Episode 545 – Eddie Campbell
Episode 499 – Hayley Campbell
Episode 292 – Eddie Campbell
Episode 287 – Audrey Niffenegger
Episode 197 – The Guest List 2016
Virtual Memories Show: The Guest List 2016
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
It’s time for our year-end Virtual Memories Show tradition: The Guest List! I reached out to 2016’s pod-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 2017! More than 30 responded with a dizzying array of books. (I participated, too!) Just in time for you to make some Hanukkah and/or Christmas purchases, The Virtual Memories Show offers up a huge list of books that you’re going to want to read! Give it a listen, and get ready to update your wish lists!
This year’s Guest List episode features selections from more than 30 of our recent guests (and one bonus guest)! 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, 2014 and 2015 editions of The Guest List for more great book ideas!
(painting of Scribners bookstore by Bob Eckstein from his new book, Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guests
The guests who participated in this year’s Guest List are Glen Baxter, Ross Benjamin, Harold Bloom, MK Brown, Nina Bunjevac, Hayley Campbell, David M. Carr, Myke Cole, Liza Donnelly, Bob Eckstein, Glynnis Fawkes, Rachel Hadas, Liz Hand, Glenn Head, Virginia Heffernan, Harry Katz, Ed Koren, David Leopold, Arthur Lubow, Michael Maslin, David Mikics, Ben Model, Christopher Nelson, Jim Ottaviani, Ann Patty, Burton Pike, Frank Sorce, Willard Spiegelman, Leslie Stein, Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins), Andrea Tsurumi, Carol Tyler, Jim Woodring, 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 of the artist. Most of the episode was recorded 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. Myke Cole’s segment was recorded at a friend’s apartment in NYC on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC.
Episode 195 – Thanksgiving 2016
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to eschew the regular interview-based podcast and ask all of my past guests what they’re thankful for. Since it’s a mere couple of weeks from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, responses were all over the spectrum. Give it a listen by MP3 download or iTunes. Here’s everyone who participated (with links to their episodes of the podcast):
- Andrea Tsurumi • starts at 4:15
- Dmitry Samarov • starts at 4:30
- Chris Nelson • starts at 4:50
- Sheila Keenan • starts at 5:10
- Wallis Wilde-Menozzi • starts at 5:20
- Summer Pierre • starts at 6:45
- Glen Baxter • starts at 7:25
- Hayley Campbell • starts at 7:40
- Kathe Koja • starts at 7:50
- Charles Blackstone • starts at 8:00
- Elizabeth Hand • starts at 8:50
- David M. Carr • starts at 9:25
- David Jaher • starts at 9:45
- Zachary D. Martin • starts at 10:00
- Willard Spiegelman • starts at 10:15
- Roz Chast • starts at 10:25
- Mary Fleener • starts at 10:35
- Glynnis Fawkes • starts at 11:00
- Ed Hermance • starts at 11:30
- Josh Alan Friedman • starts at 11:40
- Jonathan C. Hyman • starts at 12:20 (more about Jonathan below)
- Liesl Schillinger • starts at 13:00
- Rachel Hadas • starts at 13:45
- Ron Hogan • starts at 14:10
- Scott Edelman • starts at 14:45
- Tom Spurgeon • starts at 16:55
- me • starts at 18:35
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
A few guests sent along material in addition to their written or recorded responses. Liz Hand sent a link to this video about Lincolnville, ME’s Move It! Project:
Bob Eckstein (who you oughtta follow on Twitter at @bobeckstein) sent two of his cartoons, including the one at the top of this page:
Jonathan C. Hyman’s contribution is the most involved, and requires a little unpacking. In the podcast, he says, “Despite the 2016 presidential election and the myriad social, environmental, and economic issues that have fractured our society, I am thankful that we are, and hopeful we will remain, a vibrant culture where people are free to speak openly and publicly.”
Background information and narrative: Known for his decade-long project which documents the vernacular public art, public speech, and memorial language that emerged across the United States in response to the 9/11 attacks, documentary photographer and past Virtual Memories guest Jonathan C. Hyman photographed the signage, displays, and public dialogue surrounding the 2016 presidential election.
His work on the election — including the seven images he contributed to this Thanksgiving podcast — is not meant to endorse or disparage Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or their supporters. As a photographer with an interest in public expression — visual and speech — and in “things by the side of the road,” Hyman traveled within an approximate 150-mile radius from his home in Sullivan County, NY to areas in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Here, Hyman presents a sampling of the images in this series as they appeared when he came upon them. He photographed each display keeping in mind his interest in handmade objects, the American flag, and the houses, buildings, and neighborhoods people live and work in. The majority of the signs he saw, many handmade, were supportive of Donald Trump. The large majority of the handmade signs he encountered were displayed by Trump supporters on their own property. Realizing that his findings are anecdotal, Hyman says, “I have no doubt others have seen things I have not and that there were signs supporting Hillary Clinton in areas I have both visited and not traveled to. Nonetheless, it was clear to me that where pro-Hillary Clinton signs did exist, they tended to be of the more pre-fabricated, generic lawn sort and generally less likely to be on front lawns.”
Photographs © 2016 Jonathan C. Hyman All rights Reserved
Click to enlarge each picture:
In addition to being featured on the PBS NewsHour, Hyman’s work has been featured in Time Magazine, The New York Times, the Journal of American History, and several well-known European newspapers and magazines in print and online. In the fall of 2008 Hyman toured Europe as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy (as part of a program organized by the American embassy in Vienna and the University of Graz, Austria.), lecturing at universities in Berlin and Tuebingen, Germany, Vienna and Graz Austria, Brno, Czech Republic, and Zagreb, Croatia about his 9/11 related photographs. In addition to lecturing publicly since 2002 at well known academic institutions, from 2008-2016 Hyman was Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture Initiatives at Bryn Mawr College’s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, where he also supervised the Center’s online gallery.
For More Information:
- www.jchymangallery.com
- www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/911-as-art-photographer-captures-vernacular-response-to-attacks/
- www.amazon.com/The-Landscapes-11-Photographers-Journey/dp/0292726643
- exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/hyman/
Jonathan C. Hyman can be reached at arthoops55@gmail.com
Late addition! Glenn Head writes in:
I really apologize for the delay, I just got married (something I’m deeply thankful for!) there’s been a lot on the plate, but then isn’t that true for everyone? Anyway, sorry.
At the moment I’m more hopeful than thankful, but one hope is that the people who voted in Trump actually did it for the reasons that they say (the economy, basically) and that what we saw at the rallies was a more a raucous party and letting off of steam then a sign of future mayhem. I hope that maybe things will calm down. Trump was a pitchman and a loudmouth for professional wrestling. He’s always said crazy shit for effect. Maybe — just maybe — things won’t go to hell. The tone in today’s NYTimes showed a guy who wasn’t hell-bent on being a hell-raiser. Of course being hopeful isn’t easy at a time like this. But maybe — just maybe — we’ll survive all of this.
I’m really thankful to be married. I found a good woman who loves me and I love in return, we shared our vows in front of friends and family at a great ceremony in a Brooklyn hotel and restaurant (the Whythe). It was a great party and I’m grateful for all of it.
I’m thankful as a comic book artist to be doing what I believe is the best work of my career….and I’m 58 years old too, so that feels miraculous! Very much so…
And even though I don’t read comics much these days I’m grateful for the medium itself, specifically underground comics, and even more specifically their greatest progenitor: R. Crumb. By never selling out he paved the way for others to do the same, and to focus on the art itself. He raised the bar for everyone — all cartoonists (who aren’t hacks!) owe him for that — Big Time!
I’m also thankful for the comix project I’m deep into right now: another memoir about childhood. It’s entitled “Chartwell Manor, a memoir in comics”. It’s about a boarding school I attended in Mendham, NJ in the early 1970s and the effect it’s had on my life. It’s shaping up really well and should be done in hopefully another year!
The thing I’m most thankful for is having such wonderful guests who are willing to pitch in to projects like this (and otherwise help keep me sane)!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The episode was recorded primarily at stately Virtual Memories Manor 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. Portions by Summer Pierre, Zachary D. Martin and Scott Edelman were recorded separately and shared by e-mail. All processing and editing was done in Adobe Audition CC. Cartoons by Bob Eckstein, photos by Jonathan C. Hyman.
Episode 188 – Hayley Campbell
Virtual Memories Show #188: Hayley Campbell
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“I love finding people who are obsessed with things. People who devote their lives to things are my obsession.”
Writer and Twitter provocateur Hayley Campbell joins the show for a conversation about her inability to describe her job (don’t call her a “content provider”). We talk about growing up in comics royalty (her dad is the great cartoonist Eddie Campbell), Alan Moore’s magic tricks, nearly losing a comic-shop job because of her lack of a college degree, the celebrity retweet she’s proudest of, and having an accidental career path, no fixed home, and a traumatic brain injury that gooses with her memory (and whether those three things are somehow connected). Also, we get into how she recently embarrassed Jonathan Safran Foer, and more! Give it a listen! And go buy her first book, The Art of Neil Gaiman (Ilex/Harper). And for God’s sake, go follow her on Twitter!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“I think I’m more of a loser in real life than I am on the internet.”
We also get into her obsession with obsessives, becoming the oldest person at her BuzzFeed office in her early 30s, the insanely creepy Moebius comic she read as a kid, the glories of Australian dentistry, digging through old girlie magazines to research her book on Neil Gaiman, and why she loves writing about boxing. We also compare notes on doing interviews with people whose work you love. Now go listen to the show!
“Dad won’t join Twitter because he’s afraid I’ll have more followers than him, and he’ll be ‘Hayley Campbell’s dad.'”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
- Scott McCloud
- Irvine Welsh
- John Clute
- Ron Rosenbaum (2013)
- Ron Rosenbaum (2014)
- David Jaher
- Rupert Thomson (2015)
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Hayley Campbell writes for a bunch of places but then who doesn’t. She’s written a book about Neil Gaiman (The Art of Neil Gaiman, Ilex/HarperCollins) and if her face looks familiar it’s probably because she sold you comics once. Find her stuff on BuzzFeed, New Statesman, VICE, McSweeney’s, the Guardian, The Debrief, The Comics Journal, The Rumpus, Channel 4 News, Front, Planet Notion and Boing Boing.
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at a pal’s apartment in NYC 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 Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. Photos of Ms. Campbell by me.