The Virtual Memories Show

Biblical scholar David M. Carr rejoins the show for a conversation about his fantastic new book, UNMAKING EDEN: Genesis and the Domestication of the World (Cambridge University Press). We talk about how his close reading of the first 11 chapters of Genesis opened up a new understanding of how human beings related to non-human beings (animals, that is), the concept of onto-stories and how those chapters set up a world of subjugation and othering, how Tiger King inspired him to write this book, and how God's first idea of the world fell out of harmony and led God into becoming a genocidal maniac (my words, not David's). We get into how we need to find a new story to change our domestication-programming so we can see what it means to live in relation to others and not just see everyone/everything in terms of utility, how integrating indigenous, non-western traditions can help with that process (without just being a la carte cultural appropriation), how AI may accelerate our self-domestication, and how embracing a sabbath might be the first step in fixing our world. We also discuss David's jazz-funk organ habit, his other project on scroll technology, his Quaker-Buddhist outlook and how he continues to pursue traditions that range farther from the Bible, what it means for something to be freely given, and more. Follow David's podcast, The Bible And The Living World, and listen to our 2016 conversation • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With PEPPER (Toon Books), Karl Stevens brings us the latest adventures of existentialist housecat, Penny, and her eponymous sister. We talk about the fun of making a sequel to 2021's PENNY, the challenge of getting all the cats' markings right, how he found the right balance in the voices & outlooks of his main cat-characters, how giving Pepper mystical powers allowed him to get away from drawing his apartment over and over, and how cat comics PULL. We get into his realist drawing style and the underexamined potential of realistic art in comics, his upcoming gallery show of oil paintings, how he might fuse his interest in comics and oils by exploring narrative genre paintings, his collaborations with other writers (and the cartoonists he'd love to write for), and how listening to music on vinyl gives him an excuse to get up from the drawing table and stretch every 20 minutes. We also discuss Something Fell, the page-by-page podcast he co-hosts about Dave Sim's Cerebus comics to try to appreciate Sim's art and storytelling modes, his recent focus on Pre-Raphaelite painters, his progress with finishing the last book of Knausgaard's My Struggle, his thoughts on making one more big autobio book, life after having to say goodbye to Penny and whether he's drawn her since, and a lot more. Follow Karl on Instagram and check out his Linktree • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

She's been on the show to talk about her essays, novel, and memoir, and now Wallis Wilde-Menozzi gets to talk about translation! With Emerging from the Winter Sea: Selected Poetry and Prose (FSG Poetry), Wallis has translated a career-spanning collection by Antonella Anedda. We talk about her love of Anedda's writing and how it led to their friendship, how Italian poetry addresses past poetry and changes in language, how the island of Sardinia stands in for the "I" in Anedda's poems, and how Anedda chooses the world over herself (a la Kafka) and how her writing changes over the course of decades. We get into how Wallis tends to lose herself in the voice of the people she translates (which is why she's resisted requests to be a writer's official translator), the masked, genderless figure of the Componidori and how it corresponds to Anedda's art-identity, how Anedda shows us reconciling ourselves to suffering and cruelty by associating it with someone else, and how Italian poetry's ambiguity contrasts with American poetry's "just the facts, ma'am" vibe. We also discuss These Times and how Wallis' activism in the '60s contrasts with today's clicktivism, the new memoir she's working on, how personal change can be like the discovery of dark matter, and more. • Listen to our 2013, 2017, and 2022 conversations • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With DIANA (Abrams ComicArts), Nate Powell has completed his "accidental triptych" of Ozark horror & the punk scene. During SPX weekend, he returned to the show to talk about the creative leap he took with this book, the ways that DIANA fulfills but doesn't complete the stories of COME AGAIN and FALL THROUGH, why this book is set during the transitional period of the early '90s, and the challenge of writing characters in their early 20s while he's approaching his 50s (and what it meant for Frank Miller to write about 50-something Bruce Wayne when he was in his 20s). We get into his re-imagining of the punk music/art scene in Arkansas, the ways horror-genre gave him a framework on which to build story, his use of duotone and spot colors to get a midcentury color palette for the book, how he's making his art messier as an unconscious reaction to generative AI, and his lead character's self-identity and the importance of being your own canon. We also discuss how Bob Ross got him started on art, and what he got from rewatching Bob's show during lockdown, the joy of his annual pilgrimage to Small Press Expo and embrace of the comics community, his formative experiences at School of Visual Arts, the total lack of crossover between the readers of his John Lewis biography and his personal work, the right age to expose kids to the golden age of the X-Men, and more. Follow Nate on Instagram and Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With his amazing IN THE CITY comics (self-published), cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz manages to capture the ephemerality and dynamism of urban life, fueled by the stories of bar and club patrons. We talk about how he began In The City and how it unfolded and grew over five parts, how he learned to let his minor characters breathe and have their own stories, why his stand-in plays the Harpo-ish role of mute observer, and why The City isn't a specific city (but isn't Chicago). We get into Orwell's 10 rules for a perfect pub and why his new coda to In The City is (tentatively) named Moon Under Water, why it's better for his characters to embody flâneur-hood instead of his trying to seem smart by being explicit about it, how he began drawing cityscapes to get over how much he hated drawing backgrounds and then fell in love with that mode, how Evan Dorkin's Milk & Cheese was his gateway drug into indy comics, how it took him quite a while to find his voice and comics-mode, and why he hopes to keep making comics about The City for a long time. We also discuss his fashion choices and hat fixation, and how led to him getting (visually) mistaken for Seth (or cosplay-/stunt double Seth), the importance of showing up at comics events, getting stories from his adventures in different cities (esp. the bars, of course), how he's the second guest of mine named Karl who has a comic about his cat, and more. Follow Karl on Instagram, Bluesky and Flickr, and check out his Etsy shop, • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Let's celebrate a New Orleans legend with Alison Fensterstock and Michael Tisserand's fantastic new book, BUNNY MATTHEWS: HIS LIFE, ART, AND OBSESSIONS (Historic New Orleans Collection)! We talk about the role Bunny Matthews played in shaping New Orleans' identity with his comics, music reviews, art, and cultural criticism, how Alison & Michael found their collaborative voice for the book, their first encounters with Bunny's work, his satirical comic about David Duke that thankfully never got published, and how Vic and Nat'ly became a cultural phenomenon (and how Bunny drew the grossest po'boys ever). We get into Bunny's role in parsing Yat culture and promoting music, the lengths they went to find his earliest writing and drawings, Bunny's influences (and the shadow of Stan Mack in the alt-weekly world), how he quoted Cab Calloway next to Balzac, his transition to painting, and the masterpiece of his Nint'Wardica canvas, in response to the BP oil disaster. We also discuss the decline of alt-weeklies, the obit pre-write that led to this project, how thrilled they are with the design and production of the book, what it means to be a New Orleanian, and a lot more. Follow Alison on Instagram, and follow Michael on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With his fantastic debut graphic novel, THE NIGHTINGALES (Avid Reader Press), Emil Wilson tells a heartbreaking and beautiful coming-of-age story of the AIDS era. We talk about his father's decision in 1985 to bring a work-friend with AIDS into their home (in a small town in Oregon), how he fictionalized his family and the story well enough to make the fiction true, how he figured out the amazing sketchbook style of the book, and how he only came to comics in his 50s, following a 25-year career as an at director an ad agency. We get into his experiences at The Center for Cartoon Studies, where he was older than most every other student, the Nora Krug book that was his gateway drug into comics, my advice when he began this project, his work as an AIDS buddy for Gay Men's Health Crisis in the '80s and how younger people he meets have no knowledge of the AIDS era, how making The Nightingales changed his understanding of his family, and how it felt to make a "user's manual" for his father. We also get into the contrast between advertising and comics, how making comics can feel a bit like making films or videos, how the language to describe comics may need to evolve just as the language for gay life had to, why this book isn't a memoir but is full of faces, how kindness can be complicated, and more. Follow Emil on Instagram, and Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Jonathan Ames returns to celebrate his fantastic new crime novel, A PAST WITHOUT PICTURES (Mysterious Press). We talk about his obsession with pulp fiction, how he found the character of Maria Cole and her tortured relationship with her father after setting out to write a companion to You Were Never Really Here, how hard (and rewarding) it is to craft page-turning prose, and how he compares the experience of reading Death in Venice to reading a Parker novel. We get into how his Buddhist interests are under the surface of this book and are on the surface of his Happy Doll novels (including the one he's working on!), how writing is a form of seeing, and how good writing helps the reader create a movie in their mind. We also discuss his samsara of not reaching out to people, the bit from Our Town that guides him to be more loving and present in the world, the shock of seeing his lengthy letters from the '80s and '90s, why LA is so weird for me, why he reads different translations of the Tao, how Marc Maron gives us a model of how to learn to listen, and more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With his new book, LIKE SWIMMERS (New York Review Comics), Dash Shaw brings us a supernatural murder mystery set in COVID-era Richmond, VA. We talk about how he uses that story to explore memory, identity, art, marriage, and the social breakdown in America, how a murder mystery helped him reflect on the losses of COVID, LIKE SWIMMERS' pamphlet comic-feel and how that pay tribute to a lost friend who liked very different comics than what Dash usually makes, and how writing this story in the middle of COVID helped him capture details he'd never have recalled after the fact. We get into how we uncover different versions or aspects of the people we've lost, why he eschews three-act structures to find new shapes of storytelling, his use of Richmond as a character (and the very bizarre Kroeger that he couldn't fit into the book), and what it was like to go jogging in 2020 when there were snipers on rooftops. We also talk about his peripatetic project management style, what he thinks about Roy Lichtenstein's art and what it means to love cliches, getting inspiration from an unfinished Winsor McCay cartoon, working with New York Review Comics for several books, how coloring his comics is almost as tough as writing them, and more. Follow Dash on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Five-Timer Club Alert! Essayist Phillip Lopate rejoins the show as we celebrate his wonderful new book, A WASHINGTON IRVING SKETCH BOOK (Princeton)! We talk about the origins of the biography, incl. how he wound up with a 12-volume set of Washington Irving's complete works, his choice to write the bio in the form of sketches, how Irving as America's first professional writer is a precursor/trailblazer for Phillip's career, and how well Irving understood the fickleness of literary fame. We get into 19th Century American lit and its tensions with Europe, Irving's fixation on Spain, why he wrote under pseudonyms even late in his career, and how Phillip's affection for Irving deepened over the course of the book, We also discuss why personal essayists tend not to write autobiographies and how Phillip's complicated relationship with his brother, Leonard Lopate, how Leonards's death spurred him to write a memoir, his passion for visiting writers' homes (including Irving's Sunnyside and Montaigne's tower), his career-long goal of passing along the writing that's worth keeping (whether through teaching, editing essay anthologies, or appearing multiple times on some guy's podcast), our shared exhilaration over the Knicks' championship (and how we can't get excited about baseball this season), and a lot more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter