Episodes | Book Fight!

March 18, 2019
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Episode 269: Winter of Wayback, Online Lit Mags

Last week we wrapped up our year-by-year journey through the 90s, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to stop talking about the decade. This week we’re diving back in to look at some early online lit mags, including elimae, Eclectica, Blue Moon Review, and Nerve.

We dive into the history of each publication, sample some work from the archives, and talk about how they fit into the larger literary ecosystem.

As always, you can stream the show right here on our site, or download the mp3 file to listen to later. Or check us out in Apple podcasts, where you can subscribe (for free!) and catch up on older episodes. We’re also available on Spotify, Stitcher, or just about any other podcast app. If for some reason you can’t find us in your favorite app, please reach out and let us know!

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you’ll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that’s involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore’s Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Thanks for listening!

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Episode 268: Winter of Wayback, 1999 (Story Magazine)

This week we’re doing something a little different for our 1990s-themed Wayback episode. Instead of reading a single book, story, or essay, we’re diving into two issues of Story Magazine from the end of the decade–just before the venerable literary magazine folded for a second time, coincidentally. Story got its start in the early 1930s, becoming a reputable magazine for writers of short fiction and carving out a niche somewhere between the “slicks” and the “little magazines” of the mid-20th century. In 1967, the magazine ceased publishing, but was brought back to life in 1989 by a husband-and-wife team who ran it for a little more than a decade. It’s that second iteration we’re talking about this week, re-examining the magazine’s special 10-year anniversary issue as well as a regular issue, both from 1999.

Story Magazine recently came back from the dead once again, and has a new issue out this month.

In addition to Story, we talk about whether certain short stories feel “90s” to us, and how that work has aged. We’ve also got our regular Wayback segments, including what’s new (in 1999) with videogames, as well as the intersection of publishing and technology (blogs!). Plus Mike revisits the 1999 Katie Holmes-Sarah Polley movie Go.

Thanks for listening!

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March 4, 2019
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Episode 267: Winter of Wayback, 1998 (Meghan Daum)

For this week’s episode we’re talking about Meghan Daum’s 1998 essay, “On the Fringes of the Physical World,” which details her mostly-online relationship with a man who reached out to her with a fan email.

We also talk about the promise (and disappointment?) of hypertext fiction, the beginnings of fantasy football, and the movie You’ve Got Mail.

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February 25, 2019
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Episode 265: Winter of Wayback, 1997 (Daniel Clowes, Ghost World)

This week we’re revisiting Ghost World, the 1997 graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. The book pulled together material from the serialized comic Clowes wrote over several years and published in his Eightball series of anthologies. Later it was made into a movie starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansen, and Steve Buscemi.

Also this week: what people were saying in 1997 about a little company called Amazon dot com, which went public that May, making its founder a multi-millionaire. Plus the odd online short story project the company curated, with help from John Updike. Plus, Tom fondly remembers Final Fantasy 7, and Mike rewatches Chasing Amy.

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February 18, 2019
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Episode 265: Winter of Wayback, 1996 (David Shields, Remote)

We’re on to 1996, friends! For this episode we read a David Shields book, Remote, which is kind of a memoir, kind of a collection of creative nonfiction experiments, and kind of difficult to categorize. Mike bought it years ago, in college, before he knew anything about David Shields, and back then he found it a little confusing. Now, with more context for Shields’ work, will it make more sense? Tom, meanwhile, has read four Shields books over the years, but has never quite decided if he likes them or not. Will this be the one to get him off the fence?

This week in publishing news, Tom has the story of Sassy magazine’s contest to name the sassiest boy in America, and Mike has some conflicting views from within the industry about how to deal with the internet. Plus, a bit of controversy surrounding a still-new, still-fledgling Amazon.com. And for 90s Movie Club: Did Swingers predict the Men’s Rights Movement?

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February 11, 2019
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Episode 264: Winter of Wayback, 1995 (Douglas Coupland, Microserfs)

We’re halfway through the 90s, and this week we’re reading a book that feels very much like a time capsule of the era: Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, his follow-up to Generation X, the novel that introduced that term into the world. In Microserfs we follow a group of twenty-something coders as they quit their jobs at Microsoft to work for a start-up company in Silicon Valley. The book explores the world of early start-up culture just a couple years before dot-com culture fully takes over the San Francisco Bay Area.

In lieu of publishing news this week, Mike tells a personal story from 1995 about email, the internet, and one young man’s search for love. Tom, meanwhile, charts the quick rise and fall of JFK Jr.’s George magazine. And 90s Movie Club is revisiting the classic film Hackers, starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, and Jesse Bradford.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you’ll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, funnier corners of the literary world. Recently, that’s involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore’s Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Thanks for listening!

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February 4, 2019
by mikeingram25 2 Comments

Episode 263: Winter of Wayback, 1994 (Rick Moody, “The Grid”)

Boy, the ’90s are just flying by! We’re already up to 1994, a year marked by tragedy (Kurt Cobain, Nicole Brown Simpson) and triumph (Mike’s high school graduation). Our reading this week is a short story by Rick Moody, “The Grid” (you can read it here if you’re a Harper’s subscriber; it’s also in his 1995 collection, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven). We talk about the story’s unconventional structure, its musical voice, and its Gen X-era references. Mike also admits to having read this story aloud to multiple girlfriends (he was young! it was a different time!)

In publishing news this week, we take a deep dive into the story of a first novel, Fishboy, to see how a debut novelist was being marketed and promoted by a big press circa 1994. The New York Times did a multi-part series on the book’s launch, providing a step-by-step look at how author Mark Richard tried to sell the book, and himself, to the reading public.

We’ve also got video game news, font news (the birth of Comic Sans!), and for 90s Movie Club Mike is revisiting Reality Bites and wondering how Gen X was somehow erased from the public consciousness.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you’ll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, funnier corners of the literary world. Recently, that’s involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore’s Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Thanks for listening!

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