986 Danish film deservingly makes many people’s Foodie Top 10s, and we can see why. We LOVE this film, which not only shows some high level delicious cooking, but tells a parable of destiny, thwarted desire, and the balance of simplicity and hedonism with a gentle and incisive eye. The UMBs discuss whether it’s a comedy, tragedy, or something else.

The UMBers sit down with Monica Eng, co-host of the podcast Chewing, to discuss our upcoming "Foodie Films" series. Monica and Jesse educate Chris about the Jibarito sandwich, and Monica impresses us by having seen 7 out of 7 of the works in this series.

We are almost one year old! Our first episode, on Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, launched almost exactly a year ago, and we are so excited to be heading into Season Two of Upper Middle Brow. This season we're kicking things off a little differently, with a tour of "Foodie Films," beginning with Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast, followed shortly thereafter by Peter Greenaway's harrowing The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. We'll talk to Monica Eng of the Chewing podcast and listen to some classic audio podcasts. We'll keep it literary and connect with some old classics (Dickens, Austen, and Flaubert), and finally look at ways that authors examine (critically) their own cultures.

The UMBs have ANOTHER thorough conversation about the novel’s sexual politics, and Mandella’s low key homophobia, asking whether the protagonist’s biases serve some narrative purposes, or simply reveal the author’s own biases. We marvel at the sparse internality, and Haldeman’s ability to poetically reveal just enough about Mandella’s emotional state. And, we decide that Larry Niven is good.

The Forever War is widely regarded as an analogy for America’s involvement in Vietnam, and an anti-war novel, but we’re not so sure it’s firmly anti-war. Perhaps more anti-military. But that said, Haldeman’s protagonist doesn’t consider the apparently antagonistic aliens, the Taurans, to be the real Enemy. The UMBs are blown away by the ideation and certain moments of prose, but raise doubts about the one-way nature of the structure

Rick Deckard spends much of the second half pondering Rachael Rosen’s girlish legs, and his growing feelings of empathy to the Androids, before deciding to go after the remaining three. Does his empathy make it harder for him to do his appointed grisly task? Maybe? Both UMBs wonder if Dick’s ideas were too big for the scope of this book, even though it has its virtues.

Fill out our LISTENER SURVEY!! Dick’s famous novel begins… weird. And the weirdness continues. Dick orients his readers to a world in which fallout is everywhere, most animals have died, many humans have left Earth for colony planets, and androids (or andys) do much of the manual labor. The UMBs are both blown away by Dick’s imagination, but wonder if some of the books mechanics are too clunky.

Chris and Jesse are in the same meatspace in Maine, but still talking about cyberspace in…space. As the two microphone jockeys wrap up William Gibson’s Neuromancer, we do TWO close readings (one for and one against Gibson’s chops), talk about how this book created something completely new, and discuss if that fact is why Neuromancer had shown longevity and resilience, despite some issues of craft.

Our friend Lindsay Lajoie saw that we were considering William Gibson’s Neuromancer on the podcast, and admitted on her Instagram that it’s one of the very few books she attempted and could get through. Lindsay joins us for a mini-sode, and we pick apart her reaction, and try to convince her it’s worth another go.

Dukes and Bagg return to William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 novel, that popularized the cyberpunk genre. The reviews are mixed. There are moments of brilliance, but does the young Gibson’s drive to “put a hook on every page” lead to more confusion than clarity?

As students, parents, and teachers happily (or wrenchingly) return to school, we invite our resident education specialist, Justin Reich, to talk about stories with teachers. We identify many examples of bad teachers and bad teaching in fiction, and while film and TV often present sympathetic teacher protagonists, we wonder if the Great American Teacher novel is yet to be written.

Whitehead’s neo-noir crashes to a climax, but does it stick the landing? In the end, the Dukes and Bagg wonder if the weight of the the author’s allegory overloads the elevator car laden with plot and character. The lads continue to marvel at Whitehead’s sentences, and sheer originality and ambition of this remarkable novel.

The lads are quite impressed with Colson Whitehead’s debut novel, which packs an allegory about race, class, and futurism into a unique take on hard-boiled noir. Bagg challenges Dukes to unpack exactly how the tone of irony is detected in the novel, and they both marvel over Whitehead’s delicious sentences. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm

Jemisin weaves three major threads into one in the second half of The Fifth Season, but the lads take issue with some of the convenient plot wrapping. Dukes + Bagg remained blown away by the power of imagination on display, but Dukes raises the question of whether the book deals honestly with the moral dilemma at its heart.

The Fifth Season is… a lot. Fantasy? Sure. Sci-fi? Maybe. Allegory? Definitely. The first half introduces us to three apparently different protagonists, with action in an uncertain number of timelines, and the sense that this particular world is about the be transformed. But why? And how?

We hear from you! We share listener summer read recommendations in the form of voicemails and texts. Dukes + Bagg each share a summer reading recommendation, and somehow, the conversations keeps getting dragged back to baseball.

We’re joined by two journalists and avid readers, Susie An and Arionne Nettles, both former colleagues of Jesse’s from WBEZ in Chicago. Susie and Ari both like the IDEA of a beach read, and both say they use summer as a time to catch up on books they WANT to read, as opposed to books they’re SUPPOSED to read. Susie recommends The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, and Ari recommends You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi.

We’re joined by two veteran high school English teachers, each with a summer reading recommendation for a teenager. We talk about about how speculative fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, horror, alt. history) engages teenagers in different ways, and why magic gets a bad rap among “literary” readers.

Lauren Olamina leaves her ruined home in the second half of Octavia E. Butler's 1993 novel/theology document/allegory/philosophical text, heading for the mysterious utopia of Branscombe first and then...the stars? Bagg and Dukes try to locate the climax of this work, discuss the figurative vs. denotative nature of the novel, and close things out with some Muppets impersonations.

Parable of the Sower purports to be a work of speculative fiction, but Bagg points out that “speculative” is in the eye of the speculator. Dukes calls it the founding document of a theology that both UMBs find rather coherent and attractive. Whatever the book is, it is the work of a gifted writer, who was overlooked when she was alive, and died too young.

Dukes and Bagg’s challenge each other to recap the second half in three and a half sentences before diving into what makes Weir’s hard sci-fi novel about interstellar friendship so satisfying. Bagg unveils an elaborate beat map [link or insert here] based on insights from Robin D. Law’s Hamlet’s Hit Points, and Dukes wonders what is lost and gained by the mostly happy ending.

Many many many many writers take on “hard” science fiction, and get lost in the science, leaving behind such niceties as plot, character development, human insight, or deep emotional stakes. Somehow, Andy Weir imagines a thrilling and scientifically plausible adventure, that’s really just about friendship in space. Amidst the ammonia, burritos, and penis blood, sits a tale that brings both Dukes and Bagg to occasional tears. So much so that Bagg wonders if this is the “perfect novel” for our time. Summer is coming! We'd love to hear your summer reading books. Shoot us a voice memo to [email protected] and give us your name and what you'll be reading this summer. If you have a bookstore, writing workshop center (or fully fledged MFA program), a lit zine, or something similar, share Upper Middlebrow with your audience, and we’ll bake in an on-air promo spot for your thing. Just send a screencap to [email protected] and some information about your thing.

Jonathan Lethem’s climax is fun, exciting, and surprises both Bagg and Dukes by not requiring much action from its already largely inactive protagonist, Journeyman. The UMBs once again consider the virtues and drawbacks of a hapless protagonist, and wonder if post-apocalyptic tales are replacing the western, as the dominant form of American mythmaking.

Jonathan Lethem imagines not so much an apocalypse, but a kind of slow pause of most (but not all) advanced technologies, he calls “The Arrest”. Dukes and Bagg find the scenario fascinating and are not much troubled by the lack of a scientific explanation. Bagg IS troubled by the first sentence, (an important one) and Dukes wonders if our protagonist will manage to do a thing (anything!) in the book’s second half.

In the second half of Goon Squad, many of the characters end up…surprisingly OK, especially when you consider their struggles and self-destructive capacity displayed in the first half. Bagg and Dukes talk about whether the happy-ish outcomes are earned, and meditate on Proust’s epigram about memory. They wonder if the opposite of time as a ravager would be "Time, The Accepted Force that Propels Our Life Forward for Better or Worse?"

After a camel cricket update (!), Jesse and Chris try to untangle the conga line of affection and destruction that forms the structure of Egan's remarkable 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Bagg plays the babyface/fanboy while Dukes combines admiration for Egan’s craft with a deep sense of discomfort with the characters' circumstances. We wrap it up with some trivia about titans of tech and shoplifting spin.

Play along with Dukes and Bagg as we play Neal Stephenson Bingo. We find that the final third does pick up a bit, with Goto Dengo’s story in particular providing a satisfying character arc. There are moments of DENSE AND BEAUTIFUL PROSE and descriptions of MATH EMBODIED, but we also find that too often, PLOT IS GREATER THAN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, leaving both UMBs a bit frustrated (and many characters suddenly dead).