Hello, I'm James Wood, and this year on the LRB's Close Reading's podcast, I'm asking,

Who's Afraid of Realism? I'll be taking a range of great novels and short stories,

from Flobe's Madame Bovary and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, up to more recent works

by Amit Chowdhury and Gwendolyn Riley. And I'll be examining what makes and makes

for the real. How does realism produce its effects? What's the difference between artifice

and artificiality? And who is and has been afraid of realism and why? The series starts with

two episodes on Madame Bovary, which you can listen to right now,

and in the third episode,

I'll be talking to Adam Thirlwell about Dostoevsky.

You can find a link in the description,

or search close readings,

wherever you get your podcasts.

Music You're listening to the LRB podcast. I'm Malin Hay. In 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Roger went on a spree of misogynistic violence in California, killing six people. He had been radicalised online by the Incell or Involuntary Celebrate Movement, which is just one part of the so-called Manosphere, the online network of male supremacist websites,

influencers and YouTube channels.

Roger's Killings demonstrated for the first time to the public that Manosphere content

could have a real impact on the world.

While the patriarchy has existed for as long as civilization, it's now taking new and disturbing forms,

and rhetoric influenced by Manosphere content can be heard at the highest rungs of the US government.

Joining me today to discuss what makes the manosphere so appealing to men is Emily Witt,

a critic and journalist for the New Yorker, as well as many other publications,

who has published pieces in the LRB on subjects as diverse as Sheila Hetty, Meskolin and the opioid crisis.

Her most recent piece in the paper is a review of two books,

...