Backlisted25 Helmi 2025

A Life by Elia Kazan

We explore Elia Kazan's memoir A Life (1988) with veteran biographer and critic John Lahr, author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, amongst others. Kazan enjoyed a dazzling career in both theatre and film, directing the original stage productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, before making a series of cinematic masterpieces: On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd, Wild River. He discovered both Marlon Brando and James Dean. But his decision to testify in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee compromised and complicated his artistic legacy. In A Life, Kazan comes out swinging; his personality is stamped on every page of this fascinating, pugnacious and still-controversial book, echoing the defiant words of Terry Molloy at the climax of On The Waterfront: "I'm glad what I done". * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Summer Reading 2023 - Rerun

Over here in the UK, we are well and truly into summer: some of us have World Cup fever, and others... have not. To celebrate the continuing balm, we are rerunning one of our classic summer reading ep...

7 Heinä 1h 4min

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard - Rerun

Recorded back in 2018 at Port Elliot festival, Andy and John are joined on stage by writer, actor and comedian Ben Moor, author of More Trees to Climb (Granta) and whose comedy show ‘Book Talk Book Ta...

23 Kesä 58min

Look At Me by Anita Brookner - rerun

This is a vintage Backlisted episode recorded back in 2017. John and Andy were joined by Una McCormack and Lucy Scholes to discuss Anita Brookner's third novel Look At Me (1982), a tale of intergalact...

9 Kesä 1h 8min

Beloved by Toni Morrison - rerun

Beloved by Toni Morrison was first published in 1987 by Knopf, it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, among many other prizes. In 2006, the New York Times declared Beloved the best ...

2 Kesä 1h 6min

Springs of Affection by Maeve Brennan - rerun

There can be few writers more deserving of Backlisted’s attention than the Irish writer, Maeve Brennan. An adopted New Yorker, Brennan died there in 1993 and was by that time so thoroughly forgotten i...

11 Touko 1h 17min

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

Back in 2022, our guest was Stephen Fry, writer, actor and polymath, who joined John and Andy to discuss Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, the essay addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas in 1897 'from the depths...

27 Huhti 1h 20min

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald - rerun

In this episode from March 2019, Andy and John are joined by Georgina Morley who was then the Non-Fiction Editorial Director at Picador, and Lucy Scholes, the Senior Editor at McNally Editions. The b...

14 Huhti 1h 10min

Alma Cogan by Gordon Burn - Rerun

In a special edition recorded earlier this year live at the Durham Book Festival, John and Andy are joined by writers Adele Stripe and Ben Myers to discuss Gordon Burn's debut novel Alma Cogan. The 'W...

31 Maalis 1h 2min