Literary Friction - Dark Comedy with Lorrie Moore

Literary Friction

Arts

4.9 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dark humour - do you love it or hate it? Do you find it cathartic or macho? Can humour ever be too dark, and is it a useful political tool? This month our guest is the one and only Lorrie Moore, who joined us to talk about her latest novel, I Am Homeless if This is Not My Home, a story about grief and ghosts and history that is equally funny as it is philosophical. It follows Finn, who in 2016 is visiting his dying brother in a hospice in New York. Finn's stay is interrupted by the news that his ex-girlfriend Lily, who worked as a therapy clown, has killed herself, which sets off a road trip with her talking corpse. All this is punctuated by letters from a boarding house proprietor in the post-Civil War American South, about a mysterious lodger that has come to stay… Tune in for all of this, plus the usual recommendations. Recommendations on the theme, Dark Comedy: Octavia: Hot Milk by Deborah Levy Carrie: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh General Recommendations: Octavia: Open Throat by Henry Hoake Lorrie: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck Carrie: The Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/july-dark-comedy-with-lorrie-moore Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction Email us: litfriction@gmail.com Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Literary Friction. I'm Carrie Plitt here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright.
0:27.7	Hello, Octavia. How are you?
0:30.0	Hi, Carrie. I am good. I'm good. I'm gearing up to do my last London event for the book tomorrow
0:36.6	with Hannah Dawson, who I'm so excited
0:38.9	to talk to. Yeah, so I'm really psyched. How about you? I'm good. I am recording in a different
0:45.1	location right now. I don't have a mic and there is an intense amount of construction happening
0:51.2	very close to where I am.
1:01.2	So I apologize in advance for the lower quality of sound and the higher decibels of construction.
1:02.2	Hey, listen, we love a little ambience on this show.
1:05.8	It's just a little, you know, a little city noise.
1:09.8	A little bit of city noise.
1:11.8	But on to the show.
1:13.2	Today, we are thrilled to welcome the American writer, Lori Moore, to the show to talk
1:18.5	about her latest novel, I am homeless if this is not my home.
1:23.1	Lori is a writer known for her incisive short stories and novels, which are filled with
1:27.4	precision,
1:28.5	wit, humor, and an idiosyncratic knowingness about the world.
1:33.5	I am homeless, if this is not my home, tells the story of Finn, whose brother is dying in a
1:38.1	hospice in New York in 2016.
1:40.6	His stay is interrupted by the news that his ex-girlfriend Lily, who worked as what else, a therapy clown, has killed herself.
1:48.8	This sets off a road trip with her talking corpse. And if that isn't too much, all of this is punctuated by letters from a boarding house proprietor in post-Civil War America about a mysterious lodger that has come to
2:02.6	stay. So it's novel about grief and ghosts and history, but as you can probably tell from that
	...

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