The Bat Segundo Show: Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #308.

Lawrence Block is most recently the author of Step by Step.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Ruminating upon a life of exquisite indolence.

Author: Lawrence Block

Subjects Discussed: Step by Step as an anti-memoir, exploring childhood experience in print, randomness and finding connections, writing with a greater degree of freedom, Random Walk, concerns about a limited audience, earlier attempts at memoir, attempts by Block to write memoirs in the mid-1990s, the virtues of getting older, being less guarded with age, following up on Block’s remarks from Galut, avarice as the guiding principle, Evan Hunter, Charles Ardai and Hard Case Crime, growing less reticent about limited editions, the $479 Kindle, not carrying about work being preserved, genre fiction as a window to a specific world, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie never going out of print, Block and Judaism, being a creature of intense and transitory enthusiasms, not having a goal, the lack of commonality between writing and race walking, becoming increasingly drawn to pursuits that don’t involve leaving the house, writing screenplays, short stories vs. novels, and Alexander McCall Smith’s Wall Street Journal article and reader “ownership” of the characters.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

lawrence_blockCorrespondent: You mentioned that you had attempted memoir before.

Block: Right.

Correspondent: And that memoir, which I presume is still unfinished, that had more to do with the working life of a writer, I suppose?

Block: That memoir was about the early years. About the years writing pseudonymous books and getting started in the business. And I wrote about 50,000 words of it. And it still exists. And I went back to it. It was part of a multiple contract. It was submitted as part of that. And eventually the day came when I bought it back. It was a tiny portion of the advance. And I don’t think anybody at Morrow was that excited about it. My agent had just bundled things together. And because I didn’t seem inclined to resume it, oddly enough, now I find myself thinking maybe I ought to. That maybe that’s what I might want to do next.

Correspondent: Really?

Block: Yeah.

Correspondent: What brought this on? Was it just from…?

Block: The experience of Step by Step. It’s early days. I have no idea how it will sell. But people seem to like it and it seems to be getting a fair amount of attention. So we’ll see.

Correspondent: Well, I think just speaking as one person familiar with your work, the reason I was piqued when you talked about this unfinished memoir was because there’s almost like a surprising lack of amount of stuff written about that time period where you were writing pseudonymously. There was a book written by the guy who later went on to do Don’t Know Much About History, who wrote a book published about twenty-five years ago about the paperbacking of America [Kenneth C. Davis’s Two-Bit Culture] and went on about mass market paperbacks as a whole. But nothing much about the dawn of Gold Medal and Dell and all the other paperback houses. And the pseudonymous aspect. So I wonder could this interest also have to do with the fact that, with all due respect, you’re also one of the few people left who remember.

Block: Yeah. That might have something to do with it. Also, when I wrote — I think it was about ’95, ’94 or ‘5, that I wrote the memoir. And I hadn’t been planning to, as I may have mentioned in there. I was stuck on something else. I had time booked at Ragdale. And I had to write something. And at the time — that was what, fourteen years ago? — I was fifty-five, fifty-six years old. It felt early days to be writing a memoir to me.

Correspondent: Right.

Block: And before the memoir genre became something.

Correspondent: Now you have memoirs by twentysomethings.

Block: I know. I know it. “I remember the birth canal.” (laughs)

BSS #308: Lawrence Block (Download MP3)

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The Bat Segundo Show: Laurie Sandell

Laurie Sandell recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #306.

Laurie Sandell is the author of The Impostor’s Daughter.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Wondering if the coalminer was an impostor.

Author: Laurie Sandell

Subjects Discussed: Chicken recipes, the quest for truth within memoir, how narrative shapes and stretches truth, subjective vs. objective accounts, the essay written anonymously for Esquire, memory vs. concrete evidence, emails from Ashley Judd, how hard evidence enhances a visual diagram, lawyers sifting through evidence, the use of clothing against background, working with a colorist, becoming one’s parents, the use of motion lines, adopting comic book semiotics, drawing from an intuitive part of the brain, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, feeling liberated in comic form vs. restrictions in textual form, maintaining privacy vs. spilling all details to the public, diagramming environment, knowing the lay of the land, static panels, consulting graphic novels, Scott McCloud, arrows pointing to figures, strange stays in five-star hotels, sketching out the book before drawing, taking the story arc from the text version of The Impostor’s Daughter, structure and spontaneity, maintaining momentum vs. contending with painful memories, emotional change and artistic change, whether or not writing is the proper way to exorcise demons, the story of Sandell’s father as a former sense of identity, the ethical dilemmas of narrative seduction, and fearlessness.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

lauriesandellCorrespondent: I should point out I’m not trying to insist that stretching [the truth] is necessarily a bad thing. I’m merely pointing out that memory, as we all know, is a fallacious instrument.

Sandell: Yes, it is.

Correspondent: It’s been said that memory is the greatest liar of them all. It’s been said — by, I believe Lincoln — that you have to have a great memory to be a great liar.

Sandell: Right.

Correspondent: So given this conundrum, I’m wondering to what degree you relied on your own memory and to what degree you relied on reference shots. You have, for example, illustrations that crop up within the course of the book. This leads me to wonder about other specific details. But maybe we can start on memory vs. concrete evidence.

Sandell: Well, you know, it was a mix of memory and concrete evidence. On the one hand, I had a lot of concrete evidence because I had interviewed my father over a period of two years and I tape recorded our conversations with his knowledge. This was leading up to the Esquire piece when I had a 300-page transcript. So most of the things that my father said in the book came directly from those transcripts. So he’s telling stories from his past. Those came directly from my father’s mouth.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Sandell: As far as — I’m trying to think. I don’t know. What else?

Correspondent: Well, I could actually cite specific examples.

Sandell: Okay, sure.

Correspondent: For example, the difference between the narration and what is actually spoken in the text bubbles.

Sandell: Right.

Correspondent: Here’s one example. When you’re working at the office, you have a text box point to the screen: “Have you considered inpatient treatment.” We don’t actually see the email on the screen.

Sandell: Okay.

Correspondent: We actually see your particular perspective.

Sandell: Right.

Correspondent: And so I want to ask you about why that particular emphasis — I mean, that’s inherently subjective. We’re counting on your subjective viewpoint as to what is on the screen. As opposed to later on, when we actually see what’s on your screen, when you’re on your laptop in your motel room.

Sandell: I need to be honest. The reason you didn’t see that screen was probably because it didn’t fit in that box.

Correspondent: Okay.

Sandell: And so I had to deal with little callouts so you could actually see what was on the screen. But the interesting thing about the process of putting together all this evidence — a lot of it really was evidence — is that there were so many emails. For example, that email was an email, I believe, from Ashley Judd.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Sandell: And I have those emails from Ashley Judd. I have the emails from my father. You know, I worked with a private investigator for two years. So I have all of his information and the lawsuits he compiled and all the various evidence and things written by my father. You know, I think — did you ever read Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy?

Correspondent: No, I never read that.

Sandell: It’s a beautiful memoir. Ann Patchett later went on to write Truth & Beauty: A Friendship.

Correspondent: That’s right.

Sandell: And one of the things that Ann Patchett said in her afterword — after Lucy died, Ann Patchett wrote an afterword to the book — and she described how, at a reading, someone said to Lucy Grealy, “How did you remember all those details about your past?” And she said, “I didn’t remember it. I wrote it.” And people were a little bit up in arms about that. But she was pointing out the fact that this was a piece of art, it’s a piece of subjective memory, and the most important thing is to show the emotional truth of the situation. And I would say that in my case, because I have so much evidence, and evidence that Little Brown asked to say and anytime I’ve done television, they’ve actually asked to see the evidence, I feel pretty comfortable that there’s not going to be any big explosive James Frey situation.

Correspondent: Well, to what degree were they asking for the evidence? Because we’re talking about transcripts. We’re talking about investigative reporting. This is all text right now. And here you are. You have a visual document here.

Sandell: Yes.

Correspondent: You have to construct something from the text here. So it’s a wonder that evidence even means anything if it’s a visual result.

Sandell: I think it does. I mean, the visual result is obviously my memory. It’s the way I remember the situation.

(Image: Brantastic)

BSS #306: Laurie Sandell (Download MP3)

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The Bat Segundo Show: Dick Cavett

Dick Cavett appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #305.

Dick Cavett’s column, “Talk Show,” regularly appears at the New York Times.

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(PROGRAM NOTE: During the course of our conversation, a “Professor Robert Castelli from John Jay College” — who apparently has a background in law enforcement — pushed in Mr. Cavett’s chair, causing Mr. Cavett to accost him. This unusual social moment, which was resolved with bonhomie, can be experienced at the 38:04 mark.)

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Examining his birth certificate for potential Nebraskan roots.

Guest: Dick Cavett

Subjects Discussed: Books that Cavett may or may not have authored, jobs that Cavett has worked, being a professional magician as a teenager, Cavett’s brief career as a caddy, humorless Germans, James Ellroy, starting the Caddies Hall of Fame, Groucho Marx’s golf ball-enhanced hat, stalking Jack Paar in the bathroom, the dreadful cliche “It’s who you know, not what you know,” being drawn to living with showbiz people, Paul Douglas, meeting Groucho at George S. Kaufman’s funeral, Studs Terkel, being born with the showbiz urge, fame vs. ideas, whether or not showbiz people are “real” people, Nixon’s blue-suit adventures in Montauk, separating the real Cavett from the telegenic Cavett, Johnny Carson’s failure to remember his guest lineup that night, learning how to listen over the years, real listening vs. telegenic listening, Jimmy Fallon, on not relying on a catalog of quips, overpreparing for an interview, advice Cavett picked up from Jack Paar, the icky word “share,” Werner Erhard and est, “oversharing,” Twitter, on not getting Mike Nichols on the show, interviews vs. conversations, when Cavett had to telephone potential guests to get them on the show, Frank Sinatra, Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” secretly taping a telephone conversation with Marlon Brando, phrases that Brando used, Cary Grant, having to contend with armies of publicists, the worthlessness of many present talk show appearances, talent coordinators, allegations from 1960s Toronto journalists that Cavett was “attractively functional,” the bright orange shag rug on the ABC set, being bombarded by constant information and subwindows on television, TV as GUI, why Cavett didn’t renew his six-year contract at CNBC, the mispronunciation of “nuclear,” David Frost, the problems with occupying vacant rooms, Peter Ustinov, claims from executives that people won’t sit still for a long-form interview, the relationship between William Peter Blatty’s appearance and the success of The Exorcist, the number of panties that Cavett has received over the years, resistance from ABC, the infamous Norman Mailer-Gore Vidal show, the Mailer-Torn brawl, Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots, the Lillian Hellman/Mary McCarthy feud, making sure that writers could talk on television, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart as “the most trusted newsman in America.”

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

cavettCorrespondent: I’m curious about this period of you coming to New York. Coming into town. You’re on the prowl trying to get work as an actor. Before you eventually become a copy boy for Time Magazine.

Cavett: That’s right. I finally made it. (laughs)

Correspondent: I should point out that your efforts to befriend numerous showbiz figures here in New York would in some cases, by today’s standards, be considered stalking. You know, Jack Paar in the bathroom and all that.

Cavett: Yeah.

Correspondent: I’m curious. Were you drawn by the notion of “It’s who you know rather than what you know” — or what was the impetus for this?

Cavett: I had heard that dreadful cliche, usually used in the same conversation as “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” and “Some of my best friends are Jews.” In fact, two friends of mine used all three one evening and hit the jackpot. But anyway to get to your question.

Correspondent: Wow. And they’re still your friends?

Cavett: They’re both dead. So I don’t see them that often.

Correspondent: Using the phrase has killed them, I presume.

Cavett: It mighta. If cliches could kill.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Cavett: But what was the one we were working on?

Correspondent: Oh, we were kinda talking about who you know.

Cavett: Oh, who you know. Nobody ever says, “It’s whom you know.”

Correspondent: No, they don’t.

Cavett: Even though my father was an English teacher, I never did. And I was just drawn to famous successful showbiz people and wanted to live among them.

Correspondent: Really.

Cavett: Be one of them. And that took me to accost — on my first day in New York — Dave Garroway, who was out in front of the Today Show window. And speaking of making it around as an actor, one day, the great Paul Douglas — film actor for those of us older than 30 — was standing next to me waiting for a light to change waiting on Madison Avenue. And I said, “Mr. Douglas, where would you go to look for work today as an actor?” And he said, “I couldn’t answer,” and walked on. (laughs) He wasn’t impolite.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Cavett: He told the truth.

Correspondent: He probably had to get to an appointment. I’m sure it wasn’t anything personal.

Cavett: I still love him in the movies.

Correspondent: But you managed to coax Groucho into buying you lunch. And I’m curious if it was a scenario involving charisma or blackmail. I mean, what happened here? What did you attribute your ability to get on with so many people? So many bigwigs here? Or did you stalk them all like Jack Paar?

Cavett: Well, I’ve never given that much thought. I don’t know what it is. Something in me appealed to him apparently enough. I met him at George S. Kaufman’s funeral — or after it on the street. Groucho was starting to come down Fifth Avenue. Puerto Rican Day Parade booming along beside. And I said, “Groucho, I’m a big fan of yours.” Then he said, “Well, if we get any hotter, I can use a big fan.” I should have said “gets any hotter,” which is what he said. Retake. (laughs) And Groucho said, “Well if it gets any hotter, I can use a big fan.” There. That’s right, isn’t it?

Correspondent: Yeah, sure. Sure.

Cavett: Yeah. And the joke still works.

Correspondent: Yeah, it does.

Cavett: Even though it was years and years ago.

Correspondent: Actually, we should have six different attempts at this joke.

Cavett: Yeah.

Correspondent: Just to show the Cavett mind.

Cavett: Well, it shows the Groucho mind in a way. Because I never saw him misspeak a joke or a line. I only saw Hope, who I used to worship and watch and hang around when I was working for Carson/Parr. When we were out in California, I would watch Hope tape his show all the time. Once or twice, he would blow a monologue or a joke, and get a bigger laugh about doing that. As Johnny could.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Cavett: And really any good comic could. But where was I? Oh, Groucho. So we started walking down the street and chatting. Beautiful day. And I remember thinking, “This may be the best day of my life.” And I’m still not sure it was not. When we got all the way down the Plaza, where he was lunching — alone. And on the way down, he insulted every doorman. And then a Puerto Rican man in a bright suit happily enjoying his day saw Groucho and made a great grin. And he said, “Com-e-dy!” (laughs)

Correspondent: Yeah.

Cavett: And Groucho said, “Tell me. Is it true that you were cutting sugar cane only a month ago? You seem to have succeeded with that suit.” Well, anyway, it entertained me and the man. And we got to 59th Street. And he said to me, in the voice from the game show, “Well you seem like a nice young man and I’d like you to have lunch with me.” And I thought, “Am I going to awaken in a moment and find this to be only a dream?”

Correspondent: The question I have is why did showbiz people appeal more than, say, regular people. Like say the doorman, for example. I know that over the course of your show, you had a number of intriguing cultural figures and unusual people that wouldn’t be on other late-night shows. But on the other hand, it does make me curious why culture, in some sense, was the great prism for which you could conduct these many lengthy conversations with these people. Why didn’t you go the Studs Terkel route? I’m curious.

Cavett: How do you see the Studs Terkel route?

Correspondent: Well, he talked with everybody.

Cavett: Talking to?

Correspondent: He talks with writers. He talks with ditchmen.

Cavett: Talk to janitors. Or, in the politically correct age, custodians.

Correspondent: Exactly.

Cavett: (laughs)

Correspondent: I’m old enough that when I went to elementary school, they called them custodians back then.

Cavett: They did even then? Oh.

Correspondent: Yeah, they did. Back in the 70s.

BSS #305: Dick Cavett (Download MP3)

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The Bat Segundo Show: Maggie Estep

Maggie Estep appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #304.

Maggie Estep is most recently the author of Alice Fantastic.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Hoping to see Alice at the next opportunity.

Author: Maggie Estep

Subjects Discussed: Efforts to determine if it’s good to be happy, animals throughout Estep’s work, how love for animals is directly proportional to love for human beings, Of Mice and Men, literary allusions, “The Rocking Horse Winner,” women who are described as tiny, the reverse symmetry of characters being kicked out of bed, mother figures, manuscript revision and cleavers, the difficulties of writing something in 1872, being accused of deliberately being shocking, idioms that pop up in lines, “take a raincheck” as a generational cliche, fantastical survival systems, the ethics of plucking from real life, getting bogged down in the minutiae, living in the Lower East Side in the 1980s, characters with brown hair, being dismissive of blonde people, Uma Thurman, people carrying gingerbread houses, Rikers Island, getting procedures right, nothing but raw chicken necks in the fridge, the naming criteria for 17 dogs, Ira from Yo La Tengo, people who were mad at Estep’s first book, asking permission from lifting life experience, Estep’s horse racing experience, soundtracks that are more musical than fingers on a chalkboard, internal rhyme, Estep’s spoken word background, vomiting as a MacGuffin, being mildly clumsy, vacation, and quirky translation.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

maggieestepEstep: “Our love of animals is directly proportionate to our indifference to human beings.” It’s a little bit of an exaggeration. I grew up around all sorts of horses and cats and dogs. To this day, my mom — if I want to get her talking to me for more than two minutes — it has to be about the dogs. So it’s an off-the-nose dialogue where we’re talking about the dogs. But really we’re talking about something else.

Correspondent: Interesting. And in this, you are talking about something else with the dogs. Because from the very beginning, the big oaf with the puppy and all this reminded me very much of Lennie from Of Mice and Men, among many other literary allusions. First of all, I want to ask if some of these literary allusions that are there — “The Rocking Horse Winner,” for example — were these intentional or were these just part of the whole…?

Estep: It’s never, never deliberate. It’s all there swimming around in my little brain and comes out inadvertently sometimes.

Correspondent: Little brain. I wanted to ask you about littleness. Because one thing that is very curious is that many of the women in this book are described as tiny.

Estep: Oh.

Correspondent: You have the tiny goth girl waitress. And Eloise is described as tiny by her mother. And, of course, Kimberly is described as tiny. And then, of course, there’s Tina in this. Tiny. Tina.

Estep: (laughs)

Correspondent: I’m getting a little theme here that most of the women in this book are tiny. And I’m curious as to why this is. What is it with this modifier here?

Estep: I actually had not really thought of that. (laughs) I don’t know. But Alice, who is sort of the main one, is not tiny. She’s rangy. I don’t know. There’s something about small women who are very tough that’s really a beautiful prototype. And until you pointed it out, I didn’t realize that’s what was going on in the book.

Correspondent: There’s an inverse ratio between height and toughness in your mind?

Estep: (laughs)

Correspondent: Is that your theory?

Estep: Maybe. That might be something.

Correspondent: Okay. Did you develop this theory over the course of time? Or did it just apply to the particular universe of this novel?

Estep: It just came out at this very moment. (laughs)

BSS #304: Maggie Estep (Download MP3)

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The Bat Segundo Show: Philip Alcabes

Philip Alcabes appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #303.

Philip Alcabes is most recently the author of Dread.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Attempting to understand the certainty of certain dread, and the dread of dreadful certainty.

Author: Philip Alcabes

Subjects Discussed: Overstating the three Ps (pandemic, pestilence, and plague), contending with a hypothetical situation involving a Norway rat eating your sandwich for lunch, the acceptable level of fear that is required in Western society, the media’s initial coverage in 1982 of AIDS as “the gay plague,” fear of social dissolution, epidemiology as a reasonable response to a disease outbreak, Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan, whether initial irrational fear is demagogic, germ theory, calls for healthy skepticism, the linguistic misuse of “tragedy,” being flexible with the word “epidemic,” swine flu and confirmed deaths, reconsidering hysterical value, recent cases of plague, the National Research Act of 1974, Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the ethics of administering PolyHeme to unconscious patients in Chicago, contending with correlations between race and poverty, how a story about an epidemic becomes shaped around race, Nushawn Williams, parallels between painting Xs on houses infected with plague and prejudices in the 1980s against gay clubs (and calls to tattoo gay men), positive and negative liberty and how much the government is permitted to go in protecting us, the possibility of scientists being co-opted into political campaigns, the ethics of tweeting, and science at the behest of elasticity of terms.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

palcabesCorrespondent: Reading this book, I got the sense that the three Ps — pandemic, pestilence, and what’s the other one? plague! — that we’re essentially overstating them. But I want to start off by offering a hypothetical scenario. If I’m sitting at a restaurant, and a Norway rat jumps onto the table and starts nibbling at my sandwich, I’m going to have some understandable concerns. So I guess the question is, if we are in a culture of needless dread about the three Ps, what is the amount of fear that is acceptable for you? Some general terms.

Alcabes: So what is the amount of fear that is acceptable?

Correspondent: Yeah.

Alcabes: Well, I accept any amount of fear. People feel the fear that they fear. But to answer your question about the rat, would I eat the sandwich? No. Would I think I’m going to die because I saw the rat? No. Is that what you’re getting at?

Correspondent: It’s what I’m getting at.

Alcabes: Would I think that the black death is about to start again? Also, no. And do I think that we’re too worried about pandemics, pestilence, and plague? Well, we’re how worried we are. What’s odd is that we’re as worried as we are, given that we know so much. In the 14th century, which is when plague came to Europe and became what we now know as the Black Death, people didn’t know much about that illness. They didn’t actually know that it was connected to rats. They didn’t know that it was spread by fleas jumping from rats to humans. They didn’t know that it was caused by a bacterium. They didn’t know exactly how to prevent it. They didn’t know, as we do now, how we can cure it. It can be cured now by common antibiotics. But given that we know so much now, why do we get so panicky? Why do we still think that we’re about to be consumed by some new black death? And that’s the more puzzling question. It’s really the question that launched my book.

Correspondent: When the media initially covered AIDS in 1982, they referred to it as “the gay plague.” But one might argue that here we are twenty-seven years later and most people are not going to use the insensitive term “gay plague” to reference AIDS or HIV. And I’m wondering if you’re possibly being a little hard on people when some new development or some “epidemic” actually occurs. Because people are going to try and want to pinpoint it. They’re going to be frightened. They’re going to be scared. How do we transmute that initial impulse of fear that goes into atavistic territory into something that is more reasonable along the lines of what you’re suggesting? Since we have the knowledge, how do we deploy it among the general public so that they don’t freak out like this?

Alcabes: You know, it would be unreasonable for me to say, “Don’t be afraid.” People are afraid. And, in fact, I think that one of the premises of my book is that we carry with us innate, inchoate dreads. And the innate ones are about death, at least from what the psychologists tell us. And there are inchoate ones — I think this is what you meant by “atavistic territory” — that have to do with a kind of ineffable dark realm of randomness where anything can happen. And I think some people have called that a fear of social disarray, of the dissolution of society. And I think that’s a way to put it. We’re afraid of whatever’s out there. And it’s not unreasonable to think that we’re going to stop being so afraid. I do think that it’s quite reasonable to do epidemiology on it. I was trained as an epidemiologist. It’s a reasonable response to collect data and try and make sense of a disease outbreak. Where I think we let ourselves go wrong, where we let ourselves harm our own society, is when we let our fears shape narrative, if you will, of disease outbreaks, in which somebody’s to blame. Somebody has crossed a line, imperiled the rest of us. And I think your example of the early days of AIDS is really well taken. Because that’s a great example of some people looking at AIDS as a kind of ratification of suspicions they had about what some people were doing that was “bad,” right? That people were suspicious that the sexual revolution of the ’60s was going too far or who had a specific fear about homosexuality allowed themselves to see AIDS as a validation of those anxieties.

BSS #303: Philip Alcabes (Download MP3)

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