Books Podcast: William Empson’s legacy

In this week’s Books Podcast, we’re talking about William Empson, one of the most brilliant and captivatingly eccentric literary critics and poets of the twentieth century. Michael Wood, Emeritus Professor at Princeton and author of the new On Empson, joins me to discuss the strange life and mercurial thought of the man who first discerned Seven Types of Ambiguity. (Not to mention using rashers of bacon as bookmarks, travelling to Japan with nothing but a pair of tennis shoes and a lemon in his luggage, encouraging his wife’s infidelity, being sent down from Cambridge for owning condoms, and owning the strangest beard in the history of English letters…)

You can listen to our conversation here:

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