The Virtual Memories Show

Artist Frances Jetter joins the show to talk about her amazing new book, AMALGAM: An Immigrant, His Labor Union, and His American Family in Brooklyn (Fantagraphics Underground). We talk about how the book both expanded and narrowed in scope during its 12-year process, how her grandfather's story bleeds out into American, Jewish and labor history, and how she integrated her trademark linocut prints with other media to create an unforgettable graphic narrative. We get into how the editorial illustration field changed over her career and why she moved toward artist's books and narrative art, why "illustrator" isn't a dirty word & why having her work out in the world is important, how we don't always see the resonances of our work when we're in the middle of it, how working with other materials and forms (like sculpture) rejuvenated her drawing, what she learned about storytelling in the making of AMALGAM, her family's political background and her awakening, how students have changed over her 40+ years teaching at SVA, and more. Follow Frances on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

With THE NOTEBOOK: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis), Roland Allen explores how the proliferation of paper & binding changed culture, business, and maybe the nature of human consciousness. We talk about how keeping a diary got him obsessed-ish with notebooks, how he found a narrative and protagonists as he delved into the history of notebooks, and what it means to see the notebook as a piece of technology/hardware. We get into their influence on art and the Renaissance (and the theory that sketchbooks allowed artists to move toward realism), how diaries created a new, private persona distinct from the public self, how he discovered a new reading for a line of Hamlet, and how digital options never manage to replace the paper notebook. We also discuss how Moleskine came to dominate the notebook market and how Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines jumpstarted their craze, how Roland learned to switch off the "this isn't interesting" filter in his own diaries, how writing this book made him a better notebooker, the way Dutch album amicorum (friendship books) served as a social media precursor, how our notebooks can outlive us (and his posthumous plans for his diaries), and a lot more. Follow Roland on Instagram and Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

With his new graphic novel, NAKED CITY (Dark Horse Books), artist/activist Eric Drooker finishes the New York trilogy begun in Flood! and Blood Song. We talk about how Naked City started with the image of a beleaguered squeegee-man and wound up a love letter to New York and especially Tompkins Square Park, the challenges of using word/thought balloons and captions after making wordless comics for so long, and the importance of staying handmade in the digital era. We get into his upbringing in Stuy Town and the Lower East Side/Loisaida, why we were recording in an apartment above the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, how New York changed during his life, why he semi sorta escaped from the city, what it's like being a quality-of-life criminal, and the time he made his start with stencil-graffiti only to get over-tagged by Basquiat. We also discuss his artistic & political awakenings, the Tompkins Square Park riot and police militarization, his ambivalence about street art going into the gallery, the importance of on-the-ground activism (MOAR STREET POSTERS), the surveillance panopticon, and more. Follow Eric on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

With his fantastic new book, MYSTICISM (NYRB), philosopher Simon Critchley explores mystic traditions from medieval Christianity to the present. We talk about the evolving definition of mysticism, its female-centric history, how it's not just the moment of revelation but the adoption of a form practice (like Julian of Norwich's half-day of revelations and ~40 years of theological examination of them), and whether today's aesthetic experiences can truly be a substitute for the religious transcendence of the past. We get into attention as a form of mysticism and close reading as a form of attention, how we can try to overcome this age of distraction upon distraction, what it means to de-create our creaturely self and 'get out of our own way', how philosophy treated religion as bonkers, and why he's drawn to the weirdness of Christianity. We also discuss how he's made a publishing career out of death, how we each faced our theoretical deaths and found liberation in their wake, the music he makes with his oldest friend, John Simmons, how Brian Eno's concept of a Scenius is hard to create virtually, how his life and his teaching have changed since the pandemic began, The Time He Got To Meet Nick Cave (grr!), and a lot more. Follow Simon on Instagram and Facebook, and follow Critchley And Simmons on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

Hail Satan! It's spooky season, and writer/editor Doug Brod joins the show to celebrate his fantastic new biography, BORN WITH A TAIL: The Devilish Life and Wicked Times of Anton Szandor LaVey, Founder of the Church of Satan (Hachette). We talk about the line between huckster and believer, the history of the Church of Satan, why Doug didn't want to puncture the mythology LaVey built around his life, and the fun of writing a chapter about Sammy Davis Jr. exploring Satanism. We also get into how LaVey's philosophy of self-deification and aesthetics managed to penetrate American culture, how Doug balanced reporting & cultural history for the book, the people he wishes he could've interviewed, how LaVey reveled in spreading his gospel to the post-punk/'zine generation in the '90s, what it takes to create one's own aesthetic world while still going out to Olive Garden, Doug's first book about '70s hard rock, and what it means to consider Satan as metaphor rather than incarnated being, and more. Follow Doug on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

Author & essayist Sven Birkerts returns to the show to celebrate his fantastic new essay collection, The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing (Arrowsmith Press). We talk about the estrangement of the everyday, the problem of other minds, how serendipity tells us something about where we are, authors' photos and self-mythologizing, moving house (& turning 70) during COVID, and the inspiration of Cortazar's Around the Day in Eighty Worlds. We get into the threat of AI to writing, reading, and thinking, opening up to ambivalence, why people find it so tough to say the word "soul", what he misses about teaching, Kierkegaard & Walker Percy's The Moviegoer & being on The Search, and wondering what Bob Dylan is like in the kitchen in the morning. We also discuss writers' homes & graves and the myth of inspiration, his new Sketches From Memory essays and how they've opened him up as a writer, how we build circles of affinity, how his father's career as an architect influenced his eye (but not his writing), why people find it so tough to say the word "soul", and more. Follow Sven on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

With his phenomenal new book, A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and Other Wild Places (Timber Press), Christopher Brown shifts from novels into nature-writing/memoir/nonfiction mode and I am HERE for it. We talk about the eco-cosmos of East Austin, TX, the years of observation that opened him to the hidden pockets of wildness in urban environments, why solitude in nature is a myth, what we have to gain from taking a long walk, Long Time vs. the short presence of Anglos in Texas, how 2020's lockdown turned off global capitalism and showed how society might truly change, and how this book mutated from when we talked about it at Readercon 2023. We get into Bruce Sterling's unforgettable critique of his writing, the process of turning a narrative of colonization into one of decolonization, (eco)psychogeography & the Situationists, why he (begrudgingly) brought the personal/memoiristic into the book and how it helped him come to terms with himself, and what a workshop with horror writers taught him about the truth-telling power of non-redemptive storytelling. We also discuss the design flaws of the agricultural revolution, how his readers in different regions respond to his FIELD NOTES newsletter, the nature of mysticism and writing a narrative about transcending the self, hiking a Massachusetts marsh in summer with Jeff VanderMeer, and plenty more. Follow Christopher on Bluesky, Instagram and Mastodon, and subscribe to his FIELD NOTES newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

Artist Dmitry Samarov returns to the show to bail me out after a stressful couple of weeks and to explore his fantastic new book, MAKING PICTURES IS HOW I TALK TO THE WORLD, a survey of his art from the '80s to today. We talk about the process of selecting pieces for the book, what artistic legacy means to him, finding roots of his work in his childhood, and why the notion of 'progression' doesn't apply to his work. We get into the transformative experience of working at Tangible Books and how it's inspiring his new 'zine project, why he's culling a lot of his library and how he's deciding which books to keep, how his bookshelf paintings started to open him to abstraction, and why literary folks like Magritte but painters don't. We also discuss our monastic devotion to art and Antonio López García's devotion to painting his quince tree, why artistic memoirs tend to be no good but why not-great artists can be good critics, what it means to see his own books in thrift stores, how moving some furniture can change one's perspective, why he's against starting art with An Idea, and a lot more. Follow Dmitry through his newsletter and his podcasts, HU U NO and THAT HORRORCAST • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

With Salinger's Soul: His Personal & Religious Odyssey (Post Hill Press), author and retired journalist/editor Stephen B. Shepard explores the life of JD Salinger and the hidden core of an author who became famous for avoiding fame. We get into why Stephen decided to chase this elusive ghost, why Salinger didn't make it into his previous book about Jewish American writers, whether he believes Salinger's unpublished writing will see the light of day, and why it was important that he approach the book as biography and not literary criticism (although he does bring a reader's voice to the book). We talk about the lack of sex in Salinger's fiction, the uncanniness of Holden Caulfield's voice, Salinger's WWII trauma, his rise to fame, search for privacy, abandonment of publishing, embrace of Vedanta & ego-death, and his pattern of pursuing young women, and how it all maybe ties together. We also discuss Stephen's career as a journalist and how it influences his writing, what he learned in building a graduate program in journalism at CUNY, the ways we both started out in business-to-business magazines (he went a lot farther than I did, editing Newsweek and Business Week), how journalism has changed over the course of his career, Philip Roth's biography and what it means to separate the book from the writer, and a lot more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

Benjamin Dreyer joins the show to talk about the joy of good writing. We talk about his career as managing editor and copy chief of the Random House, his post-retirement perspective on that role, the authors he enjoyed working with, the success of his first book, DREYER'S ENGLISH: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (Random House), and his plans for the followup, DREYER'S FICTION (!). We get into why he's leaving NYC and looking forward to Santa Monica (and talk about the books that he can leave behind and those he can't), the way that writing a Substack newsletter has made him a better writer, how the copy-editor's role is to enhance the writer's work, not to reshape it, whether his online persona changed after retirement, his love of digressive footnotes, how he feels about "weird" catching on this election season, whether the success of Dreyer's English surprised him, the moment he KNEW it was a hit, and what his authors had to teach him about the process of writing his first book. We also discuss the tension within the pronoun section of DE (c.2019), how he hopes to revise it, and why the mind needs to catch up with the soul sometimes. All this & a lot more, so go listen! Follow Benjamin on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram, and subscribe to his Substack • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter