Shred Tear Fray
A new podcast with Cecile Wajsbrot on Time Passes & destruction, a Bill Cunningham moment, some sketches, Instax outtakes, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 640 of The Virtual Memories Show, with Cécile Wajsbrot, whose bewitching and beautiful novel NEVERMORE (Seagull Books, translated from French by Tess Lewis, who joins our conversation) takes us on a tour of Chernobyl’s Forbidden Zone, the High Line in NYC, Dresden, and Paris, under the shadow of the Time Passes section of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. We talk about the challenges of writing a first-person novel about translation, the strange ways Woolf has followed Cecile throughout her careers as author & translator, and how it felt to see her novel about translating Virginia Woolf into French get translated into English. We get into her literary career, how Time Passes became a stand-in for her fascination with destruction, why she’s translated Woolf’s The Waves three times over thirty years (and whether the first one got her into the bad graces of the editor of Le Monde de Livres), what it was like to subvert the translator’s typical role of invisibility with this novel, and the language she wishes she had. We also discuss mourning and the ways we try to keep conversation alive with those we’ve lost, the time I impressed the Princess of Yugoslavia by transliterating the Cyrillic on her family’s jewels, and more. Give it a listen! And go read NEVERMORE!
Last week I posted Episode 639 with Keiler Roberts. She may be able to quit comics (for a while), but she can’t quit my podcast! With her wonderful new book, PREPARING TO BITE (Drawn & Quarterly), Keiler returns to comics with a collection of (mostly) hilarious vignettes about domestic life, middle-age, the impact of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and having too many pets. We talked about why she walked away from comics and how she came back, how she avoids memoir in favor of memory (and humor), how she still has anxiety over drawing but is way too tired to have social anxiety anymore, and why she branched into kitschy craft-modes that no one would mistake for art. We got into why she wants her kid to read her journals when she’s gone, how MS taught her how to be bored, how men have no idea what perimenopause is like, and the reward of teaching comics to her friends and her mom. We also discussed how Karl Stevens helped her back into comics with this book (& encourages her in every other artistic idea she has), how weird it is to see two of Karl’s super-detailed pages beside her sparse drawings, and why she loved collaborating with her brother on the grownup fairytale Creepy. Plus, she teaches me the difference between living more and doing more, and I read you guys a Rilke poem in the intro. Give it a listen! And go read PREPARING TO BITE!
(And go listen to our 2017, 2020, and 2021 conversations!)
Recent episodes: Peter Kuper • Vauhini Vara • Craig Thompson • Ari Richter • Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak • Peter Trachtenberg • David Shields
Shred Tear Fray
I mailed a postcard this week from my Bill Cunningham set, featuring a b/w pic of someone in expertly ripped jeans.
The caption on the back reads, “Bill wrote a column on ‘the blue jean fad du jour: shredding, tearing and fraying.’” I wrote, “I’M shredding, tearing and fraying, and no one’s writing a column about ME.”
But I still have some lovely moments, like a conversation with a past guest about Horace, or an early morning walk with Birdy, so hey.
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Instaxery
I didn’t go anywhere with the camera this week, but here are some outtakes from when I recorded this week’s show.
Artistry
Trying to sketch with a brush-pen each day, but missed a few days recently. A couple of them are below. 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/or an Instax.
Thirty-nine and you need some leeway / Soon you're eyeing the overseas page / The trains are running late as you close the garden gate / Step through your steel front doorframe,