Wednesday, May 1 - Gary Amdahl

Tonight at 8 PM on KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California:  GARY AMDAHL.  What a pleasure it is to host in studio at last a writer whose work has meant so much to me over many years both in terms of his professional artistic struggle with a weird industry and his success as a devoted craftsman of a kind of prose that explores ideas and character, place and politics with such attention to language as to cause readers to stop and reread, sometimes perhaps out loud, before advancing further to plot and premise.  Gary Amdahl is the author of a first collection called Visigoth, which won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize.  His second book was two novellas, published together as I am Death.  And now arrives The Intimidator Still Lives in Our Hearts, a second short and long story collection that is perhaps his most representative, ambitious and richly complex yet entertaining.  This collection is a good introduction to a writer about whom you should know and care, and a reward for his many long-time fans.  Throughout the stories there is simultaneously the voice of a dramaturge, sometimes out front, sometimes less autobiographical, but always familiar --- and a consciousness, of the artist in whose trust we are affirmed and challenged.  Amdahl’s collection brings together recent stories originally seen in A Public Space, Agni, Massachusetts Review, Liquake and, yes, Santa Monica Review.  Gary Amdahl is one of the smartest, most talented, most rewarding writers you can read.  Thanks for listening, on the radio or online, and as a free download from the station’s archives.