Their Eyes Were Watching God
We apologize for the lengthy interregnum, it was so long that we had to look up a new word just to describe it. Or possibly we just have trouble getting our act together sometimes. At any rate, Novel Ideas is back with Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, a story of a woman’s personal journey to self-realization. Listen to the episode to hear our conversation about dialect, ambition, feminism, and race. We also talk about white history professors, bees, how rabies works, and kickass deathbed scenes.
Quick scheduling note: We’re trying to post an episode for John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War next week, followed by our year in review episode for “Season 2” of Novel Ideas. There is likely to be a couple more missed weeks after that as Gabs gets married and goes on her honeymoon. Or maybe Ben will post something highly self-indulgent while we’re waiting. We’ll have to see.
If you have any comments or questions about anything we’ve talked about in the past year, please let us know! Also, if there’s anything you were hoping we might talk about outside those books, also let us know. We’d like to find some interesting and slightly different content for the end of the year episode if we can.
The music bump this week is “Janie Runaway” by Steely Dan, after our plucky protagonist.
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Too Dignified for a Mule Funeral
Recommendations:
A 20th century classic that is commonly assigned in school with a lot of conversation worthy content. A little tough to read due mainly to the use of dialect, but also rather short.
Gabs: 7/10 for literary value, 5/10 for ease of reading.
Ben: 5.5/10 because I liked it more than I didn’t, but just barely. This one felt kind of like assigned reading.
This entry was posted in Admin, Episodes and tagged 30 acres and a mule, ambition, assigned reading, childless female protagonist, coming of age, death by rabies, deathbed confrontation, dialect, domestic violence, feminism, go to the doctor, life, listener suggestion, love, marriage, mixed race, mule funeral, nicknames, personal story, punctuality, puppy story, racism, research standards, science standards, self-actualization, self-importance, social lenses, the bees, Their Eyes Were Watching God, white history professor, Zora Neale Hurston.
Novel Ideas 
February 25, 2014 at 2:32 pm
Hooray Old Man’s War!
March 8, 2014 at 7:11 am
OK just listened to this and it was awesome. My mother had two pictures of Zora Neale Hurston, one in black and white, you know the one. Everyone has seen that one. The other was a stylized picture of her that was drawn on a newspaper. Either way I always thought she was interesting with regards to social thought and racial politics.
Also loved the shout out. Made me warm on the inside.