Slow Progressors
This one's got ruminations on Edmund White's death, WTF's retirement, and my leukemia, along with my new ep. with Peter Stothard on Horace, + a little art
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
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Can we find the poet in their poems? This week, I posted Episode 641 of The Virtual Memories Show, where Peter Stothard celebrates his new biography, HORACE: Poet on a Volcano (Yale University Press), and explores how the life of the great Roman poet unfolds through his art. We talk about why he wrote this biography through a critical study of Horace’s poems (and why that’s been a controversial approach), how Horace embodied the artist-as-madman long before the Romantic era, and why it was important to show the alienness of Horace’s verse and how nervous Peter was about translating him into English to show how the Latin works. We get into Horace’s place in Rome’s history, how he bridged Greek poetic modes into Latin, the variety of genres Horace worked in (and invented), and why the poet was cancelled early and often over the centuries. We also discuss mortality and legacy, how Horace & I reacted to not getting killed by falling trees, why a certain Great Books program is so Athens-centric, how Peter’s secondary school introduced him to “INCIPE!,” “Sapere Aude,” and “Carpe Diem,” among other Horace-isms, and more!. Give it a listen! And go read HORACE: Poet on a Volcano!
Last week I posted Episode 640 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 talked 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 got 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 what it was like to subvert the translator’s typical role of invisibility with this novel. We also discussed 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!
Recent episodes: Keiler Roberts • Peter Kuper • Vauhini Vara • Craig Thompson • Ari Richter • Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak • Peter Trachtenberg
Slow Progressors
This morning, I got the news that gay literary icon Edmund White died. Monday, I got the news that my podfather, Marc Maron, plans to retire his WTF podcast this fall, after 16 years. Yesterday, I got the news that my white blood cell count hadn’t increased significantly, and that my chronic lymphocytic leukemia remains at stage zero (as in, I don’t need treatment and can go on my not-so-merry way for another 3 months).
I had planned on writing this newsletter about Maron & WTF’s impact on my life, how I wouldn’t have started the Virtual Memories Show without him, and how I can’t conceive of what these past 13 years would have been like without it. I owe him an immeasurable debt (or blame, whatever), because making the podcast has opened my life, created my life. I’ve met so many people, read so many books, seen so much art, traveled so many places, none of which I would have done if I hadn’t taken this dive, if he hadn’t shown the way.
But you can’t imagine how often I think about quitting. It’s all too much sometimes: planning, reading, driving, editing, writing — everything except the moment we start talking. The problem is, I just can’t imagine my life without it, without them, without you.
I mean, Edmund White would just have been a name to me, and not a conversation, not an apartment filled with plants and flowers, not a glittering array of memories (even of the mediocre bbq I had around the corner from his place). I wouldn’t have met his husband, Michael, wouldn’t have shared an hour or so with each of them. I wouldn’t have lived so many lives.
Every few months since mid-2021, I go to an oncology clinic to find out if my CLL has progressed to the point where I need to start treatment. Each time it creeps along gradually, under the threshold, chipping away at my immune system. I tend not to worry so much before those check-ins anymore, though sometimes I wonder if a bad result wouldn’t be so bad, because it’d start another phase in my life, and I’d have an excuse to pull back or quit.
Ed was diagnosed with HIV in the mid-‘80s. Per his obit in The Guardian, “I kind of pulled the covers over my head and thought: ‘Oh gee, I’ll be dead in a year or two’ … it turned out that I was a slow progressor.” He lived so much since after that. I remember reading about him traveling to Europe in mid-2021. I thought, “Man, that’s an immunocompromised, elderly guy in a not-quite-post-lockdown world, and I’M worried about air travel?”
I don’t know where to go from here. I’m glad that Maron and his producer Brendan (who helped me out with technical questions when I was starting out) are able to end WTF on their terms. I’m glad their example let me take the plunge and change my life (and the lives of others, per some of your stories). I’m glad I got to meet people like Edmund & Michael, and that this weekend I’ll get to meet a few more guests.
I’m glad I got to make slow progress toward becoming human.
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Instaxery
I didn’t go anywhere with the camera this week, sorry. I might be able to get some writing done in the next week for the Instax book, maybe.
Artistry
I missed a few days of my daily brush-pen sketching, but here are a couple of the ones I did. 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.
Now my race is finally run / And as I tumble to the sun / All these things I can’t achieve / Brought me crashing to my knees,