Virtual Memories Show 579:
Brad Gooch
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“Sonny Mehta told me, ‘People who read biographies really want to know what the silverware was on the table, or what the curtains were like in the parents’ house.’ That was great advice, because it was about getting grounded.”
With RADIANT: The Life and Line of Keith Haring (Harper), Brad Gooch brings us the biography of Keith Haring, an artist who transformed public art & the art world in the 1980s and whose work has become part of global culture in the three decades since his untimely death from AIDS. We get into Brad’s common threads with Haring, the parallels between this book and his biography of Rumi, how fatherhood helped Brad better understand Haring, and his surprise at discovering what a serious artist Haring was. We talk about why Haring’s work makes more sense now than in the ’80s, what he would have made of social media, the fire that drove him to make more than 10,000 pieces of art in his decade-plus career, the relationship of Haring to artists of color (among other race issues), where the Radiant Baby image came from, and what the younger gay population doesn’t know about the AIDS crisis. We also discuss the incredible memorial of Keith and Howard Brookner at a recent Madonna concert, why 60 is a great age to start having kids, how Instagram reminds him of ’80s social life, the parallels between the AIDS crisis and the early months of COVID, what Brad’s learned in the course of writing four biographies, why Barbra Streisand’s memoir reminds him of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (!), and more. Give it a listen! And go read RADIANT: The Life and Line of Keith Haring!
“Keith wasn’t pretending to be a graffiti artist; he was a fan, and he found ways to respect their art while making his own statement.”
“Biography is always informed by a novelistic intent.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer whose previous books include Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller; City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara; Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America; the memoir Smash Cut ; and Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love. He is the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, and lives in New York City.
Follow Brad on Instagram and listen to our 2015 and 2017 conversations, and check out the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Brad’s wrirting lair on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Brad by Jack Pierson. It’s on my instagram.