COVID Check-In with Ken Krimstein

Virtual Memories Show
COVID Check-In: Ken Krimstein

Illustrator and cartoonist Ken Krimstein checks in from Chicago. We talk about how the process of finishing his next book helped him muscle through the early stages of social distancing and isolation, and how the content of the book — adaptations of anonymous autobiographies of Jewish teens in pre-war Lithuania — helped him with perspective on the trials people have gone through in the past. We also get into some utopian thinking, going on a Charles Portis binge, his amazement at Frank Santoro‘s graphic memoir Pittsburgh, how he’ll never escape Hannah Arendt, years after finishing his graphic biography of her, and more. Give it a listen! And go read The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt!

You can listen to all these COVID Check-In episodes at The COVID-19 Sessions.

Listen to the conversation! Then check out the archives for more conversations from The Before Times.

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About our Guest

Ken Krimstein‘s cartoons have been published in the New Yorker, Barron’s, The Harvard Business Review, Prospect Magazine, Punch, The National Lampoon, the Wall Street Journal, Narrative Magazine, and three of S. Gross’s cartoon anthologies His humor writing has been in The New York Observer’s “New Yorker’s Diary” and humor websites, including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Yankee Pot Roast, and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. His series of graphic reporting appeared in The Chicago Tribune‘s “Printer’s Row” literary magazine. A book of his Jewish-themed cartoons, Kvetch As Kvetch Can, has been published by Random House/Clarkson Potter. In addition to teaching at De Paul University and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he is also an advertising creative director. His most recent book is The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth (Bloomsbury). Follow Ken on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Credits: The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Ken by Ruby Krimstein. It’s on my instagram.

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