Episode 114 – Roller Coaster
Episode 113 – Palimpsest
Virtual Memories Show:
Michael Meyer – Palimpsest
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“When you look at the history of northeast China, it’s all successive regimes that have tried to import their version of civilization into this area, and they’ve all failed.”
When he was a kid in Minnesota, Michael Meyer papered his walls with National Geographic maps. A Peace Corps stint in 1995 began his 20-year odyssey in China, yielding two books, true love, and a unique perspective on the world’s most populous country. We talk about his latest book, In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China
“China isn’t a billion-plus people marching in lockstep. Nor is it some mastermind sitting in some opulent room in Beijing and declaring, ‘Now we will do this!'”
We also get into the time the Beijing police took Michael in so he could teach them American curse-words, why it’s safe to be a writer but not to be a journalist, China’s transition from individual farms to an agribusiness model, why the time to write a book is when the book you want to read doesn’t exist, the differences in storytelling modes between Americans and Chinese, his debts to Bruce Chatwin, Pearl S. Buck, and Ian Frazier, and how tens of thousands of Jews wound up in the town of Harbin.
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About our Guest
Michael Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
Credits: This episode’s music is Life in a Northern Town by Dream Academy. The conversation was recorded at the Bloomsbury offices on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Episode 112 – Remainder
Episode 111 – Time, Memory, Friendship, Poetry, Art
Episode 110 – Thru’ These Architects’ Eyes
Virtual Memories Show:
Witold Rybczynski –
Thru’ These Architect’s Eyes
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“An architect doesn’t build something just because he wants to build it. But as a writer, you can say, ‘I have an idea for a book.'”
Witold Rybczynski joins the show to talk about architecture! The renowned writer, scholar, and former architect discusses his newest book, How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
“There was an enormous excitement about concrete in the early 20th century.”
We also talk about the joys of architecture school, why he got out of the practice, the farthest he’s ever traveled to see a building, how he got started as a writer, his favorite period for American architecture, and how architectural criticism differs from that of other forms (and why it’s a pointless exercise)!
“[The impact of digital technology on teaching and practicing architecture] is like reinventing the English language. You know what a disaster Esperanto was.”
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About our Guest
Witold Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh, of Polish parentage, raised in London, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where he also taught for twenty years. He is Emeritus Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Rybczynski has designed and built houses as a registered architect, as well as doing practical experiments in low-cost housing, which took him to Mexico, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, and China. He has written for the Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, and has been architecture critic for Saturday Night, Wigwag, and Slate. From 2004 to 2012 he served on the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts. His most recent book is How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
He lives with his wife Shirley Hallam in an old stone house, the Icehouse, in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia. He says, “I don’t think of myself as someone with hobbies — I garden under pressure — but the artifacts I’ve owned for longest are well-used hand-tools. I don’t collect anything, but I have a lot of books.” He is on Twitter at @witoldr.
Credits: This episode’s music is I’m Goin’ Home by The Rolling Stones (because Witold wrote the book, Home
. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Mr. Rybczynski by me.
Episode 109 – The Confidence Man
Virtual Memories Show:
Walter Kirn – The Confidence Man
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“He could not imagine what went on in other people’s hearts and minds any more than you and I could imagine what it’s like to live on Jupiter.”
Author and journalist Walter Kirn joins the show to discuss his latest book, Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
“One thing I learned is that I might never have found out about Clark’s lies if he hadn’t made a mistake.”
We also talk about the three things that are most often smuggled into California prisons, what (if anything) can be done to pre-empt sociopaths, the experience of getting trolled by a convicted murderer, the advice he gleaned from Joan Didion before starting up his Great American Novel, what he thinks of New York under DeBlasio, what brought him to Montana and what keeps him there, and where the name “Virtual Memories” comes from!
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About our Guest
Walter Kirn is the author of eight books and an e-book. His most recent is Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
Credits: This episode’s music is The Secret Silken World by David Baerwald. The conversation was recorded at Mr. Kirn’s apartment on a Zoom H2n
Episode 108 – From Asterix to Zweig
Virtual Memories Show:
Anthea Bell – From Asterix to Zweig
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“There were a lot of books in the school library, and they weren’t in English, and I was mad keen to get at them.”
Renowned literary translator Anthea Bell joins the show to talk about getting her start in foreign languages, the schisms in the world of literary translation, the most challenging authors she’s worked on, the one language she’d love to learn, translating everything from Asterix to Zweig, and more! Give it a listen!
“Heinrich Heine goes into English with almost suspicious ease, but Goethe is very, very difficult.”
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We also talk about where she thinks WG Sebald’s fiction would have gone had he not died so early, why Asterix has never gotten over in America, the one word that’s the bane of her existence for U.S./UK split editions, her worries for the future of translation, her family’s history during the War, and her theory for why Asterix’s druid-pal should keep the name “Getafix”!
“If we had to have the Romantic period — and I do say we did, although I like the Enlightenment a lot better — I say the Germans did it better than anyone.”
We talk about a ton of books in this episode, so here’s a handy guide!
- Le Capitaine Fracasse
- The Little Water Sprite
- The Blindness of the Heart
- The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
- Austerlitz
- On the Natural History of Destruction
- Apple Acre
- The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
- Death in Venice
- West
- In Times of Fading Light
- Happy are the Happy
- The World of Yesterday
- The Post-Office Girl
- Chess Story
- War and Peace
- The Brothers Karamazov
- How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
- Metropole
- How to be both
- Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
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About our Guest
Anthea Bell is a freelance translator from German and French. Her translations include works of non-fiction; modern literary and popular fiction; books for young people including the Asterix the Gaul strip cartoon series; and classics by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Freud, Kafka and Stefan Zweig. She has won several translation awards.
Credits: This episode’s music is Where Are We Now? by David Bowie. The conversation was recorded at Ms. Bell’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Episode 107 – Silence in Translation
Virtual Memories Show:
Yasmina Reza – Silence in Translation
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“When you write a novel with a classical structure, you’re writing horizontally. [In Happy Are The Happy, I can] speak as a character, and the character is also somewhere in the spirit of another. It allows you to see the characters in many ways that naturalism would not allow.”
Playwright and author Yasmina Reza joins the show to talk about her new book, Happy are the Happy
“A play is good if it can be seen in different cultures, in different languages, different actors. That’s the strength of a play. Just to be played in Paris would have been for me a kind of failure.”
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About our Guest
Yasmina Reza is a playwright and novelist whose works have been translated into more than 30 languages and include Art and God of Carnage, both winners of the Tony Award for Best Play. The film adaptation of the latter, Carnage, was directed by Roman Polanski in 2011. She has written six books, including Dawn Dusk or Night: A Year with Nicolas Sarkozy
Credits: This episode’s music is The Paris Match by Style Council. The conversation was recorded on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Episode 106 – The Magic Circle
Virtual Memories Show:
Matt Farber – The Magic Circle
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“You don’t want a generation of children to be content consumers. They need to be the next generation of content creators.”
Educator (and high school pal) Matthew Farber joins the show to talk about his new book, Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning
“A project isn’t good if it’s each student doing his own thing and glue-sticking it to poster-board.”
We went out for pizza after. There are perks to recording a podcast at Chez Virtual Memories!
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About our Guest
Matthew Farber teaches social studies at Valleyview Middle School, in Denville, NJ, and is the author of Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning
Credits: This episode’s music is The Glass Bead Game by Thievery Corporation. The conversation was recorded on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast 105 – Sincere Observation
Virtual Memories Show:
Mimi Gross – Sincere Observation
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“My weakness is that I don’t have a set of parameters. My work always looks like a group show. But the connections are real. Anyone who looks can see the connections.”
Artist Mimi Gross joins the show to talk about her art, her life, and the joys of collaboration. Mimi’s been part of the New York art scene for more than half a century, and her paintings, sculptures, sets and designs have been seen around the world. We talk about how she stood out as Mimi Gross when she was “daughter of sculptor/artist Chaim Gross” and “wife of artist Red Grooms”. We also get into the difficulties of having a family while being a working artist, making art in response to 9/11, designing sets and costumes for dance and how that fed back into her other art-forms, the multi-year process of building Ruckus Manhattan, the problems and perks of not fitting into a particular tradition, the experience of building the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, and the loose definition of success. I also ask my half-assed “Jeff Koons: Fraud or Prank?” question again, but I really get shown up for my lack of knowledge of contemporary art. Give it a listen!
“It wasn’t until I was well over 40 that I realized that not everyone has imagination.”
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About our Guest
Mimi Gross is a painter, set-and-costume designer for dance, and maker of interior and exterior installations. She has had several international exhibitions, including work at the Salander O’ Reilly Galleries, and the Ruth Siegel Gallery, New York City, the Inax Gallery, in Ginza, Tokyo, and Galerie Lara Vincey, in Paris. She has also shown work at the Municipal Art Society and at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. Her anatomically-themed artwork is on permanent display, courtesy the New York City Parks Department, at the Robert Venable Park in East New York.
Her work is included in numerous public collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Brooklyn Museum, the Jewish Museum, le Musee des Art Decoratifs in Paris, the Nagoya Museum of Art, the Onasch Collection in Berlin and the Lannon Foundation, as well as the Fukuoko Bank in Japan and New York’s Bellevue Hospital.
Gross has been the recipient of countless awards and grants including from the New York State Council on the Arts, twice from the National Endowment for Visual Arts, the American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters, and a “Bessie” for sets and costumes. She held the McMillan/Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting at the Maryland College of Art in 2010-2011, and has taught at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Penland School of Crafts, Syracuse University, SUNY Purchase, as well as other universities and educational institutions, giving workshops and advising students, as a visiting artist.
From 1960-1976, Gross collaborated with Red Grooms on many large, multidimensional installations, including the fabled Ruckus Manhattan. Since 1979, she has collaborated in a fruitful (and on-going) partnership with the dancer, Douglas Dunn and his company, designing sets and costumes for his performances. She also collaborated with the poet Charles Bernstein. Her on-site drawings of the World Trade Center from 9/11 and after are included in the volume, Some of These Daze, published by Granary Books.
Credits: This episode’s music is Shoulda Been a Painter by Karl Hyde. The conversation was recorded on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones