Condition of Mr. Segundo: Avoiding pie-throwing Bolsheviks.

Guests: Jessica Stockton and Mark Binelli

Subjects Discussed: What’s real and what’s not real in Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die, anarchism, 20th century film references, the Coen brothers, Upton Sinclair, extemporaneous speeches, on not writing the novel chronologically, the sensation of research, knife-grinding, Buster Keaton, meat metaphors, Out of Bounds, shopping S&V around to publishers, Dalkey Archive Press, the fragmented trial scenes, and experimental fiction.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Binelli: When I hit on the comedy team idea, I immediately liked that. And then at some point, I can’t say when, but at some point the name “Sacco and Vanzetti” just popped into my head and it was such a perfect comedy team name. Initially, it seemed so ridiculous, which it is obviously. But then the more I thought about it, the more parallels between anarchism and slapstick started to come out. And it just kind of weirdly made more and more sense. So I just decided to embrace it.

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky’s Paperhaus and The Bat Segundo Show.)

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Abdicating his duties for an advertising campaign.

Author: Lionel Shriver

Subjects Discussed: Devising a dual narrative, snooker, film references, the relationship between The Bad Seed and Sliding Doors and Shriver’s novels, dialect and transcribed speech, sports in Shriver’s books, contrasting characters, the pros and cons of popcorn, playing the 9/11 card in contemporary fiction, writing from outlines and notes, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, on books having a short-shelf life, the success of We Need to Talk About Kevin, writing about the States from the UK, persevering as an author, food, fiction with a sense of purpose, being in love with language, Shriver’s evolving fiction tastes, on being a book critic, the benefits of reader exasperation, sex and relationships, and the Bad Sex Award.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Shriver: It was important of me never to play games for the sake of it, that is, I didn’t just want to write a clever book that was a formal experiment. The idea was always to be illustrating something about the characters, something about the nature of two very different kinds of relationships. It’s a book about tradeoffs. Neither of these men is perfect.

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