S4 Ep. 17: Biden Boom? Carolin Benack and Sanjena Sathian on the Fiction of the Economy and the Dangerous Appeal of Excess

fiction/non/fiction

Scholar Carolin Benack and novelist Sanjena Sathian join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how literature and economics intersect. First, Benack talks about the theoretical storytelling that is economics, and reads from her article on the topic. Then, Sathian reads from her debut novel Gold Diggers and talks about the American obsession with excess, and how our fluctuating economy impacts our relationship with wealth and reinvention.

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This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.

Selected readings:

Carolin Benack

• “Economists are more like storytellers than scientists – don't let the Nobel for 'economic sciences' fool you”

Sanjena Sathian

• Gold Diggers

Others:

• The Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel by Catherine Gallagher
• “The Economy of Pain: Capitalism, Humanitarianism, and the Realistic Novel,” by Wai Chee Dimock
• U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global Consequences of Social Fragmentation, from The New York Times
• All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
• Rabbit Hole, podcast from the New York Times
• George Saunders
• Edith Wharton
• John Updike

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