Podcastery

This week, I posted Episode 665 of my Virtual Memories Show, feat. the return of Prue Shaw and her amazing new book, DANTE: THE ESSENTIAL COMMEDIA (Liveright), which brings us a canto-by-canto journey through Dante’s masterwork, interweaving translated verses with her commentary, and serving as a Virgil-like guide to the poem. We talk about how she was inspired by John Carey’s The Essential Paradise Lost, why the Paradiso was her biggest challenge, how the poem has changed for her over the course of her life, and why she went with prose translations of Dante rather than verse. We get into Dante’s balance of pride in his art and his humility before God, the modern sound of Dante’s verse and the challenge of translating Italian into English, what she’s learning from helping translate Shelley into Italian, why she wants The Essential Commedia to serve as a gateway drug into Dante, and the nature of language & why the Tower of Babel plays a big role in the Commedia. We also discuss her incredible work on third edition of the Digital Commedia, life after the death of her husband, Clive James, and putting a collection of his final poems together, how an issue of the X-Men turned me on to Dante as a kid, my changing views on Ulysses in the Commedia, why sloth is my fave of the deadly sins, and more. Give it a listen! And go get DANTE: THE ESSENTIAL COMMEDIA

Two weeks ago I posted Episode 664, where Glenn Kurtz tried to answer the question: Who were the men who built the Empire State Building? We talked about his new book, MEN AT WORK: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It (Seven Stories Press) and how he accidentally fell into this project, how “turn every page” led him to a key discovery about Lewis Hine‘s photos of the Empire State construction, how his experience researching and writing THREE MINUTES IN POLAND helped him with this book, his childhood connection with the Empire State, and how identifying their subjects affects the mythic aura of Hine’s photographs. We got into the corporate & collectivist perspectives of the building and how they each dehumanize the workers who built it, whether craftsmanship and artisanship survived the transition into mass production, Hine’s authorial fallacy and the genius of his portraits, and what the Empire State says about the immigration-dynamics of the workforce and the role of unions. We also discussed the question of context and how the question, “What are we looking at?” can reveal the world, the resonance of Hine’s Icarus/Sky Boy pic, why Glenn just wants to write a novel without it inspiring a nonfiction project, and more. Give it a listen! And go read MEN AT WORK!

Recent episodes: Jennifer Hayden • Rian Hughes • Josh Neufeld • Dean Haspiel & Whitney Matheson • Ron Rosenbaum • Lance Richardson • Tom Tomorrow

Surfacing

What he experienced, perhaps, during those few moments on Christmas Eve, 1979, as he sat alone in his room on Varick Street, was this: the sudden knowledge that came over him that even alone, in the deepest solitude of his room, he was not alone, or, more precisely, that the moment he began to try to speak of that solitude, he had become more than just himself.
—Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude

Something funny happened in the last few days. The depression I’ve been walloped by since the summer — my dad’s death, and my watching same — seems to have lifted. It’s been pernicious and terrible, and it’s felt like, among other things, a disconnectedness from the world, a going-through-the-motions, a concussion, a narrowing of possibility, a sense of futility & powerlessness.

While I’ve managed to fake my way through a lot of it, I’ve had a rough time. There have been moments of relief, but they were few, and I subjected my friends to a lot of despair-laden talk, right up through Thanksgiving, when an old friend came to visit.

But a few days ago, something shifted in my soul, and I found myself re-engaged in life. I’m trying not to analyze it too closely, for fear that it turns out to be a house of cards, but:

I read a book someone recommended.

It’s The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster’s memoir(ish) about his father’s death. His father was a cipher in his life, and his death — when Auster was in his 30s — triggered a lot of feelings he didn’t know he had, leading him to explore those and his old man’s life, as well as what it meant for he himself to be a father.

His circumstances are similar-but-different-but-similar-enough that I took great solace from the first half of the book. (The second part is a little less relatable at times, in part because it hides behind erudition, but haha that should make it MORE relatable, right?) His experience in trying not just to understand why his old man behaved the way he did, but the effects it was having on him as he became a husband-father-man, resonated with me in ways that made me feel — I don’t want to say understood or less alone, so let’s just say “made me feel.”

But I don’t think it was just that reader-response that helped bring me out of this. Just as important is that my friend recommended it to me. It happened a few hours after Dad’s funeral, as we sat in my library and gabbed. I told him some hard stories about Dad, and the fucked-ness of my upbringing, knowing that my friend had in FAR worse: physical abuse, father’s suicide.

It’s not like we were engaged in one-downmanship or anything, but I was sensitive to the fact that Dad’s absence and manipulations were not the same as the abuse my pal and his brothers suffered.

We’ve known each other since I was 17, but he’d never heard about what my childhood was like, nor my later insights into how it affected who I am. And he suggested Auster’s book.

I’m not an Auster devotee — Paul Karasik / NYC Trilogy podcast notwithstanding — but I got the Kindle edition of The Invention of Solitude the next day, and finally started it last weekend, “since I’m between books.”

And I found myself not just able to feel myself in Auster’s experience all those decades ago, but also felt that my friend understood what I needed, that he was able to see me in my need, and offer something real.

It’s been a few days, like I said, and even though sometimes I’ve been tired/cranky, I don’t feel like I’m under this terrible burden. It’s not that I’ve shrugged it off, but that others are helping me carry it.

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This email setup runs $29/month, podcast-hosting via LibSyn is $25/month, and the remote recording setup on Zencastr is $20/month, so if you want to help out with these expenses or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can support the Virtual Memories Show with a contribution of any size, one-time or recurring.

Instaxery

No new Instax pix this week. Here’s one from earlier this year, when I visited Paul Karasik up at Yaddo for our podcast. It was Father’s Day, less than a month before my dad died. I don’t have any regrets about missing that one.

Artistry

Didn’t draw anything, sorry. 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 & a new Instax.

XXX,