April 30, 2025

Du mußt dein Leben ändern

A new podcast with Craig Thompson, a new translation of Rilke, some new Instax, and more

The Virtual Memories Show News

A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life

Podcastery

This week, I posted Episode 636 of The Virtual Memories Show, in which artist Craig Thompson joins the show at long last to celebrate his new book, GINSENG ROOTS: A Memoir (Pantheon). We talk about how he spent 10 summers of his childhood helping farm ginseng, how that herb connects rural Wisconsin with China and South Korea, how he balanced history, journalism, economics, and memoir in the pages of his book, and why he chose to make Ginseng Roots as a serial comic rather than a standalone book and how that affected his creative process. We get into how the book serves as a sort of midlife revision of his breakthrough book, Blankets, how the last chapter of the book had to happen in near-real-time, how a degenerative condition in his hands became a unifying theme to the book while almost derailing it, how he found the design language of the book and obsessed over a two-color process (to amazing results), and whether this is his swansong for comics (spoiler: it’s not!). We also discuss what home means to him, 8 months into being on the road, what it was like discovering that he had a global audience, his ongoing relationship with his evangelical Christian upbringing, his editor’s concerns that Ginseng Roots could open him up to accusations of cultural insensitivity (and how he got over it), all while geeking out over our fave cartoonists from the ’90s indy period (go, Dylan Horrocks!), and more. Give it a listen! And go read Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz!

Last week, I posted Episode 635, feat. a conversation with artist, professor and now like-it-or-not cartoonist Ari Richter about Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance (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, what he had to learn about comics storytelling after a career in fine arts, the revelation of reading Miriam Katin‘s memoirs and why he avoided rereading MAUS 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, the insanity of composing his comics pages in Photoshop (and what happens when he forgets to label his layers), and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz!

Recent episodes: Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak • Peter Trachtenberg • David Shields • Meeting Across the River • Elon Green • Vanda Krefft • Seth Lorinczi

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Du mußt dein Leben ändern

Another hectic week, another late newsletter. I don’t know how much of it is that work is getting tougher and how much is that I’m getting older and can’t keep up; rest assured, they’re both significant factors.

Last time, I mentioned that I’d finished my project of reading volume one of The Man Without Qualities, one chapter a day, 123 mornings in a row. I decided I’d follow that with a sorta palate cleanser: Burton Pike’s translation of a selection of Rilke’s poems, Where the Paths Do Not Go, again one each morning.

Archaic Torso of Apollo came up pretty early. I’ve read Stephen Mitchell’s version so many times that Burton’s was . . . unsettling. Familiar but in a different key:

We did not know his astonishing head 
in which the apples of his eyes ripened. But 
his torso still glows like a candelabra 
in which his seeing, only turned down low,

maintains itself and glows. Otherwise the
curve of his chest could not dazzle you, and in the gentle turning of the loins a smile could not go 
to that center that bore procreation.

Otherwise this stone would stand disfigured and short 
under the shoulders’ transparent plunge 
and would not shimmer like a predator's fur,

and would not break out from all its edges 
like a star; for there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

But the last line & a half is the same. It’s always the same.

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Instaxery

Here are two Intsax pix I took during my podcast sessions with Cecile Wajsbrot and Craig Thompson. If I finish the 2024 book and actually make some sorta 2025 Instax thang, I might not go with that one by Craig, because I got something more obliquely him, but I still need to get back to writing the GUEST/HOST pieces for the 2024 book.

Artistry

Speaking of my abject failure, I failed to write a script for that comic anthology I was invited to contribute to, and now feel like an A.F.

You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.

Postcardery

Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you.)

Until Next Time

Thanks for reading this far. I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-/meditation-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art, and an Instax or two.

What if you could make another life?, Would you still have me by your side?,