Virtual Memories Show #168:
Harry Katz
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“What connected Levine and Herblock was the fire in the belly, the outrage against people try to impose their power over the powerless, who try to disenfranchise people, who try to manipulate the laws for personal gain or prestige.”
Harry L. Katz, former head curator of prints and photographs for the Library of Congress, joins the show to talk about his new project on David Levine, his love for Herblock, how his work on the Civil War and baseball differs from Ken Burns’ work on same, what it was like to assemble the LoC’s archive of 9/11 photography and pictures, the process of learning how to see images critically, the tragic story of Arthur Szyk, and more! Give it a listen!
“Baseball was a way for people to avoid talking about religion.”
We also talk about growing up Jewish in New England, why the 1840s and 1850s are (currently) his favorite era in American history, the Boston Atheneum’s post-Civil War project to collect Confederate material, the terrifying experience of seeing Feiffer’s “Munro” cartoon as a little kid, and why the famous and powerful enjoyed being caricatured! Go listen!
“People always see what they expect to see. I first look at face value, then I draw back to start fresh. What is it? What does it portray? What is it made of? If you do that, you’ve got an understanding that’s far richer.”
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About our Guest
Author and curator Harry L. Katz was born in Lexington, MA and educated at Middlebury College and Tufts University, where he earned a M.A. in Art History. Between 1983 and 1991, he served as Assistant Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Boston Athenaeum. Between 1991 and 2004, Harry served as Head Curator within the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress (1991-2004). A specialist in American and European works on paper, he curated two dozen exhibitions at the Library of Congress and led the Library’s unparalleled initiative to collect pictorial works representing the events and aftermath of 9/11. Now an independent curator, he is the author of numerous books examining American art and culture including: Mark Twain’s America: A Celebration in Words and Images
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. “Yellow scarf” photos of Mr. Knight by me, no credit for the photo of him with a marker.. 
(University of Chicago Press). We talk about his history with Westlake’s crime novels, why Parker is Westlake’s greatest achievement, why the author wrote under so many pseudonyms, what it was like to be a working writer and how that concept may not exist nowadays, and what Westlake project he’d love to bring into print.
, as a standalone book and developing the skill and courage to tackle longer stories, his disdain for “the culture of like”, overcoming the shame and stigma of his OCD, the process of discovering an audience for his work, the pitfalls of autobiographical comics, discovering the power of negative space, turning his life into a narrative, how comics enabled him to communicate with people, and, most importantly, being an NFL bigamist. 
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). He is a contributor to Reason magazine, which led to the collection 
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anthology, and who his favorite New York Met is. (I was surprised by his answer to that last one.)
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,, 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