Episode 614 - Caitlin McGurk
The Virtual Memories Show
Comics librarian and curator returns to the show to celebrate her amazing new book, (Fantagraphics). We talk about Caitlin's shock at her 2012 discovery of Barbara Shermund's incredible gag-comics and illustrations in the archive of the , how her interest in Barbara evolved from blog posts to a museum exhibit to a book, the challenge of writing about someone who did no interviews or press and had no close relatives, and how easily women get erased from history. We get into the gestalt of Barbara's fantastic linework and washes and her wry sense of humor, why Caitlin wound up writing an...
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Episode 613 - Frances Jetter
The Virtual Memories Show
Artist joins the show to talk about her amazing new book, (Fantagraphics Underground). We talk about how the book both expanded and narrowed in scope during its 12-year process, how her grandfather's story bleeds out into American, Jewish and labor history, and how she integrated her trademark linocut prints with other media to create an unforgettable graphic narrative. We get into how the editorial illustration field changed over her career and why she moved toward artist's books and narrative art, why "illustrator" isn't a dirty word & why having her work out in the world is important,...
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Episode 612 - Roland Allen
The Virtual Memories Show
With (Biblioasis), explores how the proliferation of paper & binding changed culture, business, and maybe the nature of human consciousness. We talk about how keeping a diary got him obsessed-ish with notebooks, how he found a narrative and protagonists as he delved into the history of notebooks, and what it means to see the notebook as a piece of technology/hardware. We get into their influence on art and the Renaissance (and the theory that sketchbooks allowed artists to move toward realism), how diaries created a new, private persona distinct from the public self, how he discovered a...
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Episode 611 - Eric Drooker
The Virtual Memories Show
With his new graphic novel, (Dark Horse Books), artist/activist finishes the New York trilogy begun in and . We talk about how Naked City started with the image of a beleaguered squeegee-man and wound up a love letter to New York and especially Tompkins Square Park, the challenges of using word/thought balloons and captions after making wordless comics for so long, and the importance of staying handmade in the digital era. We get into his upbringing in Stuy Town and the Lower East Side/Loisaida, why we were recording in an apartment above the , how New York changed during his life, why he...
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Episode 610 - Simon Critchley
The Virtual Memories Show
With his fantastic new book, (NYRB), philosopher explores mystic traditions from medieval Christianity to the present. We talk about the evolving definition of mysticism, its female-centric history, how it's not just the moment of revelation but the adoption of a form practice (like Julian of Norwich's half-day of revelations and ~40 years of theological examination of them), and whether today's aesthetic experiences can truly be a substitute for the religious transcendence of the past. We get into attention as a form of mysticism and close reading as a form of attention, how we can try to...
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Episode 609 - Doug Brod
The Virtual Memories Show
Hail Satan! It's spooky season, and writer/editor Doug Brod joins the show to celebrate his fantastic new biography, (Hachette). We talk about the line between huckster and believer, the history of the , why Doug didn't want to puncture the mythology LaVey built around his life, and the fun of writing a chapter about Sammy Davis Jr. exploring Satanism. We also get into how LaVey's philosophy of self-deification and aesthetics managed to penetrate American culture, how Doug balanced reporting & cultural history for the book, the people he wishes he could've interviewed, how LaVey reveled...
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Episode 608 - Sven Birkerts
The Virtual Memories Show
Author & essayist returns to the show to celebrate his fantastic new essay collection, (Arrowsmith Press). We talk about the estrangement of the everyday, the problem of other minds, how serendipity tells us something about where we are, authors' photos and self-mythologizing, moving house (& turning 70) during COVID, and the inspiration of Cortazar's . We get into the threat of AI to writing, reading, and thinking, opening up to ambivalence, why people find it so tough to say the word "soul", what he misses about teaching, Kierkegaard & Walker Percy's & being on The...
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Episode 607 - Christopher Brown
The Virtual Memories Show
With his phenomenal new book, (Timber Press), shifts from novels into nature-writing/memoir/nonfiction mode and I am HERE for it. We talk about the eco-cosmos of East Austin, TX, the years of observation that opened him to the hidden pockets of wildness in urban environments, why solitude in nature is a myth, what we have to gain from taking a long walk, Long Time vs. the short presence of Anglos in Texas, how 2020's lockdown turned off global capitalism and showed how society might truly change, and how this book mutated from . We get into Bruce Sterling's unforgettable critique of his...
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Episode 606 - Dmitry Samarov
The Virtual Memories Show
Artist returns to the show to bail me out after a stressful couple of weeks and to explore his fantastic new book, , a survey of his art from the '80s to today. We talk about the process of selecting pieces for the book, what artistic legacy means to him, finding roots of his work in his childhood, and why the notion of 'progression' doesn't apply to his work. We get into the transformative experience of working at and how it's inspiring his new , why he's culling a lot of his library and how he's deciding which books to keep, how his bookshelf paintings started to open him to abstraction,...
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Episode 605 - Stephen B Shepard
The Virtual Memories Show
With (Post Hill Press), author and retired journalist/editor explores the life of JD Salinger and the hidden core of an author who became famous for avoiding fame. We get into why Stephen decided to chase this elusive ghost, why Salinger didn't make it into , whether he believes Salinger's unpublished writing will see the light of day, and why it was important that he approach the book as biography and not literary criticism (although he does bring a reader's voice to the book). We talk about the lack of sex in Salinger's fiction, the uncanniness of Holden Caulfield's voice, Salinger's WWII...
info_outlineBenjamin Dreyer joins the show to talk about the joy of good writing. We talk about his career as managing editor and copy chief of the Random House, his post-retirement perspective on that role, the authors he enjoyed working with, the success of his first book, DREYER'S ENGLISH: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (Random House), and his plans for the followup, DREYER'S FICTION (!). We get into why he's leaving NYC and looking forward to Santa Monica (and talk about the books that he can leave behind and those he can't), the way that writing a Substack newsletter has made him a better writer, how the copy-editor's role is to enhance the writer's work, not to reshape it, whether his online persona changed after retirement, his love of digressive footnotes, how he feels about "weird" catching on this election season, whether the success of Dreyer's English surprised him, the moment he KNEW it was a hit, and what his authors had to teach him about the process of writing his first book. We also discuss the tension within the pronoun section of DE (c.2019), how he hopes to revise it, and why the mind needs to catch up with the soul sometimes. All this & a lot more, so go listen! Follow Benjamin on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram, and subscribe to his Substack • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter