04-10-09 :Agony Column Podcast Feature : Laurie R. King on Fifteen Years of Bees
I can still vividly remember the first time I saw a book by Laurie R. King. I was browsing at out most local of local bookstore, Aptos Bookworks, when I saw a lovely little cover with the intriguing title 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice.' It had a little golden sticker on it that said "Local Author." When I picked it up and sussed it was a Holmesian work, my first thought was that one of my good friends would be just as interested in it as I was. As it happens, the Sherlock Holmes books were the first books I ever made a significant effort to buy, riding a bus from Covina to Los Angeles to find what I called "The Big Bookstore."
Back then, I'd never have dreamed that I'd have the privilege to speak with Laurie R. King (either back then!). But with the release of her new novel, 'The Language of Bees' (Bantam / Random House; April 28, 2009 ; $25), Laurie is engaged on a very clever bout of promotion for the book, which she calls Fifteen Weeks of Bees. She's been running a reading group from her website, for a couple of years now, but with the release of her new novel she's running fan fiction, and in a bold display of foresight, she's giving away E-books of 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice.' I managed to catch up with Laurie to ask about promoting books and interacting with fans, and you can hear our conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
Aimee Bender
04-09-09 :Agony Column Radio Broadcast Show of February 1, 2009 : Mardi Horowitz and Aimee Bender Reading
Ask and ye shall receive, in this case, edits. One of my listeners wrote to tell me that he enjoyed the podcast of the broadcast shows, but requested that I edit down the music segues, which I tend to leave a little long so that I can do all my grant announcements in a somewhat graceful manner. So this time, I've made a few minor tweaks on what you hear from the broadcast, but attempted to preserve the flow. And all this because a listener emailed me; which I encourage you to do early and often.
So the changes are pretty minor. Music segues that usually last about two minutes have been trimmed down to 30 seconds, and I've pulled out the literary events calendar, as that's certainly not applicable by the time I roll these out on the podcast. That said, I'm happy to put it back in if listeners desire. I do think there's a certain sort-of historical thrill to hearing those old names and to thinking back about writers' tours earlier in the year.
Today's podcast is an edited version of my interview with Mardi Horowitz about his book, 'A Course in Happiness' and Aimee Bender reading her story, "Fruit and Words." Bender's stories are so strange and so spare and so wonderful, I really enjoy hearing them. And you can as well by virtue of clicking on this link to the MP3 audio file.
04-08-09 :Heather Hudson Joins 'The Women and the Waves' : From Surfer to Director
I met Heather Hudson at the opening for the Santa Cruz Film Festival, where her film 'The Women and the Waves' is showing. At first, the idea of women surfers seemed perfectly normal to me; why wouldn't women surf? But as she spoke, I realized that as natural as the thought seems, it's not something that's often documented. In fact, the films and books about surf culture often don't get much time to focus on the human in the equation. What we see, what we want to see are the images of walls of water that dwarf the humans who ride them.
Generally speaking, those humans are usually men. But Hudson brings a very different perspective to the situation. She starts from the human angle, from the perspective of otherwise average women who simply find the time and passion to escape their jobs and domestic lives long enough to learn how to surf, to be in those moments when the waves hold you in their power. Producer-cameraman-director Peck Euwer is also a surfer — as is his wife — who helped Hudson capture her vision and those moments. And from those moments, the passion grows. It's a passion you can see in her movie, and hear in her voice on the linked MP3 file of our interview.
No matter how bad things get, or how good they get, you can always count on one economic opportunity: the chance to opine. Chris Markowski gets gigs on Fox News, CNN and CBS, and I'm saying these as if they're a good thing. He calls himself the Watchdog On Wall Street, and he's got the URL to prove it. We hear a lot about how what's happening now is like this or that, so I wanted to ask Markowski just how much the past applies to the present — and how accurately it might predict the future.
I found Chris Markowski's website more than a little alarming, but not, I suppose, particularly surprising given that he's a commentator for Fox. However, facts are facts, and once I started speaking with him, he did offer some straightforward observations as to the causes and effects of our current Fiscal Crisis. I can't confess that I'm surprised that the phrase "tax cuts" came 'round, but Markowski did seem to have a pretty good handle on the question of "toxic assets." I just called Chris and asked few questions, and he gave me his answers; they're not the final answers, of course. One set of historians will write those answers, and others will alter them beyond recognition. The future's portrait of and verdict on the present is unknowable and endlessly mutable. I promise that there are no hammers, sickles, hand-tools or garden implements inserted into the meta-data accompanying this linked MP3 podcast file.
04-06-09 :A 2009 Interview With Hannah Holmes : "The human has to fret and agonize over this..."
What are these creatures who seem to crawl everywhere and do everything? What drives those critters to, say modify their bodies, or enables them to live just about anywhere on the earth? Hannah Holmes just wanted to see the fact sheet; you know the pr’cis that tells you the physical description, habitat, range, behavior and reproductive habits. But not of particular species of bat, or crow. She wanted the fact sheet for humans.
Holmes wrote a book in lieu of the fact sheet for humans, and giving humans their due, called it 'The Well-Dressed Ape'. Certainly, not all of us are well-dressed, but we are to a certain extent, apes. I talked to Holmes in the back room of the Capitola Book Caf’ about her wonderful riff on humanity. This is a fascinating work of not just scholarship, but truly creative writing. From the get-go, Holmes offers readers a perfectly-pitched voice. It's her style of speaking in the book that makes it so compelling. I talked to her about pretty much the full-on fact sheet. You can hear her voice the answers via this MP3 link.
New to the Agony Column
03-19-10: Commentary : Adam Nevill Inherits 'Apartment 16' : Home is Where the Hell Is
03-18-10: Commentary : Stephen Kessler Follows 'The Mental Traveler' : Bad Trips and Good Reading
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Alta Ifland and Stephen Kessler : "I had to do it; it was a way of both coming to terms with the experience, of documenting the experience, of commemorating it..."
03-17-10: Commentary : Ted Chiang Charts 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' : Joshua Blue, Digital Chimps and Lives in Flux
03-15-10: Commentary : Elif Shafak Reveals 'The Forty Rules of Love' : Intimacy and Centuries
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Elif Shafak : "I know that culture that exists in my country, that is carried on by women, generations of women."
03-12-10: Commentary : Karl Marlantes Scales the 'Matterhorn' : World-Building in the Past
03-09-10: Commentary : Paul McHugh Meets 'Deadlines' : Murdering the California Coast
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Paul McHugh : "..the strengths of good writing go all the way, across all the genres..."
03-08-10: Commentary : Joe Hill Grows 'Horns' : Devil and Detail
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Joe Hill : "Eventually, the wicked and the unworthy will get their just desserts on the business end of the Devil's pitchfork."
03-05-10: Commentary : Henry Porter Calls 'The Bell Ringers' : It Takes The Village
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Four Books With Alan Cheuse : Thrillers! : Henry Porter, The Bell Ringers; Keith Thomson, Once a Spy; Jo Nesbo, The Devil's Star; Hennig Mankel, The Man From Beijing
03-04-10: Commentary : Jo NesbØ Earns 'The Devil's Star' : Rewind
03-01-10: Commentary : Adam Haslett Invests With 'Union Atlantic' : Abstract Power Abstracts Absolutely
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With Adam Haslett : "With her, and with each character, how does the rhythm create a kind of musical argument?"
02-26-10: Commentary : Dan Simmons Heads for the 'Black Hills' : Unstuck in Life
02-23-10: Commentary : Adam Haslett Knows 'You Are No Stranger Here' : Stories from Strangers' Shoes
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Jedediah Berry Interviewed at SF in SF, February 13, 2010 : "...being at Small Beer has actually introduced whole worlds to me ..."
02-22-10: Commentary : Graeme Gibson's 'The Bedside Book of Birds' and 'The Bedside Book of Beasts' : A Feast for Your Mind, Your Eyes and Your Mind's Eye
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with Graeme Gibson : "Our common humanity, our common culture, will help make the connections."
02-19-10: Commentary : Ralph Waldo Ellison 'Three Days Before the Shooting ...' : One Book, Many Stories
Agony Column Podcast News Report : John Callahan and Adam Bradley and 'Three Days before the Shooting' : "I've moved through the phases of my own life, and I find those phases mirrored in the characters of this novel." — John Callahan "...capable of brilliance, eloquence and power; that's how I understand the second novel, as we see it in Three Days Before the Shooting, and that's certainly how I understand, and I think how Ellison understood, America." — Adam Bradley
02-18-10: Commentary : George Mann Scares Up 'The Ghosts of Manhattan' : Hard Core Pulp Action
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Speaking Frankly With Thomas Frank : From Tea to Shining Tea : "When I think about what I'm saying, it's so depressing..."
02-17-10: Commentary : Thomas More, Clarence Miller and 'Utopia' : Politics, Satire, Fantasy
02-15-10: Commentary : 'Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded' by John Scalzi : A Decade of Whatever
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni : "I have to work through the novel and then it comes to me, how it's going to end."
02-12-10: Commentary : Stephanie Merritt Becomes S. J. Parris : 'Heresy'
02-11-10: Commentary : Max Watman 'Chasing the White Dog' : Home-Made Hooch and Rebellion
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With Sam Farr : : "The money came from Washington, but the uses for that money came from the local community."
02-10-10: Commentary : Anne Lamott Spots 'Imperfect Birds' : The Ties That Unbind
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Speaking Frankly: Thomas Frank on Re-Populism and Re-Launching The Baffler : "I have never seen 'populist backlash in a headline before."
02-09-10: Commentary : Douglas Clegg Returns to 'Neverland' : Is 1980's Horror Returning from the Grave?
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with David Drake, Part 2 / Complete : "I didn't have governor ... that is ... anything, endgame, was me killing somebody.""
02-08-10: Commentary : David Louis Edelman Completes Jump 225 : 'Geosynchron'
