"The Emo I Ching"

On the latest episode of Texting, Tomek and I were joined in the Riverside studio by Steve of The Idiot’s I Ching YouTube channel. Press play above to hear the three of us witter—yes, I had to look it up too—about Fernando Pessoa’s posthumously published masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet. In the intro to the pod, Steve invites textual deviants of all stripes to “feast on a buffet of bile,” likening Pessoa’s text to the melancholic musings of Morrissey and describing the BoD as a kind of “Emo I Ching.” Then, as you might have guessed, almost immediately after the theme music has played, I take the opportunity to shamelessly self-promote my translation of Pessoa’s epic poem Message, which is available in paperback, ebook, and audibook formats on Amazon and in a hardcover deluxe edition at Café a Brasileira in Lisbon. During the roughly 140 minutes of chatter which follow, we three idiots manage, among other things, to draw rather obvious parallels between Pessoa’s Lisbon and Kafka’s Prague (as well as Joyce’s Dublin). The slightly truncated video version of our chat—without, alas, Steve’s thought-provoking intro and outro, the latter of which laments that culture has become mere content—is already up on YouTube. Behold my co-host’s killer thumbnail:

Show Notes

• Oh, how I wish I had insisted on royalties!

• The audiobook version of my translation of Message, by the way, was narrated by friend of show Guy Bethell:

Listen to a preview

• And let us not forget the deviant text previously recommended by Steve. Callback to Season 2!