In a Lonely Place w/ Isaac Butler

Book Fight

The 1947 Dorothy Hughes novel In a Lonely Place is considered a hallmark of the noir genre, and also something of a feminist reimagining of those genre's tropes. We're joined by Isaac Butler (author of The Method: How the 20th Century Learned to Act) to talk about some of the book's narrative tricks, including an unreliable third-person narrator, and how it subverts the genre's "femme fatale" trope, among others. Plus: What made Dorothy Hughes think that 'Brub' was a good name for a character?

In the second half of the show, we learn about Isaac's relationship to Halloween costumes, which Muppet could play a hardboiled cop, and why Isaac thinks he's too old to read Slaughterhoue Five for the first time.

If you like the podcast, consider joining our Patreon. For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes, plus access to our entire back catalog of bonus content. During our current season, we're watching and discussing noir films, both classics and newer entries to the canon. https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight

Find Isaac on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theisaacbutler/

Or on Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/isaacbutler.bsky.social

You can subscribe to Mike's Substack (for free): https://mikeingram.substack.com/

Anc check out the newly revamped Barrelhouse newsletter, which now features an original monthly essay (writers writing about their non-writing obsessions): https://www.barrelhousemag.com/ (scroll down to the bottom of the page)

Thanks, as always, for listening!

Note: This is the second episode in our Noir season. But there's no reason you have to listen to the episodes in order.