Brian Dillon Supposes a Sentence

By LARB Radio HourMarch 5, 2021

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Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher welcome essayist Brian Dillon, author of Suppose a Sentence, which offers sharp analysis (along with intriguing discursus) of 27 sentences, both celebrated and obscure, from the likes of William Shakespeare, James Baldwin, John Ruskin, and Joan Didion. Brian opens the show with a passage from his introduction, a paean to the work of the writers he loves and the expansive possibilities of a single line. The conversation focuses on the joys and perils of close reading and reverie.

Also, Claudio Lomnitz, author of Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation, returns to recommend On Kings by anthropologists David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, and relates its lessons to the reign of Donald Trump.