06-05-09 :Agony Column Podcast News Report — The BEA with Alan Cheuse : The Death of the Book and Other Bodily Parts
Who do you want to give you the lowdown on the BEA? Well, let me suggest NPR's Alan Cheuse, who returns from the premiere Book conference with a report on lines, the bikini models, grumbling publishers and the oft-reported death of the book.
If you want to get more than a rundown on titles, Alan Cheuse is the guy to ask. In our conversation about Book Expo America 2009, he gets to the all important ambiance of the affair, the feel of the booths (not the bikini models, that's the kind of reporting I specialize in!), the talk on the floor about attendance and most importantly, we get right to the point. Because we used to just have to talk about the death of the novel, which has been right around the corner pretty much since novels were first invented. Of course like any apocalypse, if it has arrived, we've just not noticed. And the predictions get more extravagantly entertaining every damn year. Let Alan Cheuse show you what literary entertainment really means by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
06-04-09 :Agony Column Podcast News Report : Richard Kadrey Interviewed at SF in SF on May 16, 2009 :
"What I realized I had to do for this character is throw out everything"
When you read a book, or hear an author read; for example, Richard Kadrey, reading from 'Sandman Slim,' you hear or read the finished product and forget that it was not always that way. Readers suffer from the tunnel-vision of polished prose.
Moreover, as readers we sort-of presume, when we even think about such things, that characters were always intended to be as we find them, that plots emerged with complete perfection from the author's mind the first around, that the book we get is the book the author thought they were going to write. But as Richard Kadrey tells us in the MP3 audio file linked here, he had to wrench things around to get his character to work in 'Sandman Slim.' Kadrey developed a sophisticated system of magic to work in the novel, and we're not just talking about the prose here, which I thought did an admirable job of creating a good feel for the grungy underbelly of Hollywood.
06-03-09 :Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Look at Ramayana from Mount Madonna School : Epics and Students
Student life seems truly epic — to the students! But at Mount Madonona School, students find themselves immersed in an actual epic, in this case, Ramayana (rah-MY-a-na), a 2600 year-old Hindu epic in which Prince Ram is tested. And not in math, social studies and the sciences!
On the final segment of the last Talk of the Bay I hosted (May 24, 2009), I spoke with Leah Nasciemento, Camille Schwartz and Trevor Forry about their roles in Ramayana, a four-plus hour production that's been running for some thirty, count 'em THIRTY years. Camille wears nine (I think) heads and Trevor gets painted blue a la Goldfinger, only, yes, blue. Finding out about the epic itself was pretty epic, as was finding out how a 2600 year-old poem of more than 50,000 lines gets turned into a costumed extravaganza. I waited to run this podcast because, as you can find out from this link to their website (http://mountmadonnaschool.org/about/ramayana08.php), the Ramayana runs this weekend, June 5, 6 and 7. The link above will tell you how to go; follow this link to the audio interview and find out why to go!
Heather Shaw
06-02-09 :Agony Column Podcast News Report : Heather Shaw Interviewed at SF in SF on May 16, 2009 : Flytrap
One of the wonders of SF in SF is hearing a story out of the blue, something powerful and amazing like Heather Shaw's 'Little M@tch Girl'. () And it gets tough, really, determining just what the best part of the experience is; hearing the story or hearing the story of the story.
Heather Shaw's story was really quite striking. But she's much more than a short story writer. Like most of America, she is working on a novel, which, we trust will be just as striking. But she's also an editor for 'Flytrap' and married to Tim Pratt. I talked with her in our interview at SF in SF about all this and more.
06-01-09 :A 2009 Interview with Colson Whitehead : Live at KUSP
Rick Kleffel and Colson Whitehead at KUSP Studios, Santa Cruz, CA
Every interview is done live, in a sense. Even a phone interview happens in that time as two people talk. But there's nothing like a live, on-air interview to cure what ails you, if what ails you happens to be that sense of security you get when you or a guest uses one of the Seven Words and you know you can "fix it in the mix."
You can also whether any number of interruptions, just hit pause, then talk to the person hovering outside the window, then go back to your interview. But when you’re live, on the air, you have none of those refuges. On the other hand, when you’re done, you're done. I had Colson Whitehead into the studio a couple of weeks ago when he 2was in town to talk about his new memoir, 'Sag Harbor.' I've spoken with Whitehead before, and he's a great interview. This time was no different, well, only a little different, in that I was running a live show before another live show, which was being hosted, as it happened by someone other than the usual host, who would be running the broad for the new host. What this adds up to is a lot of distraction on the other side of the glass that was not apparent to either Colson or the listening audience. It almost begins to see like an I Love Lucy or Three Stooges skit with frantic gestures being made in my direction and me responding with a lifted eyebrow. You can hear my conversation with Whitehead about his fascinating writing process, a hybrid, I would say, of the outline versus organic, by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
09-01-10: Commentary : Tim Pratt Finds 'Sympathy for the Devil' : "...Hell for the company..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Dan Basta at the Blue Ocean Film Festival : "Experiential learning is the way we learn best."
08-31-10: Commentary : Peter S. Beagle Reveals 'The Secret History of Fantasy' : : Telling Lies for a Living
08-30-10: Commentary : David Doubilet Captures 'Water Time Light' : Painting with Pixels
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes : "Everything people have always feared about photography comes true underwater."
08-25-10: Commentary : Vendela Vida 'The Lovers' : Reading and Revelation
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Live Reading and Interview with Vendela Vida At Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...there was an owl that came into this place we were renting one day..."
08-24-10: Commentary : Jeff VanderMeer and 'The Third Bear' : Absurd Is as Absurd Does
08-20-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes 'Deadman's Road' : Deader Than Thou
Agony Column Podcast News Report : On the Phone with Vendela Vida : "You do all this background information, most of which never makes it into the book."
08-19-10: Commentary : Gary Shteyngart Tells a 'Super Sad True Love Story' : Retro-Prescience
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Gary Shteyngart Live Reading and Interview at Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...please like me, this will make up for Hebrew school if all of you like me.."
08-18-10: Commentary : Mark Pilkington Unleashes Weapons of Mass Deception : "ECM+CIA=UFO"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett and Barry Eisler for The Agony Column Live at Capitola Book Café, August 7, 2010 Q and A : "This is NewSpeak."
08-16-10: Commentary : Howard Norman Asks 'What is Left the Daughter' : The Past Always Rises
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Howard Norman : "I'd wanted to write from the beginning an epistolary novel; this is just an epistolary novel that's consisting of one letter."
08-12-10: Commentary : James O'Neal Copies 'The Double Human' : Proceeding into the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler and David Corbett Live at Capitola Book Café on August 7, 2010 : "If anyone thinks it's absurd that the government might assassinate the founder of WikiLeaks, it's quite a bit less absurd than I wish it were".... — Barry Eisler
08-11-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes Huck Finn to 'Dread Island' : "Classics Mutilated"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "...they'll pick up that angle and run interference for us..."
08-10-10: Commentary : David Corbett Asks 'Do They Know I'm Running?' : Crossing Borders
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "These Families are making incredible sacrifices..."
08-09-10: Commentary : David Mitchell and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet : The World is Ever the World
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with David Mitchell : "The periodic table of the human heart is still the same now as it was then."
08-06-10: Commentary : Tim Powers Sails 'On Stranger Tides' : History, Fantasy and the Reality of Reading
08-03-10: Commentary : Robert M. Price Spins 'The Tindalos Cycle' : Terrorize, Horrify, Repeat
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Short Chat with Gary Shteyngart : "...the technology is outpacing our ability to absorb what it is doing to us..."
08-02-10: Commentary : A Second Tour Through 'The Passage' : Sending Characters into Time
07-30-10: Commentary : Subterranean Press and Robert R. McCammon Wake at 'The Wolf's Hour' : The Time Before Cheese
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'
07-28-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space 2 : En Route, RJ Frith and Peter F. Hamilton
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010: Q & A : "The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."
07-27-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space : UK Space Opera Demonstrates Excess is Not Enough (Part one, the Arrived)
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010 : "Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."
07-26-10: Commentary : Brian and Wendy Froud Seek 'The Heart of Faerie Oracle' : Cards, Books and a New Perspective
