Virtual Memories Show 453: Nadine Sergejeff “What you see when you enter the Philip Roth Personal Library are about three-thousand, seven hundred and twenty books* that have marginalia, are presentation copies, or are otherwise special.” [* Librarians are very exact] It’s part 2 of a 2-part show about the new Philip Roth Personal Library at…
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Virtual Memories Show 452: Rosemary Steinbaum “His reading and his writing are intertwined. That’s the main theme of the Philip Roth Personal Library: a writer at work reading and a reader at work writing.” It’s part 1 of a 2-part show about the new Philip Roth Personal Library at the Newark Public Library! This week,…
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Virtual Memories Show 451: Jacques Berlinerblau “I think what’s different about Roth is the wink and the nod and the game; he’s signaling to us in his fiction that he’s writing about events and people that are very close to him, and yet repeatedly denied doing so. No one else engaged in that gamesmanship with…
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Virtual Memories Show 450: Robert McCrum “People should be free to do Shakespeare anyway they like: in 5 minutes, 5 seconds, 5 days, 5 hours, underwater, in a desert, on a mountain. It’ll always work; he’s indestructible, in that sense.” With his new book, Shakespearean: On Life and Language in Times of Disruption (Pegasus Books),…
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Virtual Memories Show 449: Scott Newstok “Let’s try to think our way into what we value about learning in our lives, in whatever realm: a craft, a sport, a musical activity. It’s about the complex joys of getting better.” With How To Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton University Press), Scott Newstok…
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Virtual Memories Show 448: Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn “The cultivation of the inner life is a way of looking at the self as though the inner sanctum isn’t a lonely, isolating chamber of echoes, but can be transformed into a rich inner garden.” With Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts…
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Virtual Memories Show 447: Peter Schjeldahl “My job is to give people something to read that is enjoyable and in some other way perhaps worth reading. It’s almost not about the art; it’s about the concentration, the absorption.” I traveled up to the Catskills this weekend for a round of Rip Van Winkle-themed putt-putt golf,…
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Virtual Memories Show 446: Heywood Gould With his compulsively entertaining new book, Drafted: A Memoir of the ’60s (Tolmitch Press), author, screenwriter, and director Heywood Gould takes his reader on a rollicking tour of New York City in America’s most turbulent decade as he explores his draft-dodging days in the buildup of the Vietnam war….
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Virtual Memories Show 445: Heather Cass White “I’m sure that my obsessive focus on reading, as much as it is anything else, is a sign of a wound, or a lack.” Author & professor Heather Cass White joins the show to celebrate her wonderful new book. Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life…
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Virtual Memories Show 444: Jonathan Baylis Writer Jonathan Baylis joins the show (in person!) to celebrate the latest issue of his autobio comics series, So Buttons (Tinto Press/Alchemy Comix). We talk about how he found a home in the Pekar mode, writing scripts for cartoonists to draw, and how he went all-Harvey for a strip…
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Virtual Memories Show 442: Weng Pixin / Pix “Art has always been a place for me to express things that — well, here in Singapore we don’t have a very healthy relationship with the expression of anger.” With her gorgeous new graphic memoir, Let’s Not Talk Anymore (Drawn & Quarterly), artist Weng Pixin (a.k.a. Pix)…
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Virtual Memories Show 441: Andi Watson “The stories that don’t work out are the ones that don’t have a decent central character, or an environment or a unique way of drawing or approach or style you want to experiment with. The Book Tour was one where it all worked out.” With The Book Tour (Top…
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