Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2021-04-07
Tyler Cowen & Dana Gioia: books mentioned on Conversations with Tyler
Dana Gioia on Becoming an Information Billionaire
Before he was California Poet Laureate or leading the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia marketed Jell-O. Possessing both a Stanford MBA and a Harvard MA, he combined his creativity and facil
Tyler Cowen recommended Studying with Miss Bishop by Dana Gioia, and discussed The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch and Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Dana Gioia recommended Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and discussed Paul Bunyan by W. H. Auden, The Bassarids by Hans Werner Henze and others, Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, and The flowers of evil by Charles Baudelaire and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Studying with Miss Bishop
Recommended“Most notably he has a new book out. It's a kind of memoir. Excellent book. I loved reading it. It's called Studying with Miss Bishop, Memoirs from a Young Writer's Life.”
Where to get it
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The Death of Virgil
Discussed“Now, Hermann Broch, as you know, he wrote the famous novel The Death of Virgil. He was a Catholic. Is that coincidence?”
Where to get it
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Paul Bunyan
Discussed“For Britten he did Paul Bunyan. Well, here's here's the thing you learn from Auden. His greatest libretto in terms of poetry is his first one called Paul Bunyan, which made an absolutely terrible opera –”
Where to get it
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The Bassarids
Discussed“So I think, you know, his his greatest libretti I think his best two are the two that he wrote for Hans Werner Henze, The Elegy for Young Lovers and The Bacchae, The Bassarids.”
Where to get it
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Star Maker
Discussed“You know, my friend Dan Wang thinks Last and First Men is better than Starmaker, though virtually all critics prefer Starmaker.”
Where to get it
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Earthly Powers
Discussed“I think that perhaps Earthly Powers was his great novel. Because he takes the form of a Somerset Maugham novel and he overlays a mafia novel, a religious novel, a buildingsroman all in that.”
Where to get it
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Discussed“Death of Ivan Ilyich. Uh which I think Well, first of all, if you asked me who was the greatest fiction writer who ever lived, I would say Tolstoy. Uh and and his short stories are full of masterpieces, but The Death of Ivan Ilyich is simply one of the greatest considerations of human mortality”
Where to get it
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Anna Karenina
Recommended“But we all agree that the greatest thing we've ever read together was Anna Karenina. And it just nothing else can hold its own against the greatness of that novel.”
Where to get it
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
Discussed“Willa Cather, who was not Catholic, wrote, you know, Death Comes for the Archbishop, maybe the best Catholic novel in American literature.”
Where to get it
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The flowers of evil
Discussed“I just finished writing a 14,000-word essay on Charles Baudelaire. That's going to be the introduction to a new edition of The Flowers of Evil.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (10) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing The Catholic Writer Today
“But Dana has numerous other books including books of poetry. A book The Catholic Writer Today.”
Passing Can poetry matter?
“Perhaps his most famous work is Can Poetry Matter?”
Plugged Studying with Miss Bishop
“And my other two teachers, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Fitzgerald, whom I write about in this book, were people who basically came to teaching very late.”
Passing The Bank Dick
“I adore W.C. Fields. Bank Dick is a great movie.”
Passing Last and First Men
“Tremendously influential, rather clumsy visionary early science fiction writer who wrote novels like Odd John and the First and Last Men.”
Passing Odd John
“Tremendously influential, rather clumsy visionary early science fiction writer who wrote novels like Odd John and the First and Last Men.”
Passing Last men in London
“Tremendously influential, rather clumsy visionary early science fiction writer who wrote novels like Odd John and the First and Last Men.”
Passing The Idiot
“And we did Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Right now we're reading Cousin Bette by Balzac.”
Passing Catch-22
“We did Catch-22. But we all agree that the greatest thing we've ever read together was Anna Karenina.”
Passing Red and the Black
“We did The Red and the Black. We did Catch-22.”