Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 22 –
Pete Bagge: The Least Insane of Cartoonists
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“I was asking not to be taken seriously, but I was also getting annoyed that I wasn’t being taken seriously.”
We also talk about how he never got a word of approval from his dad or his editor, how his libertarian politics got him ostracized after the 2008 election (and how some people seem to be coming around on that), why he doesn’t draw elbows, and what it felt like to be considered the “least insane of cartoonists” by R. Crumb.
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About our Guest
Peter Bagge‘s newest book is Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story
Credits: This episode’s music is Hateful Notebook by the Descendents. The conversation was recorded at the Bethesda North Marriott during SPX 2013 on a pair of Blue enCORE 200
Photo of Drew Friedman and Jerry Lewis courtesy of Jay Ruttenberg 
, published by Fantagraphics in 2010. His collection of portraits, 
, was published by Blast books in 2011. He has published three collections of paintings of Old Jewish Comedians (
, 
and 
), but none of Old Episcopal Comedians. He also raises champion beagles with his wife, K. Bidus. You can find his full bio and buy his art at 
and 
), the author who started him on his path, his balance between writing fiction and essays, how readers read and misread his work, his methods for fusing the personal and the critical, why students should read some of his essays before taking his classes, whether he considered going Hollywood, why and how he assembled 
anthology, and who his favorite New York Met is. (I was surprised by his answer to that last one.)
, 
, 
, 
, and 
,, as well as several novels and novellas, and three poetry collections, and has edited several anthologies, including 
. His essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, several Pushcart Prize annuals, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, Film Comment, Threepenny Review, Double Take, New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Preservation, Cite, 7 Days, Metropolis, Conde Nast Traveler, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He is the director of the nonfiction graduate program at Columbia University, where he also teaches writing. His two most recent books are the personal essay collection 
. The book includes more than 100 of his amazing photos, including 32 pages in color (so you can see 
, 
, 
, and 
. He is also a composer and jazz clarinetist, and he has nine CDs out under his own name, including 
, named one of the top ten CDs by Jazziz Magazine in 1995. He lives in the Hudson Valley, New York.
in their used section.
– Teju Cole – $7 – Just ‘cuz. If I don’t dig it, I can give it to a book-reading pal.
– Jaime Hernandez – $25 – Because one of my book-reading pals still has my copy of this enormous collection of Love & Rockets comics, and I’m afraid I’ll never get it back.
– Richard Powers – $5.99 – Suggested by upcoming podcast-guest David Rothenberg, partly in hopes of making Richard Powers another upcoming podcast-guest.
– Richard Powers – $5.99 – Ditto.
– Joseph Heller – $4.99 – Recommended by past podcast-guest 
– Nicholson Baker – $2.99 – Ditto, from the part when we talked about shitty novels coming out of the Bush era. He defended this one, so I figure I’ll give it a shot.
– Ada Louise Huxtable – $3.99 – Suggested by upcoming podcast-guest Phillip Lopate (in a list in the back of his collection 
– Charles Lamb – $2.99 – Another suggestion from Mr. Lopate.
(2006); 
(2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; 
(2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; and 
(2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy Award. Check out her 
or wait for 
cycle, 
, and more.)
, 
, 
, and 
. You can find out more about the 
, a collection of his zombie fiction, and 
, a collection of his science fiction stories, were both published in 2010. He has been a Stoker Award finalist five times, in the categories of both Short Story and Long Fiction. He is the editor of 
and 
, the short story collection, 
, about owning his niche (once described as “smart-but-self-destructive-white-American-middle-class-male-in-crisis”), teaching fiction and non-fiction writing, why he left the east coast for Montana, how he feels about the end of Newsweek, what it was like to make his start as a writer in his 30s.