{"id":16428,"date":"2023-11-14T15:41:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T20:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=16428"},"modified":"2023-11-14T15:41:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T20:41:17","slug":"episode-563-phillip-lopate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-563-phillip-lopate","title":{"rendered":"Episode 563 – Phillip Lopate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 563:
\nPhillip Lopate<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Episode_563_-_Phillip_Lopate.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 snobbish contempt for blogs, but just because I had a contempt for it, I thought perversely, ‘Maybe I can appropriate it and push it in a different direction.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With his new collection, A YEAR AND A DAY: AN EXPERIMENT IN ESSAYS<\/a> (NYRB), master essayist Phillip Lopate<\/a> explores the world & himself through the mode of a weekly blog. We get into how he adapted to a short, time-constrained essay form for The American Scholar<\/em><\/a>, how he avoided The Columnist’s Curse (limitless curiosity helps!), whether an essayist can truly write about anything, and how he has and hasn’t changed since the 2016-17 period in which he wrote these pieces. We talk about Phillip’s integration of the private and public self in his writing, how his wife & daughter felt about being included in this book, the question of whether he’s fulfilled as a writer, why he hides his journal, and how editing the three Great American Essay<\/a> collections allowed him to leave something canonical behind for students & readers. We also discuss how it feels when readers thinking they know him from his essays, how his books and essays add up to a fragmentary, lifelong memoir (and why he’ll likely never write an actual memoir or autobiography), why his multiple myeloma diagnosis was more of a psychological hit than a physical one, how he found himself working on a biography of Washington Irving, the benefits of a fragmentary unitary self, his thoughts on present-day personal essay tropes, the career validation of being inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Letters<\/a>, and a LOT more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read A Year And A Day<\/a>!<\/p>\n

(And go listen to our 2013<\/a>, 2017<\/a>, and 2020<\/a> conversations!)<\/em><\/p>\n

“Conversational doesn’t mean the writing can be sloppy; it means there’s a push-pull of address, working with an audience.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n