Life Stories

In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast series where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I chat with Emily Rapp about The Still Point of the Turning World, an account of parenting a son diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease at nine months. Rapp talks about how the diagnosis for this rare degenerative disorder came as a complete shock—she’d actually been tested to determine if she was a carrier and had been all but cleared—and the solace she got from other parents facing the same situation. She also describes how writing about life with Ronan as they were living it helped not just to bring her back from the edge of despair, but showed her the possibility of living without holding herself back.

Rapp cites former Life Stories guest Cheryl Strayed and the emotional support she offered in our conversation—I also noted, as I was preparing this audio for uploading, that another former guest, Sarah Manguso, had written a thoughtful review of Rapp’s memoir for the New York Times, describing it as “a brilliant study of the wages of mortal love.”

Listen to Life Stories #27: Emily Rapp (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast series of interviews with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I talk with Ashok Rajamani about The Day My Brain Exploded, his account of recovering from an AVM, or arteriovenous malformation—a cluster of veins and arteries that formed in his brain in the womb that burst one afternoon in the spring of 2000. Among other topics, we discuss just why the AVM burst when it did, Ashok’s father’s curious reaction to his hospitalization, the callousness of the doctor who performed the surgery that saved his life, and the full extent of his injuries—including what it’s like to have to rediscover your sexual orientation.

We also talk about Ashok’s decision to tell his story in order to raise awareness about the range of traumatic brain injuries—including cases like his where the extent of his condition is not immediately apparent—and how, although he’s only met one other person in “real life” who was also recovering from an AVM, he’s gotten in touch with many others, along with other brain injury victims, through the Internet. He’s also compiled a list of brain injury resources which he hosts on his website.

If you enjoyed the previous Life Stories episode with Susannah Cahalan about the autoimmune disorder that affected her brain, you’ll want to give this episode a listen—and if you haven’t heard that episode yet, then you should listen to it after you hear Ashok’s story.

Listen to Life Stories #26: Ashok Rajamani (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast series where I talk to memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, Cynthia Zarin explains why An Enlarged Heart isn’t really memoir but rather “personal history,” and from there we talk a bit about how a 400-word magazine item gets expanded into an 8,000-word personal essay, the ghost maps of memory that we carry around the cities where we live, and how the types of children’s books she’s written have changed as her children have gotten older—among other topics.

In reviewing the “tape” of this conversation, I was especially struck by her response to the question about whether there were other personal essayists whose voices she saw as a model to keep in mind while she was working on the essays in this collection: “Of course, and no.” And, too, her refusal to give in to the anxiety of influence and just concentrate on refining the voice with which she felt most comfortable, whoever else it might remind some hypothetical reader of.

Listen to Life Stories #25: Cynthia Zarin (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

In this episode of Life Stories, my podcast series of interviews with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I talk to Nick Flynn about his latest memoir, The Reenactments, which describes (among other things) what it was like to be on the set as his first memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, was turned into the motion picture Being Flynn. (And, of course, we talk about knowing that he was never going to get to keep the original title once the movie got seriously underway…)

The Reenactments also reflects Flynn’s deep interest in the neuroscience of memory, with insights drawn from Antonio Damasio, Vilayanur Ramachandran, David Eagleman, and others. And we talk a bit about the glass flower exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which Flynn visited as a child and continues to move him as a metaphor for how we try to retain our pasts and carry them over into the present.

Listen to Life Stories #24: Nick Flynn (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I talk to memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I reunite with Sarah Manguso, who I first interviewed back in 2008 shortly after the publication of her first memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay. When we met then, she mentioned that the recent death of a close friend was becoming the subject of a potential novel—instead, she’s written a short book (“an elegy,” as it’s billed on the cover) called The Guardians as an elegy to her friend Harris.

We discuss what led Sarah back to non-fiction as she probed her grief, and touch upon the idea of the supernatural as something between metaphor and reality, and I learn about a condition called akathisia that might be described as like restless leg syndrome all over your body—a condition that turns out to be a frequent side effect of certain anti-psychotic medications and which may have contributed to Harris’s condition in the hours before his suicide. I should mention that this conversation was conducted “in the field,” as it were; though the noise removal software made a pretty big difference, you’ll still hear the occasional snatches of music in the background. (The Tom Waits is pretty unmistakable.)

Listen to Life Stories #23: Sarah Manguso (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

This episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, began as an assignment for Maximum Shelf, a sponsor-supported segment of the Shelf Awareness newsletter. Once I started reading After Visiting Friends, in which Michael Hainey reveals how his life was affected by the unanswered questions surrounding his father’s death and how he determined to uncover the truth, I knew that I wanted to share this book with Beatrice readers as well. So I’m grateful my editors at Shelf have allowed me to present this version of my conversation with Michael, which took place in a conference room down the hall from his offices at GQ (where he’s the deputy editor).

There’s a lot of great stuff in this conversation—about how the truth doesn’t always bring you closure, about the perseverance to see a project through over nearly a decade, and about how the fundamentals of reporting are the fundamentals of good storytelling, among other things—but I’ve kept the central mystery intact, because, really, you need to discover it for yourself, through Michael Hainey’s voice. And I hope you will!

Listen to Life Stories #22: Michael Hainey (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

This episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, showcases Jacob Tomsky, who’s written about his experiences in the hotel service industry in Heads in Beds. We had a lot to talk about, from his decision to change his own name along with everybody else’s to why you should always tip the bellman—and a little something for the front desk wouldn’t hurt, either.

We also discussed working with his editor at Doubleday, Gerry Howard. I mentioned that it seemed like a great fit because Howard really “gets” working class literary voices, and Tomsky added that he’d been excited to work with Chuck Palahniuk’s editor because he had some wild stories to tell about the hotel trade. But that wasn’t the only reason; while another publisher who was interested in the book was very welcoming, Tomsky was actually a little intimidated by his meetings with Howard and other Doubleday brass—and he thought that fear was a sign he’d be pushed into coming up with something even better than what he’d already come up with. And the results, I’ll tell you, are pretty impressive.

Listen to Life Stories #21: Jacob Tomsky (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

In April 2012, when Dara-Lynn Weiss wrote about her attempts to control her seven-year-old daughter Bea’s diet in order to get her to lose weight, there were a lot of vehement reactions; Jezebel, for example, described it as “the worst Vogue article ever.” So when Weiss wrote a memoir, The Heavy, expanding on her experiences and discussing the reactions to her original magazine article, I was interested in having a conversation with her for Life Stories, the podcast where I talk with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir.

So we talk some about the health issues that were involved, and the controversy that erupted over Weiss’s revelations about the dietary choices she made for her daughter, and her feeling that while some parents are applauded for their vigilance over what their kids eat in other situations, parents of obese children are often not given similar benefit of the doubt. But we also talk about why she now feels it was a mistake to let Bea pose with her in the photo accompanying the Vogue article, and about her surprise at Bea’s reaction when she successfully reached her target weight—and about the difference between eating the right foods and the right amounts of the right foods, and why the “food media” seems to focus on the former rather than the latter.

One especially positive aspect of The Heavy is Weiss’s desire to broaden our sense of the word “diet,” which has popularly come to mean a short-term plan for weight loss, to a more long-term strategy for healthy eating choices throughout life. Much of her memoir centers on the attempt to instill that kind of consistency in her daughter’s eating habits, but more importantly the hope that Bea would, as she grows older, have the maturity to make smart choices for herself.

Listen to Life Stories #20: Dara-Lynn Weiss (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

Welcome to the first 2013 episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I talk with memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir. This episode features a conversation with master woodcarver David Esterly about The Lost Carving, which on one level is an account of the year he spent at London’s Hampton Court Palace in the late 1980s, recreating a wall hanging by the late 17th-century carver Grinling Gibbons that was destroyed in a fire. But the memoir is also a meditation on the creative process, a consideration of the sometimes tense relationship between artists and patrons, and an investigation into how Gibbons achieved some of his technical accomplishments.

One of the things that fascinated me about the book, and that I made sure to talk about with Esterly, was that he had not originally set out to become a visual artist, let alone a decorative woodcarver. His first reaction to seeing Gibbons’ work was that he wanted to write about the artist; then, he says, at some point he hit upon the notion that in order to really understand what Gibbons had accomplished artistically, he should try his hand at carving. When we met, decades after that revelatory moment, Esterly had just opened a brief exhibit of some of his most recent work at a Manhattan gallery, so I had an opportunity to see some of his intricately detailed still lives up close—it drove home another point that comes up during this conversation, namely the way that “realism” in art is often achieved through profound artifice…

If you’re at all interested in making a life for yourself in the creative arts, or around whatever creative practice it is that gives you fulfillment, I encourage you to listen to this conversation and to read The Lost Carving.

Listen to Life Stories #19: David Esterly (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, I chat with Sonia Taitz about The Watchmaker’s Daughter, in which she begins by talking about growing up in New York City as the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. Her relationship with her parents takes up most of the conversation, as you might expect, but we also get into how she was diverted from her literary ambitions into law school—and how she found her way back. I also found out about the novel she’s just finished writing, based on the public downward spiral of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Listen to Life Stories #18: Sonia Taitz (MP3 file); or download the file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click).

As we near the end of 2012, I just wanted to take a moment to say that I’m really delighted by how Life Stories has turned out so far, and I’m looking forward to improving my game and producing even more episodes next year. If you’re new to the podcast, I encourage you to explore the earlier interviews: Tim Anderson, Cris Beam, Sandra Beasley, Susannah Cahalan, Kambri Crews, Heather Donahue, Alyssa Harad, Storm Large, Jenny Lawson, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Gary Marcus, Steven Rinella, Rachel Shukert & Rev Jen, Daniel Smith, Cheryl Strayed, Anthony Swofford, and Alex Witchel & Will Schwalbe.

Thanks to everyone who’s been a guest so far, and the publicists who’ve helped make these interviews possible—and to you for listening to (and, I hope, enjoying) them!