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As Nathan Wolff himself puts it, his recent keynote address at the 2024 Quarry Farm Fall Symposium is “very much in dialogue with The American Vandal.” In this talk, Wolff not only summarizes Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age (1873), but further interpolates it with concepts like Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism, György Lukács’s historical novel, and Raymond Williams’s structures of feeling, all of which have been cited frequently in our “A Tale of Today” series. While this episode from the usual format of The American Vandal Podcast, listeners to this season will undoubtedly see the synergy between this season and Wolff’s keynote.

If you would prefer to watch it, the keynote is also available via our YouTube Channel.

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Cast (in order of appearance):

Nathan Wolff is Associate Professor of English at Tufts University and the author of Not Quite Hope & Other Political Emotions in The Gilded Age (Oxford UP, 2019).

Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.

Soundtrack:

All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It’s also available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Tracks featured in this episode include “Kettleridge.”

Narration:

Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.

Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-’90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.

Excerpts in this episode come from chapters 1, 18, 27, 40, 44, 30, & 8.