Episode 16: The Overstory by Richard Powers with Melanie Haupt

What Amy is reading - Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/676736/out-there-screaming-by-edited-by-jordan-peele/ 

What Kate is reading - The Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz: https://anthonyhorowitz.com/books/title/moonflower-murders 

Meet this week’s guest, Melanie Haupt: Melanie Haupt is a teacher and writer in Austin, Texas. She completed her PhD in English Literature from UT Austin in 2012. She is the publisher and editor of The Central Texas Dish, a newsletter about Central Texas food and culture. You can find her at @centraltexasdish on Instagram.

• Subscribe to the Central Texas Dish: https://thecentraltexasdish.substack.com/

• Here is the post on biscuits featuring the Taste Buds: https://thecentraltexasdish.substack.com/p/the-side-dish-biscuits 

So biscuits mean different types of baked goods in different places. In the UK and Commonwealth (and former Commonwealth) it usually means like, a hard cookie. Think like, shortbread or biscotti or ginger snaps, that kind of vibe. In North America (especially the US, Canada goes both ways) it’s a type of quickbread with a crisp outside and a soft, crumbly, sometimes layered inside. And don’t get me wrong, I love cookies, but like, there’s nothing quite like a freshly baked, homemade biscuit.

Oryx and Crake is a novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, the first of her Madadam trilogy. It’s awesome, and horrifying, and heartbreaking.

So ecoterrorism has two definitions that kind of mean opposite things? One is violence carried out to further environmentalist goals. The other is causing deliberate damage to the environment for political means. 

Ecofeminism, as defined by Harvard College’s Women’s Center, “uses the basic feminist tenets of gender equality, a revaluing of non-patriarchal or nonlinear structures, and a view of the world that respects organic processes, holistic connections, and the merits of intuition and collaboration.”

Richard Powers is a celebrated American novelist who left his career as a computer programmer  after he saw the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander in the Boston Museum of Arts and quit his job to write a novel about the people in it.

The Overstory, published in 2018, is Richard powers’ 12th novel. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the William Dean Howells Medal in 2020.

• The Overstory is 512 pages long in print. The audiobook is 22 hours and 58 minutes long. Reading Length estimates that the novel has 128000 words and at an average reading page of 250 words per minute would take 8 hours and 32 minutes to read.

• Read Melanie's full selection: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/33805f_210d538bbd9f40f4bbff5b80e8a619fb~mv2.png

“Colonial times” in the US is officially defined as between the years 1607-1775, though some would argue that it is still happening today.

A colorless, odorless, poisonous gas, carbon monoxide (CO) is often termed “the silent killer” as it is virtually undetectable to the human senses. According to the CDC, every year in the US “more than 400 Americans die from unintentional CO poisoning not linked to fires, more than 100,000 visit the emergency room, and more than 14,000 are hospitalized.” The most likely to be seriously impacted are the very young, the very old, and those with breathing issues, chronic heart disease, and anemia.

• There are a number of measures you can take to prevent CO poisoning - one easy one is ensuring your home has CO detectors along with smoke detectors that are changed out every five years. 

• Many municipalities offer free or reduced price CO detectors, if you live in Texas you can check here: https://www.tdi.texas.gov/fire/fmalarmprograms.html

Station Eleven is a post (sometimes peri) apocalyptic novel by  Emily St. John Mandel. Published in 2014, the book centers around the impact and aftermath of a fictional pandemic known as the "Georgia Flu" that decimates the world’s population. It’s not necessarily the best choice for a real life COVID-19 pandemic lockdown read, although I must admit, Dear Listeners, I (Kate) did read it at this time.

Galatea 2.2, the fifth novel by Richard Powers, is a 1995 pseudo-autobiographical, contemporary reworking of the Pygmalion myth.

The first trees as we know them today, with wooden trunks, first appeared 360 million years ago, at the start of the Carboniferous period. The oldest known living (non-clonal) tree, Methuselah, is a Great Basin bristlecone pine somewhere in the California White Mountains, and is estimated to be 4,856 years old.

Apparently the first uses of Pardon my French" / "Excuse my French” / “Mind my French” were not about profanity but were, in fact, apologizing for using actual French words. From 19th century England, obviously.

Man vs. nature is one of the traditional four literary conflicts that also include man vs. self, man vs. man, and man vs. society. Though now a lot of people use “character vs.” for like, obvious gender and inclusivity reasons. But I saw this masterclass that cotes six conflicts, with the addition of character vs. the supernatural and character vs. technology. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-conflict-in-literature-6-different-types-of-literary-conflict-and-how-to-create-conflict-in-writing

The American chestnut tree was once a dominant fixture in eastern US forests. They were a staple for indigenous peoples of the Appalachians, and then later rural agricultural economies in the burgeoning US for both lumber and sustenance.

• A deadly blight from Asia was introduced in the 19th century that greatly reduced the population and size of the physical tree by 1950. You can see a cool but also very sad animation here: https://tacf.org/history-american-chestnut/

Kate and Amy define “Good Bones” as “Pieces of writing that acknowledge the hardship and darkness in the world and inspire the hope needed to work to make it a better place, whether that’s moving through it or sitting with the duality.”

Kate did not change the book she started that night because she STILL can’t find The Overstory which is ridiculous because it’s GIANT. Nobody tell her sister in law, who upon retrospect might have just loaned it to her and may want it back at some point?

TBR stands for “To Be Read”

Bewilderment is the 13th novel by Richard Powers, published in 2021 and shortlisted for that year’s Booker Prize.

So there is a lot of research out there, some of it conflicting, but most seem to agree that crying causes the body to release oxytocin, which is a hormone that help cope with stress and aid connection, as well as endorphins - endogenous opioids that fuction as opiods.

• Emotional tears - those triggered by joy or sadness / other strong feelings - have been found to highest levels of hormones and neurotransmitters.

So we did lose Amy about halfway through this episode, but just a reminder, Dear Listener - that was Amy’s internet that went out and not Amy. 

• This event actually inspired her to replace her decade+ old computer with a new one!

Request a recommendation on a selection of writing picked by Kate and Amy just for you: https://www.findinggoodbones.com/contact

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