KPFA - Bookwaves/Artwaves

Richard Powers, whose latest novel is "The Understory," in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

The author of "The Time of Our Singing" and "The Echo Maker" delves into the world of eco-terrorism and the secret life of trees in this epic story about eight individuals who, together and apart, come to see the forests of earth as our salvation, and the salvation of the planet. Based on prodigious research, Powers tells of the way trees communicate with one another, and spins stories based on real life confrontations between protestors and those who would destroy the lifeblood of the planet to pay off leveraged debt.

Richard Powers explores the effects of modern science and technology in his twelve novels. Along with the National Book award for "The Echo Maker,"  he has awon many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. Richard Powers has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford Universities.

An extended 46-minute version of this interview is available as a Radio Wolinsky podcast. [1]

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/richard-powers-the-understory/

Nancy MacLean, author of "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America" in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean, in researching the life of libertarian professor James Buchanan, discovered the philosophical underpinnings of what Hillary Clinton (almost unknowingly) called the "vast right-wing conspiracy." Funded by Charles Koch and other donors, they've taken over the GOP and have an agenda, she says, that ultimately will allow minority rule in the United States for the forseeable future.

In this interview, she discusses the role of Buchanan and the Mont Pelerin Society in the underpinnings of this gradual take-over of the state and federal government, and what the goals are, according to her research. "Democracy in Chains"was on the short list for the 2017 National Book Award.

Extended 58-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast. [1]

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/nancy-maclean-democracy-chains/

Harlan Ellison (1934-2018), in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded in San Francisco on September 15, 1997, while he was on tour for his collection, "Slippage."

Impossible to categorize, and sometimes impossible to be around, Harlan Ellison was an acclaimed short story writer known for his science fiction and fantasy, a novelist, an editor known for the classic Dangerous Visions anthologies, a television writer and consultant, a media gadfly, and one of the most steadfast promoters of reading and independent bookstores.

Dick Lupoff first met Harlan in 1960, and their friendship, with its ups and downs, was to last until Harlan’s death, two years shy of a half-century. This interview reflects that friendship, and their relationship, both professionally and personally.

Richard A. Lupoff, on July 2, 2018:

"I first met Harlan in August of 1960. My wife Pat and I were working on the first issue of our fanzine, “Xero.” Harlan had offered to contribute an essay about Hitchcock’s film “Psycho.” We went over to Harlan’s apartment in the West Village, knocked on the door, and an older woman let us in.

“Turned out she was Harlan’s mother. She said she’d arrived to visit him and he told her that he had to run an errand and left. And hadn’t come back. We spent a few minutes with Harlan’s mom, who turned out to be a complete harridan. We could understand why he’d “had to run an errand” and not come back!

"We did get Harlan’s manuscript shortly after this. My age at the time would have been 27. Harlan and Bob Silverberg (Robert Silverberg (multiple Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction and fantasy author) and I were close in age

"In a long career stretching back to his days as a science fiction fan in the 1950s, Harlan was always outspoken, often controversial and frequently litigious. He never backed off from a fight--or from a lawsuit. He was a magnet for attention with a flair for the theatrical including such stunts as setting up a typewriter in the window of a bookstore and writing a story in the full view of customers and passers-by.”

Along with his work in television, Harlan served as host of KPFK Pacifica’s science fiction program, Hour 25 for one year in the mid-1980s. As a volunteer, Harlan felt he owned the rights to his broadcasts and was furious when Pacifica began selling them. Acrimony ensued, and Harlan moved on.

In 2006, Harlan Ellison was named a Grand Master from the Science Fiction Writers of America, and won a Nebula in 2011 for his short story “How Interesting, A Tiny Man.” His most recent of collection of new material , published in 2015, was “Can and Can’tankerous.” There’s a film about his life, “Dreams with Sharp Teeth,” released in 2007. His best stories are collected in a recent anthology, “Top of the Volcano.” Slippage is now considered one of his finest collections. The Last Dangerous Visions has still never been published.

An extended version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky [1] podcast.

 

 

 

 

[1] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/harlan-ellison-1923-2018/

Simon Winchester, whose latest book is "The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

[caption id="attachment_290807" align="alignleft" width="340"] Len Cariou & Richard Wolinsky at KPFA[/caption]

Len Cariou, Tony Award winner for the original production of "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" and star of his one-man show, "Broadway and the Bard," in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Broadway and the Bard plays June 21st-24th at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. For more information: Lesher Center Website [1]

Although recognized for his presence on television for the past eight seasons (as Tom Selleck’s dyspeptic father on the long running hit series “Blue Bloods”), Cariou has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the theatre, including originating leads in two landmark Stephen Sondheim musicals. In Broadway and the Bard, he is able to give full voice to an idea that he has harbored since his first prophetic Broadway season when he appeared as Shakespeare’s Henry V and followed by a starring role in the musical Applause. In this delightful play of verse and song, Cariou combines his two great loves – Shakespeare and American Musical Comedy –into one rich and diverse tapestry.

Len Cariou is a distinguished member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and a three-time Tony® nominee for Applause, A Little Night Music, and for his legendary performance as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tony®Award winner, Best Actor). His other Broadway credits include Nightwatch, Cold Storage, Teddy & Alice, Dance a Little Closer, The Speed of Darkness, Neil Simon’s The Dinner Party, and Proof. Showing his range, he toured the U.S. as Cap’n Andy in Showboat, and as Nils Bohrin in Copenhagen. He scored his most recent triumph in The Gate Theatre’s definitive, hit production of All My Sons in Dublin, Ireland, reprising his role as Joe Keller, for which he alsowon raves at the Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles in 2007.

An extended version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast. [2]

 

[1] http://www.lesherartscenter.org/

[2] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/len-cariou/

Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was one of the most important writers to come out of World War II. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, stunned the literary world with its hard-boiled and graphic depiction of life in the army. After a handful of other novels, including The Deer Park and An American Dream, he turned to reporting and what came to be called New Journalism with works such as The Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Of a Fire on the Moon, The Executioner’s Song and Oswald’s Tale. His later novels include Harlot’s Ghost and Ancient Evenings. As a public figure, he was known as pugnacious and irascible. A political activist, he attended several Democratic conventions and once ran for Mayor of New York.

Norman Mailer’s final novel, The Castle in the Forest, about the early life of Adolf Hitler, was intended as the first of a trilogy, but Mailer died a few months after its publication. He never got around to writing his long-awaited sequel to Harlot’s Ghost.

This podcast is taken from two interviews, the first on November 6, 1995, with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff during Mailer’s tour for his biography, Picasso, and the second, a solo interview by Richard A. Lupoff, on May 19, 1998, came during Mailer’s tour for his collection “Time of our Time.” Digitized and re-edited in 2008 by Richard Wolinsky; revised in 2018.

Tayari Jones, whose latest novel is "An American Marriage," is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and her latest, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo.  A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship.

"An American Marriage" deals with a marriage torn apart by the unjust arrest and imprisonment of the husband after an accusation by a white woman at a motel, and how both spouses deal with the following few years. "An American Marriage" is a 2018 Oprah’s Book Club Selection.

Tayari Jones website [1]

An extended version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast. [2]

[1] http://www.tayarijones.com/

[2] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/tayari-jones-an-american-marriage/

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, authors of "The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America," in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. The book is an oral history of the play by Tony Kushner, looking at not only its history, but how Angels in America fits into the fabric of the American saga and theatrical history.

The play Angels in America has become a stage classic since it was first produced in the early 1990s. Dealing with the confluence of the AIDS epidemic, the Reagan era, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the rise of gay liberation, the seven-hour epic theater piece also became a 2003 film directed by Mike Nichols and starring Meryl Streep, Mary Louise Parker, Justin Kirk, Jeffrey Wright, Emma Thompson and Al Pacino as Roy Cohn, available now on CD and via HBO.

At present, major productions of Angels in America are mounted in both New York and Berkeley. The New York production, [1] which runs through June 15, 2018, stars Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield, and is up for eleven Tony Awards. The Berkeley Rep [2] production, starring Stephen Spinella and Randy Harrison, runs through July 22, 2018.

An hour-long version of this interview can be found as a Radio Wolinsky podcast.

[1] https://angelsbroadway.com/

[2] http://berkeleyrep.org/

Michael David Lukas, author of "The Oracle of Stamboul," whose most recent novel is "The Last Watchman of Old Cairo," in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

"The Last Watchman of Old Cairo" tells the story of a family hired a thousand years ago to guard a synagogue in Cairo, and of a secret scroll that may or may not exist. Michael David Lukas grew up in Berkeley and is a former Fulbright Scholar.

Michael David Lukas website [1]

Extended Radio Wolinsky podcast [2]

[1] http://michaeldavidlukas.com/

[2] https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/michael-david-lukas-the-last-watchman-of-old-cairo/

Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, recorded in 2006, discussing this masterpiece of theatre, which currently runs at Berkeley Rep, along with his other work, including the film "Munich." Hosted by Richard Wolinsky.