The Free and Direct Podcast
A literary-inclined release from the publishers of Indirect Books. Subscribe for conversations with authors, editorial talks, critical deep dives, and other book-type discussions.
Updated at certain times.
Free episodes of our dedicated book club feed, The Cordelivres Criticism Club (also on Apple and Spotify), are cross-posted in Free and Direct. To check out the Show Notes and more, head over to our Substack.
The Sculptural Rightness of Her Limbs: Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations – Free and Direct
In this episode we talk about Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations, from 2009, looking at how Cusk’s narration and its interest in philosophical depth power the book.We talk about how her use of free indirect style—one more attuned to an “observational mirroring” rather than the messier, more associative syntactic refraction of, say, Woolf—enables her to cover an entire year in the lives of several perspective characters while still getting us close to them.We read out a few passages and talk about the ways that art—what it is and why it matters—gets into this novel. I would definitely encourage everyone to check it out; it’s a great first Cusk book if you’ve never read her. Some really incredible lines and passages all over this one.Hope you enjoy this one, and in the meantime—stay critical.Merci !
- The Sculptural Rightness of Her Limbs: Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations
- Sensitized To Linguistic Difference: Rebecca Ruth Gould on Translation and STRANGERS
- Jessica Swoboda and Attention Ecology in "Outline"
- The Past As A Place We Can Find: A Conversation with Lincoln Hirn
- Merely A Gifted Eccentric: Dalloway Intertextualities [Part Two]
Indirect Books 