Virtual Memories Show 466: Gil Roth and Aaron Finkelstein “Once you start stripping away the things you were using to distract yourself, and you’re stuck with what’s left, you see what really matters & what you reinvent to start distracting yourself again.” Our final guest of the year is . . . me! I invited…
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Virtual Memories Show 462: Ed Sorel “My wife convinced me that when someone compliments your work, you say, ‘Thank you,’ and don’t explain to them why the drawing is actually lousy.” Legendary artist, illustrator, cartoonist, & author Ed Sorel joins the show to celebrate the publication of his memoir, Profusely Illustrated (Knopf). We get into…
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Virtual Memories Show 461: Matt Madden “One of the things I love and value about comics is the plasticity of it and the elasticity of visual representation.” With his new book, Ex Libris (Uncivilized Books), cartoonist Matt Madden takes readers on a post-modern, formalist dive into comics. We talk about the challenge of tinkering with…
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Virtual Memories Show 459: Tess Lewis & Alta L. Price “‘Turn And Face The Strange’ is a pretty ideal theme not just for the era we’re living, but the particular books we chose for the festival.” They were among the last people I recorded with before lockdown, and now translators Tess Lewis and Alta L….
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Virtual Memories Show 458: Robert Emmet Meagher “As I grew as a thinker, as a scholar, as a teacher, I took Camus with me, and my appreciation of him grew as I did.” With Albert Camus and the Human Crisis (Pegasus Books), professor Robert Emmet Meagher distills a half-century of reading and teaching Camus’ work…
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Virtual Memories Show 456: Zoe Beloff “I’m a story scavenger. I’m not like a novelist who comes out with stories from scratch. I find stories, whether of real people, or just a scrap of film or old postcards. They’ll tell you stories. I think of myself as a voice through with people speak. They’re my…
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Virtual Memories Show 455: Charles Bivona Writer, poet, professor, editor and old friend Charles Bivona returns to the show for a wide-ranging conversation about art, depression, anxiety, midlife health crises (his diabetes, my CLL), Buddhism, Vietnam & contagious trauma, writing his autobiography on Patreon, and more. Our 20+ years of friendship yield an intriguing conversation…
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Virtual Memories Show 454: Anne Cattaneo “Most people want to be on the stage, but I don’t.” Lincoln Center Theater‘s dramaturg Anne Cattaneo joins the show to celebrate her new book, The Art of Dramaturgy (Yale University Press). We answer the pivotal question, “What does a dramaturg DO, exactly?” and explore the tradition of dramaturgy…
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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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