Virtual Memories Show 435:
Dorothy Gallagher
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For my first in-person podcast since March 2020 (!), I talked with writer, memoirist & biographer Dorothy Gallagher about her beautiful new collection, Stories I Forgot To Tell You (NYRB). We get into the 2010 death of her husband, literary editor & raconteur Ben Sonnenberg, and how it took her five years before she could begin to write about him, the need to balance elegy and humor in her writing, and the importance of her early days working at Magazine Management (alongside the likes of Mario Puzo & Bruce Jay Friedman). We also discuss whether things are “only things” or evidence of a life, why it’s not good for a biographer to actively dislike her subject, the one biography she’d love to write, her atheist’s notion of an afterlife (less eternal punishment/reward, more eternal cocktail hour), her favorite time & place in NYC, why she misses flea markets, the impact/scars of her Communist upbringing, how she’s handled the pandemic, and why the isolation would have driven her late husband nuts. Give it a listen! And go read Stories I Forgot To Tell You!
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Dorothy Gallagher’s works include two volumes of memoir — How I Came into My Inheritance and Strangers in the House — as well as a biography of the Italian American anarchist Carlo Tresca and, most recently, Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life. She lives in New York. Her new book is Stories I Forgot To Tell You.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone
