KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Ann Beattie, author of the novel, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Known primarily as one of the finest short story writers alive today, Ann Beattie also has a long and distinguished career as a novelist. Her latest work, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, follows a group of millennials, and one in particular, as they (and he) negotiate the aftermath of 9/11 on their lives, through the following two decades of the 21st Century.

Special thanks to Cherilyn Parsons and the Bay Area Book Festival for making this interview possible.

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Nathan Englander, whose latest novel is “kaddish.com,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

The author of two other novels, including “Ministry of Special Cases,” and two acclaimed short story collections, “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” talks about his latest book, which deals with the intersection of religion and technology, as a religious Jew who can’t bring himself to say Kaddish for his late father every day contracts with an on-line company that will do it for him.

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Susan Oxtoby, Senior Film Curator at BAMPFA, Pacific Film Archive, and curator of the  “Against Authority: The Films of Masaki Kobayashi” series retrospective running in July and August 2019, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Masaki Kobayashi directed twenty films from the early 1950s into the 1990s, but it was over a brief eleven year span that he  became a legend of Japanese cinema, beginning with “I Will Buy You” in 1956, and continuing with the three-part “The Human Condition,” “Hara Kiri,” “Kwaidan,” “The Inheritance” and “Samurai Rebellion.” In these films he moved from a realist cinema to one that used Japanese stylizations to present films that are humanist in philosophy, strongly anti-war and poke holes in authority and authority figures.

BAMPFA presents these films in late July and August. For times and dates:

https://bampfa.org/program/against-authority-cinema-masaki-kobayashi

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Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was an essayist, novelist, activist, film-maker, philosopher and teacher. On March 16, 2000, while on tour for what would be her final novel, “In America,” she was interviewed by Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff in San Francisco.

From Wikipedia: “Among her best known works are  On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, The Way We Live Now, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover, and In America.”

From Wikipedia: “Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and communism and leftist ideology. Although her essays and speeches sometimes drew controversy, she has been described as “one of the most influential critics of her generation.”

In her final four years after this interview, Susan Sontag published a long essay, Regarding the Pain of Others in 2003, concerning the visual representation of war and violence. Following her death, a collection of essays and speeches was published in 2007, and her journals and notebooks were published in two volumes, in 2008 and 2012. She died of leukemia on December 28, 2004 at the age of 71. Her illness and death were chronicled in the book Swimming in a Sea of Death by her son David Rieff. Am award-winning 2014 documentary on her life, Regarding Susan Sontag, is now available on Kanopy, the streaming app available free through your local library.

This interview and was digitized and re-edited in 2006 by Richard Wolinsky and has not been aired in thirteen years.

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National Book Award winning novelist Ha Jin discusses his latest book, “The Banished Immortal,” a biography of celebrated 8th Century Chinese poet Li Bai (also known as Li Po). Hosted by Richard Wolinsky.

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