Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (Bat Segundo interview with Bissell)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
interview Archive
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The Bat Segundo Show: Robert A. Caro
Posted on May 15, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this one hour radio interview, legendary Lyndon B. Johnson biographer Robert A. Caro discusses The Passage of Power, the fierce qualities it takes to be the greatest legislator of the 20th century, LBJ's rivalries with the Kennedys, and why character is so essential to politics. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Stewart O’Nan II
Posted on May 3, 2012 | No CommentsIn this one hour radio interview recorded at McNally Jackson, Stewart O'Nan discusses his novel The Odds, reads from the notebook he always carries on him, and even belts out Heart lyrics before an assembled crowd. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Annalena McAfee
Posted on May 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 45 minute radio interview, novelist and recovering journalist Annalena McAfee discusses her novel, The Spoiler, the problems with contemporary journalism, women in journalism, and being edited by a famous husband. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Eric Kandel
Posted on May 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 30 minute radio interview with the Novel laureate, Eric Kandel discusses his new book The Age of Insight, the intersection between art and neuroscience, and the Vienna Secession. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Jeanette Winterson
Posted on April 30, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 30 minute radio interview, Jeanette Winterson discusses her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, tells us about how she stole a cat to teach a moral lesson, and describes how solitude can be a necessary condition to create. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Tom Bissell, Part Two
Posted on April 28, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this one hour radio interview, we conclude our two part conversation with Magic Hours author Tom Bissell. The second part gets into some entirely unanticipated truths about the relationship between life and words in 2012. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Tom Bissell, Part One
Posted on April 25, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 30 minute radio interview, we begin our two part conversation with Magic Hours author Tom Bissell. The first part establishes Bissell's peripatetic history and gets into video games. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Jonah Lehrer
Posted on April 24, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this one hour radio interview, science writer Jonah Lehrer discusses Imagine: How Creativity Works, neuroscience, Pixar management techniques, W.H. Auden, and recent criticisms about his reductionist approach, -
The Bat Segundo Show: Steve Erickson II
Posted on April 11, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 45 minute radio interview, Steve Erickson discusses These Dreams of You, Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, the relationship between fact and fiction, and why he believes that writing is "a community of one." -
The Bat Segundo Show: Nancy Cohen
Posted on April 9, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 45 minute radio interview, political historian Nancy Cohen discusses the sexual counterrevolution, the ongoing assaults on women rights, parallels between gay rights and civil rights, and even challenges Thomas Frank on his evidence. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Maggie Anderson
Posted on April 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn this one hour radio interview, we talk with Maggie Anderson, author of Our Black Year, about income disparity, black unemployment, supporting African-American businesses, gentrification, and the overlap between buying indie and buying black. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Alain de Botton
Posted on April 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 30 minute radio interview, philosopher Alain de Botton discusses Religion for Atheists, awe, advertising, mandatory Australian voting, Tarkovsky, superbia, and how humans can be more interesting than a smartphone. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Louis Hyman
Posted on March 27, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this jam-packed 50 minute radio interview with historian Louis Hyman, we crack jokes and discuss in detail how Americans became reliant upon credit over the last century. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Catherine Chung
Posted on March 23, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 45 minute radio interview, novelist Catherine Chung discusses Forgotten Country, giving up the ghost, grief, Korean American identity, racism, bullying, and the challenges of drawing from personal experience. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Hari Kunzru, Part Two
Posted on March 19, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 50 minute radio interview, our massive conversation with Hari Kunzru continues. We get into 1980s personal computers, Michael Moorcock, and needless divisions between genre and literature. And we also issue a vital retraction. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Hari Kunzru, Part One
Posted on March 12, 2012 | 1 CommentThe first 40 minutes of an epic radio interview with Gods Without Men author Hari Kunzru have been released. The conversation touches upon issues of faith, flash crashes, illusions, ethical responsibilities in fiction, political violence, and Robert Coover -- and we're only just getting started. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Adam Wilson
Posted on March 9, 2012 | 2 CommentsIn this wide-ranging one hour radio interview, Adam Wilson discusses his debut novel, Flatscreen, the Slanket, men who cook, Saul Bellow, adults who live with their parents, and numerous other subjects. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Sara Levine
Posted on March 2, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 30 minute radio interview, we discuss Robert Louis Stevenson and unnamed protagonists with the author of Treasure Island!!! -
The Bat Segundo Show: Sara Benincasa
Posted on February 28, 2012 | 1 CommentIn this 50 minute radio interview, comedienne and writer Sara Benincasa discusses her memoir, Agorafabulous, freaks, the Lindbergh trial, and her many adventures. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Arthur Goldwag
Posted on February 16, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 50 minute radio interview, we talk with author Arthur Goldwag about political extremism and why hatred has been allowed to flourish in American politics. And the conversation is remarkably mellow and goofy. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Liz Moore
Posted on February 14, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 50 minute radio interview, Heft author Liz Moore discusses how emotional sincerity transcends the grotesque, observing people, being unashamed about loving modernist writers, and various existential possibilities. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Agnieszka Holland
Posted on February 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 25 minute radio interview, we talk with acclaimed Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland about In Darkness, the Downfall meme, how to find the right sewers, training actors to speak in many languages, and being faithful to Henry James. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Stephen Fry
Posted on February 7, 2012 | 3 CommentsIn this jam-packed one hour radio interview, Stephen Fry discusses Shakespeare, education, Ayn Rand, Wodehouse, eudaimonism, Secessionist Vienna coffeehouses, Apple, why he prefers Simon Raven to Anthony Powell, his efforts to dance, and at least 3,000 other interesting topics. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Deborah Scroggins
Posted on February 3, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 35 minute radio interview, journalist Deborah Scroggins discusses her book Wanted Women, ongoing perceptions about Islam, Aafia Siddiqui and American/Pakistani relations, the Jaipur Literature Festival, and why so many intellectual figures believe in Ayaan Hirsi Ali. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Susan Cain
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsIn this 40 minute radio interview, author Susan Cain discusses Quiet, differences between introverts and extroverts, Jung, conformity, Steve Wozniak, Csikszentmihalyi, and the fine line between introversion and misanthropy. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Elliot Perlman
Posted on January 10, 2012 | No CommentsIn this one hour radio interview, Australian novelist Elliot Perlman discusses The Street Sweeper, holocaust fatigue, memory as a willful dog, confronting emotional reality, and risking emotional sincerity in fiction to share the world. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Thomas Frank
Posted on January 5, 2012 | No CommentsBat Segundo returns with a big bang in this jam-packed one hour conversation with Pity the Billionaire author Thomas Frank. With talking points ripped from headlines just in the past few days, the conversation gets into populist politics being co-opted, the tendency of politicians to reinvent history, a neighborhood where half the population has PhDs, NASCAR, Ayn Rand, and Frank's collection of proletarian fiction. -
The Bat Segundo Show: William Kennedy
Posted on December 9, 2011 | 1 CommentIn this one hour interview, acclaimed writer William Kennedy discusses Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, journalistic squalor, his dealings with Hunter S. Thompson and the Albany political machine, and black power. -
The Bat Segundo Show: Joyce Carol Oates
Posted on December 7, 2011 | 2 CommentsIn this 40 minute radio interview, Joyce Carol Oates discusses The Corn Maiden, the history of narrative violence, the allure of vacuum cleaning, and what it means to be a woman writer. The conversation also features a Dickensian exchange involving a "heater." -
The Bat Segundo Show: Dennis Cooper
Posted on December 6, 2011 | 1 CommentIn this 30 minute radio interview, transgressive fiction writer Dennis Cooper discusses The Marbled Swarm, attempts to tame language, being disliked, and the historical fusion of punk and literary.