American Writers (One Hundred Pages at a Time)

This podcast is the third in my series on "Galactic Pot-Healer" by Philip K. Dick. In this part of the novel, we explore the theme of entropy. What does it have to do with meaningful work?

Part 2 of my review of my favorite Philip K. Dick novel "Galactic Pot-healer". Joe Fernwright is guided by the Glimmung to a new life with an actual purpose.

We get to the end of Herman Melville's prose writing with our look at "Billy Budd", published in 1924. It is a great little novel on power, the law, and duty.

Let's raise Heldscalla! "Galactic Pot-Healer" is my favorite Philip K. Dick novel. Let me tell you why.

Part two of my review of "The Confidence Man" by Herman Melville. Maybe we will get the final answer to the age old question: should you trust your neighbor?

Part one of Herman Melville's exploration of America's market economy, "The Confidence Man." Can the economy work without confidence and charity? We will explore these and other questions in this review.

The quite bleak finale of "Ubik" by Philip K. Dick. It is not entirely clear what is going on as this novel closes. You will either love it or hate it, but in my view it does not ruin a fascinating novel.

Joe Chip, our story's hero, tries to make sense of a world in which everything decays and even technologies revert to earlier forms, in part three of our look a Philip K. Dick's "Ubik". Maybe the secret is that everyone is dead.

We finish up looking at Herman Melville's short fiction in this episode. Some great tales about class, family, and technology. These may not all be known as Melville's greatest works of short fiction, but they are mostly all entertaining and rich in meaning.

In this episode, I look at an assortment of Herman Melville's assorted short prose: some book reviews and short stories. Part one of a two part series on these uncollected works.