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This month, the fine folks at Just In Case We Die post the first episode in a series of discussions in which they will dissect a difficult novel that has baffled readers, delighted conspiracy theorists, exhausted English majors, and earned its place among the most intimidating masterpieces in American literature: Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

Published in 1973, this mammoth of a novel throws readers right smack dab into the chaos of World War II, where rockets fall from the sky, shadowy organizations pull the strings, paranoia is practically a survival skill, and the line between genius and complete madness gets thinner with every page. At the center of it all is Tyrone Slothrop, an American lieutenant whose bizarre connection to German V-2 rocket strikes sends him spiraling into a labyrinth of sex, science, technology, corporate power, and conspiracies that may—or may not—make sense.
And that’s the thing about Gravity’s Rainbow: just when you think you’ve figured out what Pynchon is doing, he pulls the rug out from under you, hands you a banana, and disappears into a fog of paranoia and obscure pop-culture references.

Aaron is a self-avowed expert. Rebecca’s been trying to finish this novel for years. Rodney is just glad that he doesn’t have to read The Recognitions again.

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It’s October!

Everyone at Just In Case We Die firmly believes that October is the best month of the year. It’s not too hot. It’s not too cold. The leaves are changing colors. Halloween is almost here!

Halloween is the best time of year to read scary stories. No one writes better scary stories than master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. Poe has three entries on our curated list of 1,318 novels, a fact that is only irritating because Edgar Allan Poe didn’t write novels. He wrote short stories and giving him three slots on a list of novels took up spaces that could have been used for actual, you know, novels. Novels such as Lonesome Dove. Or Dune. Or Fahrenheit 451.

This month’s discussion centers around Edgar Allan Poe. His mysterious death, three of his best stories, and in-depth explanations as to why every member of the Just In Case We Die cast loves his terrifying works.

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In July, the random generator drew #768, which corresponded to a book entitled Max Havelaar. This book was written by an author named Multituli. No one even remotely connected to this podcast had ever heard of either this book or this writer, so some research ensued. As it turns out, Max Havelaar is an 1860 anticolonial work of satire that exposed the brutal exploitation of Javanese coffee farmers in the Dutch East Indies.

Sounds boring, right?

Well, Aaron sure thought so, so he vetoed the novel, swapping it out for a beloved horror novel from his list of veto choices. The selection? We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Chronicling the exploits of a troubled family years after most of them had been murdered, this novel is a well-done exercise in psychological what-the-hell-just-happened?

It’s one of Aaron’s favorite novels. Will Rebecca and Rodney like it, too?

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In 1917, a Hungarian-American immigrant (and newspaper publisher) named Joseph Pulitzer bequeathed money in his will to Columbia University to start a journalism school and to establish the Pulitzer Prize. Initially intended to recognize special achievements in journalism, the awards have since expanded to include works of fiction, drama, and music. Every year, the Pulitzer Prize Board awards 23 different prizes of $15,000 (fifteen for journalism, and eight for achievements in books, drama, and music).

This month, the cast of Just In Case We Die decided to sit down with the list of every novel that has ever been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and discuss their findings. What are the criteria for winning a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction? Which cast member has read the most from the list? Which writers are our cast surprised to learn have never won a Pulitzer Prize? Why did they not issue a prize in 1976? Why are winners not given more money than $15,000? Why hasn’t Rodney read Middlesex yet?

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“On the sun-drenched island of Utajima, young fisherman Shinji returns home from the sea to find his quiet life transformed by the arrival of Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the island’s wealthiest man. Their attraction is immediate, but in a small tradition-bound community, love is never truly private.”

The preceding paragraph, we think, is a decent, concise back-of-the-book explanation of what Yukio Mishima’s sixth novel is about. That description doesn’t mention, though, that it is written by a closeted gay man who once attempted a coup against the Japanese military, an attempt that ended in his own pre-planned ritual suicide. It doesn’t mention that this tender coming-of-age story was penned by a novelist most known for graphically-violent and sexually-explicit tales of psychological fiction.

This novel presented a first-time anomaly for this podcast in that Aaron and Rodney loved a novel that Rebecca did not. This disparity prompted an important discussion: How trite is a seventy-year-old story allowed to be before it becomes unreadable nonsense?

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Summer camp, business trips, weddings, moving a child from Tennessee into Illinois, productions of 1776, and two days of skate punk made the months of June and July too busy for all three cast members to commit to a regular recording schedule. With nothing else to fill a programming void, Rodney sat down without his castmates and had a fascinating conversation with an author local to the Rockford area. Unfortunately, Rodney did not know how to use Zoom, which means that conversation never got recorded. Thankfully, the subject of his interview was unfazed enough to come back on another day and be interviewed for a second time. This time, Rodney was armed with instructions from Aaron on how to, you know, push the button that says “record.”

Rodney’s interview is with a man named Andrew Mertzenich. Native to the Rockford area, Andrew is a practicing lawyer, an accomplished musician, the co-chair of the Rockford Area Pride Committee, founder of the city’s annual Pride parade, and now a published author. His book — entitled Forest City Yester-Queer — is a meticulously-researched chronicle of the LGBTQIA+ community in the Rockford, Illinois area. His stories are fascinating. He is also incredibly patient to record the same interview twice. That last sentence there is one final dig at Rodney. Unnecessary, yes, but we can’t help ourselves.

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After years of writing poetry, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño made the decision to secure more financial security for his family by making the transition into scribing novels. His first novel, La pista de hielo (The Skating Rink), was published in 1993. His breakthrough, Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), came about in 1998.

Unbeknownst to the public and his ever-growing fanbase, in 1992 Bolaño had been diagnosed with a terminal liver ailment, kickstarting a frenetic writing pace. Spurred in large part by a looming awareness of his impending death, he published at least one new book every year until his death in 2003.

Although he was, by this point, a well-known and critically-hailed author in Spanish-speaking countries, Bolaño was not widely translated until after his death. That changed with the posthumous publication of his magnum opus, 2666, in 2005. This massive novel, divided into five loosely-connected sections, secured his worldwide literary reputation. Since his death, all of his earlier works have been translated into English and there have been four additional posthumous works released.

Rebecca handpicked 2666 as her selection for the month of July. Yes, the discussion isn’t being posted until August, but everyone is still playing catch-up from a summer that has gotten out of control. Besides, posting late gave Rodney an opportunity to savor and digest this most post-modern of novels. Y’all know how he struggles with those.

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The folks here at Just In Case We Die have decided that all a novelist has to do to earn a spot on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is to pen a book about identity chasing. From On the Road (which Aaron adores) to Disappearance (which all but Rodney found boring), there have been many spotlighted novels that cover this theme. This novel, one that the cast was somewhat interested in based solely on the writer being from India, is one of the blandest novels they’ve ever had to discuss. Literally nothing happens save some not-very-subtle character introductions and drab postulating about whether ’tis better to embrace a new India or the encroachment of the Western world. This time around, there’s not even an interesting history to share about the novelist.