KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Richard Adams (1920-2016) interviewed in 1978 by Richard Wolinsky.

Richard Adams, the author of “Watership Down,” “Plague Dogs” “Shardik” and other novels, died on Christmas Eve, 2016 at the age of 96. Born in 1920, he served as a liaison officer during World War II, and later joined the civil service, rising to the rank of Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Housing.

Past the age of fifty and a life-long civil servant, Richard Adams began telling stories to his daughters about talking rabbits while on a car trip. The daughters prompted him to turn the stories into a novel. After four failed attempts, a fifth try in 1972 found a publisher and “Watership Down” became an international best-seller and later a beloved classic fantasy.

He followed that with “Shardik,” a novel about a giant bear. Along the way, Adams became an advocate against the use of animal testing, which is the subject of his third novel, “The Plague Dogs.”

It was on tour for that third novel upon its American publication in the spring of 1978 that Richard Wolinsky interviewed Richard Adams. Though he’d conducted a handful of interviews with a co-host, this was Richard Wolinsky’s first solo shot in what would be a long career as literary interviewer.

Though Adams continued to write well into the 21st Century and would publish fourteen more books , he never again achieved the success of his first few novels, especially of course Watership Down. Watership Down and The Plague Dogs both became animated films; a live action film of another novel. The Giril in a Swing, was released in 1988. Watership Down also became a 39 episode TV series in from 1999 to 2001. A new mini-series of Watership Down from BBC One will air in 2017 on Netflix, featuring the voices of James McAvoy, Ben Kingsley, Nicholas Hoult and John Boyega.

A shorter version of this interview aired on KPFA as an Arts-Waves program and as a Bookwaves program in syndication. The interview was digitized, remastered and edited in 2016 by Richard Wolinsky. The exact date and location of the interview were not listed on the cassette.

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Rabih Alameddine, author of “The Angel of History” is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.

Born in Kuwait and now living in San Francisco and Beirut, Rabih Alameddine is the atuhor of several novels, including “The Hakawati” and “An Unnecessary Woman.”  His latest novel deals with memory and forgetting, as a poet remembers his lover and others who died of AIDS during the ’80s in the context of both the real world and a fantasy dialogue between Satan and Death.

In this interview, Rabih Alameddine talks about his life as an immigrant, as an Arab, as a gay person, and its relationship to his art. He also discusses the recent election and how it breaks through the fantasy of America’s exceptionalism.

A shorter version of this interview can be found as a Bookwaves program.

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Anne Rice discusses her latest novel, “Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis” along with her entire career as a novelist with host Richard Wolinsky.

Anne Rice achieved success in 1976 with her novel “Interview with the Vampire,” which spawned a series of novels titled “The Vampire Chronicles” and became a world-wide phenomenon. Along the way, she also wrote several other novels including the Mayfair Witches trilogy, Cry to Heaven, a series of books under pseudonyms, and the screenplay for “Interview with the Vampire” was turned into a successful film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

In 2014, after an eight-year hiatus, she returned to the main character in her Vampire Chronicles series, Lestat, and here talks about the second book in this new series. She also talks about her career, including a failed musical of Lestat and the four films made from her books.

The interview was recorded at Books Inc., Opera Plaza, in San Francisco. The interview is also heard as a two-part series on Arts-Waves and Bookwaves the week of December 26, 2016.

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Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the novel “Here I Am” is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.

In his latest novel, the author of “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” focuses on the question of what it means to be a secular Jew in America today in the story of an American family on the verge of crisis, set against the backdrop of turmoil in the Middle East. In this wide-ranging interview, he talks about the characters in his book, why he chose its various elements, and how he relates his own life and ideas to those in his book. “Here I Am” was named as one of the 100 notable books of 2016 by the New York Times.

He also discusses his other recent work, including an aborted HBO series and other recent projects.

A shorter version of this interview airs as a Bookwaves radio program.

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John Lahr, interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.

John Lahr spent over two decades as drama critic for The New Yorker, and continues to write profiles for the magazine. His latest book, Joy Ride, consists of essays and reviews from the magazine. The author of several books, including Notes on a Cowardly Lion about his father, actor Bert Lahr, and a recent biography of Tennessee Williams, John Lahr also co-authored Elaine Stritch’s classic one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and has served as a theatrical artistic director. Being on both sides of the fence, as theatrical professional and critic, he is perhaps the leading person in America to discuss theater today.

This interview was recorded in the KPFA studios on October 4, 2015, but his views on political theater in the interview have only become more relevant with the recent election of Donald Trump and the growing resistance to his presidency.

In the interview, Lahr also discusses several aspects of criticism, including the relationship of theater to film, Tennessee Williams’ last plays, the work of August Wilson (the first of the ten-play cycle from HBO, “Fences” starring Denzel Washington, opens in theaters in December 2016), and his relationship with his famous father.

A shorter version of the interview aired on Dec. 5, 2016 as an Arts-Waves program.

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