Episode 539 – Brian Dillon
Episode 441 – Andi Watson
Episode 285 – Glen David Gold
Episode 243 – Martin Rowson
Episode 148 – The Guest List 2015
Virtual Memories Show: The Guest List 2015
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It’s time for our year-end Virtual Memories tradition: The Guest List! I reached out to 2015’s podcast guests and asked them about the favorite book(s) they read in the past year, as well as the books or authors they’re hoping to read in 2016! More than 30 responded with a dizzying array of books. (I participated, too!) So now that you’ve got your Hanukkah and/or Christmas gelt, the Virtual Memories Show offers up a huge list of books that you’re going to want to read! Get ready to update your wish lists!
This year’s Guest List episode features selections from nearly 3 dozen of our recent guests! So go give it a listen, and then visit our special Guest List page where you can find links to the books and the guests who responded.
(Also, check out the 2013 and 2014 editions of The Guest List for more great book ideas!)
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About our Guests
The guests who participated in this year’s Guest List are Derf Backderf, Anthea Bell, John Clute, Michael Dirda, Matt Farber, Jonathan Galassi, Brad Gooch, Langdon Hammer, Liz Hand, Jennifer Hayden, Ron Hogan, Dylan Horrocks, David Jaher, Kathe Koja, Jonathan Kranz, Peter Kuper, Lorenzo Mattotti, JD McClatchy, Scott McCloud, Michael Meyer, Dan Perkins (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow), Summer Pierre, Witold Rybczynski, Dmitry Samarov, Elizabeth Samet, Liesl Schillinger, Posy Simmonds, Levi Stahl, Rupert Thomson, Irvine Welsh, Warren Woodfin, Jim Woodring, Claudia Young, and me, Gil Roth! Check out their episodes at our archives!
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. Most of the episode was recorded at Virtual Memories Manor on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone
Episode 135 – Irvine Welsh / Dmitry Samarov
Virtual Memories Show #135:
Irvine Welsh / Dmitry Samarov
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“What would young, pre-Trainspotting Irvine Welsh think of you now?”
“He’d think I was a total wanker.”
Irvine Welsh has created unforgettable characters in his novels, beginning with the cast of Trainspotting
“I think it’s good for me as a writer not to be hanging out with writers all the time.”
We also talk about his critique of global capitalism, the problems with permanent austerity, American and UK tabloid culture, standing up David Bowie (twice), returning to Ulysses every few years, the ways William S. Burroughs helps rewire his brain, and the great anonymous allure of the first-time novelist.
“Instagram is like Methodone to Twitter’s heroin”
Then Dmitry Samarov rejoins the show to talk about his memoir-in-progress, his paintings, his latest readings, and his decision to jump off the social network treadmill. This episode also includes my justification for being a New York Yankees fan, as well as my problematic relationship with superhero comics. Give it a listen!
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We mention quite a few books in this episode. Here’s they are:
- Trainspotting
- Glue
– Irvine Welsh
- Marabou Stork Nightmares
– Irvine Welsh
- Filth
– Irvine Welsh
- The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
– Irvine Welsh
- The Complete Richard Allen, Vol. 1: Skinhead, Suedehead, Skinhead Escapes
– Richard Allen
- A Clockwork Orange
– Anthony Burgess
- How Late It Was, How Late
– James Kelman
- The Busconductor Hines
– James Kelman
- Jernigan
– David Gates
- Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
– Jill Leovy
- The Letters of Ivor Punch
– Colin Mcintyre
- Ulysses
– James Joyce
- Cities of the Red Night
– William S. Burroughs
- Where To?: A Hack Memoir
– Dmitry Samarov
- Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab
– Dmitry Samarov
- Experience: A Memoir
– Martin Amis
- A Childhood: The Biography of a Place
– Harry Crews
- Ask the Dust
– John Fante
- Fante: A Family’s Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving
– Don Fante
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
– Michael Chabon
- Forest of Fortune
– Jim Ruland
- Streets in Their Own Ink: Poems
– Stuart Dybek
- The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
– Lydia Davis
- Can’t and Won’t: Stories
– Lydia Davis
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
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About our Guests
Irvine Welsh is the author of Trainspotting
Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR, in 1970. He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in first grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn’t stopped doodling since. He graduated with a BFA in painting at printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. Upon graduation he promptly began driving a cab — first in Boston, then after a time, in Chicago. He is the author of two books, Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald. The conversations were recorded in the homes of Irvine Welsh and Dmitry Samarov on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Episode 130 – The Cult of Experience and the Tyranny of Relevance
Virtual Memories Show #130:
Elizabeth Samet –
The Cult of Experience and the Tyranny of Relevance
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“How do you learn things? How do you acquire the patience to admit when you don’t know things? I think those are really important things for an Army officer to know.”
Elizabeth D. Samet has been a professor of English at West Point since 1997. We talk about the tension between education and training at the military academy, the importance of books to soldiers and officers serving overseas, learning West Point’s unique argot, preparing her students to be unprepared, trying (and failing) to convince Robert Fagles that Hector is the moral center of the Iliad, why she doesn’t teach Henry V to plebes, how not to get caught up in the tyranny of relevance, why she balked at learning the fine art of parachuting, and more! Give it a listen!
“The question I’m endlessly fascinated with is, what do we call war and what do we call peace and can we draw these nice distinctions? It seems to me right now that we can’t.”
NOTE: The opinions Elizabeth Samet expresses in this interview are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of West Point, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
We also talk about teaching students who are both future Army officers and 18-year-old kids, how West Point and the student body changed after 9/11, her new anthology (Leadership
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“I have this idea about Plato: no one loves Plato who does not already think himself a guardian.”
We talk about a lot of of books in this episode. Here’s a list of ’em (Note: if I ever go to a Patreon crowdfunding model for the show, this is the first thing that goes subscriber-only):
- Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point
- No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America
- Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers
- An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Vol. One of the Liberation Trilogy
– Rick Atkinson
- The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, Vol. Two of the Liberation Trilogy
– Rick Atkinson
- The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, Vol. Three of the Liberation Trilogy
– Rick Atkinson
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- Bleak House
– Charles Dickens
- Middlemarch
– George Eliot
- Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant / Selected Letters, 1839-1865
– Ulysses S. Grant
- Everything Flows
– Vassily Grossman
- Life and Fate
– Vassily Grossman
- Catch-22
– Joseph Heller
- The Iliad
– Homer (tr. Fagles)
- The Odyssey
– Homer (tr. Fagles)
- Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
– Henry Marsh
- Black Swan Green
– David Mitchell
- The Complete Works
– Montaigne
- Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, Vol. 1
– Plutarch
- Hamlet
– Shakespeare
- King Richard II
– Shakespeare
- War and Peace
– Tolstoy
- Anna Karenina
– Tolstoy
- Hadji Murat
– Tolstoy
- The Aeneid
– Virgil (tr. Fagles)
- Sword of Honor
– Evelyn Waugh
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Elizabeth D. Samet is the author of No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America
Credits: This episode’s music is On, Brave Old Army Team by West Point Marching Band. The conversation was recorded at Prof. Samet’s apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Episode 122 – A Muse Apart
Virtual Memories Show #122:
Jonathan Galassi – A Muse Apart
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“The literary writer still needs someone to have a dialogue with, to help shape their book, understand it and make it as presentable to the world as possible.”
FSG president Jonathan Galassi has been a literary editor and publisher for more than four decades, so how did that experience prepare him for publishing his first novel? Find out in this week’s show, as we talk with Mr. Galassi about Muse
“The most important thing an editor has is taste. And how do you get taste? By reading a lot of books, and coming to understand what makes them good. Having a visceral love or detestation is important.”
We also talk about Muse‘s affectionate satire of the New York publishing world (okay: he calls it a “revenge fantasy” in our conversation), why he enjoys the rough-and-tumble aspects of the biz, the degree to which authors’ expectations have changed over the decades, the degree to which publishing relies on luck, the best training for an editor, our favorite Philip Roth novels, the value of big advances, where he falls on MFA vs. NYC, why the better literary writers should shouldn’t self-publish, and whether it was a taboo for him to venture into fiction writing after spending so many years editing fiction writers. (Photo: Yvonne Albinowski/New York Observer)
“You go into publishing because you love literature, and you end up reading a lot of crap.”
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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Jonathan Galassi is a lifelong veteran of the publishing world and the author of three collections of poetry, Morning Run
Credits: This episode’s music is Caçada by Bebel Gilberto. The conversation was recorded at Mr. Galassi’s office at FSG on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Episode 110 – Thru’ These Architects’ Eyes
Virtual Memories Show:
Witold Rybczynski –
Thru’ These Architect’s Eyes
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“An architect doesn’t build something just because he wants to build it. But as a writer, you can say, ‘I have an idea for a book.'”
Witold Rybczynski joins the show to talk about architecture! The renowned writer, scholar, and former architect discusses his newest book, How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
“There was an enormous excitement about concrete in the early 20th century.”
We also talk about the joys of architecture school, why he got out of the practice, the farthest he’s ever traveled to see a building, how he got started as a writer, his favorite period for American architecture, and how architectural criticism differs from that of other forms (and why it’s a pointless exercise)!
“[The impact of digital technology on teaching and practicing architecture] is like reinventing the English language. You know what a disaster Esperanto was.”
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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Witold Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh, of Polish parentage, raised in London, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where he also taught for twenty years. He is Emeritus Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Rybczynski has designed and built houses as a registered architect, as well as doing practical experiments in low-cost housing, which took him to Mexico, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, and China. He has written for the Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, and has been architecture critic for Saturday Night, Wigwag, and Slate. From 2004 to 2012 he served on the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts. His most recent book is How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit
He lives with his wife Shirley Hallam in an old stone house, the Icehouse, in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia. He says, “I don’t think of myself as someone with hobbies — I garden under pressure — but the artifacts I’ve owned for longest are well-used hand-tools. I don’t collect anything, but I have a lot of books.” He is on Twitter at @witoldr.
Credits: This episode’s music is I’m Goin’ Home by The Rolling Stones (because Witold wrote the book, Home
. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Mr. Rybczynski by me.
Podcast: Bookman’s Holiday
Virtual Memories: Michael Dirda – Bookman’s Holiday
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“I see people walking their dogs and looking down at their phones. When you’re out walking your dog, you should be thinking great thoughts, or reviewing your life’s major blunders, or having some moments alone with yourself.”
It’s a bookman’s life for him! I interrupted Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda from plundering the book-dealer room at Readercon 2014 for a conversation about culling his books, the great age of storytelling, teaching adventure novels, what he dislikes about the tone of today’s book reviewers, his tendency to fall asleep while reading, and the time Neil Gaiman tried to explain Twitter to him. BONUS! I went back and remastered The Correction of Taste, the episode I recorded with Michael from October 2012! Go listen to that one, too!
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“I never should have gone into book reviewing. I don’t have the right qualities for it. I read slow, I write slow: but I do love books and I’m dogged about it. I’d rather be involved with them than anything else.”
We also talk about his two early career goals (riverboat gambler or Captain Blood), what brings him back to Readercon each year, and why he’s never read Portrait of a Lady but fell in love with Lud-in-the-Mist, a fantasy novel in which the protagonists are middle-aged.
“My aim always has been to champion things that have been overlooked or neglected or otherwise not given the attention I think they deserve.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:
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About our Guest
Michael Dirda is a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post, and he received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the author of the memoir, An Open Book
Credits: This episode’s music is A Soldier’s Tale by The Good, The Bad & The Queen (see, because The Good Soldier