Person
Every book Colum McCann recommended on podcasts
Key facts
- Colum McCann has recommended or discussed 5 books on podcasts, as of April 4, 2025.
- Colum McCann has talked about books on 1 podcast, as of April 4, 2025.
- Those books came up in 1 episode, as of April 4, 2025.
- The 3 books Colum McCann has mentioned in the most episodes, not counting Colum McCann's own, as of April 4, 2025: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Ulysses and Underworld.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Colum McCann aired on April 4, 2025.
Updated
Colum McCann appeared on The Book Review podcast to discuss his novel Twist and the broader creative processes behind his writing. Reflecting on his own bibliography, McCann noted that his previous nonfiction work, Letters to a Young Writer, contains his assertion that plot is essentially juvenile. Discussing his novel Twist, McCann explained how the physical reality of undersea communication cables served as the foundational inspiration for the narrative and its characters, rather than starting with a traditional plot structure. To articulate the isolation and broken state of his narrator, McCann compared him directly to the lonely men leaning out of windows in T.S. Eliot's twentieth-century poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. Furthermore, when discussing the manipulation of time and pacing in literature, McCann invoked James Joyce's Ulysses and its famously constrained twenty-four-hour timeline. Elevating the conversation to the echelon of twentieth-century masterworks, McCann explicitly cited Don DeLillo's Underworld alongside Ulysses as one of the definitive, great novels of the twentieth century, showcasing his deep engagement with literary history and narrative architecture.
Books recommended by Colum McCann
-
Letters to a young writer
Discussed“But also, interestingly, in that book, Letters to Young Writer, that you quote, I also said that plot is juvenile.”
Where to get it
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
Books Colum McCann wrote
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colum McCann on Undersea Cables and His New Novel "Twist" | The Book Review | 2025-04-04 | 5 |