Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories Show 647:

“I’m slightly staggered that the impetus to transition was so strong that even despite knowing what I was going to lose from it, I couldn’t stop it from happening.”

With his phenomenal debut memoir, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES (Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic), Oliver Radclyffe takes us on a journey into trans-selfhood. We talk about the gap between a trans narrator and a cis-het reader, the importance of trans visibility, how his understanding of masculinity and being male have changed, and how he faced down the risks and sacrifices in his life as he transitioned, despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead. We get into how he found the perfect voice for his memoir, the importance of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on his writing process, his life-defining moment of seeing Justin Vivian Bond, why being raised in privilege explained why he knew so little about the queer world, the surprisingly wonderful support his (conservative Christian) parents gave him throughout his journey, and why the book focuses on his pre-transition life. We also discuss whether he looks at photos of his pre-transition self, how testosterone has affected his life, how gender can shift with age, how the joy of publishing his first book has transformed him (and how he hopes it leads to a long mid-to-late-life writing career), whether he’s ready to be an empty-nester, what it means to find validation through performance and defining oneself through relationships, why he identifies as a gender-irrelevant transsexual, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read Frighten The Horses and Adult Human Male!

“I thought, ‘I’m coming out as trans in the book, so I’m going to upset all the nice, white English people, and at the same time, I’m coming out as upper-class English, so I’m possibly going to upset all the trans people because of my privilege.’ But it’s my story, and the truth of who I am.”

“One person’s steps is another person’s blind alley.”

“It may have taken me 50 years to get here, but I did it, and everything leads off from here.”

“It was hard to write about my relationship, because what you feel emotionally is so divorced from what you know intellectually.”

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

Oliver Radclyffe is a transgender writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Electric Literature, and his book of essays, Adult Human Male, was published in 2023 with Unbound Edition Press. He currently lives on the Connecticut coast, where he’s raising his four children. His new book is Frighten The Horses: A Memoir.

No pictures of his children, but we do have . . .

COOKIE!

and MUFFIN!

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Oliver’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. Nice photo of Oliver by someone else; other pix by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 646:

No conversation this week, unless you count me talking to myself. I share some thoughts and memories about my father, who died last week at the age of 88 — or 87, depending on who he was lying to — along with the eulogy I gave at his funeral. Give it a listen

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

About our Guest

As I said last time I did a monologue about my father, “Gil Roth is working through some things. Here’s an About page.”

Here’s Dad’s grave, a few days after the funeral

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The monologue was recorded at Virtual Memories HQ on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. Eulogy recorded on a Zoom H2n. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of my father & his grave by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 645:

“I kept coming back to the notion that there’s no easy answers. I hope that the reader is changing their mind every few pages, because the book is about the search for a promised land, and it’s this question of a Jewish refuge that turns around and around over the decades.”

How did Russian Jews wind up migrating to Galveston, Texas in the early 1900s? How did the image of America as melting pot come into existence? How did a family memoir evolve into a forgotten history of Zionism? Find out during my conversation with Rachel Cockerell about her amazing new book, MELTING POINT: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land (FSG)! We talk about the tightrope walk of composing a history solely out of primary sources and why she eschewed the author’s voice for this book, her grudging acceptance of Robert Caro’s maxim to Turn Every Page, and how her perspective on Jewishness changed over the course of writing the book. We get into the once-titanic literary figure of Israel Zangwill and how he gave it up to find a homeland for the world’s Jews, how Zangwill invented the notion of the melting pot and whether he truly believed in assimilationism, the inspiration of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo on Melting Point, and how Rachel got over the notion that the past was just a lead-up to now. We also discuss her next book on Halley’s Comet and whether she’ll stick with her primary sources-mode in future books, how her family reacted to seeing their stories (& contradictions) on the page, how a 90-year-old distant relative stole the show, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read MELTING POINT!

“I’m only a Londoner because Israel Zangwill said to my great-grandfather, ‘You should get out of the Russian empire, and come to London; your future belongs to England and your daughters are destined to become English.'”

“Interviewing my father and his siblings and cousins, it felt like they had almost been waiting to tell someone about all of this.”

“I realized the early 20th century was more interesting, and funny, and weird, and ironic, and vivid, and relevant than the 21st century.”

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

Rachel Cockerell was born and raised in London, the sixth of seven children. She did her BA at the Courtauld Institute and her MA at City University. Melting Point is her first nonfiction book. Her research has taken her to Texas, Ohio, New York, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.

Follow Rachel on Instagram and Bluesky.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location in Prospect Park 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 Rachel by Iona Wolff; double-selfie by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 644:

“I feel like I’m a character in a Paul Auster novel: a life rife with circumstance and unpredictable coincidence.”

Thirty-plus years in the making, the graphic adaptation of Paul Auster’s THE NEW YORK TRILOGY (Pantheon) is here at last! Paul Karasik rejoins the show from Yaddo Artists Retreat to talk about the process of adapting Auster’s postmodern crime novels into comics, how he collaborated with David Mazzucchelli (CITY OF GLASS) and Lorenzo Mattotti (GHOSTS) on the first two and how he wound up drawing the third book, THE LOCKED ROOM, how these novels possessed him for decades, and the moment when he understood what each novel was really about. We get into how he met Auster at a parent-teacher conference shortly after the New York Trilogy came out, the moment of truth when Auster first saw the pages for City of Glass, the freedom (and restriction) Auster offered for the project, and whether Auster got to see the finished pages before his death in 2024. We also discuss Paul’s comics upbringing, how his mother supported his habit (and maybe melted her son’s brain by getting him a book of R. Crumb comics at 12 or 13), his lack of confidence in his drawing and his supreme confidence in his teaching, how meeting Art Spiegelman changed his life, why he’s starting an online graphic novel workshop, the immense inspiration of staying at Yaddo (and how he learned The Two Rules Of Yaddo), and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read THE NEW YORK TRILOGY!

(And listen to our 2018 talk, with Mark Newgarden)!

“I learned from Art & Francoise how much fucking work it is to make comics without compromise, and that anything else is not worth doing.”

“The reader of Ghosts is forced to consider how they interact with the printed page, just like the protagonist of the novel.”

APPLE PLAYER TK

“I don’t believe in fate per se, but through this process I’ve felt like a pawn.”

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

Two-time Eisner Award winner Paul Karasik began his career as the Associate Editor of Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s RAW magazine. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker.

Follow Paul on Instagram, support his Patreon, check out his Graphic Novel Lab, and listen to our 2018 talk, along with Mark Newgarden.

YADDO BONUS PIX!

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded in the music room of Yaddo Artist’s Retreat (pictures above) 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 Paul by me. Art by David Mazzucchelli. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 643:

“When I sent Alterations out to market for the first time, I really went into mourning for the characters.”

One of my fave guest/friends, Kate Maruyama, rejoins the show to celebrate her wonderful new novel, ALTERATIONS (Running Wild Press)! We talk about the book’s long gestation/publishing history, Kate’s love of old Hollywood & costume design, closeted movie stars and how she told the story of a gay relationship in the ’30s & ’40s, and how it felt to write a non-horror horror story. We get into her own Hollywood experience in the ’90s, how it informs Alterations, and how it felt to repeatedly smash into the glass ceiling, as well as how ghosts creep into everything she writes, how older people become invisible but have stories to tell, and how important it was to have a champion in Toni Ann Johnson for this novel. We also discuss present-moment Los Angeles, the craft book about novella-writing she’s co-writing, the need to decolonize her writing students, the (maybe non-existent) influence of Jodie Foster’s Home For The Holidays on Alterations, the essay (PDF) she wrote around the decline & death of her mother, Kit Reed, and more. Give it a listen! And go read ALTERATIONS!

(And go listen to our 2019, 2020 and 2021 conversations!)

“I adore genre and the places it takes me, but it’s usually my asking a question that leads me into a book, and then the book tells me what it is.”

“We don’t realize that when we’re in an awesome time, it may not continue.”

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

Kate Maruyama is the author of Harrowgate, Bleak Houses, and The Collective. Her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. Her short work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of the Uncharted Short Story Prize. She served on the working Board for Women Who Submit, and the Board for the Shirley Jackson Awards. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles. Her new novel is Alterations.

Follow Kate on Bluesky and Instagram, and listen to our 2019, 2020 and 2021 conversations.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the Hilton Stamford 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 Kate by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 642:

“What if Jews had freedom they never had before, and they had it in the United States?”

With his fantastic new book, EMINENT JEWS (Holt), writer and critic David Denby explores the impact on American culture of Jews Unbound through profiles of Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. We talk about how he selected his four subjects, how each of them came of age in an environment that Jews hadn’t experienced in millennia, the ways each handled the responsibilities of family against their careers, the difference between “Jew” and “Jewish,” and which one unfolded the most to him over the course of writing the book. We get into why Bernstein’s greatest role may have been as a teacher, how Mailer’s magnetism persisted way beyond its expiration date, how Friedan changed the world but was always challenged by her midwest upbringing, and whether Brooks was being disingenuous when he made musical numbers of our the Inquisition and Hitler. We also discuss judgements David made over the course of his career as a movie critic, what he did when he finally gave up reviewing and how he eased back into the cinema, why he revisited the Lit Hum course at Columbia a few years ago, after previously revisiting it 30+ years ago for Great Books, his take on my my lightning round of classic lit questions, his non-Le Carré experience in East Berlin, his reaction to my parents taking me to History of the World: Part 1 when I was 9, and more. Give it a listen! And go read EMINENT JEWS: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer!

“The centrality of the family in America is the greatest institution for American Jews, moreso than the synagogue.”

“After I stopped reviewing, I eased back into movies by watching ones that were perfect.”

“What would it be like to experience the sense that you belonged?”

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

David Denby is the New York Times bestselling author of Great Books. His other books include American Sucker and Lit Up. He was a film critic for New York magazine and The New Yorker, where he is now a staff writer. His essays have appeared in The New Republic and The Atlantic. He lives in New York City with his wife, novelist Susan Rieger. His new book is EMINENT JEWS: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer,

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at David’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 David by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 641:

“What’s very important if you’re writing a biography — a personal history — of a poet is to get as close as possible to the process of writing, how it sounded, how he made it sing, how he made the words fit together.”

Can we find the poet in their poems? With HORACE: Poet on a Volcano (Yale University Press), Peter Stothard explores how the life of the great Roman poet unfolds though his art and the histories. We talk about why he wrote this biography through a critical study of Horace’s poems (and why that’s been a controversial approach), how Horace embodied the artist-as-madman long before the Romantic era, and why it was important to show the alienness of Horace’s verse and how nervous Peter was about translating him into English to show how the Latin works. We get into Horace’s place in Rome’s history, how he bridged Greek poetic modes into Latin, the variety of genres Horace worked in (and invented), and why the poet was cancelled early and often over the centuries. We also discuss mortality and legacy, how Horace & I reacted to not getting killed by falling trees, why a certain Great Books program is so Athens-centric, how Peter’s secondary school introduced him to “INCIPE!,” “Sapere Aude,” and “Carpe Diem,” among other Horace-isms, and more! Give it a listen! And go read HORACE: Poet on a Volcano!

“The literature as a window into understanding the culture was unique to Rome. We don’t have an extensive Vandal literature, or literature of Goths, and what the Gauls were writing, we don’t know.”

“One of the things you learn rapidly as you become a Roman historian is that the Greeks Always Did Good. If two armies invaded Sicily, the Greek army civilized it, while the Roman army invaded and turned it into a slave plantation. If you were a Sicilian, one may not have felt very different from the other.”

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

Peter Stothard is a classicist, journalist, and critic. He is a former editor of The Times of London and of the Times Literary Supplement. His books include The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar; Crassus: The First Tycoon; and Palatine: An Alternative History of the Caesars.

Follow Peter on Bluesky 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 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 Peter by Teri Pengilley. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 640:

“What struck me was the coincidence, the collusion between what Virginia Woolf was describing in Time Passes and the things I saw in that documentary about the Forbidden Zone.”

With her bewitching and beautiful novel NEVERMORE (Seagull Books, translated from French by Tess Lewis, who joins our conversation), Cécile Wajsbrot takes us on a tour of Chenobyl’s Forbidden Zone, the High Line in NYC, Dresden, Paris, under the shadow of the Time Passes section of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. We talk about the challenges of writing a first-person novel about translation, the strange ways Woolf has followed Cecile throughout her careers as author & translator, and how it felt to see her novel about translating Virginia Woolf into French get translated into English. We get into her literary career, how Time Passes became a stand-in for her fascination with destruction, why she’s translated Woolf’s The Waves three times over thirty years (and whether the first one got her into the bad graces of the editor of Le Monde de Livres), what it was like to subvert the translator’s typical role of invisibility with this novel, and the language she wishes she had. We also discuss mourning and the ways we try to keep conversation alive with those we’ve lost, the time I impressed the Princess of Yugoslavia by transliterating the Cyrillic on her family’s jewels, and more. Give it a listen! And go read NEVERMORE!

“Translation as a process is almost a character in this book.”

“For me, writing a novel is not only an intellectual question, but one of emotion.”

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

Born in Paris in 1954 to Polish Jews, Cécile Wajsbrot has written 17 novels, a collection of short stories and numerous essays. She also translates from English and German. Her translations of Virginia Woolf, Jane Gardam, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Olson, Gerd Ledig, and Peter Kurzeck, among others, have won the Eugen Helmle Translation Prize. In 2016, she was awarded the Prix de l’Académie de Berlin for her writing.

Tess Lewis’ numerous translations from French and German include works by Peter Handke, Jean-Lue Benoziglio, Klaus Metz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Pascal Bruckner, among others.

Go listen to my 2020 and 2021 conversations with Tess.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Tess Lewis’ 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 Cecile by Samuel Kirszenbaum / MODDS. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 639:

“My comics have never been about me in the way that memoirs or diary comics are about the person. They’re snapshots, things I want to remember. It’s a way of looking at life that isn’t about identity.”

She may be able to quit cartooning (for a while), but Keiler Roberts can’t quit The Virtual Memories Show! With her wonderful new book, PREPARING TO BITE (Drawn & Quarterly), Keiler returns to comics with a collection of (mostly) hilarious vignettes about domestic life, middle-age, the impact of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and having too many pets. We talk about why she walked away from comics and how she came back, how she avoids memoir in favor of memory (and humor), how she still has anxiety over drawing but is way too tired to have social anxiety anymore, and why she branched into kitschy craft-modes that no one would mistake for art. We get into why she wants her kid to read her journals when she’s gone, how MS taught her how to be bored, how men have no idea what perimenopause is like, what it means to be the best appointment of her doctors’ day, and the reward of teaching comics to her friends and her mom. We also discuss how Karl Stevens helped her back into comics with this book (& encourages her in every other artistic idea she has), how weird it is to see two of Karl’s super-detailed pages beside her sparse drawings in Preparing To Bite, and why she loved collaborating with her brother on the grownup fairytale Creepy. Plus, she teaches me the difference between living more and doing more, and I read you guys a Rilke poem in the intro. Give it a listen! And go read PREPARING TO BITE!

(And go listen to our 2017, 2020, and 2021 conversations!)

“I just thought, ‘I don’t care how much I hate this process, how hard it is, I have to do something that feels like it’s mine.”

“I feel like my life is a lot more satisfying than it was when I was a lot more busy.”

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

Keiler Roberts makes autobiographical comics. She is the recipient of the Cartoonist Studio Prize and the Ignatz Award. She has taught comics at The School of The Art Institute in Chicago. She lives with her family and too many pets in Evanston, IL.

Follow Keiler on Instagram, Bluesky and Blogspot. And go listen to our 2017, 2020, and 2021 conversations!

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 Keiler by herself; drawing of Keiler by Karl Stevens. Photos of her & her sister were her sister’s idea. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 638:

“What I’m going for — without being message-y — is recognition of how much the world turns because of insects. As E.O. Wilson puts it, if humans were to disappear, the world would return to its natural beauty, and if insects were to disappear, it would collapse into chaos.”

With his new graphic novel, INSECTOPOLIS (WWNorton), Peter Kuper brings us the 400-million-year history of insects in their own words as they take a post-human tour of the New York Public Library. We talk about how Insectopolis began when he was around 4 years old and saw the 17-year cicada brood, how Peter needed a new mode of comics-making for this book, and how he made the NYPL a key character in the project. We get into mankind’s dependence on insects, the stories of forgotten entomologists (and why they were forgotten), his experience getting a Cullman fellowship at the NYPL during COVID and how he found all the great & secret rooms while the place was near-empty, the INterSECTS exhibition that evolved from the fellowship and how it grew in scale, and his realization that entomologists are like comic fans. We also discuss his wife’s great advice going into this project, the fun of getting experts to vet every chapter of Insectopolis, the alchemy that happens when people’s passions overlap, how he harnesses the dread of imminent apocalypse to make his art, and more. Give it a listen! And go read INSECTOPOLIS!

(And go listen to our past conversations: 2015, 2019a, 2019b, 2020!)

“During COVID, riding my bike to the NYPL every day, I got to see New York in a different light.”

“I’m very conscious of the joy I get out of doing these things and getting to share them.”

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

Peter Kuper wrote the Eisner Award-winning Ruins and critically acclaimed adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, Heart of Darkness, and Metamorphosis. He founded the political anthology World War 3 Illustrated, writes and draws Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy, and taught Harvard University’s first class dedicated to graphic novels and comics.

Follow Peter on Bluesky, and Instagram. And go listen to our past conversations: 2015, 2019a, 2019b, 2020.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Peter’s studio 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 Peter by Holly Kuper. It’s on my instagram.