The Virtual Memories Show

Gil Roth
  • 4,9 (89)
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  • CHAQUE SEMAINE
The Virtual Memories Show

A weekly conversation about books and life, not necessarily in that order.

  1. -5 J

    Episode 627 - Seth Lorinczi

    With DEATH TRIP: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir (Spiral Path Collective Press), Seth Lorinczi explores how trauma can be transmitted over generations, and how an ancient (& new) form of treatment can help overcome it. We talk about finding his family's story of the Holocaust, trying to understand why so much of it stayed hidden, how badly it warped his life, and how he & his wife found answers in psychedelic medicine (MDMA, ayahuasca, toad (!)). We get into the long-term damage of unmetabolized trauma and untouched grief, how psychedelics allowed him to recognize patterns in his life, family history, and the universe, the challenges of researching his family's Holocaust experience in Hungary, how his experiences led to a memoir (& a saved marriage), why Death Trip is a series of surrenders, how his close and distant relatives responded to the book, and why he thinks I should leapfrog therapy and try psychedelics first. We also discuss growing up in the punk scene of Washington, DC (and writing his next book about that), how coincidence becomes important after psychedelic experiences, how some married couples take up salsa dancing but he & his wife took up ayahuasca, how his daughter responded to all this, whether a person can change, how once you get the message you should put down the phone, and a lot more. Follow Seth on Instagram and subscribe to his Dispatches From The Fringe newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

    1 h 23 min

  2. 18 FÉVR.

    Episode 626 - Martin Mittelmeier

    With NAPLES 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory (Yale University Press, tr. Shelley Frisch), Martin Mittelmeier traces the roots of the Frankfurt School in southern Italy. We talk about the epiphany on the lip of a volcano in Lanzerote that brought this book to life, the years he spent poring over Theodor Adorno's writing (and the temptation to mimic Adorno's style), how Walter Benjamin's principle of porosity arose from both the tuff stone & the way of living of Naples, and the challenge of evoking the Naples of a century ago and how it led to a theory of society. We get into Critical Theory's attempts at understanding populism and oligarchic takeovers and why Adorno is having A Moment in Germany, the fun of speculating about meetings among great thinkers — yeah, I get into George Orwell, Henry Miller, and Inside the Whale —, the utopian aspect of local life in Naples and Capri, the complexities of reputation and destiny, and whether Critical Theory can hold up during the hyper-internet era. We also discuss the difficulties of translation with critical theory's associative language, why I need to read Hernán Diaz' Trust, his new work about Thomas Mann working with Adorno on Doctor Faustus in Pacific Palisades (a.k.a. Weimar Under The Palm Trees), how he's changed in the decade-plus since writing the book, and more. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

    1 h 11 min

  3. 11 FÉVR.

    Episode 625 - Jonathan Ames

    Can LA private detective Happy Doll live up to the Four Noble Truths and escape the cycle of Samsara? Jonathan Ames returns to the show to help answer that question and celebrate his new novel, KARMA DOLL (Mulholland Books)! We talk about the joy of reading (& writing) page-turners, how his lead character Happy Doll has evolved over three novels (so far!), what it's like bringing Buddhism into a detective novel, and how his (& Happy's) LA has changed since he began this series. We get into how he managed to avoid writing about the worst days of the pandemic while keeping Karma Doll contemporary, how writing the Doll novels has affected his understanding of Buddhism, and how he's living up to the lesson he always gave students: write what you love. We also discuss TV writing and how it took him away from prose-writing for a decade or so, the need to make art and the transitoriness of bliss, how the LA fires left him driving all over the place like he was in a Lew Archer novel, his fave reads & TV shows, how we both played with dolls as kids in the woods of northern NJ, and a lot more. Follow Jonathan on Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

    1 h 24 min

  4. 5 FÉVR.

    Episode 624 - Witold Rybczynski

    With his latest book, THE DRIVING MACHINE: A Design History of the Car (Norton), architect and architecture & design writer Witold Rybczynski explores how cars evolved from their earliest days through the befuddling styles of today's EVs. We get into the design language of cars and how it had no true precedent, why European styles were so different and varied than America's, his favorite era for car design, and the differences between writing about cars and writing about buildings. We talk about the cars in his life and how he integrated them into The Driving Machine's narrative (including the Mercedes that lasted him 25 years), the lives of the engineers & car-company founders he explored for the book, what he learned by drawing the book's car-illustrations himself, and how drawing all those cars brought him back to his youth. We also discuss the new book he's writing about his dissatisfaction with contemporary architecture, how it resulted from a Chat-GPT 'hallucination,' the cycles of architecture & the death of architecture criticism, the (sorta) imaginary house he designed for himself, and more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

    1 h 42 min

  5. 29 JANV.

    Episode 623 - Matt Madden

    Cartoonist Matt Madden rejoins the show to celebrate his new collection, SIX TREASURES OF THE SPIRAL: Comics Formed Under Pressure (Uncivilized Books). We talk about the liberation to be found in formal constraints, his history with OULIPO and its OUBAPO offshoot, how structure can inspire story, and the formal and thematic challenges in sequencing the stories in the collection. We get into how he tried to make the most of a multi-year residency at La Maison des Auteurs in Angouleme, the unwitting influence of Hergé on one of his favorite stories, the changes in his art & storytelling since publishing Ex Libris in 2021, and the "director's commentary" he added as back matter for Six Treasures. We also discuss Lewis Trondheim's challenge to him to make a comic without a formal rule or constraint, his Substack-goal of sharing OUBAPO rules, the balance of comics-making with child-rearing, the fun of making foldy-comics, why it's important not to let the formal constraints overwhelm the heart of the stories, and more. Follow Matt on Instagram and YouTube and subscribe to his Substsack • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

    1 h 22 min

  6. 20 JANV.

    Episode 622 - Fred Kaplan

    After 4+ decades as a reporter and with a half-dozen nonfiction books under his belt, Fred Kaplan rejoins the show to celebrate his first foray into fiction, A CAPITAL CALAMITY (Miniver Press)! We talk about how lockdown got him to start A Capital Calamity, how his history in national security and the defense sector informs the novel (& its accidental march torward WWIII), how his protagonist is & isn't a Fred-Not-Traveled, and what it was like to make things up after a career spent reporting the facts. We get into the moral quandaries of being an insider in Washington, his experience working for Les Aspin in the '70s, the early morning storytelling revelations that opened up the novel to him, and why he set a major scene of the book above The Comedy Cellar in NYC. We also get into whether we're slow-walking into WWIII, the lessons learned from the 2017-2021 era and how they may affect his coverage of the new administration, his jazz recommendations, the fun of dissecting Washington cocktail party culture, the pros & cons of a multipolar world, and more. Follow Fred on Bluesky, Facebook and Twitter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

    1 h 4 min

  7. 14 JANV.

    Episode 621 - Mia Wolff

    With THE EMPTY LOT (Fantagraphics Underground), artist Mia Wolff brings together 100 paintings from more than 40 years of her oeuvre. We talk about how she found the thread & structure for the book, the patterns that emerged as she re-ordered the pieces and stitched them together with new illustrations, comics and prose pieces, and how you can make a joyride of a monograph by introducing your cat into the scene. We get into her dream of catspiders that inspired her for decades, the game of exquisite corpse she's been playing with Jim Woodring, and her history in art and side trips into a trapeze act with a circus and teaching martial arts. We also discuss the graphic novel she's working on and how that art parallels her painting, why The Empty Lot has an afterword in the form of a page-by-page tour-conversation with Samuel R. Delany, her love of transparency & translucency and why her paintings of water are so magical, the tension of her pitch meeting with Gary Groth, and a lot more. Follow Mia on Bluesky and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

    1 h 24 min

  8. 7 JANV.

    Episode 620 - Damion Searls

    Translator & author Damion Searls kicks off our 2025 season with a talk about his amazing new book, THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSLATION (Yale University Press). We talk about how all writing — translation or not — involves constraints, he balanced the book between philosophical argument and concrete examples of translation, and how he came to define translation as "reading one thing and writing something else." We also get into where all the languages — German, Dutch, Norwegian, French — started for him (+ his lockdown project of teaching himself modern Greek), how the business of translation has changed during his career and the problems with the English market's dominance, how a 'book report' led to him becoming the translator of Nobel-winner Jon Fosse, how he edited an abridged version of Thoreau's (7000 pages of) journals, and why he only put one negative example in The Philosophy of Translation. Plus we discuss how he doesn't look over his own translators' shoulders, why he resents critics' bias against translation and the notion of "a 'faithful' translation" or "getting it right," how he & his peers fought for royalties over fee-for-service and the days when translators treated like typesetters, and plenty more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

    1 h 37 min
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À propos

A weekly conversation about books and life, not necessarily in that order.

Informations

  • Création
    Gil Roth
  • Années d’activité
    2012 - 2025
  • Épisodes
    697
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © 2011-2023 Gil Roth
  • Site web de l’émission
    The Virtual Memories Show

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