Episode · How I Write · 2026-09-16
Books mentioned on Francine Prose: This Is What a Harvard Writing Masterclass Feels Like | How I Write
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Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Anna Karenina
Discussed“Well, since I mentioned Anna Corinina, you know, Anna is dancing with Ronsky, right? She's met Franson on the train and there's this instant attraction and and Kitty, who is in love with and I guess at that point still engaged to Veronsky, is uh is the one who would most notice the two of them are dancing.”
Where to get it
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Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is a notoriously experimental and linguistically complex novel famous for its stream-of-consciousness style and dream-like structure.
Discussed“I if someone put a gun to my head and said, "You have to read Finnegan's Wake now." It, you know, I go, "Shoot me.”
Where to get it
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Great Expectations
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a classic novel that follows the orphan Pip through his dramatic life experiences, famously featuring characters such as the eccentric Miss Havisham.
Discussed“Well, I you know, one year I taught Jane Air and uh and Great Expectations in the same year. And Janeire is the greatest representation of of female rage ever.”
Where to get it
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Jane Eyre
Discussed“Well, I you know, one year I taught Jane Air and uh and Great Expectations in the same year. And Janeire is the greatest representation of of female rage ever. And that that hasn't gone away.”
Where to get it
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Lady with the Dog
Discussed“I mean, one thing is I really like indeterminate endings, you know. I mean, there's the ending of uh uh Czechov's lady with the pet dog, which is and they realize that the hardest part was still before them.”
Where to get it
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Loitering with Intent
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark is a witty, brilliant 1981 novel set in post-war London that follows an ambitious young female writer named Fleur Talbot as she navigates the eccentricities of the autobiographical writing world, where the bizarre events of her real life begin strangely mirroring the fiction she creates on the page.
Recommended“Have you read um Mural Sparks Lording with intent? I have not. It's really great, but it's the only thing I know about the phenomenon that I most of my close friends who are writers have had”
Where to get it
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The diary of a young girl
Discussed“I was struck by how much Anne Frank edited her her diaries. That seems to be something you were talking about over and over again. She wanted them to be published.”
Where to get it
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A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway is a classic memoir detailing the author's impoverished yet formative years as a young expatriate journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s, alongside literary figures like F.
Discussed“Well, I was thinking of that part of a movable feast by Hemingway where he just says, "Write one true sentence. Write one true sentence."”
Where to get it
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The Autumn of the Patriarch
Discussed“The Garcia Marquez's Ottoma the Patriarch is one paragraph without paragraph breaks. And a friend of ours, a Polish artist, was saying, "Oh, I hate this book."”
Where to get it
