Episode 585 - Leonard Barkan
The Virtual Memories Show
With (Fordham), professor blends memoir and deep reading of Shakespeare's greatest plays to explore his lifelong relationship with literature and the way(s) we use art to construct our identities. We get into what it means to read, hear, perform, direct, teach Shakespeare, why it took him a lifetime to get to this book, how he contrasts himself with a radically naive reader (and why it's important to try to capture our naïveté), the gayness of Shakespeare's two Antonios, the many stories he couldn't tell until his folks were gone, and the role Shakespeare played in Leonard's gay coming of...
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Episode 584 - Emily Raboteau
The Virtual Memories Show
After a ~10-year gap, rejoins the show to celebrate her amazing new essay collection, (Holt). We talk about her sparkbird and the in Washington Heights that center the book, her transformation into a climate activist, the joy of the flaneuse, her scavenger hunt for 's environmental art, and the idea of pain with a purpose. We also get into the differences between mothering & motherhood, the reason she put "the Apocalypse" in quotes in her subtitle, how COVID lockdown made her realize her kids' lives had been overscheduled (and how lockdown gave them some room to breathe), and the...
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Bonus Episode - Trillian Stars and Kyle Cassidy
The Virtual Memories Show
Photographer and writer and actor and model join us for a Bonus Episode to talk about their new Kickstarter, (closing May 4, 2024)! We get into their inspiration to make a book combining the poems of Pre-Raphaelite muse/model/artist with photos of Trillian (in a Pre-Raphaelite mode), how the project changed once they began shooting in East London, how they found enough costumes for all the photos they wanted to take, why Lizzie Siddal was dismissed by the peers of her husband, , and how modeling and acting overlap and differ (and why Kyle prefers shooting with actors). We also get into...
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Episode 583 - Leela Corman
The Virtual Memories Show
At long last, artist joins the show as we celebrate her breathtaking new graphic novel, (Schocken Books)! We talk about how the book brings together the women welders of WWII-era Brooklyn Navy Yards, professional wrestling, and her lifelong obsession with the Shoah, how discovering her watercolor style was like the portal between life and death opening, the art school experience that derailed her, and how the artistic ground start shifting beneath her as she got serious about her comics. We get into her life-defining visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the sacred responsibility of...
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Episode 582 - Keith Mayerson
The Virtual Memories Show
How did an eBay search lead to the discovery of a lost classic of comics? How can art help us build a better America? Artist and teacher joins the show to talk about co-editing the amazing new book, (Fantagraphics) and his multi-decade "wordless novel" in paintings, (Karma). We get into how Frank Johnson made thousands of pages of comics in private, never published, and may have created the first American comic-book in history, whether he constitutes an Outsider Artist, how his creative legacy contrasts with 's, and what it means to make a lifelong body of work with no sense or expectation...
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Episode 581 - Edith Hall
The Virtual Memories Show
Classicist joins the show to talk about her fantastic, important new book, (Yale University Press). We talk about the taboo of talking about suicide, how that taboo can lead to transgenerational damage, how that compares to the family curses in Greek tragedies, and what the Tragedians have to teach us about life (and death) today. We get into her grandmother's suicide and her mother's conspiracy of silence around it, her own suicidal ideation and how Heracles Mad helped her through her worst phase, the way Facing Down the Furies sprung from Edith's previous book, , the process of researching...
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Bonus Episode - Dean Haspiel
The Virtual Memories Show
LEAN INTO DEAN! Cartoonist, playwright, schmoozer, etc. returns for a Bonus Episode to talk about his new Kickstarter, (closing March 28, 2024)! We get into why he's making the plunge into Meta-Mem-Noir and bringing Dean Haspiel as a character into his New Brooklyn comics universe, what it's like to be part of the story, and how this podcast is also becoming more autobiographical with each passing week. Plus, we talk about getting old and not being able to stay out all night (even though he tried this weekend), what it's like to treat comics as a reductive art rather than a rendering one,...
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Episode 580 - David Small
The Virtual Memories Show
With his brand new collection, (Liveright), brings us a trio of stories about the beast within (that is, within the heart, within the psyche, and within the body politic). We talk about the on-and-off 40-year history of this collection, the themes of transformation and aging that suffuse these stories, and the schism in Leonora Carrington's estate that nearly derailed the whole project. We get into the the challenges of adapting prose fiction into comics, his move from graphic novels (think and ) to short stories, why he's come to love drawing digitally, and just how bad most surrealist...
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Episode 579 - Brad Gooch
The Virtual Memories Show
With (Harper), brings us the biography of , an artist who transformed public art & the art world in the 1980s and whose work has become part of global culture in the three decades since his untimely death from AIDS. We get into Brad's common threads with Haring, the parallels between this book and his , how fatherhood helped Brad better understand Haring, and his surprise at discovering what a serious artist Haring was. We talk about why Haring's work makes more sense now than in the '80s, what he would have made of social media, the fire that drove him to make more than 10,000 pieces of...
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Episode 578 - Japan
The Virtual Memories Show
No conversation this week, except for our host, Gil Roth, in conversation with some virtual memories of his own! On the occasion of going to the movies for the first time since 2018, to see ’ amazing new film , he reflects on a cusp-of-pandemic trip to Japan. This one’s got & , a misplaced fortune, , an empty parking lot, Country & Western, a special 5K run, a big bag of , and more, so give it a listen. • More info • Support The Virtual Memories Show via or and via
info_outlineLook! Up in the sky! Is it really more like a novel? Is it more like a 10-hour movie? No, it's TV! In her first book, I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution (Penguin Random House), critic Emily Nussbaum celebrates TV as TV, exploring the unique aspects of the form and helping TV viewers get over status anxiety. We talk about the satisfying/horrifying experience of culling her past reviews and profiles for the book, the audience-oriented nature of TV storytelling, whether it's important for a well-loved show to nail the finale, and the dual influences of The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer on her work as a critic. We also get into her Peak TV moment, how technology has changed TV over the decades, the only time she predicted the upcoming season's TV hits (Lost and Desperate Housewives), her theory that most workplace shows are actually about TV writing rooms, the difference between weekly and binge-released shows, the perils of writing profiles of the people she's reviewed, and the challenge of being a funny writer who wants to make serious points. We also get into the question of how (whether?) to separate the artist from the art in the #metoo era, and how she deals with the fact that much of her sense of humor came from watching and reading Woody Allen throughout her youth. On the lighter side, she tells us her favorite songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and I reveal the '90s show that I binged on 200+ episodes of last year! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal