Big Table

Episode 16: Lucy Sante

THE INTERVIEW
Since her debut book, Lowlife: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Lucy Sante has charted her own path, not only as a writer of distinction, but as a writer who has created a genre all her own in the process. Her books include The Other Paris, a sequel of sorts to Lowlife; a memoir, A Factory of Facts; a book on Folk Photography and Evidence, about crime scene photography. Her first essay collection, Kill All Your Darlings, was released 14 years ago by Verse Chorus Press in Portland. Her second essay collection, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, also published by Verse Chorus Press, was released last year in the midst of the pandemic and was like a comfort food for me while we were on lockdown. Maybe the People is an autobiographical deep dive into Sante's youth in New York City's Lower East Side in the 1970s and 1980s and how it shaped her writing over the last three decades. 
 

THE READING: 

Lucy Sante reads from her latest collection, Maybe the People Would Be the Times.

MUSIC CREDIT
Music by the Velvet Underground

The Interview: 

Brigitte Benkemoun, an investigative reporter in France, buys a vintage address book online for her partner, and soon discovers that it belonged to artist/photographer Dora Maar, Picasso’s mistress, infamous “weeping woman,” and unsung hero of the surrealist movement. Finding Dora Maar: An Artist, An Address Book, A Life (Getty Publications) is Benkemoun’s study of Maar’s legacy and later years. 

The Reading: 

Hat & Beard editor Sybil Perez reads from Reading Dora Maar (Getty Publications). 

Music by Yellow Magic Orchestra

The Interview: 

Yuval Taylor’s dual biography Zora & Langston (Norton), documents the lives, times, and work of novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston and poet and writer Langston Hughes, two towering pillars of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 30s. Taylor writes about their intimate (and productive) friendship, their falling out with one another (and their patron), and the regret they both lived with until their deaths for not reconciling with one another. 

The Reading: 

Artist and musician Senon Williams reads selections from Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues, Hughes' first poetry collection published by Knopf in 1927.

Music credits:

Music composed by Florence Price
Performed by Fort Smith Symphony and John Jeter

**Other audio:

Zora clips:

 From a session with Alan Lomax / Library of Congress (YouTube)

Langston clips:

Langston Hughes Reads Langston Hughes (YouTube)

The Weary Blues with Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, and Leonard Feather (YouTube)

THE INTERVIEW

Photographer Janette Beckman and artist/art director Cey Adams (who helmed the art department at the legendary hip-hop label Def Jam Records in its 1980s and '90s heyday) discuss their graffiti art and photography collaboration The Mash Up: Hip-Hop Photos Remixed by Iconic Graffiti Artists, which was staged as an exhibition at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles a few years ago and collected in the book companion, co-published by Hat & Beard Press and Fahey/Klein Gallery, seen here.

Music

by Arthur Russell

*Interview Clips from Style Wars (sourced from Youtube)

The Interview:

In Vincent’s Books: Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him (University of Chicago Press), Italian curator Mariella Guzzoni unpacks her year’s long research into the books that Vincent Van Gogh read throughout his life and how they influenced and inspired his painting and drawing, letters, and purpose in life.  

The Reading:
Guzonni reads from The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin)

Music: Composed by Igor Stravinsky

Performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

The Interview

William Deresiewicz documents “how creators are struggling to survive in the age of billionaires and big tech,” which is the subtitle of his masterful new book, The Death of the Artist (Henry Holt). This book is a well-written examination of the creative economy, and how it has been hollowed out and de-monetized by tech spin and greed; the toxic nonsense otherwise known as “the gig economy,” Unlike most takedowns of these 21st Century post-digital-age doldrums, The Death of the Artist has some prescriptive advice and is rooted in reality-bites pragmatism. 
 

The Reading 

Deresiewicz reads from The Death of the Artist. 

Music by Languis

The Interview:

Geoff Dyer discusses “Broadsword Calling Danny Boy”: Watching ‘Where Eagles Dare’, published by Pantheon, his study of the 1969 action film featuring  a young Clint Eastwood in one of his first starring roles, alongside Richard Burton. 

The Reading:

Dyer reads from his latest book See/Saw: Looking at Photographs, his collection  of writings over the last two decades on and about photography, published by Graywolf Press. 

Music:

by Jonathan Knight

"Where Eagles Dare" Soundtrack Suite (Ron Goodwin)

Clips sourced from Youtube

"Where Eagles Dare- Making of On Location: The Cast and Crew talk about 'Where Eagles Dare' (1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slGNnC8NOyo&t=165s

"Where Eagles Dare" official trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khIZwbXDF0o&t=74s

"Where Eagles Dare" clip- Broadsword calling Danny Boy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdaeBiF__u4&t=41s

The Interview:

Two distinguished Orwell scholars, John Rodden and D.J. Taylor, unpack the Orwell enigma: fact, fiction, myth and the most enduring legacy of any writer in the English language since Shakespeare.  Rodden’s most recent Orwell book is Become George Orwell (Princeton University Press) and Mr. Taylor’s is a study of Orwell’s most famous book, On Nineteen Eighty-Four (Abrams Press)

The Reading:

D.J. Taylor reads the first chapter of On Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Story of George Orwell’s Masterpiece.

Credit: music by Terry Riley

THE INTERVIEW

Journalist, author and biographer and Mary Gabriel discusses Ninth Street Women, published by Little, Brown, a five part biography of painters from the Abstract Expressionist era: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. This door-stopper is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand American art. 

THE READING
For the reading this episode, painter Celia Paul reads from her memoir Self-Portrait, published by NYRB Classics, which recounts the period after WWII to today, including her relationship with fellow painter Lucian Freud. 

Music by Dorothy Ashby