{"id":13706,"date":"2020-07-30T10:57:11","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T14:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=13706"},"modified":"2020-07-30T16:50:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T20:50:12","slug":"episode-387-benjamin-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-387-benjamin-taylor","title":{"rendered":"Episode 387 – Benjamin Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 387:
\nBenjamin Taylor<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_387_-_Benjamin_Taylor.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 had a reverent feeling about the writers of that generation. They were little children in the Great Depression, and they saw fear in their parents’ eyes, and it made workhorses of them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Author, editor & memoirist Benjamin Taylor<\/a> joins the show to talk about his wonderful new memoir, Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth<\/a> (Penguin). We get into how his relationship with Roth evolved over 20 years, how it affected his own writing, and his notion that everything that happened is still happening. We talk about the nature of friendship and how it may differ from literary friendship, Benjamin’s fixation on older friends, why The Human Stain<\/a> is his favorite of Roth’s novels, the notion of “literary lions” like Roth, Bellow, Oates, Updike, and Ozick, and why this era seems bereft of them. He also fills us in on how long walks with Vivian Gornick have helped him handle Pandemic World, why fiction isn’t the only worthwhile game in town, what it means to be an American and a heartbroken patriot, and plenty more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read Here We Are<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“I think that American writers in general are heartbroken patriots, who see more of the disparities than ordinary citizens. Think of Hawthorne, think of Whitman. This is what makes us an essentially Romantic civilization. We believe that the ideal is what is most real.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n