Episode 91
April 1, 2026
On the Natural History of DestructionDhalgren
Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari
The fire, now rising two thousand meters into the sky, snatched oxygen to itself so violently that the air currents reached hurricane force, resonating like mighty organs with all their stops pulled out at once. The fire burned like this for three hours. At its height, the storm lifted gables and roofs from buildings, flung rafters and entire advertising billboards through the air, tore trees from the ground, and drove human beings before it like living torches. Behind collapsing facades, the flames shot up as high as houses, rolled like a tidal wave through the streets at a speed of over a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, spun across open squares in strange rhythms like rolling cylinders of fire. The water in some of the canals was ablaze. The glass in the tram car windows melted; stocks of sugar boiled in the bakery cellars.
W.G. Sebald’s collection Luftkrieg und Literatur, translated and expanded as On the Natural History of Destruction, is both a reflection of the air strikes that Germany endured during World War II and on the literary response — or lack of repsonse — to that destruction. Samuel R. Delany’s monumental science-fiction novel Dhalgren explores the people who remain in a Midwestern American city after an unexplained collapse mostly cuts it off from the rest of the world. Suzanne and Chris find each of the books they’ve been reading difficult to discuss, but nevertheless they're compelled to try.
(Thank you to Michael Collins for helping to edit this episode.)
![[Episode artwork]](/images/podcast/spouter/episode/s/spouter-season-2.png)
Show Notes.
W.G. Sebald: On the Natural History of Destruction.
Samuel R. Delany: Dhalgren.
Our episodes on The Rings of Saturn and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.
Other books by W.G. Sebald: Austerlitz. The Emigrants.
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five. Chris discussed the book on another podcast.
Other books by Samuel R. Delany: The Jewels of Aptor. The Einstein Intersection. Tales of Nevèrÿon is the first book in the series that Chris particularly enjoys.
Bill Wood, ed.: On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren.
Our episodes on Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Our episodes on Middlemarch, Peter Hujar’s Day, and Forgetting Elena.
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