Episode · The Book Review · 2025-04-04
Colum McCann on The Book Review: books mentioned
Colum McCann on Undersea Cables and His New Novel "Twist"
Colum McCann discussed Twist by Colum McCann, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, Underworld by Don DeLillo, and Ulysses by James Joyce. Gilbert Cruz discussed Letters to a young writer by Colum McCann and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Twist
Discussed“to be honest with this book with twist which came first the cables or the characters cables came first”
Where to get it
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J.
Discussed“His life is also broken. He's one of these lonely men in shirt sleeves hanging out in out of windows as he would have been in the 20th century TS Elliott poem, Love Song of Jay Alfred Proof Rock.”
Where to get it
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Letters to a young writer
Discussed“And it was reminiscent of another line that you wrote in your letters to a young writer which is a book they wrote years ago in which you have all these sort of short chapters which you're talking to young writers.”
Where to get it
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The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.
Discussed“We are in April 2025, which marks the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby. that there definitely are echoes of that book in here.”
Where to get it
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Underworld
Underworld by Don DeLillo is a sprawling postmodern masterpiece that traces the second half of the twentieth century through the interconnected lives of various characters against the backdrop of the Cold War and the nuclear age.
Discussed“And so for me one of the the great novels along with Ulisses and there are a few others and in fact I would I I would venture to say that Underworld by Don Dilo is one of the other great novels of the 20th century.”
Where to get it
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Ulysses
James Joyce's landmark modernist novel Ulysses chronicles an ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin, mapping human consciousness and daily existence through a revolutionary stream-of-consciousness technique.
Discussed“And I do I do think if you didn't talk about Ulisses, it's 24 hours and walking around. That's the plot of the book.”
Where to get it
