Episode 244 – Nicholas Delbanco

Virtual Memories Show 244: Nicholas Delbanco

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“It’s a rare day when I’m not at my desk by 6.”

He’s been blackening the blank page for more than 50 years, and now Nicholas Delbanco joins The Virtual Memories Show to talk about writing, teaching, and sleepwalking through life! We get into his new essay collection, Curiouser and Curiouser, the importance of establishing a writing routine or habit, the process of revising a decades-old trilogy in light of his growth as a writer, the art of faking spontaneity on the page, the value of a good MFA program, his refutation of his friends’ belief that language is a finite resource and not a renewable one, his assessment that he’s a minor writer (or, even worse, “a writer’s writer”), and the place the deracinated consider home. Plus: I fall back into the trap of Acquisitive Alchemy! Give it a listen! And go buy Curiouser and Curiouser: Essays!

“Writers probably don’t have more than two or three major topics, and the passage of time is one of mine.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

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About our Guest

Nicholas Delbanco is the recently retired Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. He has published thirty books of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novels are The Years, and The Count of Concord; his most recent works of non-fiction Lastingness: The Art of Old Age and The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts. As editor he has compiled the work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud. He was the long-term Director of the MFA Program as well as the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan, he has served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. His newest book is Curiouser and Curiouser: Essays.

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 at Mr. Delbanco’s apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of Mr. Delbanco by me. It’s on my instagram.