Virtual Memories Show 673:
Andrew Durbin
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“I think we live in an era that is so deprived of authenticity, where people can’t live the lives Peter and Paul did, and so many young people are desperate to do that: to live in a cheap neighborhood and make art.”
With THE WONDERFUL WORLD THAT ALMOST WAS: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek (FSG), Andrew Durbin brings us a masterful biography of a pair of artists, their art, gay life pre- and post-Stonewall, and more. We talk about his first exposure to each of their art, why he restricted the biography to the years Paul and Peter were together/around each other (1956-1975), how queer lives are often oriented around death and why he wanted to affirm life with this book, when a biographer can let his subjects go, and why he prefers Thek over Hujar. We get into the ephemerality of much of Thek’s art installations, Hujar’s dissatisfaction with commercial photography and the struggles with getting photos taken seriously as art, the triangle they formed with Andrew’s hero, Susan Sontag, Thek’s belief that marrying the right woman (Sontag, at one point) would have “fixed” him, his regret at not getting to interview Joseph Raffael for the book, and how meeting Ann Wilson changed the course of the book. We also discuss how Andrew became an art-writer/-editor by accident, how NYC has changed since he left 6 years ago, why young people are enthusiastic about his Thek and Hujar, why he needs to decompress from writing about history, how art criticism feeds his fiction and poetry, and more. Give it a listen! And go read The Wonderful World That Almost Was!
“You can’t bring people back from the dead, but you can build a bridge.”
“My entire education in contemporary art happened because every time someone would ask me to write something, I would say yes and have to immediately have to learn all about it.”
“I live with a Polaroid of Susan Sontag next to my bed. . . . I really enjoyed writing Paul Thek’s crush on Susan.”
“All art writing is about trying to figure out why an arbitrary thing is in the room at any given moment. And that’s what fiction is, and that’s what poetry is, too.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Andrew Durbin is the editor in chief of frieze magazine. He is the author of the novels MacArthur Park, which was a finalist for the Believer Book Award, and Skyland, and served as the editor for Kevin Killian’s posthumous work Fascination. His writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Paris Review online, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He lives in London. His new book is The Wonderful World That Almost Was.
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Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location 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. Nice photo of Andrew by Suzannah Pettigrew; selfie in subway by me; photos of Paul Thek (contact sheet) and in studio by Peter Hujar. Some of it’s on my instagram.