KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Legendary playwright, cabaret performer, actor, and drag superstar Charles Busch in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Charles Busch, as a playwright, was nominated for the Tony Award for “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.” Among his other works are “Red Scare on Sunset,” which has a production at San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre, Sept 21- Oct. 21, 2018, “The Divine Sister,” “The Lady in Question” and the long-running off-Broadway hit, “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.”

From his website:

He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. For two seasons, he appeared as Nat Ginzburg on the HBO series OZ and is the author of the auto-biographical novel Whores of Lost Atlantis. He has directed two films; the Showtime short subject, Personal Assistant, and a feature, A Very Serious Person, which won an honorable mention at the Tribeca Film Festival. Due to his love and knowledge of film and theatre history, he has appeared as a guest programmer and in numerous documentaries for Turner Classic Movies, and has lectured and conducted master classes at many colleges and universities including NYU, Harvard, UCLA and Amherst College.

In this interview, he talks about “Red Scare on Sunset,” about his early career and how he came to be a playwright and performer, and about drag and the politics of drag.

New Conservatory website

Charles Busch website

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Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, just out in trade paperback, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded in front of an audience at Pegasus Books, on Solano Avenue in Berkeley.

Elizabeth Rosner, the author of three novels and one poetry/prose collection, discusses her latest book, Survivor Cafe, which deals with trauma and its effects, both direct and indirect. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she examines the effects of war and other tragedies on the psyche, and how those effects can be passed down, generation to generation.

An in-studio interview was recorded and aired/posted in September, 2017. This podcast was recorded on November 30, 2017 and is being posted for the first time.

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Erik Larson discusses his book, “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin,” hosted by Richard Wolinsky, and first aired on July 21, 2011.

As the Trump Administration continues through its second year, and as the threat of fascism grows, even as perhaps a noose is tightening around the regime’s neck, there’s a tendency to look back on the past, to see what we might learn and whether we can use that knowledge to cope with what’s happening today.

One of the decades that seems to have parallels to our own is the nineteen thirties, particularly in terms of the rise of Hitler in Germany, and I’ve noticed more than a few people I know personally have found books that maybe help them understand that era better. One of those books is Erik Larson’s 2011 “In the Garden of Beasts,” which looks at the rise of Nazi Germany from the perspective of an American family, that of ambassador William Dodd. Erik Larson is the author of several non-fiction works, including The Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck, and his most recent, Dead Wake, about the sinking of the Lusitania, in 2015.

The interview covers two areas. The first is the creation of the book itself, along with some of the history of Nazi Germany. The second delves into whether the United States (remember, this was recorded in 2011) is on the precipice of similar events. It turns out that we may be a lot closer than Eric Larson felt then.

In an e-mail sent on August 25, 2018, Eric Larson writes:

“I find it interesting that readers are making their own allusions to Trump and our times. I’ve tried to avoid making connections, though increasingly I do feel there’s a sinister resonance here, especially now that ICE seems inclined more and more to take on a Gestapo-esque role.”

Erik Larson’s next book will be published in early 2020.

Photo on Radio Wolinsky page. U.S. Ambassador William Dodd sits in the upper left-hand corner of the photo (the only photo clearly showing both Dodd and Hitler in the archives).

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Erroi Morris, documentary film maker and author of “The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Noted film maker Errol Morris was in graduate school in philosophy when he argued with his professor, Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn threw an ashtray at Morris and had him kicked out of school. The argument was about truth. Kuhn said it was relative; Morris said it was real. All of Errol Morris’s work as a director and documentary artist focuses on truth, whether it be “The Fog of War” and Robert McNamara, or “The Thin Blue Line,” or even his latest project, the Netflix series “Wormwood.”

In this interview, he talks about his feelings regarding Kuhn, the nature of truth and its relationship to the current Washington regime, the origins of “The Thin Blue Line’ and other matters.

Special thanks to Cherilyn Parsons and the folks at the Bay Area Book Fair, who helped set up this interview. Recorded June 4, 2017.

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V.S. Naipaul, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in literature, died on August 11th, 2018, just days before his 86th birthday. The author of such acclaimed novels as A House for Mr. Biswas, the Booker Prize winner In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, and non-fiction works as The Middle Passage and An Area of Darkness, Naipaul also had a well-deserved reputation as a dyspeptic and difficult personality, all of which came to light in the highly regarded memoir, Sir Vidia’s Shadow, written in 1998 by his former protégé, the novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, whose three decade friendship with Naipaul had just come to an end.

On October 28th, 1998, Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff had a chance to speak with Paul Theroux about his memoir, about V.S. Naipaul, and about the creation of Sir Vidia’s Shadow. 

Three years after the interview, V.S. Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Quoting to the Washington Post, ‘Theroux, who later reconciled with Naipaul, had visited with him recently.“We had some very ups and downs over the years, said Theroux, but there was great satisfaction in reconnecting,” he said. “It took him a long time to make his mark, but when he did, it happened in a big way.”’

From the NY Times Obituary on V.S. Naipaul:

“The writer Paul Theroux, who was one of Mr. Naipaul’s closest friends, had a falling out with Mr. Naipaul not long after the marriage to Ms. Alvi. In his book “Sir Vidia’s Shadow” (1998), Mr. Theroux documented the arc of their complicated literary friendship, which began in Uganda in 1966 and ended abruptly in 1997 after Mr. Theroux saw books he had written and inscribed to his mentor listed for sale in an auction catalog. He depicts Mr. Naipaul as a great inspiration as a writer, but also petty, cruel and needy. The two men later reconciled.”

From the Washington Post Obituary on V.S. Naipaul

“He will go down as one of the greatest writers of our time,” Theroux told The Associated Press during a telephone interview, citing his mastery of writing about families and colonialism. “He also never wrote falsely. He was a scourge of anyone who used a cliché or an un-thought out sentence. He was very scrupulous about his writing, very severe, too.”

As his literary stature grew, so did his reputation as a difficult, irascible personality. Naipaul was a private man and did not have many friends, but his personal life entered the public domain when Theroux, whose relationship with Naipaul had soured, published a stinging memoir about Naipaul in 1998.

“Sir Vidia’s Shadow” described Naipaul as a racist, sexist miser who threw terrifying tantrums and beat up women.

Naipaul ignored Theroux’s book, but he did authorize a candid biography that confirmed some of Theroux’s claims. >>

The story of their reconciliation in 2011.

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