{"id":17485,"date":"2025-04-22T21:19:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T01:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=17485"},"modified":"2025-04-22T21:19:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T01:19:21","slug":"episode-635-ari-richter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-635-ari-richter","title":{"rendered":"Episode 635 – Ari Richter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 635:
\nAri Richter<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_635_-_Ari_Richter.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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

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

“If I’m not obsessed with this history, then this history goes away.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Artist, professor and now like-it-or-not cartoonist Ari Richter<\/a> joins the show to talk about his fantastic book, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance<\/a><\/strong> (Fantagraphics). We talk about how he he began this project in the wake of the Tree of Life massacre in 2018, how it helped him exorcise the demons of his imagination after a lifetime of hearing his family’s stories about the Holocaust, and how the book centered around intergenerational trauma and collaboration. We get into how he incorporated his grandfathers’ holocaust memoirs into the book, why he found different styles for each section of the book, what he had to learn about comics storytelling after a career in fine arts, the revelation of reading Miriam Katin<\/a>‘s memoirs and why he avoided rereading MAUS<\/a> during the 5 years he worked on this book. We also discuss how drawing comics has changed his brain, why he was stunned by the commercialism of Auschwitz, why he’s glad he got a German passport, why comics folks seem friendlier than fine arts people, the insanity of composing his comics pages in Photoshop (and what happens when he forgets to label his layers<\/em>), and a lot more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“I never in my life had a project with such a long time horizon. It was disorienting, like I ceased to exist in the world creatively.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n