The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait Cover
Podcast Mentions

The Splendid Things We Planned A Family Portrait

Blake Bailey

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 'Autobiography' Meet the Baileys: Burck, a prosperous lawyer once voted the American Legion’s “Citizen of the Year” in his tiny hometown of Vinita, Oklahoma; his wife Marlies, who longs to recapture her festive life in Greenwich Village as a pretty youn...

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The Daily

Podcast

The Daily

The host referenced the memoir to illustrate the author's strong affinity for Frederick Exley and his literary ambitions. They quoted a passage where the author described feeling a kinship with Exley's alcoholism, sports obsession, and contempt for ordinary life. The book was mentioned as a contextual example rather than a recommendation.

Episode: The Sunday Read: ‘The Ghost Writer’

Bailey's 2014 memoir, The Splendid Things We Planned, was cited as expressing his affinity for author Frederick Exley and his own literary ambitions.

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I was feeling, Bailey writes in his 2014 memoirs, The Splendid Things We Planned, a keen affinity for Exley, with his alcoholism, his morbid interest in sports, his contempt for the workaday world, the whole narcissistic juvenile world.

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