{"id":7328,"date":"2013-09-22T18:23:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T22:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=7328"},"modified":"2013-09-23T18:42:25","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T22:42:25","slug":"podcast-slipping-the-noose-of-the-topical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-slipping-the-noose-of-the-topical","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: Slipping the Noose of the Topical"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Phillip<\/a><\/p>\n

Virtual Memories \u2013 season 3 episode 20 –
\nSlipping the Noose of the Topical<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Season_3_Episode_20_-_Slipping_the_Noose_of_the_Topical.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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

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

“When you start out writing, you think, ‘Maybe I’ll become one of the great writers, like Dostoevsky or Goethe, Tolstoy.’ Then you quickly realize that that’s never going to happen. But I’ve been writing now for close to 50 years, and I’ve never really had writer’s block. I think success has been esteem in this particular world of the essay and nonfiction. When I go to conferences for the Association of Writing Programs, I’m treated like a demigod. But when I’m in the real world, I’m anonymous.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Phillip Lopate<\/a>, the finest personal essayist of our time, joins us to talk about finding his voice, the difference between memoir and essay,\u00a0teaching students to use the self to fetch the world, why blogs remind him of Sei Shonagon’s pillow books, what’s too personal for a personal essay, and more!<\/p>\n

“I had learned from the great essayists — Montaigne and Hazlitt and Lamb — that it wasn’t so much the subject matter as it was the voice and the display of consciousness that was intriguing. If you liked the essayist, you would read anything that they wrote.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We discuss his five-decade-plus-long career (spanning 20 books and collections, including 2013’s Portrait Inside My Head<\/a>\"\" and To Show and to Tell<\/a>\"\"), the author who started him on his path, his balance between writing fiction and essays, how readers read and misread his work, his methods for fusing the personal and the critical, why students should read some of his essays before taking his classes, whether he considered going Hollywood, why and how he assembled The Art of the Personal Essay<\/a>\"\" anthology, and who his favorite New York Met is. (I was surprised by his answer to that last one.)<\/p>\n

“An editor once told me, ‘Phillip, your idea of a perfect assignment is one where you never have to leave the house.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Phillip<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Season_3_Episode_20_-_Slipping_the_Noose_of_the_Topical.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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

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

Enjoy the conversation!<\/a>\u00a0Then check out\u00a0the archives<\/a>\u00a0for more great episodes!<\/p>\n

Related conversations:<\/p>\n