Marlon and Jake Read Dead People is a podcast hosted by the Man Booker Prize-winning and internationally bestselling author Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, Executive Editor at Riverhead Books. In each episode, Marlon and Jake talk about authors—specifically dead authors. Authors they like. Authors they hate. Great books, terrible books, and books they love that you’d never expect them to. As a writer and an editor, Marlon and Jake have read thousands of books between them, and they’re not shy in expressing their opinions about them. Sometimes they’ll agree, sometimes they won’t, but in every episode, they’ll tell you what they think— uncensored and with no holds barred. (That’s why the authors have to be dead.) So, listen along to hear about the spectacularly good, the hilariously bad, and the brutally honest.
33 Available Episodes (33 Total)Average duration: 00:37:26
Apr 18, 2023
City Settings
00:45:41
In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about cities in books. Books set in memorable cities, books set in cities you're glad you've never been to and books where the city itself is nearly a character. They talk about the specificity of London of the 19th century British novel, the New York novel, entirely fictional cities in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and don’t miss Marlon’s personal experience with Bloomsday in Dublin!
In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about the bad characters we’re not meant to like but do and the good characters we’re meant to like but annoy us. From Dracula to Daisy Buchanan to Oliver Twist and Bambi, the good-to-evil spectrum is vast and no character is safe from commentary. Tune in to find out which classic villain the duo unanimously hate, and which villain gives Marlon the chills and scares Jake to this day.
This episode, Marlon and Jake discuss a new subject for the podcast: poetry! From epic poems to sonnets to the Romantics poets to contemporary (dead) poets. They ponder over why people don’t read poetry as much as prose and recite, on the spot, lines of poetry that are forever engrained in their memories.
Riddyn Ravings (The Mad Woman's Poem) by Jean “Binta” Breeze
Anne Sexton
Dr. Maya Angelou
The Tyger by William Blake
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Gwendolyn Brooks
June Jordan
Audre Lorde
Toni Morrison
Ogden Nash
Dorothy Parker
Tales From Ovid by Ted Hughes
Inferno from Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Mar 28, 2023
Books Assigned in School
00:43:34
Books assigned in school evoke strong feelings. You either love em’ or you hate em.’ In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss the books they wished they were assigned in school and the ones they suffered through. Accompanying the books taught in school, there are, of course, the teachers who taught them. A teacher can make or break a book read in school. As a literature teacher (as well as Booker prize winning author), Marlon acknowledges there are some novels assigned in school that you have to work to understand that are really good, but sometimes those novels are not good and if it weren’t for being assigned in school, we wouldn’t still be reading it.
In this episode, Marlon and Jake weigh in on a question as old as books themselves—can you judge a book by its cover? Spoiler alert: the answer is yes! They discuss good books with bad covers and bad books with good covers, cover art trends (*cough* the woman facing away), books that were recommended to them, and books they read because of peer pressure. Tune in to hear Marlon and Jake opine the myriad ways we judge books.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
The Latecomers by Anita Brookner
The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask by Dr. David R. Reuben
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Ancient Evening by Norman Mailer
Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
Ballad of a Sad Café by Carson McCullers
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Hound of the Baskerville by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Jamacia Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
Dune by Frank Herbert
Stoner by John Williams
One is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins
Chances by Jackie Collins
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara
A Rage to Live by John O’Hara
Grendel by John Gardner
Mickelsson’s Ghosts by John Gardner
October Light by John Gardner
Freddy’s Book by John Gardner
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Howards’ End by E.M. Forster
Maurice by E.M. Forster
Soldier’s Pay by William Faulkner
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Mar 14, 2023
From TBR to Recently Read
00:43:55
Marlon and Jake are back! And they’re catching up on the dead authors they’ve read since they last spoke—some of which they praise, others they don’t. From comparing Nella Larson’s Passing to the Netflix film, to discussing unsettling stories that linger with you, they cover a lot of literary ground. They also weigh in on longstanding debates like whether they read the book or watch the movie adaption first and the difference between horror and terror. Tune in for the witty book banter you know and love.
In just one week, Marlon and Jake return with an epic new season discussing the non-living luminaries they love, hate, and will never agree on. Get ready for even more hot takes, hilarious debates, and incisive commentary on dead poets, judging books by their covers, exactly what kind of student Marlon was in college, and which classic novel Jake spoiled the ending for a colleague—among other literary gems.
Feb 25, 2022
Appetizer 2: Powerful Female Characters
00:41:02
Marlon & Jake are back to discuss the most indelible and powerful female characters—those written by dead female authors and those written by dead male authors. From Sula Peace to the Wife of Bath, Scout Finch to Janie Crawford—these two gentleman celebrate some of literature’s most ferocious, complicated, guileless, unrepentant and commanding women.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Double Indemnity by James Cain
There Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Dubliners by James Joyce
Kindred Octavia Butler
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Sula by Toni Morrison
Feb 18, 2022
Appetizer 1: Unreliable Narrators
00:45:25
Marlon & Jake are back to discuss the narrators they love but can't trust. From the delusional to the uninformed, the sociopathic to the sympathetic, they explore the characters that charm as much as they trick, begging the question: is there such a thing as a reliable narrator? So tune in to hear if Jake has warmed to Great Expectations (spoiler alert: he hasn’t) and so much more!
Select titles mentioned in this episode:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
"Charles" by Shirley Jackson (in The Lottery and Other Stories collection)
Feb 18, 2022
Appetizers for everyone!
00:03:38
We didn't ghost you, dear listeners. Marlon had a novel to finish, which Jake had to edit. But the good news is it's officially out in the world, and so before Marlon—the very living author—takes off on his whirlwind book tour, he and Jake are back together for a brief (but delicious) reunion of discussing what they love most: DEAD AUTHORS. We'll be back for season three later this spring, but until then, stayed tuned for an amuse bouche, a canapé, an appetizer—take your pick!—to the glorious meal on the horizon.
Apr 18 | 00:45:41
City Settings
Apr 11 | 00:54:35
Characters Behaving Badly
Apr 04 | 00:40:34
Poetry FOMO
Mar 28 | 00:43:34
Books Assigned in School
Mar 21 | 00:44:52
Judging a Book
Mar 14 | 00:43:55
From TBR to Recently Read
Mar 07 | 00:00:42
Season Three Announcement
Feb 25 | 00:41:02
Appetizer 2: Powerful Female Characters
Feb 18 | 00:45:25
Appetizer 1: Unreliable Narrators
Feb 18 | 00:03:38
Appetizers for everyone!
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