After midterms, life in America may not get better, but it could suck more quietly

Narrated by Jared Moore

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Art belongs to everyone and even heavy metal is more important than causes

Narrated by Jared Moore

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Having dispensed with marriage, the New York Times enlists a professor to denigrate writing

Narrated by Jared Moore

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The New York Times semi-retracts a 2015 celebration of marriage

Narrated by Jared Moore

This administration’s speech messes have become an excuse to whitewash history

Narrated by Jared Moore

Brad and Matt finish up the classic William Faulkner novel.

Today on Get Lit we are finishing William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.

In the second half of the novel we finally get to hear from Addie, and learn that she was a deeply neurotic and disturbed woman who deserved the terrible family she had and sent them on this quest out of pure malice. We also hear from Jewel’s real father, and the deranged math by which Addie “made it up” to Anse for having a son by another man. The odyssey reaches its tragic conclusion, with Darl going insane and getting sent to Jackson, the crippling of Cash, and the rape of Dewey Dell. However, in a surprise ending that is hard to make sense of, everything seems to work out for Anse, who continues his streak of always getting the help he doesn’t deserve.

We hope you have enjoyed spending time in this most gothic South. Faulkner has certainly shown readers the grotesque.

Next week, we will be doing the first two sections of Émile Zola’s Germinal, his masterpiece about striking coal miners in 1870’s France, which will give us an entirely different view of the depravity of poverty, something which seems to be becoming an unintended theme on this podcast.

— Brad Pearce