{"id":11778,"date":"2018-09-23T21:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T01:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=11778"},"modified":"2018-09-23T21:00:50","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T01:00:50","slug":"episode-288-ken-krimstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-288-ken-krimstein","title":{"rendered":"Episode 288 – Ken Krimstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 288:
\nKen Krimstein<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Episode_288_-_Ken_Krimstein.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“I think philosophers are all frustrated cartoonists and cartoonists are all frustrated philosophers.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With his new graphic biography The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth<\/a>\"\" (Bloomsbury), Ken Krimstein<\/a> combines his interests in comics, history and philosophy into a dream project. We talk about how he made the shift from “average NPR listener” to deep scholar of Hannah Arendt, teaching himself phenomenology in mid-life to balance story with philosophy, trying to understand the relationship between Arendt and Heidegger (and trying to understand Heidegger’s philosophy and whether it fed into his Nazism), seeing through Arendt’s eyes and taking solace from her philosophy, and how he got laughed at by other cartoonists when he told them he thought he could draw this 240-page book in 6-8 weeks. We also get into Ken’s history in comics and advertising, the alchemy of the New Yorker<\/em> cartoon, how he learned about culture via Mad Magazine<\/em>, his failed attempt to be Saul Bellow, the lesson that problem-finding is more important than problem-solving, the Chicago comics scene and the Evanston arts-mafia, what he misses about New York, and Saul Steinberg’s central role in art and comics for the 20th century and beyond. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go buy The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt<\/a>\"\"!<\/p>\n

“When Walter Benjamin collects all the stuff for The Arcades Project, he’s just like all the collectors of old comic books. We look at the detritus, the scraps, and say, ‘This is what was really going on.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n