LA Review of Books

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi joins co-hosts Eric Newman, Kate Wolf, and Medaya Ocher to discuss her first novel, Call Me Zebra, released to universal praise this past month. In his review for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Nathan Scott McNamara, describes how Zebra, “the precocious narrator, a self-proclaimed “connoisseur of literature,… is unvaryingly brilliant and deadpan funny… the smartest narrator you will encounter this year.” Through her travels, tragedies, romance, and voracious reading of canonical literature, this book of ideas captures the “the experience of exile, deftly threading the narrative with theory while also using theory to pull the reader in.” In conversation with Azareen, we learn about a young author ambitious enough to take all this on and produce a captivating work of literature. Also, Giulia Sissa stops by to tell how she fell in love with Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (À la recherche du temps perdu) as a young woman and remains under its spell to this day.

LARB Radio was live at The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA this past Sunday at the Book Release Party for author Tim DeRoche's and illustrator Daniel Gonzalez's 21st century recasting of Mark Twain's American Classic: The Ballad of Huck and Miguel. Co-hosts Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher facilitated the main event, a free flowing discussion with Tim and Daniel that captivated the overflow crowd with reflections on a book that, much like the original, illuminates many of the central concerns and crises of contemporary American society. Tim and Daniel explain the project's evolution: why Huck's companion Jim, a runaway slave, became Miguel an undocumented migrant; the Mississippi became the LA River; and how Los Angeles, with its limitless diversity and underappreciated nature, plays a staring role accentuated by Daniel's gorgeous prints. Once again, the searing social critique resonates because our hearts are drawn in by the battered-but-unbroken adolescent who finds on the river an older role model, something unavailable to him in "proper" society, in the person of a fellow outcast, Miguel - a human connection, as with Jim, all-but-forbidden by white America. Also, Dan Lopez drops by to share his Olympic Fever, by recommending a book that the Winter Games inspired him to read: Barbara Demick's study of life in the world's most closed and mysterious country, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.

On this Valentine's week, we celebrate jealousy! Giulia Sissa, Professor of Classics and Political Science at UCLA, joins hosts Eric, Kate, and Medaya to discuss her new book Jealousy: A Forbidden Passion; and elucidate how jealousy, though much maligned, is in fact central to our greatest desire, passionate amorous love. Sure, jealousy can hurt like hell, can be an unstoppable force of (creative) destruction; indeed, the soul-wrenching tales of Medea and Othello have universal resonance - but, as Sissa explains, jealousy is much more than fearful agony. Jealousy operates whenever we desire another, for then we are desiring to be desired by someone who is free to shun us or choose another; and that vulnerability both heightens, and is elemental to, love. Also, our own Kate Wolf recommends Sam the Cat, a short story collection from 2001 by Matthew Klam with surprising plot twists that challenge the artifice of sexist machismo and have an uncanny resonance in the #MeToo moment.

Befitting the scope of Min Jin Lee's National Book Award-nominated novel Pachinko, this interview sweeps delightfully through a broad range of subjects - the challenges of writing a historical novel, of representing the unique pressures felt by immigrants, 20th Century Korean and Japanese relations, Presbyterian theology, fate, the dangers inherent in the American pursuit of happiness, the importance of valuing suffering and perseverance, and a show stopping meta-moment where we reflect on the possibilities of a LARB Radio interview - animated throughout by the joy and intensity that co-hosts Eric Newman, Kate Wolf, and Medaya Ocher experienced reading Min Jin Lee's masterpiece. Also, Medaya recommends Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman, a biographical study of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes' relationship that uses this legendary, tragic, near-mythical relationship to critique the distorting operation of conventional biographies.

A couple of weeks ago, LARB hosted an event that featured science writer K.C. Cole in dialogue with Actor and Author Alan Alda to discuss the ideas that animate his new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating. A lifelong science-enthusiast, Alda tells how he parlayed his experience hosting a TV series produced by Scientific American into working with scientists to help them better represent their work to the public (and to each other) by teaching them improvisational acting. The results were measurable and impressive; and, if people are willing, the evidence suggests that the lessons are universally applicable, even in a country divided. Also, don't miss the exchange that starts in the 36th minute, when Alda, an outspoken feminist for decades, is asked to reflect on the current #MeToo moment - co-host Medaya Ocher described his response as "by far the most articulate, generous, and kind" description by a man of why this is a great and necessary movement.

Authors Ivy Pochoda and Galt Niederhoffer join co-hosts Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher to talk about their new noir novels. Pochoda’s heralded Wonder Valley weaves a tale of striving, wayward Los Angelenos, from Skid Row through gentrifying neighborhoods and out to a New Age Desert commune; a 21st Century update of the gloom beneath LA’s glamour. Niederhoffer’s intimate Poison, a harrowing portrait of betrayal, is drawn from the author’s own experience (she accused her ex-partner of trying to murder her); which inspires a discussion about “gaslighting,” MeToo, and the need to challenge the underlying logic of patriarchy that informs these treacherous times. Also, author and avid reader Dan Lopez returns to recommend Sadness is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher.

Author and artist Myriam Gurba joins co-hosts Eric Newman and Kate Wolf for a conversation about her new book Mean, which is receiving effusive praise across the literary, art, and mainstream presses - including a glowing review from last week's guest, Jonathan Alexander, in the LA Review of Books. Billed as part True Crime Tale, part Ghost Story, part Queer coming-of-age Memoir; with all parts deformed by an epidemic of sexual assault and violence in Myriam's hometown - it sounds a perfect fit for the Zeitgeist. Only it's the opposite; as Myriam explains, her love of language is disruptive, and empowering, a lifeline that even allows her to recognize, and commune with, the ghosts haunting our souls. Indeed, as Myriam, Kate, and Eric's conversation turns to our on-going #MeToo moment, Myriam insists we cannot continue to reduce people to good or bad caricatures, our team vs the enemy; rather, we need to talk to each other, have compassion for the traumatized, and, if you're really serious about trying to do some some good, deploy the type of deep psychological insight familiar to readers and writers of literature. Also, Jonathan Alexander drops by to recommend Jay McInerney's latest novel Bright, Precious Days, the third installment of the Calloway Saga; set in NYC in-and-around the (declining) publishing industry during last decade's financial collapse through the early Obama years. Jonathan says it's top notch Mcinerney: delicious junk food for the literati, plus a front row seat for the Decline of the American Empire!

Memoirist, composition theorist, and educator Jonathan Alexander joins hosts Eric Newman and Kate Wolf to talk about his new critical memoir "Creep: a Life, a Theory, an Apology." With wit and sharpness, Alexander walks us through the definitional morass that informs our cultural accounts of the "creep" in a wide ranging discussion that shuttles from the Deep South to Hollywood to the White House. Also, author Janet Fitch return to recommend Sergei Dovlatov's The Suitcase: A Novel.

Janet Fitch, author of the legendary novel White Oleander, joins co-hosts Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher to talk about her new work, The Revolutions of Marina M, which tells the story of a young woman poet coming of age in the heady, early days of the October Revolution. Fitch talks about her approach to writing such a sweeping novel, her visits to Russia before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how she's able to represent sex so well on the page, and the importance of balancing the utopian dream with mundane reality when writing about, and living through, revolutions. Also, Author Dan Lopez drops by to recommend Richard Lloyd Parry's Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone, which reflects on humanity's relationship to death and life while telling the story of a small town in Japan that suffered a tremendous loss of life during the March 2011 Tsunami.

Wasn't the collapse of the Soviet Union supposed to herald the dawn of a new era of unfettered freedom, liberal democracy, and the end of history? Instead Russia moved rapidly from Autocratic Socialism to Autocratic Oligarchy. Masha Gessen talks with co-hosts Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher about why she chose to investigate this world-historical disappointment by talking to young people who witnessed this calamitous transition first-hand. The result is Gessen's National Book Award-nominated The Future of History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, a work of literary journalism rife with the unique insights this novel approach revealed(to which our own Soviet-born Medaya adds her memories). Gessen also reflects on what Russia's re-embracing of repression may teach us in our suddenly benighted land with an unstable leader who reveres strongmen like Putin. Also, Essayist Garnette Cadogan returns to recommend two works by the contemporary British Author Robert MacFarlane: one for children: The Lost Words; one for adults: Landmarks - both of which exhibit how language can re-enchant our relationship to the world.