Tag / podcast

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segudo Show: Allegra Goodman

In this 25 minute radio interview, Allegra Goodman discusses her latest novel, The Cookbook Collector.

Allegra Goodman appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #355. She is most recently the author of The Cookbook Collector.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Confusing cookbooks with novels.

Author: Allegra Goodman

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Jonathan’s dialogue is so reflective of Sergey Brin. I mean, he says things like “Introduce me. I’m serious.” Very Star Trek-like in his dialogue.

Goodman: Actually, I’m glad you raised that. Because in terms of research into the dot commers, I did not go to libraries obviously and do that kind of research. You can’t research them like you would a group of rare cookbooks. But my research consisted of listening to the way they talk. I’m very interested in voices. The way somebody like Bill Gates talks. The way somebody like Sergey Brin talks. I’m interested in their militant casualness. They’re very bright. They’re very ambitious. They’re very driven. And they’re very chummy and casual. Like “Let’s all just make this happen.” In a way, anti-intellectual in some ways. In their rhetoric. Not that they aren’t intellectual, a lot of them. And I don’t mean to lump all of them together. But I listened to the rhetoric that they used.

Correspondent: Who did you listen to? Specific tapes or recordings?

Goodman: I was interested in Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and some of the younger voices that I was reading in interviews in magazines at the time. The way researchers talk. The way techie people talk. The way programmers talk. Not necessarily just the powerful ones. But these are the words that they use. And I was interested actually – you know, Jess and George are very literary. And their dialogue and their banter has a lot of references to books and things like that. People have mentioned this about my book. But there’s a counterweight that people don’t mention. Maybe they don’t hear it because it’s so obvious. It’s like what we hear all the time. It doesn’t stick out. But it’s very not literary. It’s very anti-intellectual. Techie.

Correspondent: Well, Jonathan quibbles with “tenuous” at one point, looking at it like a mystified word. But this is interesting. Because I’m wondering if one of the motivating factors to write this novel is because the 1990s – God, that time was incredible in the way we documented everything about the dot com era. We documented everything about our culture. We wanted to publicize our own vacuity, so to speak. I’m wondering if this made things easier from a novelistic standpoint.

Goodman: Well, it’s really interesting. Because we did document that era and we still do. It’s been so well documented. But what I always thin is, “Well, what can my contribution be as a novelist?” As opposed to being a historian or an economist. Or even a psychologist. A sociologist. People talked about the different syndromes of sudden wealth at the time. There was a tremendous amount of journalism at the time. And after. The aftermath. The postmortems. So what could I contribute as a novelist? And what I contribute is to write about it from the inside rather than the outside. To give an intimate portrait rather than the broad overview. And as I did in Intuition, to talk about motivation. Which journalists are really not allowed to talk about, but novelists get to do.

The Bat Segundo Show #355: Allegra Goodman (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Prince of Broadway & Adam Langer II

In this one hour radio interview, we talk with Prince of Broadway filmmakers Sean Baker and Darren Dean and Thieves of Manhattan author Adam Langer.

Sean Baker, Darren Dean, and Adam Langer all appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #354.

Sean Baker is the director and co-writer (among other things) of Prince of Broadway. Darren Dean is the producer and co-writer of that same film.

Adam Langer is most recently the author of Thieves of Manhattan. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #175.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Searching for princes and publishing insiders.

Guests: Sean Baker and Darren Dean, and Adam Langer

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPTS FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Because this was a low-budget operation, I have to say that there had to be at least one moment where it was guerrilla shooting.

Baker: Oh yeah.

Correspondent: Could you talk about this? I mean, how much of this was sneaked….

Baker: Do you want to talk about it?

Correspondent: Can you talk about it?

Baker: I don’t know if we can talk about this.

Dean: (laughs)

Correspondent: You can hint at it.

Baker: The fight scene.

Dean: Yeah, we can talk about it.

Baker: I think so.

Dean: We had permits for everything. Which fight scene? The first fight scene or the second fight scene?

Baker: No, the second fight scene.

Dean: We had permits for everything. And we just ran up against the wall. And at the very, very end, we were like, “Oh my god! We forgot this fight scene!”

Baker: Yeah.

Dean: But we shot in the parking lot. We got up that day and we said, “Well, we need to shoot this scene.” Our permits were gone.

Baker: We ran out of insurance that morning.

Correspondent: Wow.

Dean: Everything was gone. This was the last scene we had to shoot or one of the last scenes we had to shoot. And we got up. We went to Prince. And we said, “Here’s $10. Or $15. For each guy you can find. Tell them we need them for twenty minutes. There’s going to be a fight. And meet us at that garage over there.” I went over to the gate of the garage, talked to the guy who was working the garage. I gave him twenty bucks. I said, “We’re going to be here shooting for fifteen minutes and then we’re out.” Shot the scene and literally took off. And that was it.

Baker: That was the one point where we just had to resort to that. Because we were running out of money. We ran out of insurance. And to get the film completed, it took those drastic measures.

* * *

Correspondent: John McNally at the San Francisco Chronicle called you a “publishing insider.”

Langer: Oh yeah.

Correspondent: And I’m wondering why he thought this. This is a book, after all, that has the rather implausible idea of US News & World Report having a books editor. I thought that was rather absurd, I have to say. If you’re a “publishing insider,” that should have been the big tipoff.

Langer: Yeah, I know US News & World Report. But that’s also from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know a hell of a lot about the book industry. The guy who identifies himself as a US News & World Report guy. But publishing insider? I mean, I don’t know. I write books. So I’m inside publishing that way. I’ve never had a job in publishing. I worked as an editor for a book magazine. I don’t know. If you’re a sportswriter, are you inside the sports world? Maybe. I don’t know.

Correspondent: It could very well be that the literary world, or the publishing world, has only so many cliches or is so diaphanous in its subject matter that anyone could, by way of delving into it, could become a publishing insider.

Langer: Yes. Guilty as charged. But I never really thought of myself that way. And I wish I had a few more editorial jobs to give myself a little more streetcred in that regard.

Correspondent: Well, going back to the names of people you brought up, did you have to go through Legal to get permission in house? Was anything considered to be defamatory in any capacity?

Langer: No. Not everything is defamatory in the book necessarily. I mean, I really didn’t want to slag individual people in the book. But at the same time, I wanted it to be taking place in the real publishing world. So I didn’t want anything in there fictional. I mean, if someone’s at a party, I wanted people who would be at these parties intermingling with fictional characters. In the same way I like to talk about how you have Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But you also have Jessica Rabbit running around. So I like the intermingling of cartoonish and reality. But I had no desire or interest in ragging on anybody specific in publishing. And anyone who is libeled in the book is fictional, I would say.

The Bat Segundo Show #354: Prince of Broadway & Adam Langer II (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Daniele Thompson

In this 30 minute radio interview, director Daniele Thompson discusses Change of Plans, how people act during certain times of the day, and how cinematic fantasy can reflect real life.

Daniele Thompson appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #353. Ms. Thompson is most recently the co-writer and director of Change of Plans — a movie that opens in theaters on August 27, 2010.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Confusing his code with his plans.

Guest: Daniele Thopmson

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to start off about confinement and physical space. In Jet Lag, you have two characters who are predominantly occupying a hotel room. In Avenue Montaigne, you have a broader physical space with the cultural world. And in this [Change of Plans], you have, of course, the dinner party. Eleven characters. It’s the ultimate locked room mystery of life. So my question to you is whether you pursue this confinement as a way to generate dramatic conflict. Or whether this reflects more a concern with the home truths that come out with this human relationship with physical space.

Thompson: Well, we’re dealing with the question of time and space in all fiction!

Correspondent: Yes!

Thompson: It’s true that it’s a challenge to have eleven people in the same place one night, and then again one night a year after not in the same place. I don’t want to give out all the…(laughs)

Correspondent: Sure. But we’re talking predominantly the first dinner party.

Thompson: Right. It seemed that it was the ideal frame for the original idea for the film. The original idea for the film — my original ideas are usually very tiny. They’re like little seeds. And then we have to work on it for weeks, and sometimes months, to find out whether that seed is going to give out some kind of flower or tree or whatever.

Correspondent: Or transform in this case to a baroque redwood.

Thompson: Exactly. So the original idea was fascinating by the fact that when we meet friends in the evening, our friends and ourselves are not the same people in the afternoon. The afternoon or the day or whatever. Because I thought we all have few choices in life. Waking up in the morning and going to work is not a choice. It’s an obligation. 7:00, 6:00, 8:00 in France is later than in America. You can make a decision of not going out to dinner. You have that choice. You can call in sick. I have a headache. I have a problem. So if you do go out, the politeness — the least thing you can do is bring something of yourself. The more sunny side of yourself. And that’s what people do. And therefore people lie. People pretend. And the lovely thing about it, and this is why it’s kind of an apology. It’s an aspect of life that I think is very important in social life. You believe it in yourself. It makes you feel better. You have a sort of entr’acte. An intermission in your own life where you have laughed and told funny jokes, and pretended that everything is going well with your couple and your children and your work. And I thought it was a very funny idea to make the audience aware of what these people’s lives were really going on in the afternoon and then see what happens at night.

The Bat Segundo Show #353: Daniele Thompson (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Gary Shteyngart II

In this 40 minute radio interview, novelist Gary Shteyngart discusses Super Sad True Love Story, singularity, conceptual knishes, and whether or not the novel is dead.

Gary Shteyngart appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #352. Mr. Shteyngart is most recently the author of Super Sad True Love Story. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #121 and was ambushed by a Noah Weinberg type earlier in the year.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Too old and too much of a hack for Conde Nast’s cryogenic chambers.

Author: Gary Shteyngart

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: You’ve probably seen this video of this 11-year-old who’s being cyberbullied by 4chan. Did you hear about this? She’s going by the name of Slaughter. And there’s a video where her dad is shouting in the background. And it’s truly horrifying. Surely, I think people would still value their privacy to some degree. Or they would say, “This is going way over the line.” Harassing people. Providing every bit of personal information. I mean, that’s got to trump any seduction by technology.

Shtyengart: Who knows? Things happen so quickly. Our values are changing so quickly. I mean, one of the things that this book doesn’t state, but maybe believes, is that change is okay. Change is going to happen. The end of slavery was good. Racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia — the dilution of all these things in states outside of Arizona. That’s good. But change happens quicker than we’re able to accommodate it. Because we are really flesh and bone and certain whatevers going on in our heads. But there’s only so much we can do. And when we’re addicted to constant change that’s changing at a breakneck speed, what happens when the change overruns us and begins to condition this group mind that we have brought together? It begins to condition us more than we condition the group mind. That can be very depressing. I mean, going back to the television people — when television was revealed — there was a similar worry. But what this does is a little more insidious. It takes away our privacy, for one thing. But it also deputizes all of us to be writers, filmmakers, musicians. Which sounds lovely and democratic. But when a book ceases to become a book, when a book becomes a Kindle application, when it become a file — how different is it in the mind of somebody from any other file that you get? Sitting there at your workstation — if you’re a white-collar worker — all you do all day long is receive bits and bits of information. And in some ways, you begin to privilege these bits of information. But in another way, one email is as good as another. It’s all just coming at you. Streaming at you. You go home. What’s the last thing you want to do? The last thing you want to do is pick up a hard brick like the one I’m holding right now, open it, and begin to read linear text for 330 pages. It’s the last thing you want to do. Who the hell would want to do it? And I think that because America is such a market economy, there’s still a real love of storytelling. That’s why you look at something like The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men. You know, what they’ve done is they’ve very cleverly — and they’ve talked about this — they’ve repurposed fiction — the way it used to exist between covers — in a way that can be transmitted inside an eyeball, in a way that satisfies our craving for storytelling. But without all the added benefits that you get from a book.

Correspondent: Hmmm. Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, to some degree, by having jokes and by writing an entertaining book — which I think this is an entertaining book…

Shteyngart: Thank you.

Correspondent: …you are kind of contributing towards this entertainment-oriented storytelling.

Shteyngart: That’s right.

Correspondent: What makes you different, eh?

Shteyngart: Well, you hit the nail on the head with your big hammer. I still believe that fiction is a form of entertainment. In my crazy world, which may not exist, I’m still hearing about a book that I have to read. And I’m getting out of bed. And I’m running to the bookstore. And I’m buying it. In the way that people run to the cineplex. I’m excited. And that’s what I want fiction to do. If it doesn’t entertain me, then it’s work. When I was researching parts of this book, I had to read a lot of books that were not entertaining. And they were work. What worries me is the academization of literature. When it becomes just an academic pursuit, where we sit around, we create serious works that are then discussed by serious people in serious settings, and the entertainment value is nil. And we become a small tiny society that’s obsessed with things. In other words, we become where poetry is today. Utterly irrelevant. Beyond a certain beautiful wonderful circle of people. And the poetry hasn’t gotten any worse. The poetry’s great. And the fiction hasn’t gotten any worse. Some of it is amazing. But the way we approach these things has become too serious.

Correspondent: Well, to what degree should books be work? I mean, I’d hate to live in a world in which Ulysses was banned simply because it was considered to be too much work. I find it a very marvelous journey to just sift into all those crazy phrases and all that language. But it doesn’t feel like work to me. And I don’t think it feels like work to everybody. And we still have Bloomsday and all that.

Shteyngart: I’m not talking about Ulysses. I’m talking about self-important crap.

Correspondent: Like what?

Shteyngart: Well, I’m not going to say.

Correspondent: Ha ha! Very convenient.

Shteyngart: Very convenient. I’m not going to say. Madame Bovary. Talk about a page-turner. I can’t put that thing down. I read it all the time. Jesus Christ, and there’s still part of me that thinks, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Madame B. Stay away from that schmuck.” Because it’s so damn involving. It’s brilliant. It’s funny as hell. You know, the apothecary. There’s so many elements in it that are working. It’s perfectly researched. The language is just right. It doesn’t — I suppose it could be considered work. But it’s not any more work than one needs to do in order to gain the maximum enjoyment and understanding of these characters.

Correspondent: Yeah. But isn’t there some sort of compromise? Aren’t you trading something away for this happy medium? Are we talking essentially to some degree about approaching books and literature as if it’s a middlebrow medium?

Shteyngart: Oh what does it mean? Middlebrow, lowbrow, highbrow. These brows. I raise my brow at those brows.

Correspondent: Very bromidic

Shteyngart: The whole bromidic stuff is nonsense. What makes Jeffrey Eugenides or Franzen’s works — what makes them stay in our minds? They use whatever language they want. If they need to deploy highfalutin language, they’ll do it. If they need to use street slang, they’ll do that. The range is always there. And you try to capture a world. A place and time you try and capture as best as you can with the best people who you can deploy. The best characters you can deploy doing them. And to do that, you need to care about these people. Maybe I failed. But I certainly have tried with Lenny and Eunice more so than with anyone else. I’ve tried to live inside their skin. I’ve tried to make myself feel the love that they both have toward each other in this very difficult world. And you know, that doesn’t sound highbrow. But to me, it’s the most important thing I can do with my art.

(Image: Morbinear)

The Bat Segundo Show #352: Gary Shteyngart II (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: David Mitchell III

In this 45 minute radio interview, David Mitchell returns to Bat Segundo to discuss The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, aphorisms, words, morality, language, games, and historical truth.

David Mitchell appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #350. He is most recently the author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #1 — the very program that started it all — along with a two-part podcast from 2006 (Show #54 and Show #55).

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Annoyed by hotel security.

Author: David Mitchell

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Mitchell: I think of words as vehicles that convey what is in my imagination into someone else’s. And we’re sort of in a dialogue. Because they don’t just replicate what’s in the imagination. They can alter it. You can mistype and you get a word that actually can be better than the one you meant. Words can feed back and suggest to the imagination, “Well, would it be neater if you imagine this instead?” Language itself is a kind of a writing partner, separate to the writer, who is deploying the language. I think. I think this is true. Has that answered your question?

Correspondent: It sort of does. Actually, there’s one thing I wanted to ask you and that is with Orito. You investigate the flashback of her sexual assault. Yet in the shrine, we don’t really see the true horror of what’s going on. I mean, granted it’s from Orito’s perspective. But I’m wondering why you didn’t really go into what was happening. I mean, she could have observed the engifting. I mean, it sounds horrific in terms of a “what is not seen” standpoint. To use a cinematic idea. But I’m wondering why you didn’t go full-borne. Or if there was a draft where you did in fact go into that dark territory and it proved just too disturbing? I don’t know.

Mitchell: I didn’t know how to do a sex scene that involved engiftment for it to not stink of misogyny. And as a male writer, that’s even worse. You know, in blunt terms, if you can ever hear a writer jerking off as he’s writing, then that’s it. Then the book’s dead. That’s a crude thing to have said.

Correspondent: You can say whatever crude things you like here.

Mitchell: But it’s what I meant. And you kind of know what I mean.

Correspondent: Yeah, I do. But on the other hand, you are dealing with an age from centuries ago where it was in fact a very misogynistic atmosphere.

Mitchell: Oh certainly. Certainly!

Correspondent: You certainly get a lot of that in the book. But I’m just curious why. I mean, don’t we have to really look at these terrible dark feelings squarely in the face in order to really get at the truth?

Mitchell: If it’s happening now — at a place about a quarter of a mile from the Helmsley Hotel that we’ve just been kicked out of in downtown New York, and it’s a social wrong, and women have been trafficked from godforsaken parts of the world and are being exploited like this — dead right. Shine cold hard truth or truth of light onto it. Please. It’s got to be stopped.

This is fiction. Two hundred years ago. And it hasn’t got that same imperative. That wrong, in this day and age, does not exist to be righted. If there’s an echo of Dejima, which is also a place that no longer exists, it’s a novelist’s requisite. That’s what the shrine on Mount Shiranui is. And for me to be offering the scenes — sort of on camera as opposed to off stage, where such physical exploitation is taking place — I think would have gone over a kind of writerly ethical mark in the sand. Which I chose not to go over.

Correspondent: What would that ethical mark in the sand be for you? I mean, it seems to me that other people — like Brian Evenson, who comes to mind — will go across that mark. And by doing so, really risk the idea of being impugned as a misogynist. Even though there is no misogyny in their particular intent. I’m wondering if it’s an overstated concern perhaps on your part. Or whether this is just one of those lines in the sand that you will possibly cross in the future or some capacity. Staring some really terrible truth in the face like that. I mean, you do. Don’t get me wrong. But this is an interesting question.

Mitchell: If it’s a real terrible truth, it has to be stared at the face. If it’s an unreal, made up, quasi-historical fictitious terrible truth, then to be describing institutionalized rape on the page in hard porn vocabulary terms, I feel that it sounds like me jerking off into my laptop. And all of a sudden, 98% of my readers have left the building. And I probably have gone with them, had I been a reader of the book.

Correspondent: Would you call something like Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho jerking off?

Mitchell: Firstly, I can’t say what I’ll be writing in the future. I don’t know. Secondly, to go back to the question that you’ve — well, two questions ago and actually one question ago as well. I don’t begin to sit in judgment on other writers who handle this, who make this call in a different way. And I’ve read that book. And it works very well. It’s distressing and awful and upsetting. And it works very well. And good luck to him really. But here in my book, in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, it felt wrong. And I’ve had a really blessed life. But I’ve also had enough hurt and pain to know it’s real stuff. And it’s not to be toyed around with just because, “Hey, I’m going somewhere no one else has gone before.” No. You have to treat your own female characters with respect as a male writer. Why I’ll stop being afraid to show the moral hypocrisies going on and the way that these things are justified quite plausibly, quite kindly, by the men who are conducting this kind of farm — that I’m not afraid of at all. Why would I be? But the language that they use. Just like a term like “ethnic cleansing.” These soft little euphemisms when reality is too horrific to be true. What gives? What bends? There’s actually language used to describe it. And these euphemisms. Rendering. Waterboarding. They sound quite pleasant. They sound quite Beach Boy-esque, don’t they? Always watch out when you hear words like that. Because it means reality is too horrific for that spade to be called a spade. Now this kind of thing, I really have to explore in the book. And I do it. And that’s great. But the thing itself that is being euphemized about — this farming of newborn children for purposes I’m not going to talk about, because I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it — it’s crucial that I don’t wobble my fingers in that gore in a sort of gratifying, self-regarding, “Look how brave I’m being” kind of a way.

Correspondent: I bring that up because it does resemble the farm that’s in the midsection of Cloud Atlas.

Mitchell: Yeah, it does. Doesn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that. So it does.

Correspondent: And you seem to be really concerned with the idea of slavery. Particularly in the first two parts of the book. And this is why I’m convinced that what we’re talking about here is an interesting fusion between these moral hypocrisies and, of course, the narrative steam engine. At the end, we’ve got the clearly influenced Patrick O’Brian. Which is great and all. But what I’m wondering is: Can you really pursue these dark and dangerous and really heavy topics that involve serious exploitation? I mean, I haven’t even brought up the slave chapter that was from the perspective of Weh. The only time the book slips into the first person. This is also interesting to this question. Can you really explore dark terrain like this and stop short of the mark? That’s the question. Is this something you’re still figuring out?

Mitchell: It is. And it’s an ongoing debate I have with myself. If you feel the book works, then I can and one can. If you feel the book doesn’t work, then perhaps one of the reasons it doesn’t work is because it can’t be done. You do have to slip into — not sexual porn, but a kind of pornography of violence. Maybe you do. I can’t judge my own books. I’ve no idea if they work or not. I never do. Never do.

The Bat Segundo Show #350: David Mitchell III (Download MP3)

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