S6E17: How To Psychoanalyze Your Neighbors with A.M. Homes
Added 2022-09-20 00:32:55 +0000 UTCWriter A.M. Homes and Bret Easton Ellis discuss an unsettling occupational hazard of being an author, unfolding the Big Guy and grasping for human connection through youthful correspondence with famous strangers. Part 1 of 2.
Comments
Don’t miss David Lean’s film “Passage To India” based upon E.M. Forester’s novel.
daisy
2024-04-22 18:48:26 +0000 UTCThis is my favorite interview on the pod. Rock solid conversation.
diane
2024-04-08 00:45:10 +0000 UTCBought the book based on your conversation with AM. Finished it in just over a week. Then again even a mention of Palm Springs as the back drop in a book makes me click Buy Now immediately. Thanks for the recommendation and conversation, as always.
Nick B
2022-10-03 23:43:09 +0000 UTCThe Holmes interview is one of the best!
Dave
2022-10-02 17:20:10 +0000 UTCOh Bret…suddenly people are just ‘dying’ for reasons medically unclear or nonsensical: driving 100 down a side street for absolutely no reason (weird shit like the Heche crash is happening so often first responders have their own internal descriptor, ‘vaxcidents’) just dying of ‘dying’ no cause given or demanded, in one’s 20’s (well to be fair, that’s often diagnosed-heart failure or stroke in previously perfectly healthy young people…NORMAL, of course) 30’s 40’s 50’s 60’s in numbers, at rates, so far above the historical mean that they almost defy actuarial science…and it’s just shoulder-shrugging normal? Really? REALLY? Everyone KNOWS it isn’t, but just stuffs it down inside, the dissonance slowing causing them to become unmoored from reality, and wondering why they feel so anxious, so…weird? Why things lately feel so unreal? Is the external and, far more psychologically damaging, internal censoring of the obvious truth now so (and all credit where due, via the most brilliant PR/propaganda campaign of all time) culturally embedded that those who absolutely must be aware of it, who you’d last expect to go along with the insane denial, the ‘it’s just so crazy and awful, but NORMAL…’ now apparently are, at least publicly. This external and internal denial of some awful yet clearly obvious truths is driving so many people to the edge, and over, the edge of sanity that things are going to get so crazy it’s beyond belief. As it were.
MikeE
2022-09-30 21:24:31 +0000 UTCGreat episode. Also love the ones with writers. Noticed Bret had dinner with Irvine Welsh. Been suggesting have Welsh on for a while. Adam, can you guys make that happen!?
Vin Bravo
2022-09-29 12:07:30 +0000 UTCBest episode in quite a while. 5 smuggled Philip Roth’s dad’s bottles out of five
Mikael Pawlo
2022-09-28 12:18:53 +0000 UTCWow. Edgy.
James__
2022-09-26 18:39:22 +0000 UTCCool - I just finished ‘tapping the source’. Loved it too. These writer episodes are great for recommendations.
James__
2022-09-26 18:37:20 +0000 UTCWhere is part 2? Shouldn't it have been released by now?
Joe Marklin
2022-09-26 15:56:34 +0000 UTCBret: suggestion: you should watch and review the movie Fall
Rowan Oliver
2022-09-26 13:28:43 +0000 UTCHa ha waiting for a discussion of AMs new book - which strikes me as sympathetic to MAGAts - & it never comes…
Walter Robinson
2022-09-25 20:27:28 +0000 UTCGreat episode. Looking forward to pt II. Also just finished ‘tapping the source’ which was mentioned a few eps ago - so so good. Now onto James Ellroy and the Black Dahlia. Thank you to Brett, guests and listeners for the constant flow of great reading recs! 🙏🏻
P Smoke
2022-09-24 09:41:11 +0000 UTCWHAT DOES SHE THINK OF THE EAGLES ??!!! 🦅
Erik Jerrard
2022-09-23 22:47:44 +0000 UTCthis was so great, really hit a sweet spot with the literary convo
kelton water
2022-09-23 22:18:17 +0000 UTCExcellent. Listened three times. Writers are easily my favorite guests (directors are a close second).
Chad Daniel Russell
2022-09-23 21:51:09 +0000 UTCHow refreshing!
JEREMY ROBERTS
2022-09-23 18:26:35 +0000 UTCTry Refn’s Too Old to Die Young on Amazon. By no means perfect … but it works sometimes … if not that, then mad men rewatch is never a bad way to spend one’s time … or perhaps Atlanta on Hulu … Enlightended, the Leftovers, White Lotus on HBO.
Brian Rooney
2022-09-23 15:18:04 +0000 UTCRIP Hilary Mantel
Thomas Edwards
2022-09-23 11:28:53 +0000 UTCSuch a great episode!!!!!!
Brian Rooney
2022-09-23 10:27:22 +0000 UTCYou inspire me to write, Bret
LIGHTNING LOGAN
2022-09-23 08:47:09 +0000 UTCLoved this one bret
Lachlan Reid
2022-09-23 07:14:18 +0000 UTCVery enjoyable first half. Another great writer episode. A.M. is a great guest! I love BEE’s reviews and thoughts on cinema, but conversations about literature and the art of writing is really where he is most in his wheelhouse.
N.M. Janice.
2022-09-23 03:46:57 +0000 UTCI adore Haroun and the sea of stories
Kerry
2022-09-23 03:02:00 +0000 UTCBethesda/CC socialists are a dime a dozen in DC🤣
Marisa Urgo Shaalan
2022-09-23 01:08:10 +0000 UTC🙄…this novel summary. Oh tell me how eeevil republicans are all secret subversives. How transgres…Yawn! 🙄🙄
Marisa Urgo Shaalan
2022-09-23 01:01:37 +0000 UTCI read Rushdie, he's great. Just finished The Golden House which was excellent.
David Breithaupt
2022-09-22 11:16:59 +0000 UTCI was shocked that she said that she hadn't read the great 19thC novels. Maybe that was an exaggeration or something. I wasn't any kind of a literature major but I still took classes where I read Flaubert, Stendhal, Zola, etc. And, I read The Mill on the Floss for fun in college. I practically read it straight; it was great. Geez, Bret. A few podcasts ago Bret said that he was moving on to Zola. Please report back, Bret. You seem a little bit like the Zola of your day. I should revisit those books. This podcast is such an inspiration for reading, as well as a source of streaming shows to watch. I can't find anything good to watch. I got so desperate that I have been trying the Acorn channel, which is lots of formulaic British mystery shows (like the second tier ones), and PBS Documentaries. Suggestions, anyone?
BUtterfield8
2022-09-22 08:55:16 +0000 UTCI tried reading the novel that movie is based on. Since my 80s childhood I've wanted to see a movie that sort of gets a tone like that without being a piece of shit. The only movie I can think of off hand that at least gets close is the Joe Carnahan movie that I think BEE mentioned, Smoking Aces. I'm not sure I think it's even a good idea anymore. At least not for a traditional movie format of 2hrs or less. Certainly not more. I say it that way because not even the excellent work of the Zuckers at their peak or the Farrelly brothers at their best could quite pull off a completely satisfying movie. By that very general sounding phrase I just mean movies that didn't end up shitting the bed before credits rolled. Something About Mary, for me, comes closest for "here for the jokes but stayed for the plot" kind of thing. And Cameron Diaz really nailed that whole perfect ideal girl role that could have been cloying or good here but just OK there -- I'm not talking about body, if it sounds that way. I just mean you know characters like these are written poorly and they're so real in some scenes and total cartoons in other scenes and the character comes off as entirely fabricated. Some middle-aged writer's fuck fantasy. Growing up, my first writer pet peeve was how novelists in 80s and 90s (Boomers, I guess, as if there was any doubt! Just kidding, Boomers, some of you are my favorite filmmakers and writers...as if anybody is reading my shitty comment, haha). I always hated the old middle-aged college professor who has the hottest piece in his class trying to "seduce" HIM (bc our hero would never use his position to exploit a student -- never!). And this whole deal seemed to be recycled time after time, for example, in every Michael Crichton (christ, did he win an award for Best Least Intuitive spelling of a name ever? I nominate him now, if not... next to my Best Least Employment of Good Grammar award). All this is a way of saying the Bullet Train novel didn't hold my attention for long. And it had that Charlie Huston "fun" vibe that really means no fun at all and just boring hack writing people who rarely read love. I'm getting a breathalyzer installed on all my comments so this tragedy will never be repeated. EDIT: the "boomer" part of my opus was before listening to this BEE hour. Just FYI.
bpvalentine
2022-09-22 07:09:42 +0000 UTCCaptain Fiction or Gary Fisketjon as guests please.
Ben
2022-09-22 05:55:15 +0000 UTCMoron
N.M. Janice.
2022-09-22 00:12:36 +0000 UTCGreat stuff. Please do a monologue on the recently departed Jean-Luc Godard! More or less all of his notable films are on Criterion Channel right now. Watching them feels like a drink of cold water when the theaters are full of overwarm soda like Bullet Train.
Harrison Bergeron
2022-09-21 18:55:36 +0000 UTCHoly shit this is good
Fernando
2022-09-21 18:41:32 +0000 UTCDave Eggers could be a good guest. I just finished The Circle and loved it
Jack
2022-09-21 16:21:22 +0000 UTCBret should more regularly have authors on, cause it always results in great conversations.
Anthony Giancola
2022-09-21 15:57:31 +0000 UTCam going to listen on my run. will say more later, after my run.
richard owain roberts
2022-09-21 15:57:05 +0000 UTCWhat a disgusting thing to say.
David Willis
2022-09-21 15:56:14 +0000 UTCGlamorana took a long time, but it was also relentlessly hilarious in the first half and I reckon it took a lot of work to sustain that tap dance through the barrage of super silly quips. clearly the funniest out of the ouuvreee —
Seneca Garcia
2022-09-21 05:57:58 +0000 UTCOMG someone dare say something bad about islam in the book...that is grounds for death sentence...sure....
Poetical Gore
2022-09-20 23:15:22 +0000 UTCQuichotte came out in 2019, it sold pretty well, and received favorable reviews. He makes a lot of money on lecture circuit. I’m not a big fan or anything—but you’re wrong.
M. Nero Nava
2022-09-20 20:18:58 +0000 UTCI think it’s likely on his mind as a contrast to The Shards. I’ve noticed that too
M. Nero Nava
2022-09-20 20:15:18 +0000 UTCNo one reads Salman Rushdie. The only reason anyone knows who Salman Rushdie is because of the fatwa (and the hot wife). A lot of time has passed and memories fade. He probably paid someone to stab him so he could get back in the press. Muslim-baiting is a great career.
Antonio Primavera
2022-09-20 19:59:06 +0000 UTCSuch a good episode The writers really are the best guests!
Kerry
2022-09-20 17:35:04 +0000 UTCIs it just me or is Bret suddenly repeatedly complaining about how many years he spent writing Glamorama? Not sure if he is criticising his own work ethic or if he now thinks the book is kinda dumb. Or just retrospective frustration at how little impact it made ( I still love it )
Keith campbell
2022-09-20 17:07:03 +0000 UTCExcellent ….
PETER GREER
2022-09-20 13:06:39 +0000 UTCVery good. Writers are always good guests. Bret, consider having Blake Bailey on the show. He was canceled shortly after the Roth biography came out.
Steve
2022-09-20 03:27:03 +0000 UTCJust started, but it’s another writer/writer convo! 🤗
Patrick
2022-09-20 00:37:44 +0000 UTC
