Podcast appearances and mentions of Harry Ransom Center

Hermione Lee is the renowned biographer of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald, and, most recently, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard died at the end of last year, so Hermione and I talked about the influence of Shaw and Eliot and Coward on his work, the recent production of The Invention of Love, the role of ideas in Stoppard's writing, his writing process, rehearsals, revivals, movies. We also talked about John Carey, Brian Moore, Virginia Woolf as a critic. Hermione is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. Her life of Anita Brookner will be released in September.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today I have the great pleasure of talking to Professor Dame Hermione Lee. Hermione was the first woman to be appointed Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and she is the most renowned and admired living English biographer. She wrote a seminal life of Virginia Woolf. She's written splendid books about people like Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and my own favorite, Penelope Fitzgerald. And most recently she has been the biographer of Tom Stoppard, and I believe this year she has a new book coming out about Anita Brookner. Hermione, welcome.Hermione Lee: Thank you very much.Oliver: We're mostly going to talk about Tom Stoppard because he, sadly, just died. But I might have a few questions about your broader career at the end. So tell me first how Shavian is Stoppard's work?Lee: He would reply “very close Shavian,” when asked that question. I think there are similarities. There are obviously similarities in the delighting forceful intellectual play, and you see that very much in Jumpers where after all the central character is a philosopher, a bit of a bonkers philosopher, but still a very rational one.And you see it in someone like Henry, the playwright in The Real Thing, who always has an answer to every argument. He may be quite wrong, but he is full of the sort of zest of argument, the passion for argument. And I think that kind of delight in making things intellectually clear and the pleasure in argument is very Shavian.Where I think they differ and where I think is really more like Chekov, or more like Beckett or more in his early work, the dialogues in T. S. Elliot, and less like Shaw is in a kind of underlying strangeness or melancholy or sense of fate or sense of mortality that rings through almost all the plays, even the very, very funny ones. And I don't think I find that in Shaw. My prime reading time for Shaw was between 15 and 19, when I thought that Shaw was the most brilliant grownup that one could possibly be listening to, and I think now I feel less impressed by him and a bit more impatient with him.And I also think that Shaw is much more in the business of resolving moral dilemmas. So in something like Arms and the Man or Man and Superman, you will get a kind of resolution, you will get a sort of sense of this is what we're meant to be agreeing with.Whereas I think quite often one of the fascinating things about Stoppard is the way that he will give all sides of the question; he will embody all sides of the question. And I think his alter ego there is not Shaw, but the character of Turgenev in The Coast of Utopia, who is constantly being nagged by his radical political friends to make his mind up and to have a point of view and come down on one side or the other. And Turgenev says, I take every point of view.Oliver: I must confess, I find The Coast of Utopia a little dull compared to Stoppard's other work.Lee: It's long. Yes. I don't find it dull. But I think it may be a play to read possibly more than a play to see now. And you're never going to get it put on again anyway because the cast is too big. And who's going to put on a nine-hour free play, 50 people cast about 19th-century Russian revolutionaries? Nobody, I would think.But I find it very absorbing actually. And partly because I'm so interested in Isaiah Berlin, who is a very strong presence in the anti-utopianism of those plays. But that's a matter of opinion.Oliver: No. I like Berlin. One thing about Stoppard that's un-Shavian is that he says his plays begin as a noise or an image or a scene, and then we think of him as this very thinking writer. But is he really more of an intuitive writer?Lee: I think it's a terribly good question. I think it gets right at the heart of the matter, and I think it's both. Sorry, I sound like Turgenev, not making my mind up. But yes, there is an image or there is an idea, or there are often two ideas, as it were, the birth of quantum physics and 18th-century landscape gardening. Who else but Stoppard would put those two things in one play, Arcadia, and have you think about both at once.But the image and the play may well have been a dance between two periods of time together in one room. So I think he never knew what the next play was going to be until it would come at him, as it were. He often resisted the idea that if he chose a topic and then researched it, a play would come out of it. That wasn't what happened. Something would come at him and then he would start doing a great deal of research usually for every play.Oliver: What sort of influence did T. S. Elliot have on him? Did it change the dialogue or, was it something else?Lee: When I was working with him on my biography, he gave me a number of things. I had extraordinary access, and we can perhaps come back to that interesting fact. And most of these things were loans he gave them to me to work on. Then I gave them back to him.But he gave me as a present one thing, which was a black notebook that he had been keeping at the time he was writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and also his first and only novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, which is little known, which he thought was going to make his career. The book was published in the same week that Rosencrantz came up. He thought the novel was going to make his career and the play was going to sink without trace. Not so. In the notebook there are many quotations from T. S. Elliot, and particularly from Prufrock and the Wasteland, and you can see him working them into the novel and into the play.“I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be.” And that sense of being a disconsolate outsider. Ill at ease with and neurotic about the world that is charging along almost without you, and you are having to hang on to the edge of the world. The person who feels themself to be in internal exile, not at one with the universe. I think that point of view recurs over and over again, right through the work, but also a kind of epigrammatical, slightly mysterious crypticness that Elliot has, certainly in Prufrock and in the Wasteland and in the early poems. He loved that tone.Oliver: Yes. When I read your paper about that I thought about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quite differently. I've always disliked the idea that it's a sort of Beckett imitation play. It seems very Elliotic having read what you described.Lee: There is Beckett in there. You can't get away from it.Oliver: Surface level.Lee: Beckett's there, but I think the sense of people waiting around—Stoppard's favorite description of Rosencrantz was: “It's two journalists on a story that doesn't add up, which is very clever and funny.”Yes. And that sense of, Vladimir going, “What are we supposed to be doing and how are we going to pass the time?” That's profoundly influential on Stoppard. So I don't think it's just a superficial resemblance myself, but I agree that Elliot just fills the tone of that play and other things too.Oliver: In the article you wrote about Stoppard and Elliot, the title is about biographical questing, and you also described Arcadia as a quest. How important is the idea of the quest to the way you work and also to the way you read Stoppard?Lee: I took as the epigraph for my biography of Stoppard a line from Arcadia: “It's wanting to know that makes us matter, otherwise we're going out the way we came in.” So I think that's right at the heart of Stoppard's work, and it's right at the heart of any biographical work, whether or not it's mine or someone else's. If you can't know, in the sense of knowing the person, knowing what the person is like, and also knowing as much as possible about them from different kinds of sources, then you might as well give up.You can't do it through impressions. You've got to do it through knowledge. Of course, a certain amount of intuition may also come into play, though I'm not the kind of biographer that feels you can make things up. Working on a living person, this is the only time I've done that.It was, of course, a very different thing from working on a safely dead author. And I knew Penelope Fitzgerald a little bit, but I had no idea I was going to write her biography when I had conversations with her and she wouldn't have told me anything anyway. She was so wicked and evasive. But it was a set up thing; he asked me to do it. And we had a proper contract and we worked together over several years, during which time he became a friend, which was a wonderful piece of luck for me.I was doing four things, really. One was reading all the material that he produced, everything, and getting to know it as well as I could. And that's obviously the basic task. One was talking to him and listening to him talk about his life. And he was very generous with those interviews. I'm sure there were things he didn't tell me, but that's fine. One was talking to other people about him, which is a very interesting process. And with someone like him who knew everyone in the literary, theatrical, cultural world, you have to draw a halt at some point. You can't talk to a thousand people, or I'd have still been doing it, so you talk to particularly fellow playwrights, directors, actors who've worked with him often, as well as family and friends. And then you start pitting the versions against each other and seeing what stands up and what keeps being said.Repetition's very important in that process because when several people say the same thing to you, then you know that's right. And that quest also involves some actual footsteps, as Richard Holmes would say. Footsteps. Traveling to places he'd lived in and going to Darjeeling where he had been to school before he came to England, that kind of travel.And then the fourth, and to me, in a way, almost the most exciting, was the opportunity to watch him at work in rehearsal. So with the director's permissions, I was allowed to sit in on two or three processes like that, the 50th anniversary production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the Old Vic with David Lavoie. And Patrick Marber's wonderful production of Leopoldstadt and Nick Hytner's production of The Hard Problem at the National. So I was able to witness the very interesting negotiations going on between Tom and the director and the cast.And also the extraordinary fact that even with a play like Rosencrantz, which is on every school syllabus and has been for 50—however many years—he was still changing things in rehearsal. I can't get over that. And in his view, as he often said, theater is an event and not a text, and so one could see that actual process of things changing before one's very eyes, and that for a biographer, it's a pretty amazing privilege.Oliver: How much of the plays were written during rehearsal do you think?Lee: Oh, 99% of the plays were written with much labor, much precision, much correction alone at his desk. The text is there, the text is written, and everything changes when you go into the rehearsal room because you suddenly find that there isn't enough time with that speech for the person to get from the bed to the door. It's physics; you have to put another line in so that someone can make an entrance or an exit, that kind of thing.Or the actors will say quite often, because they were a bit in awe—by the time he became well known—the actors initially would be a bit in awe of the braininess and the brilliance. And quite often the actors will be saying, “I'm sorry, I don't understand. I don't understand this.” You'd often get, “I don't really understand.”And then he would never be dismissive. He would either say, “No, I think you've got to make it work.” I'm putting words into his mouth here. Or he would say, “Okay, let's put another sentence or something like that.”Oliver: Between what he wrote at his desk and the book that's available for purchase now, how much changed? Is it 10%, 50? You know what I mean?Lee: Yes. You should be talking to his editor at Faber, Dinah Wood. So Faber would print a relatively small number for the first edition before the rehearsal process and the final production. And then they would do a second edition, which would have some changes in it. So 2%. Okay. But crucial sometimes.Oliver: No, sure. Very important.Lee: And also some plays like Jumpers went through different additions with different endings, different solutions to plot problems. Travesties, he had a lot of trouble with the Lenins in Travesties because it's the play in which you've got Joyce and you've got Tristan Tzara and you've got the Lenins, and they're all these real people and he makes him talk.But he was a little bit nervous about the Lenin. So what he gave him to say were things that they had really said, that Lenin had really said. As opposed to the Tzara-Joyce stuff, which is all wonderfully made up. The bloody Lenins became a bit of a problem for him. And so that gets changed in later editions you'll find.Oliver: How closely do you think The Real Thing is based on Present Laughter by Noël Coward?Lee: Oh, I think there's a little bit of Coward in there. Yes, sure. I think he liked Coward, he liked Wilde, obviously. He likes brilliant, witty, playful entertainers. He wants to be an entertainer. But I think The Real Thing, he was proud of the fact that The Real Thing was one of the few examples of his plays at that time, which weren't based on something else. They weren't based on Hamlet. They weren't based on The Importance of Being Earnest. It's not based on a real person like Housman. I think The Real Thing came out of himself much more than out of literary models.Oliver: You don't think that Henry is a bit like the actor character in Present Laughter and it's all set in his flat and the couples moving around and the slight element of farce?The cricket bat speech is quite similar to when Gary Essendine—do you remember that very funny young man comes up on the train from Epping or somewhere and lectures him about the social value of art. And Gary Essendine says, “Get a job in a theater rep and write 20 plays. And if you can get one of them put on in a pub, you'll be damn lucky.” It's like a model for him, a loose model.Lee: Yes. Henry, I think you should write an article comparing these two plays.Oliver: Okay. Very good. What does Stoppardian mean?Lee: It means witty. It means brilliant with words. It means fizzing with verbal energy. It means intellectually dazzling. The word dazzling is the one that tends to get used. My own version of Stoppardian is a little bit different from, as it were, those standard received and perfectly acceptable accounts of Stoppardian.My own sense of Stoppardian has more to do with grief and mortality and a sense of not belonging and of puzzlement and bewilderment, within all that I said before, within the dazzling, playful astonishing zest and brio of language and the precision about language.Oliver: Because it's a funny word. It's hard to include Leopoldstadt under the typical use of Stoppardian, because it's an untypical Stoppard.Lee: One of the things about Leopoldstadt that I think is—let's get rid of that trope about Stoppardian—characteristic of him is the remarkable way it deals with time. Here's a play like Arcadia, all set in the same place, all set in the same room, in the same house, and it goes from a big hustling room, late 19th-century family play, just like the beginning of The Coast of Utopia, where you begin with a big family in Russia and then it moves through the '20s and then into the terrible appalling period of the Anschluss and the Holocaust.And then it ends up after the war with an empty room. This room, is like a different kind of theater, an empty room. Three characters, none of whom you know very well, speaking in three different kinds of English, reaching across vast spaces of incomprehension, and you've had these jumps through time.And then at the very end, the original family, all of whom have been destroyed, the original family reappears on the stage. I'm sorry to tell this for anyone who hasn't seen Leopoldstadt. Because when it happens on the stage, it's an absolutely astonishing moment. As if the time has gone round and as if the play, which I think it was for him, was an act of restitution to all those people.Oliver: How often did he use his charm to get his way with actors?Lee: A lot. And not just actors. People he worked with, film people, friends, companions. Charm is such an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we shouldn't deviate, but there's always a slightly sinister aspect to the word charm as in, a magic charm. And one tends to be a bit suspicious of charm. And he knew he had charm and he was physically very magnetic and good looking and very funny and very attentive to people.But I think the charm, in his case, he did use it to get the right results, and he did use it, as he would say, “to look after my plays.” He was always, “I want to look after my plays.” And that's why he went back to rehearsal when there were revivals and so on. But he wasn't always charming. Patrick Marber, who's a friend of his and who directed Leopoldstadt, is very good on how irritable Stoppard could be sometimes in rehearsal. And I've heard that from other directors too—Jack O'Brien, who did the American productions of things like The Invention of Love.If Stoppard felt it wasn't right, he could get quite cross. So this wasn't a sort of oleaginous character at all. It's not smooth, it's not a smooth charm at all. But yes, he knew his power and he used it, and I think in a good way. I think he was a benign character actually. And one of the things that was very fascinating to me, not only when he died and there was this great outpouring of tributes, very heartfelt tributes, I thought. But also when I was working on the biography, I was going around the world trying to find people to say bad things about him, because what I didn't want to do was write a hagiography. You don't want to do that; there would be no point. And it was genuinely quite hard.And I don't know the theater world; it's not my world. I got to know it a little bit then. But I have never necessarily thought of the theater world as being utterly loving and generous about everybody else. I'm sure there are lots of rivalries and spitefulness, as there is in academic life, all the rest of it. But it was very hard to find anyone with a bad word to say about him, even people who'd come up against the steeliness that there is in him.I had an interview with Steven Spielberg about him, with whom he worked a lot, and with whom he did Empire of the Sun. And I would ask my interviewees if they could come up with two or three adjectives or an adjective that would sum him up, that would sum Stoppard up to them. And when I asked Spielberg this question, he had a little think and then he said, intransigent. I thought, great. He must be the only person who ever stood up to him.Oliver: What was his best film script? Did he write a really great film.Lee: That one. I think partly the novel, I don't know if you know the Ballard novel, the Empire of the Sun, it's a marvelous novel. And Ballard was just a magical and amazing writer, a great hero of mine. But I think what Stoppard did with that was really clever and brilliant.I know people like Brazil, the Terry Gilliam sort of surrealist way. And there's some interesting early work. Most of his film work was not one script; it was little bits that he helped with. So there's famously the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he did most of the dialogue for Harrison Ford.But there are others like the One Hundred and One Dalmatians, where I think there's one line, anonymously Stoppardian in there. One of the things about the obituaries that slightly narked me was that there, I felt there was a bit too much about the films. Truly, I don't think the film work was—he wanted it to be right and he wanted to get it right—but it wasn't as close to his heart as the theater work. And indeed the work for radio, which I thought was generally underwritten about when he died. There was some terrific work there.Oliver: Yes. And there aren't that many canonical writers who've been great on the radio.Lee: Absolutely. He did everything. He did film, he did radio. He wrote some opera librettos. He really did everything. And on top of that, there was the great work for the public good, which I think is a very important part of his legacy, his history.Oliver: How much crossover influence is there between the different bits of his career? Does the screenwriting influence the theater writing and the radio and so on? Or is he just compartmentalized and able to do a lot of different things?Lee: That's such an interesting question. I don't think I've thought about it enough. I think there are very cinematic aspects to some of the plays, like Night and Day, for instance, the play about journalism. That could easily have been a film.And perhaps Hapgood as well, although it could be a kind of John le Carré type film thriller, though it's such a set of complicated interlocking boxes that I don't know that it would work as a film. It's not one of my favorite players, I must say. I struggle a little bit with Hapgood. But, yes, I'm sure that they fed into each other. Because he was so busy, he was often doing several things at once. So he was keeping things in boxes and opening the lid of that box. But mentally things must have overlapped, I'm sure.Oliver: He once joked that rather than having read Wittgenstein from cover to cover, he had only read the covers. How true is that? Because I know some people who would say he's very clever in everything, but he's not as clever as he looks. It's obviously not true that he only read the covers.Lee: I think there was a phase, wasn't there, after the early plays when people felt that he was—it's that English phrase, isn't it—too clever by half. Which you would never hear anyone in France saying of someone that they were too clever by half. So he was this kind of jazzy intellectual who put all his ideas out there, and he was this sort of self-educated savant who hadn't been to Oxford.There was quite a lot of that about in the earlier years, I think. And a sense that he was getting away with it, to which I would countermand with the story of the writing of The Invention of Love. So what attracted him to the figure of Housman initially was not the painful, suppressed homosexual love story, but the fact that here was this person who was divided into a very pernickety, savagely critical classical editor of Latin and a romantic lyric poet. In order to work out how to turn this into a play, he probably spent about six years taking Latin lessons, reading everything he could read on the history of classical literature. Obviously reading about Housman, engaging in conversation with classical scholars about Housman's, finer points of editorial precision about certain phrases. And what he used from that was the tip of the iceberg. But the iceberg was real.He really did that work and he often used to say that it was his favorite play because he'd so much enjoyed the work that went into it. I think he took what he needed from someone like Wittgenstein. I know you don't like The Coast of Utopia very much, but if you read his background to Coast of Utopia, what went into it, and if you compare what's in the plays, those three plays, with what's in the writing about those revolutionaries, he read everything. He may have magpied it, but he's certainly knows what he's talking about. So I defend him a bit against that, I think.Oliver: Good, good. Did you see the recent production at the Hamstead Theatre of The Invention of Love?Lee: I did, yes.Oliver: What did you think?Lee: I liked it. I thought it was rather beautifully done. I liked those boats rowing around that clicked together. I thought Simon Russell Beale was extremely good, particularly very moving. And very good in Housman's vindictiveness as a critic. He is not a nice person in that sense. And his scornfulness about the women students in his class, that kind of thing. And so there was a wonderful vitriol and scorn in Russell Beale's performance.I think when you see it now, some of the Oxford context is a little bit clunky, those scenes with Jowett and Pater and so on, it's like a bit of a caricature of the context of cultural life at the time, intellectual life at the time. But I think that the trope of the old and the young Housman meeting each other and talking to each other, which I still think is very moving. I thought it worked tremendously well.Oliver: What are Tom Stoppard's poems like?Lee: You see them in Indian Ink where he invents a poet, Flora Crewe, who is a poet who was died young, turn of the century, bold feminist associated with Bloomsbury and gets picked up much later as a kind of Sylvia Plath-type, HD type heroine. And when you look at Stoppard's manuscripts in the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Austin, in Texas, there is more ink spent on writing and rewriting those poems of Flora Crewe than anything else I saw in the manuscript. He wrote them and rewrote them.Early on he wrote some Elliot—they're very like Elliot—little poems for himself. I think there are probably quite a lot of love poems out there, which I never saw because they belong to the people for whom he wrote them. So I wouldn't know about those.Oliver: How consistently did Stoppard hold to a kind of liberal individualism in his politics?Lee: He was accused of being very right wing in the 1980s really, 1970s, 1980s, when the preponderant tendency for British drama was radicalism, Royal Court, left wing, all of that. And Stoppard seemed an outlier then, because he approved of Thatcher. He was a friend of Thatcher. He didn't like the print union. It was particularly about newspapers because he'd been a newspaper man in his youth. That was his alternative university education, working in Bristol on the newspapers. He had a romance heroic feeling about the value of the journalist to uphold democracy, and he hated the pressure of the print unions to what he thought at the time was stifling that.He changed his mind. I think a lot about that. He had been very idealistic and in love with English liberal values. And I think towards the end of his life he felt that those were being eroded. He voted lots of different ways. He voted conservative, voted green. He voted lib dem. I don't if he ever voted Labour.Oliver: But even though his personal politics shifted and the way he voted shifted, there is something quite continuous from the early plays through to Rock ‘n' Roll. Is there a sort of basic foundation that doesn't change, even though the response to events and the idea about the times changes?Lee: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it can be summed up in what Henry says in The Real Thing about politics, which is a version of what's often said in his plays, which is public postures have the configuration of private derangement. So that there's a deep suspicion of political rhetoric, especially when it tends towards the final solution type, the utopian type, the sense that individual lives can be sacrificed in the interest of an ultimate rationalized greater good.And then, he's worked in the '70s for the victims of Soviet communism. His work alongside in support of Havel and Charter 77. And he wrote on those themes such as Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul. Those are absolutely at the heart of what he felt. And they come back again when he's very modest about this and kept it quiet. But he did an enormous amount of work for the Belarus exile, Belarus Free Theater collective, people in support of those trying to work against the regime in Belarus.And then the profound, heartfelt, intense feeling of horror about what happened to people in Leopoldstadt. That's all part of the same thing. I think he's a believer in individual freedom and in democracy and has a suspicion of political rhetoric.Oliver: How much were some of his great parts written for specific actors? Because I sometimes have a feeling when I watch one of his plays now, if I'd been here when Felicity Kendal was doing this, I would be getting the whole thing, but I'm getting most of it.Lee: I'm sure that's right. And he built up a team around him: Peter Wood, the director and John Wood who's such an extraordinary Henry Carr in in in Travesties. And Michael Hordern as George the philosopher in Jumpers. And he wrote a lot for Kendal, in the process of becoming life companions.But he'd obviously been writing and thinking of her very much, for instance, in Arcadia. And also I think very much, it's very touching now to see the production of Indian Ink that's running at Hampstead Theatre in which Felicity Kendal is playing the older woman, the surviving older sister of the poet Flora Crewe, where of course the part of Flora Crewe was written for her. And there's something very touching about seeing that now. And, in fact, the first night of that production was the day of Stoppard's funeral. And Kendal couldn't be at the funeral, of course, because she was in the first night of his play. That's a very touching thing.Oliver: Why did he think the revivals came too soon?Lee: I don't really know the answer to that. I think he thought a play had to hook up a lot of oxygen and attract a lot of attention. If you were lucky while it was on, people would remember the casting and the direction of that version of it, and it would have a kind of memory. You had to be there.But people who were there would remember it and talk about it. And if you had another production very soon after that, then maybe it would diminish or take away that effect. I think he had a sort of loyalty to first productions often. What do you think about that? I'm not quite sure of the answer to that.Oliver: I don't know. To me it seems to conflict a bit with his idea that it's a living thing and he's always rewriting it in the rehearsal room. But I think probably what you say is right, and he will have got it right in a certain way through all that rehearsing. You then need to wait for a new generation of people to make it fresh again, if you like.Lee: Or not a generation even, but give it five years.Oliver: Everyone new and this theater's working differently now. We can rework it in our own way. Can we have a few questions about your broader career before we finish?Lee: Depends what they are.Oliver: Your former colleague John Carey died at a similar time to Stoppard. What do you think was his best work?Lee: John Carey's best work? Oh. I thought the biography of Golding was pretty good. And I thought he wrote a very good book on Thackery. And I thought his work on Milton was good. I wasn't so keen on The Intellectuals and the Masses. He and I used to have vociferous arguments about that because he had cast Virginia Woolf with all the modernist fascists, as it were. He'd put her in a pile with Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound and so on. And actually, Virginia Woolf was a socialist feminist. And this didn't seem to have struck him because he was so keen to expose her frightful snobbery, which is what people in England reading Woolf, especially middle class blokes, were horrified by.And she is a snob, there's no doubt about it. But she knew that and she lacerated herself for it too. And I think he ignored all the other aspects of her. So I was angry about that. But he was the kind of person you could have a really good argument with. That was one of the really great things about John.Oliver: He seems to be someone else who was amenable and charming, but also very steely.Lee: Yes, I think he probably was I think he probably was. You can see that in his memoir, I think.Oliver: What was Carmen Callil like?Lee: Oh. She was a very important person in my life. It was she who got me involved in writing pieces for Virago. And it was she who asked me to write the life of Virginia Woolf for Chatto. And she was an enormous, inspiring encourager as she was to very many people. And I loved her.But I was also, as many people were, quite daunted by her. She was temperamental, she was angry. She was passionate. She was often quite difficult. Not a word I like to use about women because there's that trope of difficult women, but she could be. And she lost her temper in a very un-English way, which was quite a sight to behold. But I think of her as one of the most creative and influential publishers of the 20th century.Oliver: Will there be a biography of her?Lee: I don't know. Yes, it's a really interesting question, and I've been asking her executors whether they have any thoughts about that. Somebody said to me, oh, who wants a biography of a publisher? But, actually, publishers are really important people often, so I hope there would be. Yes. And it would need to be someone who understood the politics of feminism and who understood about coming from Australia and who understood about the Catholic background and who understood about her passion for France. And there are a whole lot of aspects to that life. It's a rich and complex life. Yes, I hope there will be someday.Oliver: Her papers are sitting there in the British Library.Lee: They are. And in fact—you kindly mentioned this to start with—I've just finished a biography of the art historian and novelist, Anita Brookner, who won the Booker prize in 1984 for a novel called Hotel du Lac.And Carmen and Anita were great buddies, surprisingly actually, because they were very different kinds of characters. And the year before she died, Carmen, who knew I was working on Anita, showed me all her diary entries and all the letters she'd kept from Anita. And that's the kind of generous person that she was.That material is now sitting in the British Library, along with huge reams of correspondence between Carmen and many other people. And it's an exciting archive.Oliver: She seems to have had a capacity to be friends with almost anyone.Lee: Yes, I think there were people she would not have wanted to be friends with. She was very disapproving of a lot of political figures and particularly right-wing figures, and there were people she would've simply spat at if she was in the room with them. But, yes, she an enormous range of friends, and she was, as I said, she was fantastically encouraging to younger women writers.And, also, another aspect of Carmen's life, which I greatly admired and was fascinated by: In Virago she would often be resuscitating the careers of elderly women writers who had been forgotten or neglected, including Antonia White and including Rosamund Lehmann. And part of Carmen's job at Virago, as she felt, was not just to republish these people, some of whom hadn't had a book published for decades, but also to look after them. And they were all quite elderly and often quite eccentric and often quite needy. And Carmen would be there, bringing them out and looking after them and going around to see them. And really marvelous, I think.Oliver: Yes, it is. Tell me about Brian Moore.Lee: Breean, as he called himself.Oliver: Oh, I'm sorry.Lee: No, it's all right. I think Brian became a friend because in the 1980s I had a book program on Channel 4, which was called Book Four. It had a very small audience, but had a wonderful time over several years interviewing lots and lots of writers who had new books out. We didn't have a budget; it was a table and two chairs and not the kind of book program you see on the television anymore. And I got to know Brian through that and through reviewing him a bit and doing interviews with him, and my husband and I would go out and visit him and his wife Jean.And I loved the work. I thought the work was such a brilliant mixture of popular cultural forms, like the thriller and historical novel and so on. And fascinating ideas about authority and religion and how to be free, how to break free of the bonds of what he'd grown up with in Ireland, in Northern Ireland, the bombs of religious autocracy, as it were. And very surreal in some ways as well. And he was also a very charming, funny, gregarious person who could be quite wicked about other writers.And, he was a wonderfully wicked and funny companion. What breaks my heart about Brian Moore is that while he was alive, he was writing a novel maybe every other year or every three years, and people would review them and they were talked about, and I don't think they were on academic syllabuses but they were really popular. And when he died and there were no more books, it just went. You can think of other writers like that who were tremendously well known in their time. And then when there weren't any more books, just went away. You ask people, now you go out and ask people, say, “What about The Temptation of Eileen Hughes or The Doctor's Wife or Black Robe? And they'll go, “Sorry?”Oliver: If anyone listening to this wants to try one of his novels, where do you say they should start?Lee: I think I would start with The Doctor's Wife and The Temptation of Eileen Hughes. And then if one liked those, one would get a taste for him. But there's plenty to choose from.Oliver: What about Catholics?Lee: Yes. Catholics is a wonderful book. Yes. Wonderful book. Bit like Muriel Spark's The Abbess of Crewe, I think.Oliver: How important is religion to Penelope Fitzgerald's work?Lee: She would say that she felt guilty about not having put her religious beliefs more explicitly into her fiction. I'm very glad that she didn't because I think it is deeply important and she believes in miracles and saints and angels and manifestations and providence, but she doesn't spell it out.And so when at the end of The Gate of Angels, for instance, there is a kind of miracle on the last page but it's much better not to have it spelt out as a miracle, in my view. And in The Blue Flower, which is not my favorite of her books, but it's the book of the greatest genius possibly. And I think she was a genius. There is a deep interest in Novalis's romantic philosophical ideas about a spiritual life, beyond the physical life, no more doctrinally than that. And she, of course, believes in that. I think she believed, in an almost Platonic way, that this life was a kind of cave of shadows and that there was something beyond that. And there are some very mysterious moments in her books, which, if they had been explained as religious experiences, I think would've been much less forceful and much less intense.Oliver: What is your favorite of her books?Lee: Oh, The Beginning of Spring. The Beginning of Spring is set in Moscow just before the revolution. And its concerns an Englishman who runs a print and publishing works. And it's based quite a lot on some factual narratives about people in Moscow at the time. And it's about the feeling of that place and that time, but it's also about being in love with two people at the same time.And, yes, and it's about cultural clashes and cultural misunderstanding, and it is an astonishingly evocative book. And when asked about this book, interviewers would say to Penelope, oh, she must have lived in Moscow for ages to know so much about it. And sometimes she would say, “Yes, I lived there for years.” And sometimes she would say, “No, I've never been there in my life.” And the fact was she'd had a week's book tour in Moscow with her daughter. And that was the only time she ever went to Russia, but she read. So it was a wonderful example of how she would be so wicked; she would lie.Oliver: Yes.Lee: Because she couldn't be bothered to tell the truth.Oliver: But wasn't she poking fun at their silly questions?Lee: Yes. It's not such a silly question. I would've asked her that question. It is an astonishing evocation of a place.Oliver: No, I would've asked it too, but I do feel like she had this sense of it's silly to be asked questions at all. It's silly to be interviewed.Lee: I interviewed her about three times—and it was fascinating. And she would deflect. She would deflect, deflect. When you asked her about her own work, she would deflect onto someone else's work or she would tell you a story. But she also got quite irritable.So for instance, there's a poltergeist in a novel called The Bookshop. And the poltergeist is a very frightening apparition and very strong chapter in the book. And I said to her in interview, “Look, lots of people think this is just superstition. There aren't poltergeists.” And she looked at me very crossly and said they just haven't been there. They don't know what they're talking about. Absolutely factual and matter of fact about the reality of a poltergeist.Oliver: What makes Virginia Woolf's literary criticism so good?Lee: Oh, I think it's a kind of empathy actually. That she has an extraordinary ability to try and inhabit the person that she's writing about. So she doesn't write from the point of view of, as it were, a dry, historical appreciation.She's got the facts and she's read the books, but she's trying to intimately evoke what it felt like to be that writer. I don't mean by dressing it up with personal anecdotes, but just she has an extraordinary way of describing what that person's writing is like, often in images by using images and metaphors, which makes you feel you are inside the story somehow.And she loves anecdotes. She's very good at telling anecdotes, I think. And also she's not soft, but she's not harshly judgmental. I think she will try and get the juice out of anything she's writing about. Most of these literary criticism pieces were written for money and against the clock and whilst doing other things.So if you read her on Dorothy Wordsworth or Mary Wollstonecraft or Henry James, there's a wonderful sense of, you feel your knowledge has been expanded. Knowledge in the sense of knowing the person; I don't mean in the sense of hard facts.Oliver: Sure. You've finished your Anita Brookner biography and that's coming this year.Lee: September the 10th this year, here and in the States.Oliver: What will you do next?Lee: Yes. That's a very good question, though a little soon, I feel.Oliver: Is there someone whose life you always wanted to write, but didn't?Lee: No. No, there isn't. Not at the moment. Who knows?Oliver: You are open to it. You are open.Lee: Who knows what will come up.Oliver: Yes. Hermione Lee, this was a real pleasure. Thank you very much.Lee: Thank you very much. It was a treat. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

For the podcast's annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including:Which sphere of influence is Western Europe in today?What should we make of President Trump's lawsuit against BBC?After nearly a year of the Trump Administration, how do you view the record of Attorney General Merrick Garland?What does the military campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers tell us about checks and balances within the U.S. system around the use of military force (or lack thereof)?With the escalating rhetoric in the Caribbean, what lessons should we be keeping in mind from the lead-up to the Iraq War?What can be done to reverse Americans' tolerance for the slide towards illiberal democracy?And importantly, is Ben's martial arts challenge to Putin still on?For object lessons, our listeners really came through! Blake recommends a couple of coffee table books right up Tyler's alley: “Building Stories” by Alastair Philip Wiper and "Closure: The Final Days of the Waterford Bicycle Factory" by Tucker and Anna Schwinn. Keenan points out a good companion listen to this podcast in NPR's Sources and Methods. Liz really embraces the variety show that is “object lessons,” introducing us to Danylo Yavhusishyn—a.k.a., Aonishiki—a Ukrainian-born sumo wrestler, hyping Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as her Game of the Year, waxing poetic about The Sun Eater book series, and log-rolling her work on the Final Fantasy TCG. Speaking of variety shows, Lisa spotlights the Live from New York: The Lorne Michaels Collection exhibition at UT Austin's Harry Ransom Center. And Riley asks the crew about their top fiction recommendations for 2026. Tune in to find out what they are!And thank goodness, that's it for 2025! But don't worry, Rational Security and the whole Lawfare team will be back with you in the new year to help make sense of what's to come in national security in 2026!To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the podcast's annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including:Which sphere of influence is Western Europe in today?What should we make of President Trump's lawsuit against BBC?After nearly a year of the Trump Administration, how do you view the record of Attorney General Merrick Garland?What does the military campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers tell us about checks and balances within the U.S. system around the use of military force (or lack thereof)?With the escalating rhetoric in the Caribbean, what lessons should we be keeping in mind from the lead-up to the Iraq War?What can be done to reverse Americans' tolerance for the slide towards illiberal democracy?And importantly, is Ben's martial arts challenge to Putin still on?For object lessons, our listeners really came through! Blake recommends a couple of coffee table books right up Tyler's alley: “Building Stories” by Alastair Philip Wiper and "Closure: The Final Days of the Waterford Bicycle Factory" by Tucker and Anna Schwinn. Keenan points out a good companion listen to this podcast in NPR's Sources and Methods. Liz really embraces the variety show that is “object lessons,” introducing us to Danylo Yavhusishyn—a.k.a., Aonishiki—a Ukrainian-born sumo wrestler, hyping Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as her Game of the Year, waxing poetic about The Sun Eater book series, and log-rolling her work on the Final Fantasy TCG. Speaking of variety shows, Lisa spotlights the Live from New York: The Lorne Michaels Collection exhibition at UT Austin's Harry Ransom Center. And Riley asks the crew about their top fiction recommendations for 2026. Tune in to find out what they are!And thank goodness, that's it for 2025! But don't worry, Rational Security and the whole Lawfare team will be back with you in the new year to help make sense of what's to come in national security in 2026!To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha is joined by photographer, publisher, editor, and educator Nelson Chan. Together, they trace the winding path that led Nelson to his dream job as a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Along the way, Nelson reflects on the “guardian angels” who helped him stay the course, the openness that allowed unexpected opportunities to shape his trajectory, and the community of friends and collaborators who eventually inspired the founding of TIS Books. Sasha and Nelson also talk about the value of building connections, putting yourself out there, and treating your career as a marathon rather than a sprint. https://www.nelsonchanphotography.com/ https://www.tisbooks.pub/ Nelson Chan was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and has spent most of his life between the States and Hong Kong. Having grown up between two continents, this immigrant experience influences the majority of his work. Nelson received his BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Hartford Art School, respectively. He has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; and 798 Space, Beijing, China. His books are collected in the institutional libraries of The MET, The Guggenheim, SEMOMA, The Whitney Museum, The Harry Ransom Center, and MoMA, among others. Along with his own photographic work, book publishing and education are extensions of, what Nelson refers to as, an industrious studio practice. He is co-founder of TIS books, an independent art book publisher and was production manager at the Aperture Foundation from 2016-19. In 2025, Nelson was awarded tenure at California College of the Arts but ultimately left the Bay Area to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design as an associate professor of photography.

We do have our favorite but surely wouldn't mind if Thomas Pynchon won the Nobel Prize too . . . and in Episode 32 we finish off 2025 by considering Shadow Ticket, the noir detective take on the 1930s by a writer who was surely a key influence on the early DeLillo (we read from an unpublished DeLillo letter summarizing that relationship) but who also seems to have been reading works like Running Dog over the years (or so we imagine in unpacking Shadow Ticket scenes invoking Chaplin and a “German Political Celebrity” named Hitler). We try to understand how Pynchon's latest examination of historical and potential fascism works in its 1932 setting, ranging from Milwaukee to Hungary, where reluctant protagonist and “sentimental ape” and “sap” Hicks McTaggart keeps adding on to his P.I. “tickets” in a strange search for a Wisconsin heiress and her Jewish musician lover but also what might ultimately be justice (a far from simple thing). Shadow Ticket is loads of serious fun, where Pynchon manages to examine the direst of turning points amidst scenes of bowling alley and motorcycle lore, dairy strikes, Prohibition's black markets, dance hall and speakeasy glamour, and something called “Radio-Cheez.” Bela Lugosi, vampires, a beautiful pig in a sidecar, and some of the most tasteless lamps in the world also play a role. The real content here for Hicks, though, is the prospect of spiritual and other forms of peace in a world where weapons from clubs to guns and submarines operate according to mysterious laws of “apport” and “asport,” occult material that interweaves with Hicks's strike-breaking past and raises connections to Gravity's Rainbow. Is Hicks's fellow orphan and young protégé Skeet Wheeler the father of Vineland's Zoyd, headed out to California as the novel ends? What's the meaning of Hicks failing to return to his home country, and what does cheese gangster Bruno Airmont's submarine fate have to do with Bleeding Edge? Are Hungary's shifting borders a new kind of “Zone”? What's going on in the novel's many Statue of Liberty references and its anachronistic allusions to a “Face Tube” for flirtation in bars? And how does this always funny writer, now in his late eighties, keep coming up with all these absurd songs (we sing some) and hilarious mock-movies like the one featuring “Squeezita Thickly” swimming in soup pots (Shirley Temple, is that you?)? Teasing out many connections to Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day, and Vineland, this episode makes reference to just about all of Pynchon's other works, including even V. and his earliest short stories. At the same time, you need come to it with nothing but an interest in Pynchon's life and work. We doubt that we get every reference to history or previous Pynchon right or mount interpretations we won't later want to revise, but on this brand-new and captivating late work from a masterful author, we hope in nearly three hours of deep conversation and laughter that we've made a good start on the many critical readings to come. A partial list of references and quotations that we mention or paraphrase in this episode . . . On “prefascist twilight”: “And other grandfolks could be heard arguing the perennial question of whether the United States still lingered in a prefascist twilight, or whether that darkness had fallen long stupefied years ago, and the light they thought they saw was coming only from millions of Tubes all showing the same bright-colored shadows. One by one, as other voices joined in, the names began, some shouted, some accompanied by spit, the old reliable names good for hours of contention, stomach distress, and insomnia – Hitler, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Hoover, Mafia, CIA, Reagan, Kissinger, that collection of names and their tragic interweaving that stood not constellated above in any nightwide remoteness of light, but below, diminished to the last unfaceable American secret, to be pressed, each time deeper, again and again beneath the meanest of random soles, one blackly fermenting leaf on the forest floor that nobody wanted to turn over, because of all that lived, virulent, waiting, just beneath.” (Pynchon, Vineland (1990)) On “second sheep”: “Our common nightmare The Bomb is in there too. It was bad enough in '59 and is much worse now, as the level of danger has continued to grow. There was never anything subliminal about it, then or now. Except for that succession of the criminally insane who have enjoyed power since 1945, including the power to do something about it, most of the rest of us poor sheep have always been stuck with simple, standard fear. I think we all have tried to deal with this slow escalation of our helplessness and terror in the few ways open to us, from not thinking about it to going crazy from it. Somewhere on this spectrum of impotence is writing fiction about it.” (Pynchon, “Introduction,” Slow Learner (1984)) The “Sloth essay paragraph” mentioned midway through: “In this century we have come to think of Sloth as primarily political, a failure of public will allowing the introduction of evil policies and the rise of evil regimes, the worldwide fascist ascendancy of the 1920's and 30's being perhaps Sloth's finest hour, though the Vietnam era and the Reagan-Bush years are not far behind. Fiction and nonfiction alike are full of characters who fail to do what they should because of the effort involved. How can we not recognize our world? Occasions for choosing good present themselves in public and private for us every day, and we pass them by. Acedia is the vernacular of everyday moral life.” (Pynchon, “Nearer, My Couch, To Thee” (1993)) Don DeLillo Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin The Motherland Calls statue, Volgograd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls  Pareidolia defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Johnny Mac delivers the Thanksgiving edition highlighting comedian Jonathan Kite's spot-on Anthony Bourdain impressions on social media. Sebastian Maniscalco reflects on his love for cooking and its similarities to comedy, while Fortune Feimster shares amusing anecdotes from her tour and her culinary preferences. Jim Gaffigan and Kathleen Madigan discuss their families' roles in their comedy, with Gaffigan touching on parenting and social media. Stephen Colbert debates the relevance of late-night TV and its sense of community. Additionally, Lorne Michaels donates his vast archive to the Harry Ransom Center, featuring memorabilia from his storied career. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/daily-comedy-news-with-johnny-mac--4522158/support.Contact John at John@thesharkdeck dot com Thanks to our sponsors!Raycon EarbudsUnderdog Fantasy Promo Code DCNBlue Chew Promo Code DCNTalkspace promo code Space 80For Uninterrupted Listening, use the Apple Podcast App and click the banner that says Uninterrupted Listening.  $4.99/month John's Substack about media is free.

Elaine Hsieh Chou is the author of the debut story collection Where Are You Really From, available from Penguin Press. Official September 2025 pick of the Otherppl Book Club. Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American author and screenwriter from California. Described as “the funniest, most poignant novel of the year” by Vogue, her debut novel Disorientation was a New York Times Editors' Choice Book, New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist and Thurber Prize Finalist. A former Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow at New York University, her Pushcart Award–winning short fiction appears in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Tin House Online, Ploughshares and The Atlantic, while her essays appear in The Cut and Vanity Fair. She is a Fred R. Brown Literary Award recipient, a Sundance Episodic Lab Fellow and a Gotham Series Creator to Watch. Her work has been supported by the Harry Ransom Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts and Hedgebrook's Writers-in-Residence Program. *** ⁠Otherppl with Brad Listi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, etc. Get ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How to Write a Novel,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠Brad's email newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proud affiliate partner of Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who killed JFK? What forces made the mind and actions of Lee Oswald? And what does it mean to be an agent of history or something called fate? DDSWTNP probe these and other big questions in multiple new episodes on Libra released over the coming month. June may be the time of Gemini, another sign of doubles in the Zodiac, but for us it's a month for the balance scale, tipping one way or the other, with some Librans like Lee not balanced at all but (as David Ferrie puts it) “somewhat unsteady and impulsive . . . Poised to make the dangerous leap.” In Episode 25: Libra (1), we discuss where DeLillo began in the 1970s in his build-up to Libra, as far back as Americana and other early novels' mentions of JFK, Oswald, the CIA, and the overwhelming Warren Report. We examine what makes DeLillo's Oswald a great but frustrating character and a portal for new dimensions in the author's examination of language, naming, and self-making. We ask what's behind the clear shifts in style, tone, and humor DeLillo makes for this historical novel, as well as the power of his place/date chapter structure, the influence of existentialist fiction, and some alternate titles he considered. And we begin working our way through all the figures and ideas surrounding Oswald, from Marxist beliefs and CIA practices of “unknowing” to Cold War obsessions with the Bay of Pigs, life in the U.S.S.R., and a losing war in Vietnam that DeLillo and readers know is coming but his characters importantly don't.  Stay tuned in our Libra episodes to come for investigation of the Murray-like wit of David Ferrie, how DeLillo regards the lone gunman theory, the mysterious edits made to his “Author's Note,” the theological musings of Nicholas Branch, and much more. Texts and historical figures mentioned in Episode 25: Ann Arensberg, “Seven Seconds” (1988), in Thomas DePietro, ed., Conversations with Don DeLillo, University of Mississippi Press, 2005, 40-46. Don DeLillo, “American Blood: A Journey Through the Labyrinth of Dallas and JFK.” Rolling Stone, December 8, 1983. Rpt. in Osteen, Mark, ed., Novels of the 1980s: The Names, White Noise, Libra. Library of America, 2022. 1045-1061.  ---. “Preface, 2022.” In Osteen, ed., Novels of the 1980s: The Names, White Noise, Libra. Library of America, 2022. 633-634. Don DeLillo Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. “Don DeLillo: The Word, the Image, and the Gun.” BBC Documentary, September 27, 1991. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DTePKA1wgc DeLillo: “I was hoping it was Scorpio, because I liked that word. But his birth sign turned out to be Libra, the scales. I settled for that.” David Marchese, “We All Live in Don DeLillo's World. He's Confused By It Too” (2020)https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/12/magazine/don-delillo-interview.html Everette Howard Hunt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt Correction: the character Aleksei Kirilenko, Oswald's Soviet handler in the novel (and source for one of many Lee aliases, Alek?), is DeLillo's creation, not historical! Branch later reveals Kirilenko's real name is Sergei Broda (301). No claim about DeLillo's basis for Kirilenko/Broda, but here is information on yet another shadowy figure, defecting KGB agent Yuri Nosenko, who claimed to have been in charge of Oswald's case file in the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko

Judith Fox is an award-winning fine art photographer, poet, public speaker, and business leader. The temporary service she founded in Richmond, Virginia in 1978 was purchased by a NYSE firm in 1996. During her business career, Fox served on many for-profit and non-profit boards, was a public speaker and consultant. After selling her company, Judith devoted herself full-time to photography and writing. Fox's award-winning photographs are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), the Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA), the Southeast Museum of Photography (SMP), the Harry Ransom Center, the Haggerty Museum of Art, and the Harn Museum; her work is in private and corporate collections throughout the world. Fox's photographs have been exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States and Europe. After her book I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer's was released, Fox became a global advocate for Alzheimer's awareness and education. She's been a speaker and consultant on Alzheimer's and family caregiving for corporations, non-profit associations and universities. I Still Do was named “one of the best photography books of 2009” by Photo-Eye Magazine. Judith Fox lives and works in Southern California and is currently working on a collection of poetry. Find more information at: https://www.judithfox.com/ As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem about the happiest place on earth. Next Week's Prompt: Write a poem about a time that you carried more than you ever thought possible, and include a reference to temperature. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

In today's comedy news, Johnny Mac covers Bill Burr discussing his new Hulu special 'Drop Dead Years,' and his approach to stand-up in different cities. The show also includes Nikki Glaser's experience with plastic surgery, touching on an article about her cosmetic changes over the years. Pete Davidson gives an update on the Staten Island Ferry project and shares a cherished story about his father's firehouse boots. Additionally, Johnny reflects on Pete's comments about his earnings on SNL and the impact of his friendship with John Mulaney. Roy Wood Jr. talks about his use of the n-word and curse words in comedy, while Lorne Michaels donates a significant collection of his work to the Harry Ransom Center. 00:35 Bill Burr's New Special Insights04:44 Nikki Glaser and Plastic Surgery06:45 Pete Davidson's Personal Treasures11:35 Roy Wood Jr. on Comedy and Cursing13:05 Lorne Michaels' SNL Archive DonationUnlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!  You also get 20+ other shows on the network ad-free!    This podcast supports Podcasting 2.0 if you'd like to support the show via value for value and stream some sats! https://linktr.ee/dailycomedynews Contact John at john@thesharkdeck dot com  John's free substack about the media:  Media Thoughts  is mcdpod.substack.com DCN on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@dailycomedynews You can also support the show at www.buymeacoffee.com/dailycomedynewsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/daily-comedy-news--4522158/support.

Clever Confidential is Clever's offshoot series, where we dig into the darker side of design - the shadowy, sometimes sordid tales hiding under a glossy topcoat of respectable legacy.On the afternoon of August 14th, 1915, fire ripped through Taliesin, the Spring Green, Wisconsin home of the world's most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. When the smoke cleared seven people would be dead, murdered with an axe at the hands of Julian Carlton, a servant of Wright's. But why? The motive remains a mystery to this day. But there are so many other questions. Why does seemingly everyone know Frank Lloyd Wright but strangely, very few seem to know this much darker side of his story? In this episode we'll investigate all of that as well as the great state of Wisconsin, Wright's never-ending battle with societal norms, and the interplay between critics and creative professionals.Images, links and more about Frank Lloyd Wright and the Murders at Taliesin!Special thanks to our sponsor, Porkbun! Go to https://porkbun.com/CleverBun to get a .PRO domain for only $1 for the first year with promo code DIGITALPRO at Porkbun!Thank you to Brad Lynch of Brininstool & Lynch Architects for lending his expertise, insight and colorful commentary and to "The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas for audio clips from the historic Frank Lloyd Wright interview.Please help us out by completing a short LISTENER SURVEYSubscribe to our free substack for updates, bonus content, and new episode alerts.For info, resources, and special offers from our guests and sponsors: Clever ResourcesPlease say Hi on social! X, Instagram, Linkedin and Facebook - @CleverPodcast, @amydeversIf you enjoy Clever we could use your support! Please consider leaving a review, making a donation, becoming a sponsor, or introducing us to your friends! We love and appreciate you!Clever Confidential is hosted by Amy Devers and Andrew Wagner, with editing and sound design by Camille Stennis, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan. Our theme music is “Astronomy” by Thin White Rope. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode Twelve, DDSWTNP interview Curt Gardner, creator and keeper of “Don DeLillo's America,” a prolific and comprehensive website that for nearly 30 years has been the go-to spot for information about DeLillo, from reviews, appearances, and novel publication histories to news of film adaptations and play performances. We cover Curt's stories of first discovering DeLillo in 1981, what he learned about the writing of Amazons at the Harry Ransom Center, and the letters he's exchanged with the man himself as he's built his site. We had a really fun time trading stories, insights, and interpretive connections with Curt. After listening to this in-depth interview, check out the riches of “Don DeLillo's America” at http://www.perival.com/delillo/delillo.html Support our work: https://buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast Mentioned and discussed in this episode: Ant Farm, “The Eternal Frame” (1975):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg1FCjvZ_jA DeLillo, Don. “Notes Toward a Definitive Meditation (By Someone Else) on the Novel ‘Americana.'” Epoch 21.3 (Spring 1972): 327-29. ---. “The Sightings.” Weekend Magazine (Toronto) 4 August 1979: 26-30.  ---. “Total Loss Weekend.” Sports Illustrated Nov. 27, 1972.https://web.archive.org/web/20090210115257/http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1086811/index.htm “Is cyberspace a thing within the world or is it the other way around? Which contains the other, and how can you tell for sure?” (Underworld) Game 6: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425055/ LeClair, Thomas. “Missing Writers.” Horizon Oct. 1981: 48-52. 

Episodes Ten and Eleven: Running Dog (1 and 2) unpack DeLillo's frightening post-Vietnam War vision of a nation marked by pornographic personhood, corrupt politics, and an openness to fascistic fantasy, all centered on the quest for a rumored film of an orgy in Hitler's crumbling Berlin bunker. Pornographers and their well-armed henchmen, obsessive collectors of erotic art, and military men driven by profit saturate this narrative of New York and the Texas desert, while attempts to expose and subvert their cons by a journalist and a strangely spiritual intelligence agent reveal that all who resist these forces may end up mere lackeys and running dogs. DDSWTNP also draw clear links to U.S. politics in 2024, with orange make-up on a senator and a satire-proof dictator who dons the look of a clownish entertainer turning Running Dog, read now, into another of DeLillo's uncanny prophecies of an image-mad American culture's very grim potentials. #imperialistlackeys #thegreatdictator #hitlerhumanized #acourseindying In this episode we also announce your chance to support our podcasting work and contribute to our trip this year to DeLillo's huge archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas! If you enjoy this podcast we hope you'll support us at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast Texts and sites referred to in this episode: Mark Binelli, “Intensity of a Plot” (interview with Don DeLillo), Guernica, July 17, 2007. https://www.guernicamag.com/intensity_of_a_plot/ Don DeLillo, “Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson, and the Millennium.” Dimensions 4:3 (1989: 29-34. Rpt. In Mark Osteen, ed., White Noise: Text and Criticism (Penguin Books, 1998), 344-352. “Don DeLillo's America – A Don DeLillo Site”: http://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html Vince Passaro, “Dangerous Don DeLillo.” New York Times Magazine, May 19, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html

Episodes Ten and Eleven: Running Dog (1 and 2) unpack DeLillo's frightening post-Vietnam War vision of a nation marked by pornographic personhood, corrupt politics, and an openness to fascistic fantasy, all centered on the quest for a rumored film of an orgy in Hitler's crumbling Berlin bunker. Pornographers and their well-armed henchmen, obsessive collectors of erotic art, and military men driven by profit saturate this narrative of New York and the Texas desert, while attempts to expose and subvert their cons by a journalist and a strangely spiritual intelligence agent reveal that all who resist these forces may end up mere lackeys and running dogs. DDSWTNP also draw clear links to U.S. politics in 2024, with orange make-up on a senator and a satire-proof dictator who dons the look of a clownish entertainer turning Running Dog, read now, into another of DeLillo's uncanny prophecies of an image-mad American culture's very grim potentials. #imperialistlackeys #thegreatdictator #hitlerhumanized #acourseindying In this episode we also announce your chance to support our podcasting work and contribute to our trip this year to DeLillo's huge archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas! If you enjoy this podcast we hope you'll support us at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/delillopodcast Texts and sites referred to in this episode: Mark Binelli, “Intensity of a Plot” (interview with Don DeLillo), Guernica, July 17, 2007. https://www.guernicamag.com/intensity_of_a_plot/ Don DeLillo, “Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson, and the Millennium.” Dimensions 4:3 (1989: 29-34. Rpt. In Mark Osteen, ed., White Noise: Text and Criticism (Penguin Books, 1998), 344-352. “Don DeLillo's America – A Don DeLillo Site”: http://perival.com/delillo/delillo.html Vince Passaro, “Dangerous Don DeLillo.” New York Times Magazine, May 19, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/magazine/dangerous-don-delillo.html

Welcome to our last episode of the year! We reflect on our 2023 reading intentions, announce our 2024 readalong theme, and have a delightful conversation with Australian author Pip Williams to cap off our year of reading Books About Books. Some of the books we just read & discuss: – THE HELSINKI AFFAIR by Anna Pitoniak – THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND by Donal Ryan – UNNATURAL DEATH by Patricia Cornwell – THE MAID by Nita Prose – THE BOOKBINDER by Pip Williams In Biblio Adventures, we had a wonderful joint jaunt to Glastonbury, CT where we shopped at River Bend Bookshop's new location and then walked wide-eyed through the gorgeously renovated Welles-Turner Memorial Library. Emily visited her daughter in Michigan and returned to Bay Books in Suttons Bay where she purchased THE RECIPE BOX by Viola Shipman. Chris attended two virtual events: Robert Darnton's talk at the Boston Athenaeum about his new book, THE REVOLUTIONARY TEMPER: PARIS, 1748-1790, and Alan B. Farmer's lecture on “Lost Books: The Dark Matter of the Early Modern English Book Trade” at the Harry Ransom Center. Thank you all for a fantastic year of books, authors, libraries, bookstores, and, in a few cases, mushrooms and mosquitos. Happy Reading!

Entrevistamos a Alvaro Santana Acuña, Profesor Titular de sociología en Whitman College e instructor en el Harvard Summer School. Es autor de Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic, publicado por la Universidad de Columbia (Nueva York). Ascent to Glory es un detallado estudio sobre la creación y consagración global de la obra cumbre de García Márquez, Cien años de soledad. Santana Acuña es también el comisario de la exposición internacional, “Gabriel García Márquez: The Making of a Global Writer“, basada en documentos del archivo del escritor y organizada por el Harry Ransom Center (Austin, Texas). Esta exposición reabrirá al público en septiembre de 2021 y viajará al Museo de Arte Moderno de Ciudad de México en junio de 2022. Santana Acuña es doctor y magíster en sociología por la Universidad de Harvard, magíster en ciencias sociales por la Universidad de Chicago y licenciado en historia por la Universidad de La Laguna. Ha tenido becas de investigación en la Universidad de Harvard, la Universidad de Stanford, la Comisión Fulbright, el Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de París, el Harry Ransom Center y la Fundación Andrew W. Mellon. Ha sido investigador visitante en la Universidad de Stanford, la Escuela de Altos Estudios en Ciencias sociales de París, la Universidad de Edimburgo, la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid y el Instituto de Estudio Políticos-Sciences Po Paris. La investigación de Santana Acuña ha recibido varios premios de la American Sociological Association y ha sido mencionada en medios como la BBC (Reino Unido), The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, National Public Radio (Estados Unidos), El País, El Mundo, Radio Nacional (España), La Vie des idées (Francia), El Universal (México) o El Espectador (Colombia). Santana Acuña colabora, entre otros medios, con The New York Times, The New York Times en español y El País.

Programa de actualidad con información, formación y entretenimiento conectando directamente con los oyentes, presentado y dirigido por Miguel Ángel González Suárez. www.ladiez.es - Informativo de primera hora de la mañana, en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital Radio. Hoy se cumplen un año y 111 días del cruel ataque e invasión de Rusia a Ucrania. Hoy es miércoles 14 de junio de 2023. Buenos días Ucrania. Día Mundial del Donante de Sangre. El Día Mundial del Donante de Sangre se celebra el 14 de junio de cada año, con la finalidad de sensibilizar y concienciar a la población mundial acerca de la importancia de donar sangre, para contribuir con la salud de pacientes que requieren transfusiones. Asimismo, se pretende promover el establecimiento de sistemas e infraestructuras, destinadas a incrementar las donaciones de sangre y productos sanguíneos seguros para transfusiones, con el apoyo de los gobiernos y las autoridades sanitarias. La fecha de esta efeméride conmemora el nacimiento de Karl Landsteiner, patólogo y biólogo austríaco que descubrió y tipificó los grupos sanguíneos, motivo por el cual se le concedió el Premio Nobel de Medicina en el año 1930. 1699.- Presentación en la Real Sociedad de Londres de la primera máquina de vapor, por el mecánico inglés Thomas Savery. 1808.- Guerra de la Independencia: la escuadra francesa del almirante Rossilly, surta en Cádiz, se rinde a las fuerzas navales de Ruiz de Apodaca. 1905.- La tripulación del acorazado ruso Potemkin se rebela y fusila al comandante y a varios oficiales. 1914.- I Guerra Mundial: una escuadrilla de aviones alemanes bombardea Londres y causa más de 500 víctimas. 1928: nace Ernesto Che Guevara, guerrillero, médico y político cubano de origen argentino. 1940: el Ejército franquista (de España) ocupa la ciudad internacional de Tánger con el fin de garantizar su neutralidad. 1982.- Final de la Guerra de las Malvinas: el Ejército argentino se rinde ante las fuerzas británicas. 1984.- Los ministros de Interior de España y Francia, José Barrionuevo y Gastón Deferre, firman los "Acuerdos de Castellana", punto de partida de la colaboración antiterrorista hispanofrancesa. 1992.- El ciclista navarro Miguel Indurain gana la 75 edición del Giro de Italia, primer español que lo consigue. Patrocinio del santo de cada día por gentileza de la Casa de las Imágenes, en la calle Obispo Perez Cáceres, 17 en Candelaria. santos Anastasio, Valerio, Metodio, Eliseo y Félix. Putin confiesa que el armamento de guerra escasea en Rusia. La contraofensiva ucraniana choca con la resistencia rusa en el este. PP y Vox llegan a un acuerdo de gobierno de coalición en la Comunidad Valenciana. Los funcionarios de justicia deciden mantener la huelga indefinida pese al estancamiento de las negociaciones. Reclaman una subida salarial de hasta 430 euros mensuales, como las acordadas para LAJ, jueces y fiscales. Aumentan un 5 % las llamadas por violencia de género en Canarias. De las 1.270 recibidas en el mes de mayo, 807 fueron de emergencia por peligro inminente de la víctima. La inflación baja en mayo en Canarias, pero los precios de los alimentos continúan subiendo. En el archipiélago han subido un 13,4 % los alimentos y bebidas no alcohólicas, mientras que el precio de la vivienda ha bajado un 7,9 %. Salvamento Marítimo podrá detectar náufragos durante la noche con su nuevo sistema inteligente de rescate. El jefe del servicio aéreo de la entidad pública empresarial, Néstor Perales, ha destacado que iSar es un proyecto “muy valiente” de innovación cofinanciado en un 85% con fondos europeos Feder de Desarrollo Regional que ha supuesto una inversión de 21 millones de euros. Las patronales turísticas canarias piden una mejora en la aplicación de los fondos europeos para la renovación hotelera. Estas sugerencias pretenden generar mayor competitividad en la industria alojativa a través de una serie de cambios en los criterios destinados a la construcción y renovación de los establecimientos en las Islas. Principio de acuerdo entre PSOE, NC y USP para un nuevo tripartito Una reunión acaba de cerrar un preacuerdo que ahora deberá ser sometido a los órganos internos de los tres partidos. Un 14 de junio de 1973 nació Coti, cantante y compositor argentino. Nada Fue Un Error. - Sección de actualidad informativa con Humor inteligente en el programa El Remate de La Diez Capital radio con el periodista socarrón y palmero, José Juan Pérez Capote, El Nº 1. - Sección en el programa EL Remate de La Diez Capital radio con el periodista y coronel, Francisco Pallero. - Entrevistamos a Alvaro Santana Acuña, Profesor Titular de sociología en Whitman College e instructor en el Harvard Summer School. Es autor de Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic, publicado por la Universidad de Columbia (Nueva York). Ascent to Glory es un detallado estudio sobre la creación y consagración global de la obra cumbre de García Márquez, Cien años de soledad. Santana Acuña es también el comisario de la exposición internacional, “Gabriel García Márquez: The Making of a Global Writer“, basada en documentos del archivo del escritor y organizada por el Harry Ransom Center (Austin, Texas). Esta exposición reabrirá al público en septiembre de 2021 y viajará al Museo de Arte Moderno de Ciudad de México en junio de 2022. Santana Acuña es doctor y magíster en sociología por la Universidad de Harvard, magíster en ciencias sociales por la Universidad de Chicago y licenciado en historia por la Universidad de La Laguna. Ha tenido becas de investigación en la Universidad de Harvard, la Universidad de Stanford, la Comisión Fulbright, el Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de París, el Harry Ransom Center y la Fundación Andrew W. Mellon. Ha sido investigador visitante en la Universidad de Stanford, la Escuela de Altos Estudios en Ciencias sociales de París, la Universidad de Edimburgo, la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid y el Instituto de Estudio Políticos-Sciences Po Paris. La investigación de Santana Acuña ha recibido varios premios de la American Sociological Association y ha sido mencionada en medios como la BBC (Reino Unido), The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, National Public Radio (Estados Unidos), El País, El Mundo, Radio Nacional (España), La Vie des idées (Francia), El Universal (México) o El Espectador (Colombia). Santana Acuña colabora, entre otros medios, con The New York Times, The New York Times en español y El País.

1936 – Las cartas entre 1936 y 1960 a Meta Carpenter están custodiadas por el Harry Ransom Center y van desde la fogosidad del escritor mayor que ella y casado, hasta el agotamiento y el silencio de cuando la llama se va aplastando porque ya es imposible combinar esas vidas que intentó separar, su casa y su amor. Un espacio de Bárbara Espejo.

This is Eric Stark with The Smart RV'er Podcast Delivering the smarts you need to enjoy the freedom of the RV Lifestyle without the fear of breaking down! Living the RV Life: Eric and Alexis talk about the FMCA Rally. From its beginning, FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) has been centered on bringing people together. To make friends. Learn about their RVs. Travel to parts unknown. Have fun. While much has changed since those early days, FMCA continues to unite RV enthusiasts through its conventions, area rallies, and chapter gatherings. FMCA's biannual international conventions unite thousands of people for four days of everything RVing – education, shopping, entertainment, and camaraderie. There are also regional events. Each of FMCAs' 10 areas generally holds an area rally annually, where members gather to socialize, view exhibits, attend seminars, and enjoy quality entertainment. Area rallies are organized by FMCA and area associations. Be sure to check out more at TheSmartRverPodcast!  Staying On The Road: Eric discusses how most trailers come with the most basic suspension, leaf springs, and that is it. It is the same old suspension that has been used for hundreds of years. Then he talks about each of the below brands! Dexter Red EZ Flex Equalizers Equaflex - Lippert Center Point Air Ride System Moreryde SRE & CREA Lippert Shocks Roadmaster Comfort Ride System Add-On Shocks Slipper Springs 5K, 7k, 8k Tandem axles, Triple axel system available The Next Stop: There are many reasons why The Smart RVer should think about visiting Austin, Texas is worth it. Here are a few that Eric and Alexis discuss: Music Scene: Austin is known as the "Live Music Capital of the World" and for good reason. The city has a thriving music scene with over 250 live music venues and hosts two major music festivals each year, South by Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits (ACL). Food: Austin has a diverse and delicious food scene, with a range of options from traditional Texas BBQ to innovative fusion cuisine. You can find food trucks, food halls, and restaurants that serve everything from tacos to sushi. Outdoor Activities: Austin is surrounded by beautiful natural areas, including several parks, lakes, and hiking trails. You can take a dip in Barton Springs Pool, hike up Mount Bonnell for a stunning view of the city, or go kayaking on Lady Bird Lake. Art and Culture: Austin is home to numerous museums, galleries, and cultural institutions, including the Blanton Museum of Art and the Harry Ransom Center. The city also hosts a variety of cultural events and festivals throughout the year, such as the Texas Book Festival and the Fusebox Festival. Nightlife: Austin's nightlife is just as lively as its music scene,...

Who should be prevented from having children? And who gets to decide? Across 20th century America, there was a battle to control birth - a battle which rages on to this day. In 1907, the state of Indiana passed the first sterilisation law in the world. Government-run institutions were granted the power to sterilise those deemed degenerate - often against their will. In the same period, women are becoming more educated, empowered and sexually liberated. In the Roaring Twenties, the flappers start dancing the Charleston and women win the right to vote. But contraception is still illegal and utterly taboo. The pioneering campaigner Margaret Sanger, begins her decades long activism to secure women access to birth control - the only way, she argues, women can be truly free. In the final part of the episode, sterilisation survivor and campaigner Elaine Riddick shares her painful but remarkable story. Contributors: Professor Alexandra Minna Stern from the UCLA Institue of Society and Genetics, Professor Wendy Kline from Purdue Univerity, Elaine and Tony Riddick from the Rebecca Project for Justice Featuring the voice of Joanna Monro Music and Sound Design by Jon Nicholls Presented by Adam Rutherford Produced by IIan Goodman Clips: Coverage of Dobbs v Jackson Supreme Court decision from June 24, 2022 including BBC News / CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford / BBC News Sarah Smith / audio of protesters from Channel 4 News. / Mike Wallace interviews Margaret Sanger, September 1957, from the archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

For birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett, the personal was political. After a difficult labor and delivery with her third child, a physician told Mary Ware Dennett she should not have any more children, but he told her nothing about how to prevent pregnancy. Dennett's husband began an affair with a client of his architectural firm, destroying their marriage, and Dennett devoted her work to ensuring that other couples could receive information about birth control. A 1930 federal court case against her, United States v. Dennett, opened the door to widespread distribution of birth control information in the US. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Assistant Professor of History at Kennesaw State University and faculty research fellow at the Georgia State University College of Law's Center for Law, Health & Society. She is writing a book called Battle for Birth Control: Mary Dennett, Margaret Sanger, and the Rivalry That Shaped a Movement, that will be published by Rutgers University Press. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is a photo of Mary Ware Dennett from the New York Journal-American Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University Of Texas. Sources: “The Sex Side of Life: An Explanation for Young People,” by Mary Ware Dennett, 1919. Available via Project Gutenberg. “Papers of Mary Ware Dennett,” Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute “The Sex Education Pamphlet That Sparked a Landmark Censorship Case,” by Sharon Spaulding, Smithsonian Magazine, September 30, 2021. “A Birth-Control Crusader,” by Marjorie Heins, The Atlantic, October 1996. “Mary Coffin Ware Dennett,” by Lakshmeeramya Malladi,Embryo Project Encyclopedia, June 22, 2016. “Unsentimental Education: Mary Ware Dennett's quest to make contraception—and knowledge about sex—available to all,” by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The American Scholar, March 4, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Rubinstein, a novelist, physician, and psychiatrist, has written eight nonfiction books, including The Storytellers. He has also written eight novels and novellas, including the Mad Dog trilogy and The Lovers' Tango. He lives in Wilton, Connecticut. -- Michael Benson is one of today's most popular nonfiction crime writers and a regular commentator on the Investigation Discovery channel. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award, he's written more than 60 nonfiction titles, including acclaimed books on the history of the American Mafia such as Carmine the Snake: Carmine Persico and His Murderous Mafia Family; Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia; and Mafia Hit Man Carmine DiBiase: The Wiseguy Who Really Killed Joey Gallo. Join Robert Manni, author of The Guys' Guy's Guide To Love as we discuss life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Subscribe to Guy's Guy Radio on YouTube, iTunes and wherever you get your podcasts! Buy The Guys' Guy's Guide to Love now!

Mark Rubinstein, a novelist, physician, and psychiatrist, has written eight nonfiction books, including The Storytellers. He has also written eight novels and novellas, including the Mad Dog trilogy and The Lovers' Tango. He lives in Wilton, Connecticut. -- Michael Benson is one of today's most popular nonfiction crime writers and a regular commentator on the Investigation Discovery channel. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award, he's written more than 60 nonfiction titles, including acclaimed books on the history of the American Mafia such as Carmine the Snake: Carmine Persico and His Murderous Mafia Family; Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia; and Mafia Hit Man Carmine DiBiase: The Wiseguy Who Really Killed Joey Gallo. Join Robert Manni, author of The Guys' Guy's Guide To Love as we discuss life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Subscribe to Guy's Guy Radio on YouTube, iTunes and wherever you get your podcasts! Buy The Guys' Guy's Guide to Love now!

We present the story of Durenstein aka The Victorian Blood Book, a strange scrapbook of religious and natural imagery, hand-written poetry, and other ornaments – every page dripping with red India ink “blood”. We also talk about potentially poison books.If you would like to help us continue to make Strange Familiars, get bonus content, t-shirts, stickers, and more rewards, you can become a patron: http://www.patreon.com/StrangeFamiliarsIf you would prefer a one-time payment to help us out, here is a PayPal.me link - you can change the number 25 in the URL to any amount: https://www.paypal.me/timothyrenner/25Our Strange Familiars / Lost Grave etsy shop has art, books, patches, t-shirts, and more ... including original art done for Strange Familiars: https://www.etsy.com/shop/lostgraveStrange Familiars t-shirts and other designs are available here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/strange-familiars?ref_id=14000Episode 340 notes and links:Durenstein at the Harry Ransom Center: https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll16Riverbend Comics: https://www.riverbendcomics.comRiverbend Comics Instagram: @riverbendcomicsKarmic Garden: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KarmicGardenStrange Familiars Curiosity of the Week #55: First Communion PhotoYou can purchase this photo at our etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1282926898/first-communion-photograph-strangeTimothy's books: https://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Renner/e/B072X44SD5Strange Familiars ‘Awoken Tree' t-shirts are available in our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/739690857/strange-familiars-podcast-awoken-treeAlison: https://www.etsy.com/shop/odpeacockChad's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNB7MSJ2F1SRBPcQsEFLnvg (make sure to subscribe to Chad's channel, Ruck Rabbit Outdoors.)Chad's etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RuckRabbitOutdoorsTo help with the Capuchin Day Center's work with the homeless you can donate here: https://www.capuchindaycentre.ieand here: https://www.cskdetroit.orgContact us via email at: strangefamiliarspodcast@gmail.comhttp://www.facebook.com/strangefamiliarsJoin the Strange Familiars Gathering group on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/strangefamiliars/instagram: @strangefamiliarshttp://www.strangefamiliars.comIntro and background music by Stone Breath. You can find more at http://stonebreath.bandcamp.comThe closing song is Thunder Runs Through Me by Stone Breath – from the album Who is Listening?: https://stonebreath.bandcamp.com/album/who-is-listening Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/strange-familiars/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Wildfires near Austin continue burning: the Big Sky fire near Fredericksburg has burned nearly 1,500 acres and is 60% contained, the Smoke Rider fire near Dripping Springs burns on as well, now having consumed 1,200 acres and several homes with 70% containment, and a third wildfire has forced evacuations near Wimberley. Austin Fire is pleading with local smokers to keep their lit butts inside their cars. Following the lead of several other Texas cities including Austin, San Marcos city officials announce that their police department will not investigate violations of new abortion bans in Texas. The Alex Jones jury has delivered a verdict, awarding the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victim Jesse Lewis's parents $4.1 million - they had sought $150 million. Two more trials to go for Jones. As of Thursday, Austin has set its third-longest streak for consecutive triple-digit days at 20. Forecast models are predicting a chance of rain this weekend, and Colorado State is predicting potential hurricane relief for Central Texas. We'll believe it when we see it. City officials are considering September as a good starting point for the first pilot run of Austin's guaranteed income program, the first to be tried in Texas. The city is also calling for input on how it should manage Austin's homelessness situation. Local animal shelters, facing overcrowding, are struggling to adhere to Austin's standards as a no-kill city. Austin has been ranked #1 on a new list of cities measured by lowest carbon footprint. Meanwhile Brewing will host a book fair titled "Lagers and Literature" on August 28 to benefit the Inside Books Project, featuring pop-ups by the Austin Public Library, the Harry Ransom Center, Typewriter Rodeo and more. Cameron "Dicker The Kicker" has left the building - leaving a gaping hole in Texas Football's special teams plans. Live music for the weekend: the Hot Summer Nights free local music series continues through Saturday at venues all over the Red River Cultural District and beyond. Friday catch a long-awaited rescheduled show with David Gray at ACL Live, COIN at Stubb's, and Black Pistol Fire at Emo's. Saturday sees Leon Bridges at the Moody Center and Franz Ferdinand at Stubb's. Sunday, Christian Lee Hutson plays the Parish.

In the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade, several companies with presences in Austin have announced that they'll cover travel costs for employees seeking abortion care. Travis County DA Jose Garza has announced that his office will not prosecute abortion-related cases, and Austin City Council Member Chito Vela is spearheading a resolution discouraging Austin police from investigating allegations concerning abortion. The decision has also prompted an increase of interest in vasectomies and tubal ligation procedures. A city-commissioned consumer advocate team is warning that proposed utility price hikes from Austin Energy will present significant challenges to lower-income Austinites. The downtown building housing Vince Young Steakhouse, dating back to 1912, is facing demolition. The Harry Ransom Center at UT is creating a new endowment named for actor Robert De Niro, who is set to host a 65th anniversary gala for the Ransom Center in September. Six Austin companies have made a new ranking of the "Best Companies To Work For". Hoffbrau Steaks, one of Austin's oldest restaurants, has closed down again - this time because it's just too hot. The last two Blues On The Green shows for the year will feature Shinyribs on July 19 and Black Joe Lewis on July 20. Good and bad news with the weather: we've officially set a new record for 100-degree days in June - but wasn't that rain nice yesterday? There's a chance we'll see more this week, and slightly cooler temps - we may not hit 100 again until after the July 4 holiday.

For the first time since new three-level, CDC-managed measurement metrics were adopted for Travis County, our COVID risk assessment has been raised from Low to Medium level. Austin U.S. Representative Chip Roy presented what the Statesman calls a "dystopian" critique of attempts to apply restrictions to gun access during another hearing Thursday that featured survivors of the Uvalde shooting - one Democratic lawmaker pointed out that Roy's pretext for protecting gun rights involves owners turning them on American troops. Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school police department head who has been at the center of discussions on the delay in police action against the mass shooter, has given his first full-ranging interview - the delay, he says, was in finding a key that would unlock the classroom's reinforced door. Over 2,000 Austin ISD staffers are leaving the district as the school year ends. Harmful algae has been detected in Lady Bird Lake, and the city's Watershed Protection department is expanding its Phoslock treatment plan in an attempt to curb its growth. Austin has been named the U.S. city with the fastest-rising residential rental rates - in fact, housing costs in Austin have risen so much that our city no longer appears to be a savings opportunity for people living in high-cost areas. A new Virgin Atlantic direct flight from London to Austin experienced baggage handling problems upon arrival at ABIA for the first time. While he was in town, passenger and Virgin founder Richard Branson took a tour of Austin's Capital Factory. This year's ROT Rally is based in Bastrop for the first time, but Austin drivers should expect an uptick in motorcycle traffic over the weekend. Laurie Anderson, the widow of rock icon Lou Reed, says plans to base an exhibit of Reed's work at UT's Harry Ransom Center were scrapped due to Texas laws that went into effect in 2015, allowing the carrying of guns on college campuses. Texas Softball loses a second game, and thus the WCWS, to Oklahoma. Texas Baseball begins a super-regional best-of-three series against East Carolina at Greenville this morning at 11. And, brace yourself for a wiltingly-hot weekend. Texas A&M University climate expert and State Climatologist Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon says he expects this summer to be the second-hottest summer on record for the state.

Stephen Enniss is director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Previous posts include Head Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Director of Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library where he made a series of impressive acquisitions including the archives of Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie and Ted Hughes. Since taking over at the Ransom Center in 2013, Stephen has overseen the acquisition of the archives of Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Michael Ondaatje, among others.  We met via Zoom to discuss his role as director of a special collections library; where Martin Amis is, and Christopher Hitchens, Clive James and other members of their group. About fighting oblivion; about the value and challenges of email archives and negotiating or not negotiating with Andrew Wylie; about Texan "nationalism," and the goals of attracting books and people, and developing a "civilization;" about diversity, and hiring practices and collection development policies; about cataloguing, bureaucracies, acquisitions, books bridging political divides, the Gotham Book Mart, sweet little exhibition catalogues, and much more.   

Tom Kiradhy is a Tony and Olivier Award-winning producer whose projects have spanned Broadway, off-Broadway, the West End, and national and international tours. He most recently produced the Broadway production of the epic two-part play THE INHERITANCE (4 Tony Awards including Best Play), the smash-hit HADESTOWN (8 Tony Awards including Best Musical), the off-Broadway revival of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS starring Tammy Blanchard, Jonathan Groff, and Christian Borle (Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Awards, Best Revival of a Musical), Terrence McNally's FRANKIE & JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE starring Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon (2 Tony nominations including Best Revival of a Play), and the ANASTASIA national and international tours. Select Broadway credits: ANASTASIA, the box office record breaking IT'S ONLY A PLAY starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, THE VISIT starring Chita Rivera (5 Tony nominations). Select West End credits: THE INHERITANCE (4 Olivier Awards including Best New Play), THE JUNGLE, Edward Albee's THE GOAT, OR WHO IS SYLVIA? Select off-Broadway credits: THE WHITE CHIP (N.Y. Times Critic's Pick), THE JUNGLE (N.Y. Times Critic's Pick), WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT (N.Y. Times Critic's Pick). Additional Tony nominations: MOTHERS AND SONS, AFTER MIDNIGHT, RAGTIME, MASTER CLASS. Kirdahy serves on the Broadway League Board of Governors, the Board of Trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Advisory Council for the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a founding director of the nonprofit Berwin Lee London New York Playwrights, Inc., which supports emerging playwrights. He is the 2019 recipient of the Robert Whitehead Award for Outstanding Achievement in Commercial Theater Producing. As an attorney, he spent nearly two decades providing free legal services to people living with HIV/AIDS and served for many years on the Executive Committee of the NYC LGBT Center.

Nancy Baron was born in Chicago and is now based in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, California. In her fine art documentary photography, she uses portraits, landscapes, and architectural photographs to record the world nearby with a hopeful bias. Her background in filmmaking, including the documentary form, has inspired her to honor the still image while giving it a cinematic tone. Baron's two monographs, The Good Life > Palm Springs and Palm Springs > The Good Life Goes On are published by Kehrer Verlag and are held in the collection of the Library of Congress and in various museum libraries, including MOMA, LACMA, the Getty, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.  Nancy's third monograph, Palm Springs Modern Dogs at Home, was published by Schiffer Books in September 2020. Websites Nancy Brown Sponsors Charcoal Book Club Education Resources: Momenta Photographic Workshops Candid Frame Resources Download the free Candid Frame app for your favorite smart device. Click here to download for . Click here to download Support the work we do at The Candid Frame by contributing to our Patreon effort.  You can do this by visiting or visiting the website and clicking on the Patreon button. You can also provide a one-time donation via . You can follow Ibarionex on and .

A sizeable crowd rallied at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday to observe Transgender Visibility Day. Austin Mayor Steve Adler has tested positive for COVID-19 and is isolating - meanwhile an inquiry into Mayor Adler's real estate holdings has been dismissed by the City's Ethics Review Commission. Texas teachers, in the midst of a staffing and retention crisis, report that they have recently been required to take a long and rigorous training regimen under threat of termination, but without compensation. Neighboring New Mexico has become the 18th state to legalize recreational marijuana - the primary obstacle towards such progress in Texas lies in the Texas Legislature. As Circuit of the Americas continues to add to its calendar, meaningful infrastructure improvements to alleviate regular traffic jams in the area are moving very slowly. UT observes the passing of Tom Staley, the director of the Harry Ransom Center largely credited for its impressive development, at 89. Austin FC's match at San Jose results in a 2-2 draw, including its first road goal of the season - the team is also investing over $3 million into affordable housing initiatives in the neighborhood around Q2 Stadium. Texas Baseball wins its first Big 12 series of the season against OU in Arlington, including an amazing comeback from a 7-1 sixth-inning deficit in Sunday's 12-8 win. And Austin weather includes a slight threat of severe weather tonight, and record-breaking heat on Tuesday - 96 is expected, which will top the existing record high of just under 94.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a revered classic today fifty five years after it was first published in 1967. Today I talked to Alvaro Santana Acuña a sociologist and historian who describes the ingredients that went into manufacturing the success of this book. In Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia UP, 2020), Alvaro Santana-Acuña first deconstructs the “fake news” surrounding García Márquez and then describes the cultural brokers, the literary cognoscenti of the Boom, the gatekeepers, the Spanish publishing industry and the Casa de las Americas who made the One Hundred Years of Solitude a bestseller across generations. The multitudinous references in this book are part of the archives that Alvaro Santana-Acuña has curated for an exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Márquez – The Making of a Global Writer” by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin which will run till January 2022. Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

On the afternoon of August 14th, 1915, fire ripped through Taliesin, the Spring Green, Wisconsin home of the world's most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. When the smoke cleared seven people would be dead, murdered with an axe at the hands of Julian Carlton, a servant of Wright's. But why? The motive remains a mystery to this day. But there are so many other questions. Why does seemingly everyone know Frank Lloyd Wright but strangely, very few seem to know this much darker side of his story? In this episode we'll investigate all of that as well as the great state of Wisconsin, Wright's never-ending battle with societal norms, and the interplay between critics and creative professionals. Happy Halloween! Images, links and more about Frank Lloyd Wright and the Murders at Taliesin!If you like Clever Confidential and want to hear more, please support us by telling your friends and letting us know what you think! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - @CleverPodcast, @amydevers, @designmilk. If you enjoy Clever Confidential we could use your support! Please consider leaving a review, making a donation, becoming a sponsor, or introducing us to your friends! Thank you to Brad Lynch of Brininstool & Lynch Architects for lending his expertise, insight and colorful commentary and to "The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas for audio clips from the historic Frank Lloyd Wright interview.Clever Confidential is hosted by Amy Devers and Andrew Wagner, produced by 2VDE Media, with editing and sound design by Camille Stennis, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and theme music from Thin White Rope's “Astronomy.”Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.Clever is a member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/clever. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Stephen Enniss is Director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He has held previous appointments at the Folger Shakespeare Library and at Emory University's Rare Book Library. His research interests are in 20th century poetry, and he has written on Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney, among others. He is the author of After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon (Gill and Macmillan, 2014).  The Harry Ransom Center is one of the great rare book libraries of the world. Not only does it possess many of the greatest books and manuscripts ever written, it also has an outstanding record of promoting and exhibiting them, and making them available to researchers and the public.  I invited Stephen to participate with me, and a group of Canadian book collectors I've recently helped assemble (working title for the club: Bibliophiles North), in a discussion about how collectors can best go about establishing relationships with rare book libraries in hopes of selling or donating their collections 

This conversation is also available on YouTube under the search term, 'Speaking of Shakespeare.'  Aaron Pratt studied the early modern period with a cadre of fine scholars first at Ohio State University and then at Yale University. He is currently the Carl & Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books & Manuscripts, Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Aaron describe the center and its holdings and also discussed his scholarly approaches to evaluating the public reception and impact of early books and manuscripts within the context of the times they appeared. He also speaks on early modern drama, Shakespeare, and 16th and 17th century religious editions. 

This week we travel to Austin, Texas where one of the world's largest collection of Houdini ephemera resides. Dr. Eric Colleary is our guest who is the Cline Curator of Theatre & Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center, an international humanities research library, archive, and museum. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Historiography from the University of Minnesota and an all-around great guy. The title “In Front of the Bookcase” for this week's episode comes from the massive bookcase (and its contents) once owned by Houdini that now is owned by the University.This week's podcast episode on YouTube. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize In this conversation, Dr. Colleary tells us about how this Houdini collection came to Austin, Texas and what is in the massive collection. There are some interesting stories in this week's episode told about Houdini and Eric also debunked a few myths around parts of this collection. Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. You can download or listen to the podcast through Stitcher by Clicking Here or through FeedPress by Clicking Here or through Tunein.com by Clicking Here or through iHeart Radio by Clicking Here..If you have a Spotify account, then you can also hear us through that app, too. You can also listen through your Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices. Remember, you can download it through the iTunes store, too. See the preview page by Clicking Here

Learn how Dr. Eric Colleary and his colleagues at the Harry Ransom Center are documenting how the tumultuous events of 2020 affected theatre.

Since breaking the fateful story of Watergate in 1972, Bob Woodward has been at the top of his field, twice winning the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism and writing 18 best-selling books. Woodward's latest book, “Rage,” his second on Donald Trump, features 18 exclusive interviews with President Trump himself. In this episode, he discusses the explosive new book and what it says about President Trump, the balance between journalism and history, and his nearly 50-year career covering nine presidents. This conversation was recorded on September 24, 2020, as part of a virtual program co-sponsored by the Harry Ransom Center and the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin. Copies of "Rage" are available for sale from The Store at LBJ.

While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie—letters that are tender, intimate, and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters’ language—but does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her.And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of McCullers’s life: she wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at McCullers’s childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives McCullers’s days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and McCullers, she sees how McCullers’s story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results reveal something entirely new not only about this one remarkable, walleyed life, but about the way we tell queer love stories.In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. Shapland is in conversation with Andy Campbell, PhD, an art historian, critic, and curator.

Desde Cultural Press Podcast esta es Conexión Artística Bienvenidos, soy Miguel Ángel Perez y me alegra estar de nuevo con ustedes En este episodio de Conexión Artística les hablo sobre la exposición del archivo personal del escritor Gabriel García Márquez en la Universidad de Texas, Estados Unidos. Con una selección de más de 200 objetos del archivo personal del reconocido escritor y ganador del premio Nobel de Literatura Gabriel Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014), el Harry Ransom Center de la Universidad de Texas en Austin, mostrará la primera gran exposición sobre el autor colombiano. La exposición bilingüe, ha sido titulada "Gabriel García Márquez: la creación de un escritor global", y muestra cómo el escritor colombiano que ganó el premio Nobel de literatura en 1982 se convirtió en un éxito internacional. La exposición recorre su vida y muestra documentos anteriores y posteriores a la publicación de su novela clásica, Cien años de soledad en el año 1967. Este libro, que ha sido traducido a más de 45 idiomas, ha superado ventas mundiales de más de 50 millones de copias. Una obra a la que se suman otras novelas, libros de cuentos, trabajos periodísticos, guiones cinematográficos y un legado profesional y personal que aún perdura. El comisario encargado de la exposición es Álvaro Santana-Acuña, profesor de Whitman College, y él ha dicho en una nota de prensa que "García Márquez es un escritor 'global' porque sus historias continúan entrando en las vidas de millones de lectores en todo el mundo cada año. Una generación tras otra, los lectores encuentran en sus obras personajes, situaciones, eventos, sentimientos, recuerdos que son significativos para ellos. Sus obras han atraído a todo tipo de lectores, incluyendo personalidades como Oprah Winfrey, el expresidente Bill Clinton, Marlon Brando, Shakira, Fidel Castro y Jorge Luis Borges entre otras". >>> Para que te enteres de todo escucha el episodio completo >>>

This week on On Story we pay tribute to legendary comedy writer Buck Henry, who co-created the series Get Smart with Mel Brooks and was twice nominated for an Academy Award®- first in 1968 for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Graduate and again in 1979 for Best Director for the film Heaven Can Wait. In this episode we’re featuring a panel recorded in 2005 featuring comedy luminaries Buck Henry, Judd Apatow and Harold Ramis. And later we’ll hear from Emmy Award winner Larry Wilmore Legendary writer – actor – director Buck Henry passed away at the age of 89. A frequent Austin Film Festival panelist and the recipient of AFF’s 1997 Distinguished Screenwriter Award, Buck was unparalleled in his humor and generosity giving back to the writing community. On Today’s episode we’re featuring a conversation on comedy writing with Henry, Judd Apatow, and Harold Ramis that was recorded at the 2005 Austin Film Festival.    Buck Henry got his start in television in the early 1960’s. Buck Henry co-created the series Get Smart with Mel Brooks and was twice nominated for an Academy Award®- first in 1968 for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Graduate and again in 1979 for Best Director for the film Heaven Can Wait. Producer, director, actor, comedian and screenwriter Judd Apatow is best known for the television shows Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, and Girls. His extensive filmography includes the hit movies, Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Bridesmaids and the 2015 film Trainwreck starring Amy Schumer, Tilda Swinton and Bill Hader.    The late Harold Ramis wrote, directed and starred in some of the most beloved comedies of the past forty years including Caddyshack, Animal House, Ghostbusters, High Fidelity and Groundhog Day. He got his start as a joke editor for Playboy Magazine and went on to become a performer and head writer on the sketch comedy series SCTV. Producer Barry Josephson spoke with these comedy luminaries at the 12th Austin Film Festival Emmy Award winner Larry Wilmore has been a television producer, actor, comedian, and writer for more than 25 years. He started his career as an actor and stand-up comedian before writing and producing on the early nineties classic television shows In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Jamie Foxx Show. He co-created The PJ’s with Eddie Murphy, The Bernie Mac Show with Bernie Mac, and was a consulting producer and guest star on the American version of The Office. This segment was recorded at the 14th annual Austin Film Festival and at a special event at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX in 2013. We begin with comedian and satirist Larry Wilmore discussing his comedic roots.  

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space's natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,' and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record of border building uninvoked. A recent book, written by UT Austin professor Dr. C.J. Alvarez, offers an over one-hundred-year history that extends to before the building of a border wall in 1990. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (UT Press, 2019) recounts the history of how both US and Mexican government agencies surveyed, organized, and operationalized land and water from 1848 until 2009. By centering the relationship between government agencies and border policing, Alvarez clearly shows how construction and manipulation of the border space’s natural features maintained the political and geographical form of the nation-state, how it reproduced the notion of the border space as something needing to be controlled and dominated, and how it transformed the border space into one of economic possibility and growth. The history of construction and hydraulic engineering on the divide is largely about the opposing forces of border building to keep certain people and things out, and border building to let certain things in. Alvarez lays bare this tension between tactical infrastructure and trade infrastructure both as forces that have organized border life. During the 1960s and 70s, “the ports of entry began to embody the ever-deepening contradictions embedded in policies designed to accelerate sanctioned economic exchange on the one hand while seeking to decelerate black market commerce on the other,” Alvarez writes (143). By the turn of the 21st century, Alvarez argues, most of the police construction on the border was designed to manage the negative effects of previous building projects and policies. In regards to the completion of the 2009 border fence, Alvarez writes, “It was overbuilding designed to compensate for an unsustainable immigration system, unsustainable ‘drug wars,’ and an unsustainable politics of scapegoating noncitizens. Far more successful at achieving its stated goals, however, was the infrastructure of cross-border commerce” (222). Dr. Alvarez utilizes extensive government records from the binational agency International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)/ Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA), records from Army Corps of Engineers, the INS, and the prodigious W.D. Smithers photograph collection from the Harry Ransom Center. The number of photographs included in the manuscript shows the vastness of the US-Mexico divide's natural landscape, shows how agencies attempted to make sense of such vastness, and shows what they constructed. Border Land, Border Water is a must-read for historians of the US-Mexico divide, environmental historians, and anyone interested in better understanding from a historical perspective current calls construction on the border. Dr. Alvarez, “Chihuahuan Desert History” School for Advanced Research Colloquium Talk Jonathan Cortez is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Brown University. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz and on their personal website www.historiancortez.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Harry Ransom Center, a world-renowned research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, holds many treasures. Its performing arts collections are particularly fascinating, as Dr. Eric Colleary, the Cline Curator of Theater and Performing Arts at the center, tells us in this episode. Eric shares some of his favorite items in the collections and tells listeners how they can further explore the Harry Ransom Center.

Today, we’re back with more letters! Except instead of last letters, we thought we’d cheer things up with—rejection letters. We’re reporting from the Harry Ransom Center as we dive into a massive collection of business papers—namely, the records of the Alfred A. Knopf, Inc publishing company.We dug through boxes and boxes of Knopf business records to find letters explaining why the firm rejected the work of two famous authors, Langston Hughes and Ray Bradbury.

This week on On Story we’ll hear from filmmaker Lulu Wang on her new project, The Farewell. And later, we’ll hear from writer and producer Felicia D. Henderson on her 25-year television career which includes work on some of the 90’s most memorable series including Moesha, Family Matters, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as well as current hits The Punisher and Empire. Lulu Wang is a classical pianist turned filmmaker. Born in Beijing, raised in Miami and educated in Boston, Lulu is a recipient of the Chaz and Roger Ebert Directing Fellowship, which was awarded at the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Her first feature film, Posthumous, starting Jack Huston and Brit Marling was released that same year. Her latest project, The Farewell is based on Wang’s life and a lie her family told to keep her grandmother from knowing that she was dying. Clips of The Farewell courtesy of A24 Next up, award-winning creator of the Emmy-nominated hit show Soul Food Felicia D. Henderson. Most recently, Henderson was a co-executive producer on the Netflix adaptation of Marvel’s The Punisher and a consulting producer on Fox’s Empire. Henderson also co-created The Quad, which was named one of the “Top 15 Shows to Watch” by The New York Times in 2017. Additionally, Henderson also wrote and produced on the television shows Gossip Girl, Fringe, and Everybody Hates Chris. Felicia received three NAACP Best Drama Awards for Soul Food. She also garnered a Writers Guild of America nomination for Fringe and a Gracie Award for The Quad. Writer Maya Perez spoke with Felicia during a year round event this year held at the Harry Ransom Center. Clips of Soul Food courtesy of Paramount Pictures Corporation Clips of The Punisher courtesy of Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. Clips of The Quad courtesy of Black Entertainment Television (BET)

Ken Lopez is a renowned antiquarian bookseller who deals in rare books, specializing in modern literary first editions. He regularly issues catalogs of Modern Literature and less regularly issues catalogs of Native American Literature, the Literature of the Vietnam War and the 1960s, and Nature Writing. He also has an established record of placing authors' archives in institutional collections. Ken is a former President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He operates out of Hadley, Massachusetts, where I met him to talk about, among other things, collecting books about the Vietnam War, grunts, Tim O'Brien, Raymond Carver, Mario Puzo and sleeping with the fishes, Native American literature, climate fiction, nature writing, John Burroughs, wildlife photography, the social value of book collecting, asking the question of your collection 'is it something people/scholars can learn from?' author archives, the importance of association copies, Ken Kesey, the editor's copy of the proofs of The Lord of the Rings, Michael Ondaatje's archive at the Harry Ransom Center, and learning throughout life.    

When veteran author Siri Hustvedt discovered her old notebook along with early drafts of a never-completed novel, she found herself caught in a dialogue between her past and present selves. The product of this juxtaposition was Memories of the Future, her new novel that brings together themes that have made Hustvedt among the most celebrated novelists working today. Hustvedt took Town Hall’s stage to provide a glimpse into the process of the novel’s creation, and to reflect on the internal decade-spanning conversation that emerged alongside it. She met in conversation with journalist Lauren Du Graf to enlighten us on the novel’s themes: the fallibility of memory; gender mutability; the violence of patriarchy; the vagaries of perception; the ambiguous borders between sensation and thought. Join Hustvedt and Du Graf for an exploration of sanity, madness, and our dependence on primal drives such as sex, love, hunger, and rage. Siri Hustvedt is the internationally acclaimed author of a book of poems, six novels, four collections of essays, and a work of nonfiction. In 2012 she was awarded the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities. Her novel The Blazing World was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Lost Angeles Book Prize for Fiction. She has published numerous papers in scholarly and scientific journals, and her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Lauren Du Graf has written about film, art, music, and literature for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Oxford American Magazine, and elsewhere. Her research and writing have been supported with fellowships from the Camargo Foundation, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Recorded live at Seattle First Baptist Church by Town Hall Seattle on March 25, 2019. 

465 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 Hours The MFA is open 7 days a week. Monday–Tuesday 10 am–5 pm Wednesday–Friday 10 am–10 pm Saturday–Sunday 10 am–5 pm Admission Members Free Adults $25 Seniors (65+) $23 Children 6 and under Free Youths 7–17* Free / $10* Students (18+)** $23** *Youths 7–17 admitted free weekends, weekdays after 3 pm, and Boston public school holidays; otherwise admission for youths is $10. **Participants in the University Membership program receive free admission. NH and ME resident students also receive free admission. Included in the price of admission: All-day access to galleries and special exhibitions One free repeat visit within 10 days (applies to full-price Adult, Senior, and Student tickets only) Free Gallery Activities and Tours Massachusetts residents who present Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards at a ticket desk may receive up to four $3 tickets good for adult, senior, or student admission. Youths aged 17 and under are always free. EBT Card to Culture is a collaboration between the Mass Cultural Council and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services’ Department of Transitional Assistance. See the full list of participants. Junior Artists Every Saturday, 10:30 am–12:30 pm New program starting September 9! Enjoy a weekly free drop-in creative morning for families with children ages 5 to 8. Look closely at art, make art, and have fun! Free with Museum admission. Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular February 27, 2019 – June 16, 2019 Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332) and Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 334) The influence of Mexican folk art on Kahlo’s work and life Like many artists in Mexico City’s vibrant intellectual circles, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) avidly collected traditional Mexican folk art—arte popular—as a celebration of Mexican national culture. She drew inspiration from these objects, seizing on their political significance after the Mexican Revolution and incorporating their visual and material qualities into her now iconic paintings. Following the recent acquisition of Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia) (1928), this is the MFA’s first exhibition on Frida Kahlo. It tightly focuses on Kahlo’s lasting engagements with arte popular, exploring how her passion for objects such as decorated ceramics, embroidered textiles, children’s toys, and devotional retablo paintings shaped her own artistic practice. A selection of Kahlo’s paintings—including important loans from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin—is brought together with representative examples of arte popular. Bringing fresh attention to Kahlo as an ambitious, ever-evolving painter, this exhibition also opens broader discussions about the influences of anonymous folk artists on famed modern painters.

Speaker – Peter Stansky William Morris was a poet and artist as well as the foremost figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. He succeeded in reviving some of the techniques of handmade production that machines were replacing. His iconic patterns for fabrics and wallpaper are instantly recognizable, and the baroquely beautiful productions of his […]

Today, we’re looking at objects at the Harry Ransom Center we’re calling “Frankenbooks.”’ Join us for an interview with Aaron Pratt, the Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center. https://archivalfever.com/2019/02/15/episode-4-frankenbooks/

Ed Ruscha is one of America's most treasured contemporary artists. Raised in Oklahoma, Ed and Lance discussed his desire to head west to California in the mid 50's, the support of his parents early on and his process for creating his paintings and photographs. An exhibit of Ed's works are on display at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin through early January. 

Speaker – Stephen Enniss, HARRY RANSOM CENTER In the early 1960s a talented group of Northern Irish poets emerged in Belfast, including the future Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. In the decades since, a popular myth has taken root about the Northern Irish Renaissance with some commentators linking the emergence of a new generation of poets […]

On this episode of On Story, Die Hard screenwriter Jeb Stuart and Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black discuss their two action classics, followed by screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen on his long-standing collaboration with filmmaker Luc Besson and their work creating the The Fifth Element, The Transporter and Taken. The 1987 blockbuster Lethal Weapon is the first writing credit in Shane Black’s filmography. He went on to act in, write or write and direct over 30 films including The Long Kiss Goodnight, Iron Man 3, and The Nice Guys. Black’s latest film, will be a remake of his 1987 sci-fi film, entitled, The Predator is slated for release August of 2018. Shane Black’s popular Lethal Weapon franchise has currently evolved into a TV show on Fox of the same name and stars Damon Wayans. Season 2 of the TV show is slated for early 2018. Jeb Stuart wrote the screenplay for the action classic, Die Hard. The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards® and voted the Best Action Film of All Time by Entertainment Weekly in 2007. Jeb Stuart’s other credits include the screenplays for The Fugitive, nominated for 7 Academy Awards® including Best Picture and the action-comedy Another 48 Hrs. I spoke with Shane Black and Jeb Stuart in 2015 as part of the 22nd Austin Film Festival. Portions of this half of our episode were recorded at the Q&A session following a special screening of Die Hard at the historic Paramount Theatre in Austin Texas in 2015. Robert Mark Kamen’s screenwriting credits begin with the script for the 1981 film Taps which was adapted from Devery Freeman’s novel Father Sky, and which stars George C Scott, Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise in his first major role in a motion picture. He went on to create The Karate Kid, starring Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio, and collaborated with filmmaker Luc Besson on The Fifth Element, as well as the Transporter and Taken franchises. I spoke with Robert Mark Kamen on July 12th 2015 at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin Texas.    

This week, Andrew Lanham co-writer of The Glass Castle, discusses adapting the New York Times Best Seller memoir of the same name followed by Life of Pi and Finding Neverland writer David Magee discusses writing for imaginative worlds, and using language to translate stories to the screen. Andrew Lanham received his MFA in screenwriting from The University of Texas at Austin. In 2010, he won the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, as well as the Drama and Latitude screenwriting awards at the Austin Film Festival, for his script The Jumper of Maine which tackles Lanham’s Tourette’s syndrome. Lanham helped co-write Jeannette Walls memoir and New York Times Best Seller, The Glass Castle. The film stars Academy Award® winning actress Brie Larson as Walls, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson. David Magee is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter known for adapting the beloved novel by Yann Martel, Life of Pi. He also co-wrote the screenplay for Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Finding Neverland. His screen adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and earned director Ang Lee an Oscar for Best Director. Magee is also the screenwriter for the next Chronicles of Narnia film, The Silver Chair and is currently writing the screenplay for the Disney musical Mary Poppins Returns. David Magee spoke with me during a special year-round event held in the Harry Ransom Center in 2013. Clips from this episode copyright: Dune Entertainment III LLC, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, and Miramax Film Corporation.      

This week on the Daily Texan Newscast we discuss campus closure on the first day of class, subsidies for on-campus mental health counseling sessions, and the Harry Ransom Center's purchase of Arthur Miller's estate. We're also joined by Senior City/State Reporter Chase Karacostas to talk about the funding of UT's China Center from a group known to spread Chinese government propaganda.

A visit to the Harry Ransom Center on UT campus. Current exhibit through December 31st features Mexican artists from 1920-1945.

Brad Kent is Professor of British and Irish Literatures at Université Laval in Quebec City. In 2013-14 he was Visiting Professor at Trinity College Dublin in the School of English, and in the spring of 2018 he will be the C.P. Snow Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center, where he was the Hobby Fellow in the spring of 2009. His recent publications include George Bernard Shaw in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016). He is currently general editor of an eight-volume series of Shaw’s writings that will be published by Oxford World’s Classics in 2021. At present he is working on a monograph entitled ‘Literature, Censorship, and the Cultural Politics of Affect in Ireland,’ which is supported with a major grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This podcast was recorded and produced by Aaron Lakoff and Simone Lucas.

Part of the Focus 45 series. For the past three years, Ellen Handy has been conducting research at the Eastman Museum for her forthcoming book, Histories of Photography: An Introduction, which draws extensively on the museum's collections. Handy states, "The George Eastman Museum is the home of the history of photography—not only because it is the home of the man who did so much to create the photographic industry and medium many of us grew up with, or because it is the first and greatest museum dedicated to the camera arts—but also because it was here that Beaumont Newhall codified the history of photography in narrative form in 1949. From the perspective of today, the most striking thing about the photographic medium is its multiplicity—it has many histories, not one, and they are all to be found under this roof." Handy is the former Executive Curator of Photography and Visual Collections at Harry Ransom Center and Curator of Collections at the International Center of Photography. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Art Department at the City University of New York.

Brad Listi talks with Alex Gilvarry, author of the novel EASTMAN WAS HERE, available from Viking. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. Gilvarry is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 nominee and he has received fellowships from the Harry Ransom Center and the Normal Mailer Center. Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. All episodes are free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Show Notes   This week, Brea and Mallory discuss the best places for book tourism, interview Icelandic crime author Yrsa Sigudardottir and debate spoilers. Use the hashtag #ReadingAroundTheWorld to participate in online discussion on Instagram and Twitter!   Links -   Goodreads Choice Awards https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2016   Overdrive https://www.overdrive.com/   Hoopla https://www.hoopladigital.com/   Library Playaways http://my.playaway.com/playaway/where-to-find/   Libby https://meet.libbyapp.com/   UNESCO Cities of Literature http://www.cityofliterature.com/cities-of-literature/cities-of-literature/   Hay on Wye https://www.hayfestival.com/   El Ateneo http://www.buenostours.com/el-ateneo-grand-splendid-bookstore   Belfast, Maine https://www.belfastbookfestival.com/   National Steinbeck Center http://www.steinbeck.org/   Harry Ransom Center http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/       Yrsa Sigurdardottir https://www.facebook.com/YrsaSig/ https://twitter.com/yrsasig https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250045621   I Remember You Trailer http://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3431198/chilling-trailer-icelandic-haunter-i-remember-you/   Ngaio Marsh Crime Awards https://www.facebook.com/NgaioMarshAward   Arnaldur Indridason https://blueskiesandbriefchronicles.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/the-reykjavik-murder-mysteries-by-arnaldur-indridason/   Sjon http://sjon.siberia.is/   Audur Ava https://www.pushkinpress.com/author/audur-ava-olafsdottir/   Books Mentioned -   Faller by Will McIntosh https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780765383556   Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780756410841   Dark Matter by Blake Crouch https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101904244      

Richard Oram, former associate director of Harry Ransom Center, delivers a talk titled “Whatnots and Whatnot: Evelyn Waugh and Victorian Aesthetics of Ornamentation.” This talk was included in the session titled “Waugh's Life in Archives.” Part of “Evelyn Waugh: Reader, Writer, Collector,” a conference held at The Huntington May 5–6, 2017.

After studying photography in Southern California, Dan Winters  finished his formal education at the film school of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. He began his career in photography as a photojournalist in his home town in Ventura County, California. After winning several regional awards for his work, he moved to New York City, where magazine assignments came rapidly. Known for the broad range of subject matter he is able to interpret, he is widely recognized for his unusual celebrity portraiture, his scientific photography, photo illustrations, drawings and photojournalistic stories. Dan has won over one hundred national and international awards from American Photography, Communications Arts, The Society of Publication Designers, PDN, The Art Director's Club of New York, Life Magazine, and won the world press photo award in the portrait category, among others. He was also awarded the prestigious, Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography. In 2003, he was honored by Kodak as a photo "Icon" in their biographical "Legends" series. He has had four exhibitions of his personal work in galleries In New York and Los Angeles and had a book of his magazine work entitled Dan Winters: Periodical Photographs published in 2009 by Aperture. In addition, he has photos in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Harry Ransom Center in Austin and the Wittliff Collection at the Jepson Center for the ARts/Telfair Museum in Savannah, GA. He has published several books of his photography. His latest is The Grey Ghost: New York City Photographs.   Resources: Dan Winters The Grey Ghost: New York City Photographs Irving Penn Francis Bacon: Work on Paper }} Fahey Klein Gallery   Download the free Candid Frame app for your favorite smart device. Click here to download for . Click here to download Click here to download for Support the work we do at The Candid Frame with contributing to our Patreon effort.  You can do this by visiting or visiting the website and clicking on the Patreon button.

Donna Pinckley, a native of Louisiana, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Louisiana Tech University and a Master of Fine Arts in photography from University of Texas at Austin.  She has received Visual Artist Fellowships from the Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA and the Arkansas Arts Council.   Her project Sticks and Stones examines the negative comments that some interracial couples are subject to. The project is more than just about racism, the project profiles strong people who choose to rise above hate and bigotry to build lives together based on love and respect. Pinckley’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 200 solo/juried shows and also included in several public collections, such as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, the University of Vera Cruz at Xalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, and the Photographic Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.   She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas.   Resources:   Donna Pinckley http://www.donnapinckley.com Cig Harvey http://www.cigharvey.com Download the free Candid Frame app for your favorite smart device.   Click here to download for . Click here to download Click here to download for Support the work we do at The Candid Frame with your donations via PayPal.   https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=Mi4dvPrTA1swPjOF_OtGoFfv7ZXMtQIo9p1P9MEBsvbtPk_-DliSc55i1Ti&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8d64ad11bbf4d2a5a1a0d303a50933f9b2

Movie Addict HQ celebrates the 75th Anniversary of Gone with the Wind, one of the most successful films of all time. Film historian James Colt Harrison and Classic Film Guide founder Diana Saenger plan to join the festivities. Plus, Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne has been invited to call in. Listeners will also hear a clip from Cammie King Conlon's interview about playing Rhett and Scarlett's doomed daughter, Bonnie Blue Butler.  Gone with the Wind, released in 1939, received 10 Oscars. It has been screened millions of times throughout the world. Fans of this beloved epic continue to celebrate the movie at various GWTW conventions. To honor this important anniversary, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has teamed up with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Fathom Events and The Harry Ransom Center for a multi-tiered celebration that includes a new Blu-ray release, screenings at over 600 theaters, an exhibit and new book on the making of the film, and a special screening of the movie on Turner Classic Movies. These activities are scheduled for the last part of September and early October. The late Cammie King Conlon, author of Bonnie Blue Butler: A Gone with the Wind Memoir, visited Movie Addict HQ four years ago to discuss her delightful book, which is filled with fascinating inside information concerning what happened on and off the set, including what it was like to work with Clark Gable and director Victor Fleming. Movie fans should enjoy hearing about these experiences in the clip from her terrific interview. 

Harry Ransom Center's recent exhibition "The World at War, 1914–1918." The exhibit marks the centenary of the start of World War I, and seeks to recover the deeply personal experience of the war.