Condition of Mr. Segundo: Fleeing the Bolsheviks.

Guests: Katharine Weber and Levi Asher

Subjects Discussed: Fibonacci spirals and Sierpinski triangles, Fibonacci sidewalks, the unknown etymological origins of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, interview transcripts and excised questions, designing the Esther and Ruth Zion vernaculars, colloquies within the novel, .edu addresses that have been duped by counterfeited transcripts, Ian McEwan, Ruth Zion’s character makeup and academia, MacArthur genius grants, the authentic requirements of contemporary novels, approaching historical events from a contemporary vantage point, James Frye, fact vs. fiction, intrusive footnotes and reader obedience, “based on a true story,” the 2003 Station nightclub fire, comparisons between the Triangle fire and the World Trade Center, children’s books about the Triangle fire, Henry Botkin and Gershwin, Thanksgiving and other American traditions, on seeing too many patterns in life, “crackpot magpie” research, not having a high school diploma, and being an autodidact.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Weber: It’s not just that she’s been speaking English for fifty years, but she’s been speaking the language of the Triangle fire. She’s been telling the story and telling the story. So what interested me wasn’t just developing her use of English, but her developing and mutating over time relationship to the story, and how it stuck to the story, and how she wandered off the story and got details wrong over time. We all get details wrong over time. If you now had to describe to me every moment of a car accident you were in thirty years ago, even if you think that’s what happened, it might not match the police report. And you may have changed it because someone saw something that you didn’t actually experience, but now you’ve incorporated it into your experience. And it becomes part of your telling of the story. I’m interested in how we tell our stories, the agenda we bring to the telling of the stories, but also so much of the novel is about the agenda we bring to the listening of stories. We ask our questions with agendas as much as we tell stories with agendas.

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SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTE: I had arranged an interview with Katie Roiphe because I felt that she might be misunderstood. Ms. Roiphe had laid down some interesting ideas over the years that had pissed more than a few people off, including the notion that women were primarily responsible for date rape in her tract, The Morning After. Extraordinary claims, of course, require extraordinary evidence. And it was because of this that I wanted to determine how much of Ms. Roiphe’s personal ideology influenced her views. Late in the interview, Ms. Roiphe grew contentious when I asked a personally reasonable question and quoted a specific passage in her most recent book, Uncommon Arrangements, in relation to an affair initiated between Harry Andrews and Winifred Holtby, which can be found on pages 282-283 in the hardcover edition:

They slept together, one spring, when she had taken a cottage by the sea. This was entirely her doing: she had decided to abandon pride and convention and push their romantically charged friendship to a crisis.

Ms. Roiphe at first denied that she had written this passage, until I found the page and showed it to her during the course of the interview. She then claimed that the meaning I had averred, that the woman is solely responsible for a sexual liaison, was wrong. Without passing the same judgment on Ms. Roiphe that she appeared to cast upon me, I leave listeners to make up their own minds as to whether the phrase “this was entirely her doing” reflects an instance where Ms. Roiphe’s personal ideology influenced her scholarship, or whether Ms. Roiphe was being needlessly belligerent. But then I’m not the one with the Ph.D.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Abdicating to dubious journalistic principles.

Author: Katie Roiphe

Subjects Discussed: On whether the state of a marriage can be judged exclusively upon letters and notes, inferring from perspective, Phylis Rose’s Parallel Lives, Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, avoiding 21st century relationship terms, “marriage a la mode,” Radclyffe Hall, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, the relationship between class fixations and subject choice, interconnected aristocracies, the difficulties of obtaining divorce in the United Kingdom and the Marriage Act of 1949, contemporary pressure on women in thirties to get married, the influence of Jane Austen on married life, the theatrical nature of Ottoline Morrell’s philanthropy, the influence on Roiphe’s ideology upon her scholarship, relying upon books vs. relying upon empirical evidence, on being allegedly misquoted, and Roiphe’s unchanging ideology.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Roiphe: Anyway, I’m actually out of time. Um, you can have one more question.

Correspondent: Well, I actually wanted to ask you a question about The Morning After.

Roiphe: Okay.

Correspondent: If we revisit that, do you still feel that the word “survivor” is bandied about too much in relation to date rape or — and if the term “survivor” is still unacceptable to you, how do you expect someone to cope with a legitimate psychological grievance?

Roiphe: I’m actually interested in talking about this book and not my previous work. But, yes, I stand by everything that I said at the time that I wrote that book.

Correspondent: Okay. I mean, you know, don’t you — doesn’t your ideology change in any manner?

Roiphe: As I say, I stand by everything I wrote in this book and I’m right now interested in talking about Uncommon Arrangements.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Smitten with literary Kates.

Authors: Katherine Taylor and Mindy Schneider

Subjects Discussed: The similarities and differences between Taylor the person and Taylor the character, declarative dialogue, MFA programs, the degree of arrogance taught in classrooms, Ben Kunkel, chick lit, the problems with literary influences, conversations in New York, writing out of revenge, writing for money, vignette-based narratives, on being the face of Diet Coke, stalking Denis Johnson, summer camps, taking narrative liberties with memory, camp anecdotes, combining multiple characters within memoirs, creative nonfiction, thirteen-year-old misfits, being a television addict, non-kosher food at Jewish camps, growing up in a spendthrift family, the importance of good shoes, camp songs, psychological evaluations of campers, softball, on being the best and worst athlete, an ice cream delicacy called the Icky Orgy, being bombarded with nostalgia, and South of the Border.

EXCERPTS FROM SHOW:

Taylor: A writer, I don’t think, becomes a writer because they get an MFA or don’t. It was helpful to me because I needed to learn some rules. I was so incredibly arrogant that I needed a couple of teachers to sort of reign me in and tell me what I could and couldn’t do. Which was helpful, because now I know what I can and can’t do. And it’s — well, it’s helpful to have those rules, as Peter Carey said, in order to break them. I’m actually a big fan of the MFA. Mostly because I think Americans throughout their educations are taught to be incredibly arrogant. And it’s good to have someone tell you…

Correspondent: Wait. You actually think that?

Taylor: Oh absolutely!

Correspondent: Every form of education? Maybe some schools. But I mean…that assumes…

Taylor: Maybe I just went to the schools where they tell you to be incredibly arrogant.

Correspondent: I never took Hubris 101.

* * *

Schneider: I am fortunate in that I was able to remember a lot of people’s quirks. And then, to try and help safeguard their privacy to some degree, I combined people. So I mean, one year, there was a girl in my bunk who walked and talked and did things in her sleep and another one who read constantly and hated camp. So I compressed them. It seemed to be an interesting mix and those two things were always going on in the bunk. And I found in early drafts — I’m not even sure I did that in my first draft — but early drafts, I found that I had too many people. So it was suggested to me by the teachers at UCLA, “Put them together. You’re allowed to do that.” And it made it much more manageable and easier to keep track of people. And I felt more comfortable because I wasn’t giving away exactly someone’s identity.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Stumbling upon 21st century technologies.

Author: Michelle Richmond

Subjects Discussed: The relationship of research to plotting, author character qualities and protagonist character qualities, Alabama, San Francisco landmarks, the Richmond District, emasculated men who live in restored Victorians, using simple character names, writing in multiple short chapters, contrapuntal searching, disappearances, beaches and sand dollars, waves and warning signs at Ocean Beach, surfing, photography, on how location influences emotional experience of character, days and calendaring, forensic artists, and the Year of Fog audio book.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Richmond: I’ve written a lot about Alabama. I haven’t lived there in — I don’t know, eighteen years. But I can’t seem to entirely get it out of my system. So this is my first book that was really separate from my upbringing, but yet there’s a tiny bit of that Gulf Coast stuff sprinkled in there. Since that’s where she’s from.

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