Tonight at 8 PM on Bibliocracy, KPFK 90.7 FM: VICTORIA PATTERSON. In her first two books, a short story
collection and a novel, my guest tonight observed, dramatized, sent up the glittering
rotten lives of the grown-ups and children of nouveau riche of Orange County,
California, wielding an elegant ice pick at duplicity and self-reverence, the
too-easy meaningful meaninglessness of the indulged and clueless, yet
simultaneously offered empathy and honest description. Victoria Patterson is the author of the debut
short story collection Drift and a
novel, This Vacant Paradise, two
favorite books about our Southern California
place and politics. Now, in her third
book, she offers a fictional version of a lost moment in history, constructs a
revisionist tale, and ---best of all --- explores perspective and the authority
of storytelling – all around the circumstance of women’s participation in the
1928 Olympics, not to mention the struggle against intransigent misogyny and
discrimination against women athletes, period.
The Peerless Four is not only
a sports novel, though the excitement, pain, and physical beauty of competition
is of course thrillingly told. The novel
is also about who tells the story, and whose story is told, and how and why the
teller might indeed be as important as the other characters. Thanks for listening on the radio, or
online. The show is available as a
download, free for 90 days, from the KPFK audio archives. Thanks always to Stan Misraje, engineer.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Wednesday, November 13 - novelist Nicholson Baker
Wednesday night at 8 PM on Bibliocracy Radio, KPFK 90.7 FM
in Southern California : NICHOLSON
BAKER. The fictional
poet-anthologist introduced in an earlier and much-acclaimed novel is back in Nicholson Baker’s continuing fictional documentary
self-narration of his life titled, self-consciously and hilariously, Traveling
Sprinkler. The also wonderfully
named anti-hero Paul Chowder, almost age 55,
hosts his own make-believe public radio show in his car, and behaves,
stubbornly yet as easily as your favorite eccentric next-door neighbor as local
purveyor of a certain kind of charming.
He integrates big ideals and ambitions into the hapless and
tragic-comic. Selfish but humane,
big-hearted yet impulsive, Paul’s response to big problems or issues – the war,
US drones, love – is asymmetrical and kind of nutty, but most of all it allows
him to become and inhabit and exist with the urgency and futility of, not
poetry this time, but song, rhythm, music, beats. Nicholson Baker is the acclaimed author of nine
novels and nonfiction as well, The
Anthologist being the earlier, wildly popular first part of the Paul
Chowder story. It probably does not
matter which you read first, but for sentence-level hilarity, wit, deadpan
existential arias and joy, joy, joy at idiom, detail and the everyday profound
power of words, Nicholson Baker is one of our best. What a great writer. What a cool radio show. You can listen to it on the radio live, or
online and, yes, as a free download on your computer, shoe phone, or traveling
sprinkler anytime you like, as long as it’s in the next 90 days. Thanks for supporting commercial-free
anti-corporate genuine community media. Oh, and if you'd like more of my take on Baker, here's the link to a recent OC Bookly piece: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2013/10/nicholson_baker.php
Monday, November 4, 2013
Wednesday, November 6 - Joanna Scutts on Fascist Sympathies
Tonight at 8 PM Bibliocracy Radio, KFPK 90.7 FM: JOANNA
SCUTTS on Fascist Sympathies. I’m a
longtime reader, fan, and supporter of The
Nation magazine --- no surprise! --- and am grateful and delighted at the
experience of finding an article, review or opinion piece which not only
affirms but teaches me something, provokes, insists its argument into my life,
whether demanding more reading and research, or correcting my own misperception
or --- I’ll be honest --- confirming what I’d understood. All of that happened for this happy reader
after blazing through a long, packed, fun piece by my guest tonight, Joanna
Scutts. Her review, not so much of a single book, but of a genre, inspired and delighted
me with its careful yet urgent framing of the so-called American self-help
movement and its literature, in a historical context and, yes, a political
one. It’s important to be able to
critique the enduring attraction of what seems so obviously a flimsy if
ideologically grounded --- in the worst way --- part of how many citizens seem
to construct a worldview. The article,
which its author will read from, is “Fascist Sympathies: On Dorothea Brande," from the August 13 Nation
magazine. Who was Dorothea Brande, and
how is it that so much of the all-American tradition of narcissistic and
pro-capitalist, dog-eat-dog self-improvement literature, Dale to Deepak, emanates
from her arguably right-wing bestseller of 75 years ago, Wake Up and Live!? The writer is Joanna Scutts, freelance reviewer
of book reviews, writer of author profiles, and cultural criticism for The Washington Post, The Nation, The
Wall Street Journal, Los
Angeles Review of Books, and more. She holds a PhD in English and
Comparative Literature from Columbia University and teaches writing at NYU’s Gallatin School . This is one of the most fun conversations I've had lately. Thanks for listening, on the radio or online live, or as a free download from the station's archives whenever you like.
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