Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories Show 667:

Let’s close out 2025 with graphic memoirist and comics journalist Jonathan Sandler! We talk about his childhood secret origin in comics, the comics course in 2017 that brought him back to the form, the process of turning his grandfather’s WWII memoir into a comic, THE ENGLISH GI (with art by Brian Bicknell), and how he really became a comics aficionado after publishing his first graphic novel. We get into how he started the Graphic Memoir blog and began reviewing comics, interviewing cartoonists, visiting exhibitions, and spreading the comics gospel, and why this very podcast has provided him with a ton of inspiration. We also discuss what he’s learned from and about interviewing, why he’s started drawing his own comics, why he’s glad he dived into making The English GI instead of researching all the other WWII graphic novels out there, what the late Tom Spurgeon meant to me and everyone else he met, why the most difficult thing about making comics is choosing what to put in the panels, and more. Give it a listen! And go subscribe to Graphic Memoir and read THE ENGLISH GI!

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Jonathan Sandler runs a blog dedicated to exploring the latest in comics, graphic novels, and exhibitions, blending his passion for storytelling with his deep interest in visual art. He studied Politics at Leicester University and has spent much of his career in the software industry, leading and managing complex projects. In 2020, Jonathan combined his lifelong love of World War II history and graphic novels to create The English GI, a World War II graphic memoir published by graphicmemoir.co.uk in 2022. A keen sketcher, Jonathan draws inspiration from the intersection of history and art. He lives in North West London with his wife and three children.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded in a hotel room at The Westin London City on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Jonathan & me by me; photo of him at signing by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 666:

“Part of what The Magic Mountain is about is the sense of having lived through a really major rupture in time, of living through a moment in which an old order is falling apart. And that’s the way in which it most speaks to our time.”

With THE MASTER OF CONTRADICTIONS: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic Mountain (Yale University Press), Morten Høi Jensen brings us a masterful biography of one of the great novels of the 20th century and shows how it and its author speak to our present moment. We talk about Morten’s history with Mann’s novel, his weeks of research in the sanatoria of Davos and his discovery of how much of The Magic Mountain‘s world is intact a century later, and how Mann’s novel changed for him in the process of writing this book. We get into Mann’s political transformation from a nationalist into an antifascist, how art & politics can make for a disastrous mix, Mann’s rivalry with his novelist brother Heinrich, and what it was like to write about a novel about life in a TB clinic while in the middle of a pandemic. We also discuss the weird connection I draw between Mann and Thomas Pynchon, how Morten became a literary biographer via the biography of another novel, spiritualism before and after WWI, how he came around on the chapter of The Magic Mountain that bored him in his earlier readings, why Robert Musil resented Mann, whether it’s okay to write margin notes and never look at them, and more. Give it a listen! And go read THE MASTER OF CONTRADICTIONS!

“Mann doesn’t come at politics in a straight and narrow way. Nothing is ever really straightforward for him, but the more I researched his later antifascism, the deeper my admiration for his courage became.”

“Approaching a novelist through their creation feels to me a more fruitful way of approaching questions of biography.”

“In some respects, Mann may not have realized how much this novel is about the years in which it’s written.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Morten Høi Jensen is the author of The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic Mountain, and A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics, The Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, and Commonweal, among other publications. He currently works as the European Liaison for Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Morten by Darren Gerrish. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 665:

“I felt again incredulity that one person could have produced this poem.”

With her amazing new book, DANTE: THE ESSENTIAL COMMEDIA (Liveright), scholar Prue Shaw brings us a canto-by-canto journey through Dante’s masterwork, interweaving translated verses with her commentary, and serving as a Virgil-like guide to the poem. We talk about how she was inspired by John Carey’s The Essential Paradise Lost, why the Paradiso was her biggest challenge, how the poem has changed for her over the course of her life, and why she went with prose translations of Dante rather than verse. We get into Dante’s balance of pride in his art and his humility before God, the modern sound of Dante’s verse and the challenge of translating Italian into English, what she’s learning from helping translate Shelley into Italian, why she wants The Essential Commedia to serve as a gateway drug into Dante, and the nature of language & why the Tower of Babel plays a big role in the Commedia. We also discuss her incredible work on third edition of the Digital Commedia, life after the death of her husband, Clive James, and putting a collection of his final poems together, how an issue of the X-Men turned me on to Dante as a kid, my changing views on Ulysses in the Commedia, why sloth is my fave of the deadly sins, and more. Give it a listen! And go read DANTE: THE ESSENTIAL COMMEDIA!

“I wonder about some basic aspects of Dante writing the Commedia in exile, from court to court: How did he get his parchment? Where did he stash it?”

“Clive was a poet, not a TV celebrity. He got totally involved with TV, and may have lost his sense of direction. But in the last years, because he was ill and couldn’t leave the house, all he did was write poems.”

“I wanted the reader who has some Italian or wants to learn it to feel that they could read the English than look to the left and see how the Italian works.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Prue Shaw is an emeritus reader in Italian at University College London. She is the editor of the edizione nazionale of Dante’s medieval Latin treatise Monarchia and of a groundbreaking digital edition of the Commedia. She lives in Cambridge, England. Her new book is Dante: The Essential Commedia.

Listen to our 2015 conversation about Reading Dante: From Here To Eternity.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Prue’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Portrait photo of Prue by someone else; other ones by me, including ALL THE BOOKS. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 664:

“It’s a profound question: What are we looking at? If you keep asking that question in a naive and cunning way, it will draw out the history of the world.”

Who were the men who built the Empire State Building? Glenn Kurtz returns to the show to tell their story with MEN AT WORK: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It (Seven Stories Press). We talk about how he accidentally fell into this project, how “turn every page” led him to a key discovery about Lewis Hine‘s photos of the Empire State construction, how his experience researching and writing THREE MINUTES IN POLAND helped him with this book, his childhood connection with the Empire State, and how identifying their subjects affects the mythic aura of Hine’s photographs. We get into the corporate perspective of the building and how it dehumanizes the workers who built it, and similarly how that heroic collectivist notion of The Worker devalues workers as people, whether craftsmanship and artisanship survived the transition into mass production during the skyscraper era, Hine’s authorial fallacy and the genius of his portraits, and what the Empire State says about the immigration-dynamics of the workforce and the role of unions, We also discuss the question of context and how the question, “What are we looking at?” can reveal the world, the resonance of Hine’s Icarus/Sky Boy pic, the messiness of history, the joy of Virginia Woolf’s diaries, why Glenn just wants to write a novel without it inspiring a nonfiction project, and more. Give it a listen! And go read MEN AT WORK!

“We have this idea that we want to be remembered, but one of the first things that goes away in family histories is the specificity of personalities.”

“I was surprised by how completely the idea of Worker overtakes the actual person.”

“Hine didn’t have a language precise enough to define what he was trying to do.”

“The closer you look at some of these sources, the fuzzier things get.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Glenn Kurtz is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film, which was named a “Best Book of 2014” by the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. A documentary film, Three Minutes—A Lengthening, based on the book, was directed by Bianca Stigter, co-produced by Academy Award-winner Steve McQueen, and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. After premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, the film was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and received the inaugural Yad Vashem Award for Outstanding Holocaust Documentary. Glenn’s first book, Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music, garnered enthusiastic reviews from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. The recipient of a 2016-2017 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Glenn is a graduate of Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music and holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. His new book is MEN AT WORK: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It.

Follow Glenn on Instagram and Facebook, and listen to our 2022 conversation.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Virtual Memories HQ on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Glenn by Beowulf Sheehan; photo Icarus by Lewis Hine; photo of me & Glenn by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 663:

“The great crystallizing aspect of aging is that the older you get, the more intense you get about what you really are, and the less you give a shit about all that stuff you’re not.”

Who knew that olive oil makes head lice sleepy? Jennifer Hayden rejoins the show to celebrate her new graphic memoir/anti-cookbook, WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S DINNER: Confessions of a Cartoonist Cook (Top Shelf), share comedic tales of domestic mess, and rebel against the expectations of wife/motherhood. We talk about the lifetime of bad cooking that led to this new book, the revenge of turning her bad experiences into comedy, how she found a unique form to tell her story, and how a youthful reading of Babar left her with a lifelong phobia of mushrooms. We get into how she was reverse-inspired by Lucy Knisley’s Relish, how watercolors gave her a color toolbox for her comics, what this book taught her about storytelling, and how her daughter diagnosed her as “expectation-allergic.” We also discuss how she’s been cheating on comics with spoken word storytelling, what life after memoir is like, how her breast-cancer memoir doubled as a last will & testament for her family, the process of finding a new creative process and narrative voice, her shamanic experience attending The Moth, the significance of the tarot card she repeatedly draws when she’s hard at work on a book, why the folk names of herbs are like edible emotion, and more. Give it a listen! And go read WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S DINNER!

“My great fear as a mother is that I would poison my children. But wasn’t going to poison them with frozen food, or McDonalds, or takeout; I had to try to poison them on my own.”

“The reason I’m not doing a comic or graphic novel right now — and I have got a couple of story ideas — is because I need to change who I am in comics. I’m becoming someone other than my avatar. I don’t identify with quite as much negativity or ruefulness as I did.”

“As a kid I just kept my head down and tried to make sure nobody expected anything more of me, because I was definitely going to disappoint them.”

“I’m basically the Florence Nightingale of graphic memoir.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Jennifer Hayden is the author and artist of the Eisner-nominated breast cancer memoir The Story of My Tits, which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and French. The French edition, Nénés Chéris, was short-listed for Elle France’s 2022 comics grand prize. Her first collection, Underwire, was published in The Best American Comics 2013. She draws and cooks dinner in the woods of New Jersey and plans to use the proceeds of this book to hire a personal chef.

Follow Jennifer on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to her Substack.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Jennifer’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Jennifer by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 662:

“I’m never bored. I’m very lucky because I get up in the morning and I’m full of the possibilities of what I can do that day. And I’m very, very lucky because what I do seems to have some kind of audience.”

Multi-hyphenate Rian Hughes rejoins the show to celebrate his new Kickstarter, TYPERACTIVE: Thirty Years of Device Fonts (closing November 20, 2025)! We talk about designing and publishing a catalog-collection of every font he ever designed for his foundry, how the Kickstarter has proved a lot more successful than he was expecting, seeing one of his fonts showing up on Poker Face, and how typography means designing a form without content. We get into the history of type design and how he approaches new design with respect for his precursors, the serendipity that led to one of his best-known fonts, how he balances commercial work with pushing the limits of design in personal projects, the artist’s trajectory from inspired amateur to spent expert, how he knows when one of his fonts has been ripped off, and his take on AI in illustration and type design. We also discuss his new novel and how it fits with XX and The Black Locomotive, the pros and cons of advertising work, designing the new EC Horror comics, the next Kickstarter he’s considering, how he used to keep three different portfolios until he realized it was All Rian and integrated them into one, why his creative mind leaves him with zero interest in meditation, and more. Give it a listen! And go support TYPERACTIVE!

“I don’t think, ‘What is the audience?,’ I think, ‘What is it I fancy doing and how can I sell that and make that into a functional project?'”

“There are two aspects to type: what it says, and how it says it.”

“I always to try to design things that aren’t just windows into a world; they’re objects that come from that world into your world.”

“One of the most beautiful things about type is how specific and evocative it can be. If I showed you a bell-bottomed, rounded font from 1969, you’d be transported right back there.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Rian Hughes is a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, typographer and sometime comic book artist who has worked extensively for the British and American publishing, music, advertising and comic book industries. He has written and drawn comics for 2000AD and Batman: Black and White, and designed logos for James Bond, the X-Men, Superman, Hed Kandi and The Avengers, collected in the Eisner-nominated book Logo a Gogo. He has published two novels, XX and The Black Locomotive. His font foundry, Device Fonts, celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2025.

Listen to our 2020 and 2023 conversations.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Rian’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface, but I got crazy static on the line so I used my Zoom H2n backup. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Rian by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 661:

“It was a really fulfilling thing, as an artist, as a journalist, to feel like I was carrying these people’s stories, that I was representing them, bringing out who they were, and that they were trusting me to give them a voice.”

Comics journalist Josh Neufeld joins the show to talk about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the legacy of his fantastic graphic reporting of the lives upended by that catastrophe, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (Pantheon). We talk about his new ‘zine followup, Beyond A.D., how the storm inspired him to become an emergency response volunteer and what he learned when he was stationed in Biloxi, what it was like to learn journalism and reporting on the fly and integrate those with his comics storytelling skills, and why his goal with A.D. was to make a people’s history. We get into how he viewed the anniversary, whether he’s gone back to New Orleans since reporting on it, and how he stayed connected with his subjects after the project and what it was like putting the anniversary ‘zine together. We also discuss his comics upbringing, what it was like drawing for Harvey Pekar after years of American Splendor fandom, how constraints can lead to greater creativity, how neither of us have the lying gene necessary for fiction, his interest in graphic medicine and how that shapes his recent comics, the difference between journalism and nonfiction, a couple of my Small Press Expo anecdotes, how Michael Jordan’s minor league baseball experience helps explain why comics people (usually) treat newbies well, and more. Give it a listen! And go read A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and Beyond A.D.!

“A.D. for me as a comics journalist was the sweet spot because so much of it could be told through action and dialogue.”

“I’m not the greatest journalist in the world; I’m certainly not the greatest artist in the world. But I can combine the two of them pretty . . . okay.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest, in his own words

I am a cartoonist who works primarily in the field of nonfiction comics, specifically as a comics journalist. I’m the writer/artist of the Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, and the Xeric Award-winning graphic travelogue A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia & Central Europe). I am the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller The Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone On the Media. I was a longtime artist for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, and my art has been exhibited in gallery and museum shows in the United States and Europe.

Follow Josh on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded in a hotel room during the Small Press Expo 2025 on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on the same setup, since I’m sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt right now. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Josh by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 660:

Cartoonist-playwright-filmmaker Dean Haspiel rejoins the show for the homestretch of his new Kickstarter, ANTIMATTER (finishing Nov. 3, 2025), and brings his studio mate Whitney Matheson along to talk about her new story collection, THE FEELING. We talk about how Dino got the idea for a one-man anthology to contain all the characters & stories of his Dino-verse, new models for funding creative projects, and how promotion can be tough when you accidentally get banned on Instagram. They give me creative advice to help me get through my own book project, talk about their lessons from crowdfunding and self-publishing, and come up with a great idea for a new book, while we cope with some technical difficulties. Give it a listen! And go support ANTIMATTER and read THE FEELING!

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guests

Dean Haspiel is an Emmy & Ringo Award-winning NYC cartoonist, playwright + Yaddo fellow. He is the creator of Billy Dogma, The Red Hook, Covid Cop & Chest Face. Dean has worked for Marvel, DC, Archie, Image, Webtoon, etc.

Go listen to our 2018, 2020, 2023 and 2024 conversations.

Whitney Matheson is a NYC writer, comics-maker & playwright known for USA Today‘s Pop Candy (‘99-‘14).

Go listen to our 2020 conversation.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Dean & Whitney by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 659:

“I’m always looking beyond the surface of the words to deeper meanings. Or sometimes shallower meanings.”

One of my fave writers, Ron Rosenbaum, returns to the show to celebrate his amazing new book, BOB DYLAN: Things Have Changed (A Kind Of Biography) (Melville House Press). We talk about how his lifetime fandom of Dylan led to this book, why he opted for a biographical meditation over strict biography, the week he spent with Dylan in the ’70s for a Playboy interview, what our response to Dylan’s songs say about us, and how he got over his sense of betrayal when Dylan joined a Jesus-cult for a few years. We get into his insight into Dylan’s Nobel acceptance and the Rosebud-moment therein, the question of theodicy (radical evil) and Dylan’s argument with God, Ron’s experience falling in love with someone to Dylan’s songs, and how Dylan’s post-Jesus songwriting methods became a reflection of his One-Mind consciousness. We also discuss authenticity vs. sincerity, the discontinuity of being, the impact of Salinger & Dylan on American language and outlook, Ron’s top 20-ish of Dylan’s songs, the 4+-hour movie Dylan made in the ’70s and how it may have led to his crack-up (and why Ron thinks it should be reissued), and more. Give it a listen! And go read BOB DYLAN: Things Have Changed!

“I probably wouldn’t have found my way so deep into his songs if they hadn’t found their way so deep into me.”

“I felt it was a badge of honor to be insulted by Dylan.”

“The combination of Salinger and Dylan changed American language.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Ron Rosenbaum is the author of seven books, among them Explaining Hitler, A New York Times best seller, and The Shakespeare Wars, which Cynthia Ozick called “Electrifying — a spectacular book.” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, called Rosenbaum “one of the most original journalists and writers of our time.” He’s been a Dylan fan since he was a teen and a guest here several times.

Listen to our 2013, 2014, and 2023 conversations.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Nice photo of Ron by Nina Roberts; double-selfie by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 658:

“‘Who was Peter Matthiessen?’ is one of those fractals; the closer you look, the more complicated the question becomes.”

Writer Lance Richardson rejoins the show to celebrate his magnificent new biography, TRUE NATURE: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen (Pantheon). We talk about his youthful introduction to Peter Matthiessen via The Snow Leopard, how this project grew beyond his (& his publisher’s) original concept, the health risks of following PM’s trek through Nepal to the Crystal Monastery and the fleetingness of his time there, and which of PM’s many hyphens he focuses on (novelist-naturalist-Zen roshi). We get into Matthiessen’s journey into American Zen, the problematic nature of race and gender in PM’s life and work, PM’s fixation on Bigfoot and how that shifted to the notional, the Paris Review/CIA connection that everyone asks about, and how Matthiessen’s widow came to trust Lance with the project. We also discuss his fave of Matthiessen’s novels, the financial challenges of long-term writing projects (this one took eight years), getting over self-doubt and learning from his previous biography of Tommy Nutter, enjoying the research-hunt of biography more than the writing, what his literary upbringing in Australia was like, whether he came to like or despite Matthiessen, and more! Plus, I monologue-ramble about my 20,000th day on earth and the pod-retirement of Marc Maron! Give it a listen! And go read TRUE NATURE!

“If you go with the expectation of enlightenment, then it’s not going to happen. You can’t force it.”

“Books about ‘Great Men Of Literature’ often sideline the women, or write about them in a certain way that’s belittling or diminishing. I absolutely wanted to push against that by writing a book that centered and gave room for those women to have a voice.”

“The challenge that worried me the most, and that I had sleepless nights over, was how to deal with the fact that Matthiessen was really into cryptozoology. He really was invested in the idea of a Yeti or a Bigfoot.”

“There were never points at which I hated him, but there were points where I was frustrated with him. And it was usually something to do with his treatment of women.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Lance Richardson‘s first book, House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and named one of the notable titles of 2018 by The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, Esquire, and the American Library Association. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, including a year-long residency at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, at the New York Public Library. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College, Vermont. His new book is True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen.

Follow Lance on Bluesky and Instagram and listen to our 2018 conversation.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Lance by James Appleton; double-selfie of us by me. It’s on my instagram.