Virtual Memories Show 236: Mimi Pond returns!
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“I felt more of a sense of empty nest when I finished this book than I did when my children left home.”
Cartoonist and humorist Mimi Pond makes her third appearance on the show, this time to celebrate publication of The Customer is Always Wrong
“I liked Archie comics because it was a look to an adolescence I hoped I would have. It turned out to be a crushing disappointment. There was no Pop’s Soda Shop! I didn’t get to date a guy with hashmarks on the side of his head. Most importantly, there was no Jughead!”
“The dark, ugly secret of comics is that just about everyone successful has a partner behind them, supporting them in some way.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, humorist and writer. Her graphic memoir, The Customer is Always Wrong
Pond has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen Magazine, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, and many other publications too numerous to mention, along with five humor books. She has also written for television: her credits include the first full-length episode of the Simpsons in 1989, and episodes for the television shows “Designing Women” and “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Mimi’s friend Ann’s east Village apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones
, and his ambivalence over the final product. We get into the negative review that affirmed all of his self-doubts and pushed him toward his goal of becoming transparent, the benefits of consolatory drivel, dreaming of the next day’s note and making writing a source of pleasure, his mixed-race heritage (his dad’s Japanese, his mom’s caucasian-American) and his childhood in the 60s, his 30 years at Princeton, his joy at living in the same world as Torres and Ronaldo, and why you have to feel homesick before you feel home. Oh, and there’s a heartbreaking story of how he came out to his parents, plus I do a lot more talking than usual. This is one of those beautiful, soul-diving conversations, so 
, the upsides and downsides of his major careers, the gestalt of artist-artwork-audience, his curious mixture of shyness and arrogance, our respective imposter syndromes, teaching music for films, moving beyond the keyboard as a computer interface, having students who don’t know about his music career, looking back at his life and starting to figure out the big picture, and meeting the one rock band that doesn’t find Spinal Tap funny. (Jump to 7:00 to skip my intro.) 
(Norton). We get into Bellow’s legacy, his fall from academic favor, his transmutations of life into art, David’s humorously accidental introduction to his work, what Jewishness meant to Bellow, whether Philip Roth was right when he told Bruce Jay Friedman, “Saul Bellow am de daddy of us all,” and more! 
, what contemporary books look like they’ll last, and why he eventually came around on Faulkner. 
feeding into a 
digital recorder. Intro was recorded on the same setup. Photo of Mr. Mikics by me.
(Graywolf Press)! We discuss the perils of translation, German sense of humor (the theme of FNL ’16 is “Seriously Funny”), becoming a Person of Indian Origin, the peculiarities of Bavarian pride, and transcending the limits of empathy in prose. 
. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Mr. Kloebler by Valerie Schmidt.
, the weight of age, the intifada of the young, and the epigraphs of his life. You should 
, 
, 
, and 
. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the recipient of many honorary awards and honorary degrees, including the Academy’s Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the Catalonia International Prize, and the Alfonso Reyes International Prize of Mexico. He lives in New Haven, CT. His new book is 
(Harper), making illustrated journalism from Syria, Guantanamo and Abu Dhabi, translating Nizar Qabbani, growing into her parents’ legacy of art, Marxism and argumentation, finding her soul in the 
(Knopf)! We talk about his history (and future) in publishing, how he wound up a publisher-hybrid of Roger Straus and James Laughlin, how he learned to shut off his editor-self in order to get in touch with writer-self, why he took the challenge of writing a character’s world-changing poetry, and more. 
, 
and 
, as well as translations of the Italian poets Eugenio Montale and Giacomo Leopardi. He has served as a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, and as executive editor and later president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In 2008 he received the Maxwell E. Perkins Award, which recognizes an editor, publisher, or agent who “has discovered, nurtured and championed writers of fiction in the U.S.” A former Guggenheim Fellow and poetry editor of the Paris Review, he also writes for the New York Review of Books and other publications. He lives in New York City. His new novel is 
(New York Review Books), which profiles Lionel Triling, Dwight Macdonald, Alfred Kazin, William Maxwell, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, WH Auden, Frank O’Hara. We discuss the role of individuals in mass culture, the intellectual’s temptation to be a leader, the outdated figure of the Beloved Professor, Orwell’s misinterpretation of Auden, the writer he was terrified to meet, the failures of identity politics, the purpose of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum, his lack of nostalgia for the era of public intellectuals, the way certain books need a year off from teaching in order to recharge, and more. 
is a study in self-pity, and more! Go listen!
(1999) is a sequel to his 
(1981). His book, 
, was published by Pantheon in 2006. His new book is 
. He has prepared editions of novels by Hardy, Bennett, Meredith, Wells, and Trollope, the first five volumes of a complete edition of Auden, and selections of Auden’s poems and prose. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, TLS, the New York Times Book Review, and many other journals and collections, and he wrote an introduction for a new edition of Gravity’s Rainbow. He has also written about computers, music, and the visual arts. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first Isabel Dalhousie Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
