Hey Nineteen
This one's got a new ep. w/Elon Green, a bronze anniversary, an impulse book, a self-portrait, One More Goddamned writing project, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
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This week, I posted Episode 629 of The Virtual Memories Show, with author Elon Green celebrating his amazing new book, THE MAN NOBODY KILLED: Life, Death, and Art In Michael Stewart’s New York (Celadon Books), an investigation into a terrible episode of police brutality and its aftermath in mid-’80s NYC. We talk about what drew him to the story of Michael Stewart, a 25-year-old black artist-model-DJ who died at the hands of transit police in 1983, his amazement that no one else had written this book, and how his early assumptions about a coverup gave way to a different coverup. We get into how he so wonderfully evokes the gritty NYC of that era, spreading out a canvas that takes in the arts scene — think Haring, Basquiat, Madonna — and the awful crimes and police behavior — think Bumpurs, Goetz — of that era. We discuss the art of interviewing people 40+ years after an event without reopening old wounds, the judge on the case who talked with him for 3 hours and shared how his conclusions on the verdict changed, what he sees in Stewart’s art, how he tries to build the entire environment of the world he’s writing about in his books, why he considers himself a history writer (& despises the “true crime” label & genre), why being a good journalist means having a sense of decency, bringing his first book to life as an HBO series, and more. Give it a listen! And go read THE MAN NOBODY KILLED!
Last week I posted Episode 628, feat. biographer Vanda Krefft’s return to celebrate her wonderful & illuminating new book: EXPECT GREAT THINGS!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women (Algonquin Books). We talk about the turn of the (20th) century origins of Katharine Gibbs & her school, the legacy of her executive secretarial course for generations of women, “Gibbs Girls’” descendants’ desire to honor their family members, the incredible quality of faculty Gibbs was able to recruit, and the risks women had to take to enter the professional workforce. We get into Vanda’s desire to write about people who were overlooked in their time, how this book required a different mode than her biography of William Fox, what she had to learn about the history of women in America, and her interest in mid-century America. We also discuss how the Gibbs school declined when the family finally sold it in the late ’60s, what she’d like her next book to be about, her experience living in Santa Monica during the LA fires, getting inspired by Howard Fishman‘s book on Connie Converse, and plenty more. Give it a listen! And go read EXPECT GREAT THINGS!
Next week, I don’t have a guest lined up yet, so there may not be a new episode. My schedule’s hectic and I’ve recorded a couple of April’s shows, but the 3/18 slot is in doubt, unless I come up with someone in NYC while I’m there on the 16th ahead of a trade show for work.
Recent episodes: Seth Lorinczi • Martin Mittelmeier • Jonathan Ames • Witold Rybczynski • Matt Madden • Fred Kaplan • Mia Wolff
Hey Nineteen
I didn’t get you bronzer, a Bronzino, or a LeBron James jersey, but happy 19th anniversary, my love.
I am writing in the early 2020s. The thoughts of many people are properly engaged with the historical and the topical — with politics and ideologies and the like. With events. My head is there, too, but the constant pressure of the external in these years has, perhaps unsurprisingly, also led me more fully into the equally stormy internal. “It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without,” Wallace Stevens wrote. The human imagination has something to do with our self-preservation: and “helps us to live our lives.”
That’s from To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die: An Essay with Digressions, by Tom Carpenter. I was at Labyrinth Books in Princeton this week after a client visit nearby, and it caught my eye on one of the table displays. I thought it might have something that would help me procrastinate from writing my book around my Instax photos — haha, there’s already an entry about how I could use Sontag, Barthes, et al. to procrastinate — and after flipping through a few pages, decided to pick it up.
I gabbed with the store manager later. She noticed it in my hand and said, “What is it with that book? Everybody’s buying it!”
No, reader, despite a flicker of hesitation, my innate snobbishness didn’t kick in; I went ahead with my purchase, along with a collection of poems by one of Pessoa’s heteronyms. At home, I read the first page, with that opening paragraph (following a quote by Valery), and figured I made the right decision.
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Instaxery
Here’s a new Instax I shot this weekend at a pod-guest/friend’s home:
On Sunday, vis-a-vis our conversation, he texted, “I really hope you write an essay about the unstated obligations that arise between interviewer and subject, and between the living and the dead,” and now I’m wondering if he’s really my friend.
Artistry
I draw a daily sketch with a rollerball pen in a cheap notebook, and a couple were okay. I did one based on the photo of my old man, shirtless and slumping, getting a shot in his end-stage arthritic shoulder from an orthopedist, but I’m not gonna post that. Here’s a self-portrait instead:
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, maybe some Instax or an outtake.
She thinks I’m crazy / But I'm just growing old,