August 16, 2006August 16, 2006 by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show #54: David Mitchell II, Part One

[NOTE: This is part one of a two-part podcast.]

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Responding to the crazed accusations of a major film director.

Subjects Discussed: The similarities between Jason Taylor and David Mitchell, idiosynchratic vernacular, first-person vs. third-person voice, index cards, how Granta unexpectedly kicked off Black Swan Green, the correct pronounciation of Nabokov, the difference between sandwiches in the US and the UK, the use of 1980s technology in writing, the Falkland Islands, on selecting cultural references from 1982, Friendster, the regulation of UK schools over the past thirty years, the use of visual elements in BSG, authenticity, money and Thatcher’s England, MacGuffins in novels and life, being nice to horrid people, the Julia principle, the politics of language, hip-hop culture, the threat of conformity vs. Jason Taylor’s resilience, shaking off the Murakami yoke, the Ed Park review, on using characters from other books, and naming the headmaster Nixon, and character names that “stick on the eyeball.”

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August 13, 2006 by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show #53: Michael Orthofer and Betsy Wing

Guests: Michael Orthofer and Betsy Wing (translator, LBC nominee, Summer 2006)

Condition of Mr. Segundo: In absentia, fleeing the silly hipsters.

Subjects Discussed: How to raise awareness of translated fiction, an idea involving Chad Post, on being a designated translator, language adopted by literary critics, a very friendly dog in the Wing household, breaking down a novel, dictionaries, on hooking up with Paule Constant, working class vernacular, dialects, maintaining the tone between funny and heartwrenchingly sad, working against first impressions in translation, the myth of auctorial spontaneity, a forgotten movement in the late 1970s and the early 1980s to bring attention to translators, the advantages of freelance translating, and putting the translator’s name on the book spine.

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August 11, 2006August 11, 2006 by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show #52: Dan Wickett & Kellie Wells

Guests: Dan Wickett and Kellie Wells (LBC Nominee, Summer 2006)

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Absent, avoiding his family lineage.

Subjects Discussed: Interdependent stories, the perception of a “novel in stories,” “Compression Scars” as the launching pad for the novel, building community consciousness within fiction, setting down distinct vernacular, preserving Midwestern cultural details, Sherwood Anderson, the publishing industry’s prejudice against the Midwest, cap guns, finding the right brand name referential balance, Spirographs, novelists as chroniclers, the adaptive nature of human behavior as expressed through fiction, The Pickwick Papers, writing about abuse, the origins of What Cheer, punk culture in Kansas, and the propinquity of magical realism to personal experience.

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July 28, 2006July 28, 2006 by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show #51: OGIC, Scott Esposito & Edie Meidav

Guests: OGIC, Scott Esposito and Edie Meidav (LBC Nominee, Summer 2006).

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Running away from the Bolsheviks.

Subjects Discussed: Dancing about architecture, Humbert Humbert, antiheroes, character names and wordplay, Nabokov, the memory of environment vs. its inevitable change, balancing secondary characters against a complex protagonist, the real-life inspiration for the wastrels, writing in sheds, various notions of “crawl space,” cross-graphs, visual elements contained within text, on being edited at FSG, “throwing out crazy trees,” discarded subplots, drowning babies, mining abandoned material vs. moving forward, and introducing loaded guns in the first act.