Mark Haber, novelist

In the studio today to open SEASON 4 of the show—that’s right y’all F***ing Shakespeare is on our 4th season! To celebrate we have Houston’s own lit genius, Mark Haber. He’s our first returning guest, so we must be doing something right. He’s definitely doing all the things right. He’s here to talk Tolstoy’s dog problem, melancholy, the fun-house mirror situation that is eastern European and central American literary scenes. His rich new novel Reinhardt’s Garden is discussed, as well as how to compel the authors who blurb you to use the word ‘genius.’ (Just kidding, not that one. He’s keeping that secret.) But we do get a bit of a bonus material-round makeover this season with a Haber-inspired esoterica category of questions to round out the show.

Msrk’s influences are numerous, but click links below to expand your literary taste. You will not be disappointed:

• Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile

• Thomas Bernhard 

• César Aira

• László Krasznahorkai’s double-novella set, The Last Wolf and Herman

• New Directions’ championing of Latin American writers in the early aughts

• Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov

• Clarice Lispector

Things we learned:

• How to write humid

• What’s wrong with Florida

• How to write believable man-splaining (LOL)

• How to end a publishing journey in tears, the good kind

• How a bad translation is like a bad cheeseburger

Shout-outs

• World Editions, feminist press

• Brazos Bookstore

Photo credit: Nina Subin