{"id":17415,"date":"2025-03-11T19:19:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T23:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=17415"},"modified":"2025-03-11T19:19:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T23:19:47","slug":"episode-629-elon-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-629-elon-green","title":{"rendered":"Episode 629 – Elon Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 629:
\nElon Green<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_629_-_Elon_Green.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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

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“The Wikipedia entry was so interesting that I assumed there were already two or three books written about the case, and I was frankly shocked that nobody had gone back in the intervening 40 years to revisit it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With THE MAN NOBODY KILLED: Life, Death, and Art In Michael Stewart’s New York<\/a> (Celadon Books), author Elon Green<\/a> brings us an investigation into a terrible episode of police brutality and its aftermath in mid-’80s NYC. We talk about what drew him to the story of Michael Stewart<\/a>, a 25-year-old black artist-model-DJ who died at the hands of transit police in 1983, his amazement that no one else had written this book, and how his early assumptions about a coverup gave way to a different coverup. We get into how he so wonderfully evokes the gritty NYC of that era, spreading out a canvas that takes in the arts scene \u2014 think Haring, Basquiat, Madonna \u2014 and the awful crimes and police behavior \u2014 think Bumpurs, Goetz \u2014 of that era. We discuss the art of interviewing people 40+ years after an event without reopening old wounds, the judge on the case who talked with him for 3 hours and shared how his conclusions on the verdict changed, what he sees in Stewart’s art, how he tries to build the entire environment of the world he’s writing about in his books, why he considers himself a history writer (& despises the “true crime” label & genre), why being a good journalist means having a sense of decency, bringing his first book<\/a> to life as an HBO series<\/a>, and more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read THE MAN NOBODY KILLED<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“When I began the story, I assumed the idea of a coverup in the chief medical examiner’s office was true. . . . That didn’t turn out to be real. Everything he did was explicable, with reasoning to it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n