Big Table

The Interview: 

Biographer Colin Asher, discusses the legacy of one of the greatest unknown American writers, Nelson Algren, a pre-Beat Generation realist who also took the Underground Man to new heights in the 1930s thru the 1970s, writing from the working man and woman’s perspective in Chicago and elsewhere. Here, he discusses his definitive biography, Never A Lovely So Real (Norton).

The Reading: 

Original compositions by Ken Vandermark with Nelson Algren reading The Man with the Golden Arm in the 1970s, unearthed by Mr. Asher. 

Music: featured in the in the introduction by Ken Vandermark and additional music by Aaron Copland 

Lili Anolik, whose Vanity Fair profile of the reclusive writer, re-started the Eve Babitz revival, discusses her Eve biography, Hollywood Eve (published by Scribner) and, as the subtitle suggests, “The Secret History of LA."

For our reading this episode, writer and critic Molly Lambert reads from Eve’s latest collection of unpublished later work, I Used to Be Charming (published by NYRB)

Music by Mike Melvoin

EPISODE : 4

THE INTERVIEW
Jenn Shapland discusses her National Book
Award-nominated memoir My Autobiography of
Carson McCullers (Tin House), a brilliantly
rendered hybrid which wrestles with identity,
sexuality, and creativity.

THE READING
Carson in her own words. Courtesy of the
NEA’s Big Read, actress Holly Hunter reads
from Carson’s most famous novel The Heart is
a Lonely Hunter.

Credit: Music by Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou

EPISODE : 3
THE INTERVIEW
Along for the Ride director Nick Ebeling unpacks the enigma of Dennis Hopper and his blacklisted years as seen through the eyes of the film’s star, Satya de la Manitou, Hopper’s decades-long “right-hand
man".

THE READING
Director Nick Ebeling reads Rudyard
Kipling’s poem “If,” a Hopper favorite.

Credit: Music from The Last Movie trailer

EPISODE: 2

THE INTERVIEW
Professor and critic Eddie Glaude, Jr.
discusses his latest book Begin Again (Crown),
an intellectual look at James Baldwin’s most
potent political writing from The Fire Next
Time to No Name in the Street.

THE READING
James Baldwin in his own words throughout
the episode courtesy of YouTube.

Credit: Music by Beverly Glenn-Copland

EPISODE: 1  

THE INTERVIEW
Tosh Berman—poet, publisher, bookstore
buyer, record store clerk, son of artists
Wallace and Shirley Berman—discusses his
memoir, entitled simply Tosh (City
Lights). The subtitle says it all: “Growing
up in Wallace Berman’s world.”

THE READING  Tosh reads from Tosh, his memoir.

Credit: Music by Thelonious Monk