April 27, 2025

Hitting The Links: 4/27/25

Remembering Barry Malzberg, + a ton of links, Birdy on a cliff, my favorite Lucian Freud model, a Dior & I moment, what it's like to be a Photoshop doc, & more

The Virtual Memories Show News

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

Housekeeping

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Underlay

I only talked with Barry N. Malzberg once, during a festival (off-mic), and only read a few of his books, but Scott Edelman was coming in from WV for his memorial yesterday here in northern NJ, and Gordon Van Gelder would be on hand too, so I figured I’d pay my respects. (Here’s Jeet Heer’s amazing obit of Malzberg; Gordon told me one well-known writer called it “an obit with dying for.”) (Barry & I had emailed about getting together sometime to record, but even though he only lived 30 min. away, I never followed through, to my shame.)

The event was held at the assisted living facility where Barry’s wife lives, and when I was in the elevator, the elderly woman who got on with me told me I was very handsome. I thanked her, and she said what I thought was, “I have Alzheimer’s.” I asked her to repeat herself, and she said, “I have all sons,” which made me feel better.

Before the service began, a friend of Barry’s daughter came up to me and said, “The woman behind me” — she gestured back to another elderly woman with a walker — “wants to know if you’re an eye doctor.” Because apparently I resembled her eye doctor, who I hope doesn’t have a ponytail, but y’know, from her lips to my Jewish mother’s ears.

Anyway, the service was filled with wonderful and hysterical stories about Barry, including a couple of great remembrances from Scott, who recounted Barry’s godawful driver and photographic memory, his life lessons and frustrations, and various anecdotes like the time he & Barry talked about the lost Raymond Carver science fiction stories — Carver apparently started out wanting to make it in SF — and Barry produced a Carver SF pastiche within days for Scott’s magazine.

Once the service ended, I checked out the indicia for Underlay, the book from which Barry wanted a couple pages read at the service. (The program included his memorial service wishes, from an email written about 10 years before his death.) His daughter Erika told us that the pages he specified were not exactly appropriate for a memorial, so they went with another section.

She saw me looking at the copy by the lectern, and I told her I was looking for the publishing info so I could check it out when I get home. She asked if I had a copy, and when I told her I didn’t, she insisted I take that one. “We have lots of copies, and he’d be glad that it’s going to a good home.”

What with us starting on Jewish Mean Time, all the great conversations over bagels & lox after the service ended, and a couple of side-quests I made on the way home, a lot of my plans for the day fell by the wayside, but it was worth it to celebrate a writer’s life.

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Birdy Of The Week

We took her on a walk up to The Cliff last Sunday, and she was unimpressed/wouldn’t stand still, so we staged her Looking Off Pensively/Nervously in the distance.

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And now, let’s hit the links!

Links & Such

• Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Ari Richter • Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak • Peter Trachtenberg • David Shields • Meeting Across The River • Elon Green • Vanda Krefft

• RIP Mike Patrick . . . RIP Mongo McMichael . . . RIP Crocus Behemoth . . . RIP Virginia Giuffre . . . RIP Karen Durbin . . . RIP Roy Thomas Baker . . . RIP Herbert J. Gans . . . RIP Robert Douglas . . . RIP Patrick Adiarte . . .

• Kathy Valentine wrote a lovely piece about the late Clem Burke.

• I’m glad to find out there are better techniques for making my pourover, but I’m sad for all the cups of coffee that went undrunk in the name of science.

• Man, this Henri Cole essay about James Merrill is a wonder.

• Go check out these poems by Antonella Anedda, translated by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi (2013, 2017, 2022).

• I developed a lot of empathy through the podcast interviews, but I don’t think that’d make me a good CEO.

• Oddball story of Ely Callaway, marketer of the Big Bertha driver (it’s a golf thing), and why you should make sure never to be the only signer of a consent decree.

• I can’t believe that Sam Waksal of all people would engage in shady business practices!

• I’m still kinda bummed that I didn’t make an insane 24-hour trip to London for the March opening of Celia Paul’s Colony of Ghosts exhibition. (She wrote to tell me it went wonderfully.) Here’s a Guardian piece a few days before the opening, an Observer piece about the amazing 1975-2025 monograph that accompanied the show, and a video produced by the Victoria Miro Gallery about Celia & her work. And, of course, my 2020 and 2022 talks with Celia.

• In Yet Another Weird Coincidence, I meandered to a lounge in the assisted living facility yesterday and noticed they had a couple of coffee-table art books beside the sofa. One was of nature photography, but the other was A Painter’s Progress, a book of photographs of Lucian Freud & his models, alongside the paintings they sat for, by his assistant, David Dawson. Freud being the father of Celia’s son, Frank. Here’s a pic of my favorite of Freud’s models, Eli:

  

• And here’s me later that day at Riverside Square Mall, re-enacting a shot from that Raf Simons documentary, Dior & I, where I felt beautiful for a moment:

  

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Current/Recent Reading

Ginseng Roots: A Memoir - Craig Thompson

Nevermore - Cecile Wajsbrot (tr. Tess Lewis)

Where the Paths Do Not Go - Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Burton Pike)

Great Books - David Denby

We might say that Homer offers a conception of life that is noble rather than ethical—except that such an opposition is finally misleading. For the Greeks, nobility has an ethical quality. You are not good or bad in the Christian sense. You are strong or weak; beautiful or ugly; conquering or vanquished; living or dead; favored by gods or cursed. Here were some of Tayler’s “binary opposites,” but skewed into matching pairs alien to us, in which nothing softened Homer’s appraisal of quality.

The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil (tr. Wilkins/Pike) (I finished Vol. 1 on Monday! Going to wait a little while to start Vol. 2)

He remembered saying casually that he would probably have to either write a book or kill himself.

Sound Body, Fractured Mind

Man, I missed a lot of exercise this week: Wednesday’s weights because of travel from Boston, Friday’s weights because of work going LONG, Saturday’s yoga because of Barry Malzberg’s memorial service + side quests, and maybe today’s weights because I’ve got a 1pm podcast to record over in New York. On the plus side, I got in two more 5.4-mi. runs w/The Guys on Tuesday & Thursday, improving my pace each time. I might get out this afternoon for a local run at a much worse pace (The Hilllllls), because I want to keep up with about 15-16 mi./week, then build up to go longer.

At least I kept up with meditation every day, even with travels. During one session this week, my mantra became Hide Layers Merge Layers as I conceived of myself as an overworked Photoshop document. Hide Layers: remove/invisible-ize all that accreted cruft we call a life. Merge Layers: irreversibly combine/integrate all that cruft once and for all and accept it as part of being. In the midst of that, it occurred to me that my wildest dream is to Free Transform.

Until Next Time

Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, a new Instax, & maybe some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.

Pulsin’ light goes to my head! / Everything I see is red! / Baby, when I kiss your hair, / I feel electricity in the air,