Tag: Gary Groth

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Podcast: The Whimsical Barracuda

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 31 –
The Whimsical Barracuda

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“With my brothers, it was like ‘Resistance is futile! You will enjoy horror movies! You will go to comic book conventions! You will learn to love B-movies and worship Tor Johnson and Plan 9 from Outer Space! Shemp Howard must be worshipped!’”

Kipp Friedman is the latest member of a comedic dynasty (so says the subtitle of his new memoir, Barracuda in the Attic). The son of novelist, journalist, playwright and screenwriter Bruce Jay Friedman and brother of cartoonist Drew Friedman and writer/musician Josh Alan Friedman, Kipp has tossed his hat into the ring with a book filled with tales of New York City in the 1960’s and ‘70s, of pop culture education, of living with his divorced dad during his days writing “The Lonely Guy” columns, and more!

“My father was so prolific for so many years as a writer, people would wonder why he never seemed to be working. And yet his stuff kept on being published. I think making it seem effortless rubbed off on his kids. We agonize over everything.”

While in NYC for a series of book readings, Kipp sat down to talk with me about Barracuda in the Attic (Fantagraphics Books), the joys of “growing up Friedman,” hunting for comics and Mad magazines with his brothers, what he misses about New York, what he’ll never forgive the Knicks for, how he ended up with a “real job,” and what it felt like to add a volume to the bookshelf of works by his family. It’s a wonderful perspective on the most creative family any of us will likely ever see!

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About our Guest

Kipp Friedman is a native New Yorker who holds B.A.s in history and journalism from the Universit of Wisconsin-Madison. He began his career as a reporter for several newspapers in south Florida before moving to Wisconsin, where he worked in PR for GE Medical Systems, as marketing and PR director at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, and as a PR consultant for Jewish Family Services of Milwaukee. He is also a professional photographer and has shot more than 300 bar and bat mitzvahs (despite not having been bar mitzvah’d himself). He currently resides in Milwaukee with his wife, Anne. They have a grown son, Max, who is studying to be an architect. Barracuda in the Attic is his first book.

Credits: This episode’s music is When I Write a Book by Rockpile. The conversation was recorded at a hotel in SoHo on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded at home on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Kipp Friedman by me.

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Moustache Rides to Williamsburg (blech)

I had two missions for November: write a novel for National Novel Writing Month and grow a moustache for Movember. I failed miserably in the former (although I did write about 1500 words of something that could grow into a short story, a first chapter, or a one-act play) but succeeded wildly in the latter, proving that natural facial hair growth will always trump creativity and a sketchy work ethic.

Amy hated the ‘stache with a passion, and offered to contribute to the men’s health charity behind Movember just to get me to shave it off early. I decided to keep it for a few extra days so that she could take some pix in natural light.

Stash

And, of course, while shaving it off, I had to try out The Hitler:

My pal Tom Spurgeon, the Comics Reporter, was visiting from New Mexico (and staying with us) this weekend to attend the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, so on Saturday I drove out to the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Williamsburg to see some cartoonists and serve as Tom’s valet. I took no pictures, so instead you get 20 quick observations/notes on the afternoon. After I shaved off the Hitler.

1. I was dressed pretty generic adult-prep at the event — white button-down oxford, black sweater, tobacco khakis — and was kinda stunned to find out that all the sartorial stereotypes about Williamsburg hipster guys were true: the trucker hats, wild facial hair, chunky eyeglasses, flannels, skintight jeans, Converse, etc. I had assumed this stuff was an exaggeration, but it was a veritable uniform for the men at the festival and in the neighborhood. I think some of the cartoonists treated me nicely because I was dressed like such a (non-ironic) square. Or an adult. Whatever.

2. The festival was just packed. I was impressed by the turnout. It’s a smaller affair than the Toronto Comic Arts Festival we attend every May, but New York paradoxically may not have the same space opportunities that Toronto has, at least for an event that doesn’t charge admission for attendees. It’s got a lot of potential, esp. with the Williamsburg art-crowd, but it’ll be tough to keep the show from getting too crowded.

3. I was awfully darned happy to get to chat with Drew Friedman, whose work I’ve enjoyed for about 20 years. He turned out to be a really pleasant guy, and liked the stylish business card my wife got me for my 40th birthday. I gave him the card so he could spell my 3-letter name correctly in the copy of Too Soon? that I bought from him. I also picked up a super-awesome print that’s going to be a Christmas present for a pal of mine. He seemed happy when I told him that his dad’s memoir is the next book on my reading list. Overall, I was surprised by how warm he was in conversation. For some reason, I thought he’d be a bit irascible.

4. Earlier in the day, I discovered a great Gary Panter rarity, a cardboard-bound proto-collection of his Jimbo comics from 1982, at our local Barnes & Noble. It was in the first-editions case of the B&N’s used books section. I thought Gary would like to see it, so I brought it to the festival. He beamed, and drew me a great Jimbo & dinosaur sketch inside the front cover. He also liked Amy’s business card and asked to keep it. (You should read my wacky story about my first meeting with Gary.)

5. I turned from one table and literally bumped into Matt Groening, who was at the festival with his son Abe. He may be the highest net worth individual to whom I’ve ever said, “Pardon me.” I’m pretty sure some of my friends would have simply fainted dead away upon meeting Mr. Groening.

6. I had a mind-blowingly good tongue burrito at Yola’s Cafe on Metropolitan Ave.

7. I wanted to pick up some original art from the Scott Eder Gallery table, but wasn’t inclined to spend in excess of $2,000 for a Jim Woodring page. (The “Matt Groening’s here!” prices, as one wag put it.) I ended up buying a partially inked sketch by Al Columbia and a set of 4 silkscreen prints of Woodring’s stuff. It was a lot cheaper. Multiple people warned me against showing the art to Al Columbia when he was signing at the Fantagraphics table later in the evening, for fear that he would take it from me and rip it to shreds. When I saw Al at the table, I realized they were right to worry. This is what I bought:

bobby.jpg

8. I bought the new Gloria Badcock comic from Maurice Vellekoop, because he’s a hoot. He also loved my business card and asked to keep it.

9. I walked over to Union Pool to attend the Chip Kidd & David Mazzucchelli panel, but the room was way overfilled, with attendees milling outside in the bar’s courtyard, way out of earshot. I was bummed. Later in the day, I bumped into Chip and had a pleasant conversation. We have a mutual friend in Samuel Delany, so I established my not-just-a-fanboy bona fides. We talked about his work, the panel earlier in the day, comics in general, and Delany’s health. I told him that I wanted to bring my copy of The Learners along with me for him to sign, but decided to bring “this neat Gary Panter Jimbo rarity” instead. He knew exactly the edition, and was happy to hear that I own both his novels. I also told him that I admired his becoming a celebrity in the field of book and graphic design, since it’s not an area that generates celebrities. He joked it was a little like being the world’s greatest plumber. I was too afraid he’d sneer at them to give him one of my business cards.

10. The BQE separated the church (where the festival was) from the Union Pool bar (where the panels were). The city noise was kinda exaggerated by the volume of cars zooming by overhead.

11. I bought the new Kramers Ergot anthology. I thought about getting each of the contributors to sign/sketch it, because they were all on hand, but I didn’t know many of them by name or work, and thought it would be rude to say, “Don’t know you, don’t know you, don’t know you, don’t — Oh! Hey! Sammy Harkham! What are you doing out on shabbat?” And in a church, no less!

12. I got to meet Jeff Wong, who drew the cover for Tom’s book on Stan Lee. I knew his work from The Comics Journal and Sports Illustrated, and he seemed pretty delighted when I praised his work on the latter. I doubt the Venn diagram of indy comics nerds and SI readers has much overlap.

13. Like all artists, cartoonists really do like to receive praise for their work. I (briefly) interrupted R. Sikoryak’s conversation with a couple to let him know how much I enjoyed his Masterpiece Comics. He really lit up and thanked me effusively for the compliment. I told him that I first read his “Inferno Joe” (Dante’s Inferno in Bazooka Joe style) strips in a late-’80’s issue of Raw, and that it was a positively warping experience (as in, I was warped positively). You really oughtta read his book.

14. I hoped that the Drawn & Quarterly table would be able to replace a recent issue of the Acme Novelty Library that had been misprinted, but they didn’t have it in stock. They promised to send a replacement. When I tried reading the book 2 years ago, I thought perhaps Chris Ware was engaging in some post-modern storytelling wackiness by running the last 12 pages of the book twice, but concluded that the printer/binder just screwed up. It was almost as bad as when I started reading a Xerox preview of The Birth Caul from the last page forward and didn’t realize my mistake for a dozen pages. Now I’ll finally find out what happened to whoever!

15. Near the end of the evening, I caught up with Gary Groth at the Fantagraphics table. We spoke briefly a few nights earlier, at an event at The Strand honoring legendary cartoonist Jack Davis (Fantagraphics just published a retrospective of Davis’ career). This time, I asked Gary what he’s been reading lately (non-comics division). He was so fried from working the table all day that he just stared down at the various books on display, pondered for a bit, and then mentioned a brief biography of Cahiers du Cinema, but said he was drawing a blank otherwise. A few moments later, when I bought a copy of Michael Kupperman’s new book, Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010, with a $20 bill, Gary tried to give me $80 back. It was a long day.

16. I found street parking right around the corner from the festival, which made up for my getting raped by bridge-tolls: $12 at the GW, $6.50 each way on the Triborough. The Triborough really is an amazing bridge. Robert Moses sure had a heck of a vision for New York City. (You can be wrong and still have a vision.)

17. Tom moderated a conversation with Brian Ralph and CF, neither of whose work I’d read before. I took Tom out for dinner before the panel, where he worked on his questions, and then dropped him at Union Pool while I took our stuff back to the car. I thought that the panel would be more sparsely attended than the Kidd/Mazzucchelli one from a few hours before, since it was the last one of the day, but it was packed, with people spilling out of the room and into the courtyard. So I sat in the bar, had a Plymouth & tonic, and wrote for a little bit.

18. There were 3 women at the table behind me, arguing about whether one of them knew she was hot and was just downplaying it. One said, “Screw you! You don’t go to a comics festival in a kimono and thigh-highs if you don’t think you’re hot!” I was puzzled because, when I walked past the table on my way in, I reflexively noted that none of them were hot.

19. A woman standing by my table looked at me like she was about to say something, then stopped. I asked her if I knew her. She said she thought I was someone else. “The mayor of Chicago?” I asked. “Because I got that last week.” She didn’t see any resemblance between me and Rahm Emanuel. I admitted it was puzzling. She sat down at my table and we chatted for a big about cartooning. She gave me her new photcopied 8-page comic, presumably because I told her I was here with Tom.

20. Lots of people give Tom their comics. We joked about the “Comics Reporter sales bump” and thought about designing a stamp, a la Oprah’s book club, for the CR Seal of Approval. After his panel, Tom made his round of goodbyes back at the festival, and we headed back to NJ. The drive home was smooth, and I was glad to escape the constant vibration of the city. I’m afraid I’m a little out of tune.

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Exorcism Weekend

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.

–Soren Kierkegaard

Ever wonder where all those Unrequired Reading links come from? I use NetNewsWire for my RSS reader. It helps me keep track of 150+ RSS feeds, and has its own browser for feeds that I want to click through. The problem is, I have a tendency to save tabs “for later”, and there are presently more than 60 browser windows open in the program.

I save some pages for my own edification, not necessarily for posting. Still, I have a feeling all these tabs are starting to impair my computer’s ability to keep me happy, so I’ve decided to thin out the ranks today. After all, there are also more than 800 unread items in the feed. That’s about two days’ accumulation of feeds. I’ll zap through some of them en masse, but read some of the others pretty intently.

So let’s go through a whole ton of links that I meant to write about, but never got around to and likely never will! I’ll even share the “just for me” links, goofy as they are! (I thought about writing this as 88 Lines about 44 Links, but didn’t think I’d be able to make it all rhyme; sorry.)

Orwell

I meant to write a whole lot about George Orwell, and that’s why the following links have been sitting in my tabs for so darned long.

The Masterpiece That Killed George Orwell – Orwell’s last days on Jura, writing 1984. (5/10/09)

Oxford Literary Festival: George Orwell’s son speaks for the first time about his father – Richard Blair was only 6 when his adoptive dad died, but he liked life on Jura. (3/15/09)

TS Eliot’s snort of rejection for Animal Farm – Ha-ha! You were wrong, Tough Shit! (3/29/09)

A Fine Rage – James Wood on Orwell. I haven’t read this yet; the link is only for an abstract, and I’m not a New Yorker subscriber, so I gotta hit the library sometime and find the original. Sure sounds interesting, and it’s got a great Ralph Steadman illo of Orwell. (4/13/09)

Eternal Vigilance – Keith Gessen on Orwell’s essays, eventually getting around to the problematic nature of my favorite one: Inside the Whale. (5/28/09)

Bumming Smokes in Paris and London: George Orwell’s Obsession with Tobacco – I once argued that the real horror of 1984 isn’t the rats in a cage or the police busting down the door, but rather the dull razor blades and the cigarettes that fall apart. This PopMatters article may cover that, but it’s SEVEN PAGES LONG and the single-page version is poorly formatted and won’t resize in my browser. So I’ll never know. (6/19/09)

Curse Ye, Orwell! – I hadn’t gotten around to reading this Popmatters article about the limitations of Orwell’s Why I Write essay till now, but it strikes me that the author takes Orwell’s writing as far too canonical and literal. Pfeh. (1/22/10)

Libraries

I wanted to write about the thinning out of my library. I had some thoughts about the process of admitting that there are books you will never get around to reading, a theme I hit on before, and how my tastes and interests have changed.

Shelf Life – William H. Gass on his library. (12/07)

Longing for Great Lost Works – Stephen Marche on the (maybe) wonderful books, plays and poems that were lost. Sorta like all the blog-posts I abandoned, right? (4/18/09)

Books do furnish a life – Roger Ebert on the books that mount up in his office library. (10/5/09)

Antilibraries – Jason Kottke on Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Umberto Eco on how the books we haven’t read menace us. (6/1/09)

2009 Commencement Address by Daniel Mendelsohn – Beautiful story about why we read the classics, which would’ve helped (in part) with my justification for tossing many contemporary/ephemeral books from my library. (5/15/09)

Middlebrow Messiahs – A review of a book about the history of the Great Books as a commercial concept. The book is uncharitable toward St. John’s College, where I went to grad school, but the reviewer takes the writer to task for that. (1/16/09)

Confessions of a Middlebrow Professor – Here’s another essay inspired by that book and the idea of middlebrow culture striving for intellectual achievement. Obviously, I was going to write some sort of essay about my time at St. John’s around this. (10/5/09)

The Arcadia Fire

Speaking of the classics, destroying libraries, and the conversation with the past, I really wanted to write about Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia. I may still. Here are the first few paragraphs of an abortive attempt:

I’ve written before about my evolving relationship with works of art (mainly books, movies and music) and their touchstone-y nature in my life. I think my best take on it was my year-end post in 2008 — I’ve written plenty on works that meant a lot to me once upon a time, but make me cringe now, as well as works that have grown in my estimation over the years.

Sometimes I think I’ve neglected to tell you about the works that have retained their importance to me all these years. Partly it’s because of how familiar I am with them, how much they’ve come to inform who I am and how I understand things. Partly it’s because I’m afraid that I’ll fail to do them justice, that I’ll come up short in my descriptions of them and their importance.

I could give you a list of books that have stuck with me all this time, beginning with Orwell’s essays and Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and it’d be a nice counterweight to my 0-fer series, where I celebrate all the lacunae in my reading universe.

Which brings me to Arcadia.

Eh. Here are some of the links that would’ve woven into the piece.

Et In Arcadia – Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variaion kicked things off for me by noting two revivals of Arcadia in D.C. and London. (5/15/09)

Warmly, an ‘Arcadia’ That’s Most Calculating – Peter Marks at The Washington Post reviews the D.C. revival. I imagine that the editor who wrote that headline must be very difficult to understand in conversation. (5/15/09)

Dinner with the FT: Sir Tom Stoppard – Illuminating conversation covering the London revival of Arcadia and Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekhov. Plus you get to find out what they spent on the meal.(5/15/09)

Books

Interview: Katherine Dunn – I could’ve sworn I posted this AV Club interview with Katherine “Geek Love” Dunn before, but I’m not finding any link for it on the site. Oops. (5/21/09)

Outsmarted – Another big John Lanchester review/essay in The New Yorker about finance. I’m undecided about reading his new book on the subject, I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay. (6/1/09)

50 Must-Read Novels from the 20th Century – Do you miss that Literary 0-fers series I used to post, about authors and series I’ve never read a word of? I was going to use this list for that. Since it has White Noise on the list and describes it as “beautifully postmodern,” you don’t really have to subject yourself to this one.

When Lit Blew Into Bits – This was going to be near the center for my Books of the Decade post, which got derailed when a pal of mine died unexpectedly. It’s got some neat arguments, even if it neglects to mention that Oscar Wao is a prose hybrid-rewrite of the Hernandez Bros.’ Love & Rockets comics. (12/6/09)

Rilke the clay pot – I wish I had the stamina to make it through this review of a new translation of Rilke’s poems, a new bio and a collection his correspondence with Lou Andreas-Salomé. Alas, I’m going to delete it after six months. (9/16/09)

The Hack – How did Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ time as a journalist affect his prose? Sadly, I don’t care enough to finish the article. (Jan/Feb 2010)

Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy – A rare interview with Cormac McCarthy. I don’t dig his work very much, but it’s a fascinating conversation. (11/20/09)

Court of Opinion – A New York Magazine book club-style discussion of Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball. I quit reading that book after discovering that the Robert Horry writeup consisted of a 3-page reprint of one of Simmons’ columns. Still, it was fun to get other people’s perspectives. (12/8/09)

Movies

Vulcan: The Soul of Spock – A video essay from Matt Zoller Seitz on Spock-As-Othello. (5/6/09)

Zen Pulp: The World of Michael Mann, Pt. 1: Vice Precedent – Zoller Seitz also did a series of video essays on Michael Mann’s movies, partly focusing on the idea that Mann is obsessed with work, albeit not in the way that Charlie Kaufman’s scripts all seem to be about work and how it defines us. (7/1/09)

The Ubiquitous Anderson – A video essay about the pernicious influence of Wes Anderson, from the prism of Rian Johnson’s movie The Brothers Bloom. I haven’t watched this yet and, since I didn’t like The Brothers Bloom very much, probably won’t. (5/21/09)

Quentin Tarantino lists his top films of 2009 – Star Trek was #1, so whatever.(12/14/09)

Bourgeois Surrender

A pal of mine from St. John’s has been blogging under that handle for a while. I’ve reposted him from time to time.

Music Post – I haven’t clicked through all the links to the music and videos. Glad we share an affinity for the Pet Shop Boys. (Gayyyy. . . .) (10/5/09)

Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium” – B.S. is a good reader (and re-reader) of books, plays and poetry, so I’ve saved some of the ones for pieces that I’ve yet to read.

Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind” – I wish I read more poetry. (11/4/09)

Julius Caesar: Part I and Part II – Embarrassingly, I haven’t read Julius Caesar yet. I really oughtta get on that. (4/25/09 and 5/1/09)

People Must Love a Good Blog Post – He covers a couple of subjects, but focuses on Hollywood of the 1970’s, considered via Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, (or How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Generation Saved Hollywood).

Books in a Digital Age – I’m afraid this long Sven Birkerts’ essay will boil down to “books good, internet bad,” but I haven’t read it yet. Given the nature of this post of mine, he’s probably right. (Spring 2010)

Comics

Interview: Joe Sacco – I’m saving this till I read Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. (1/18/10)

Preface to Mid-Life Creative Imperatives, Part 1 of 3 – Springboarding off Jeet Heer’s post about what great cartoonists did in their middle-age, Gary Groth recently wrote an epic take on the subject. I think. Approaching 40, I was interested in the topic, but feared I wouldn’t finish reading it before turning 50. (2/24/10)

CR Holiday Interviews #9 (Jeet Heer) and #11 (Timothy Hodler) – Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter published a great series of interviews around the holidays. I pulled a couple of them and keep meaning to go back and read the whole shebang, but I was most interested in checking out these guys, who are both good comics critics. (12/29/09 and 12/31/09)

Etc.

The Architect of 9/11 – I haven’t gotten around to reading these posts about Mohamed Atta, and how his architecture background may have influenced his radicalism and his role in 9/11. (9/8/09)

The Chess Master and the Computer – I was gonna tie this Garry Kasparov review into a conversation I had c.1994 about how the changeover to CD and digital recording may have subtly affected the way music was played and recorded. Nowadays, some artists are recording in ways that play to the narrower range of MP3 compression and/or ringtone speakers, and I’m glad to be vindicated in that. Playing chess against computers changes the way we learn and play chess. (2/11/10)

Ennui Becomes Us – A National Interest article about how the world’s going to hell or something, as per the second law of thermodynamics. No, seriously: information entropy is behind everything. It’s like Thomas Pynchon c. 1965. (12/16/09)

Seizing the Opportunity to Destroy Western Civilization – Speaking of which, World War I was a black swan. (3/4/10)

Edge People – The latest installment in Tony Judt’s memoirs, post-ALS. (2/23/10)

The agony of a body artist – I’m not sure what I was going to do with this Roger Ebert blog post about performance artist Chris Burden. (10/14/09)

Andy Warhol’s TV – I still wanna write about Plimpton and Warhol and celebrity in New York. I’ll probably get some good material out of watching these Warhol TV shows from the ’80’s.(7/1/09)

NYC Grid

I love Paul Sahner’s daily photo-essays of New York, one block at a time on NYC Grid. But I fell behind last month, and have a couple of them tabbed (as well as a bunch as unread news items).

Just For Me

The Essential Home Bar – I care about my gin. (2/18/10)

This year, I started to care about how I dress, so I have some men’s fashion sites in my RSS.

Feature: Footwear With Jesse Thorn of PutThisOn.com – I need some variety in my shoes, okay? (3/9/10)

The Pants After Jeans – It’s difficult for me to find a pair of pants that fit well (not too tight in the crotchal region, not too balloony for the rest of the leg). (2/28/10)

I still want to get back to fiction writing someday. So:

Ten rules for writing fiction – A bunch of writers offer up their antidote to Elmore Leonard’s weird 10 rules. It took me a while to start it, because I’m that good at procrastinating when it comes to my own writing. (2/20/10)

How to Write a Great Novel: Junot Diaz, Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood and Other Authors Tell – Sort of a shorthand version of those Paris Review Writers At Work interviews. (11/13/09)

Overcoming Creative Block – Strategies visual artists use to get out of a rut. There’s some good stuff in here. I’m sure one technique is to quit reading so many RSS feeds. (2/10/10)

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Publishers at Play

When I was a pretentious young man (I’m older now; but that doesn’t mean I’m less pretentious), the Paris Review Writers at Work anthologies were my Bible. (Or at least my Apocrypha. My Bible was a mash-up of Tropic of Cancer and Inside the Whale.)

I’d seek out the collections at used bookstores. The first volume I picked up, the 5th Series, contained interviews with William Gass (whom I was just then struggling to read), Jerzy Kosinski, Gore Vidal, P.G. Wodehouse, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and more. The interviews were a joy to this self-important, deluded Future Great American Writer, deftly exploring the writers’ histories, influences and literary opinions, while also revealing some of the practical aspects of their writing habits. Each interview was prefaced with a facsimile of a page of the writer’s manuscript or typescript. This was a wonderful touch, a peek into the writer’s editorial process.

(Well, except for the Henry Miller interview, which had a bizarre diagram with the caption, “Manuscript plan of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, ’embracing planetary conjunction; topographical map of region and monuments and streets and cemeteries; fatal, or otherwise, influence of fields — according to type; Major Events; Dominant Idea; Psychological Pattern.” This may be why I never finished Tropic of Capricorn.)

If I found WaW volumes in a library, I’d photocopy the interviews with my favorites. I still have a folder somewhere with Philip Roth, Harold Bloom, Milan Kundera (I said I was pretentious back then) and others. I began looking up past issues of the Paris Review to find other interviews that had yet to be anthologized.

One of my great triumphs came when I was in Bethesda, MD in 1998 for the Small Press Expo (SPX), an indie-comics event. In a used bookstore near the expo hotel, I found issue #105 with the famed (and uncollected) William Gaddis interview!

At SPX, I met Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth. I’d been writing mean-spirited reviews for his magazine, The Comics Journal, for a few months at that time. He thanked me for those, joking that it was good to have someone else writing mean-spiritedly in the magazine, because it freed up his time. Then he noticed the Paris Review back issue in my hand and said, “I see you found the one with the William Gaddis interview!”

I felt like I was in good company.

The WaW anthology series, published by Viking / Penguin, ended after the 9th volume in 1992, near as I can tell from abebooks.com. A decade or so later, Modern Library began publishing Women Writers at Work, Beat Writers at Work, Playwrights at Work and, um, Latin American Writers at Work (?), but I never picked those up. (I did grab The Writer’s Chapbook, which excerpted quotes from the interviews around particular themes, such as the audience, character, potboilers, peers, etc. It was a nice volume, but not as satisfying as having the complete interviews.)

In 2006, St. Martin’s Picador imprint began a new series called The Paris Review Interviews (I, II, and III). They’re the same format as the old WaW collections, right down to the facsimile manuscript page. And they collected the Gaddis interview! I still find the interviews pretty delightful, even though I’m no longer harboring dreams of being a Great American Writer. (I 0-fer-ized two of them here and here.)

George, Being George has a lot of good material about the history of the interviews, including the giddy elation some writers experienced when they were asked by George Plimpton to sit down for a Writers at Work session. Rather than excerpt any of those, I instead offer up a passage about the business of publishing the books:

MONA SIMPSON: [George] was very unhappy at one point with the amount of money that the Review had been paid for the various anthologies of interviews. Viking was paying us very little, and they were delaying publications. So Jay and I volunteered to go to this guy we knew at Simon and Schuster to see about moving our books there, and George was all for it. After an extended series of meetings, we got an offer for twenty-five thousand dollars — the current publisher was offering, I think three thousand — and they were really going to push it and promote it. So we come to George saying, “Okay, let’s sign on the dotted line, it’s going to be great.”

Then, at the last minute, George calls our editor at the other house — basically an old friend of George’s whom he’d been working with for years, who occasionally sent him tickets to a ball game. The editor sends George some tickets to the ball game and the whole deal is off. We realized at that point that we couldn’t just go out in the world and do that sort of thing anymore, not even with his permission, because we found that we basically didn’t have power to go against his personal loyalties. It was very embarrassing, because Simon and Schuster was outraged that we were staying with an offer that was about twelve percent of theirs.

I’ve taken several clients to basketball and baseball games, as well as fancy dinners. I like to believe that our magazine offers great value to our advertisers and that the fun times are sorta ancillary, but I’m sure that “relationship-building” activities like this muddle even the most otherwise clear business decisions.

As I said, George, Being George is a pretty entertaining book. Why, it’s right here at the end of my Plimpton/Review shelf!

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Oh, and the fourth volume of the new series — sorry, the IVth one — is coming out next week, so you should get on that.