LA Review of Books
LA Review of Books
The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts.
The Los Angeles Review of Books magazine was created in part as a response to the disappearance of the traditional newspaper book review supplement, and, with it, the art of lively, intelligent long-form writing on recent publications in every genre, ranging from fiction to politics. The Los Angeles Review of Books seeks to revive and reinvent the book review for the internet age, and remains committed to covering and representing today’s diverse literary and cultural landscape.
The Los Angeles Review of Books magazine was created in part as a response to the disappearance of the traditional newspaper book review supplement, and, with it, the art of lively, intelligent long-form writing on recent publications in every genre, ranging from fiction to politics. The Los Angeles Review of Books seeks to revive and reinvent the book review for the internet age, and remains committed to covering and representing today’s diverse literary and cultural landscape.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Nov 23, 2016 • 30min
Paul Crewes of Wallis Annenberg on LA Theater; plus Anne Sexton & Dinah Lenney
Paul Crewes, the new Artistic Director of the Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, joins host Laurie Winer to discuss the tremendous possibilities for theater in Southern California. Also, author Dinah Lenney stops by to recommend two books: Marisa Silver's Little Nothing; and Nancy Reisman's Trompe L'Oeil. The show closes with a reading of Anne Sexton's poem "To a Friend Whose Work has Come to Triumph."
Nov 17, 2016 • 44min
John Romano on Adapting Philip Roth's American Pastoral; plus Colin Wilson & Mark Strand
Screenwriter John Romano joins Laurie Winer and co-host Dinah Lenney to talk about his adaptation of Philip Roth's 1997 classic novel American Pastoral about a family torn apart amidst the turmoil of the late 1960s. The film directed by Ewan McGregor, who co-stars alongside Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Connelly, was released this past month. A wide-ranging discussion ensues, addressing Roth's relationship to the "meaning" of the 60s, family suffering, Job's suffering, and ours in the age of Trump. Also, author Simon Reynolds drops by to recommend a biography of Occultist Colin Wilson by renaissance man Gary Lachman; and Linda Balgord reads Mark Strand's Eating Poetry.
Nov 10, 2016 • 35min
LARB Radio: Simon Reynolds' Glam Rock History Shock and Awe + Denise Levertov & Hortense Powdermaker
Host Evan Kindley talks with Simon Reynolds about his new book "Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-first Century." David Bowie may be Glam's greatest superstar, but figures as diverse as Roxy Music, Alice Cooper, and LA's own Sparks are also central to this most colorful and still-influential 1970's pop movement. The LA Times Jill Leovy drops by to recommend anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker's After Freedom, a study of 1920'as Mississippi; and which remains a stunning reminder of the severe oppression suffered by Black Americans under Jim Crow. This week's poetry reading is of Denise Levertov's Psalm Concerning the Castle.
Nov 3, 2016 • 40min
LARB Radio: Jessica Koslow Sqirl Everything I Want To Eat; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; ee cummings
Laurie Winer and co-host Medaya Ocher, managing editor of the LA Review of Books, are joined by Jessica Koslow, chef extraordinaire and creator of Sqirl, one of LA's most popular restaurants — on the occasion of the publication of Jessica's first cookbook, Everything I Want To Eat. It's the "Comfort Radio" edition of the podcast, as Laurie and Medaya build up an appetite learning the secrets behind Jessica's scrumptious creations. Leslie M.M. Blume drops by to recommend Anita Loos's brilliant comic novel from the 1920s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Judy Kaye reads ee cummings's poem "I thank God for most this amazing."
Oct 27, 2016 • 36min
LARB Radio: Robert Gottlieb Avid Reader; Tracy Tynan on PG Wodehouse; & WB Yeats The Second Coming
Legendary publisher and editor Robert Gottlieb talks with Laurie about his new memoir Avid Reader; reflects on his glory days at Knopf and The New Yorker; and expresses confidence about the state of writing today. Tracy Tynan offers PG Wodehouse as comfort reading for these treacherous times. Tom and Laurie launch a new poetry feature with a reading of WB Yeats The Second Coming.
Oct 20, 2016 • 35min
LARB Radio: Will California End the Death Penalty? Gil Garcetti, Stephen Rohde & Don Franzen
This week Laurie is joined by LARB legal affairs editor Don Franzen to discuss two competing California Ballot Initiatives related to the death penalty: Proposition 62, which would put an end to the death penalty in the state, and Proposition 66, a confusing pro-death-penalty measure, which calls for speeding up executions. Stephen Rohde (from Death Penalty Focus) and legendary former District Attorney of Los Angeles County, Gil Garcetti, contribute to the clarifying conversation.
Oct 13, 2016 • 41min
Radio Hour: Despina Stratigakos "Hitler at Home" & Nicholson Baker on Nabokov's "Speak, Memory"
Despina Stratigakos, author of "Hitler at Home", joins Laurie, and co-host Boris Drayluk, for a wide-ranging discussion about how tasteful interior design operated as propaganda in the Third Reich, the powerful woman at the heart of that effort, Gerdy Troost, and the lessons learned for our own celebrity-saturated politics.
Also, Nicholson Baker, author of Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids, returns to explain his mysterious relationship to classic Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov's "Speak, Memory".
Oct 6, 2016 • 37min
LARB Radio: Tracy Tynan's "Wear and Tear", plus D.W. Winnicott
Celebrated costume designer and author, Tracy Tynan, joins Tom and Laurie to talk about her new memoir, "Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life". The daughter of a legendary couple from London during the Swinging '60s - famed theater critic and playwright Kenneth Tynan ("Oh! Calcutta!") and actress turned author Elaine Dundy ("The Dud Avocado") - Tynan spins tales of a daringly dysfunctional, but beautifully dressed, nuclear family.
LARB editor (and new father) Evan Kindley drops by to recommend "Child, the Family and the Outside World" by British Developmental Psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, a pioneer in "object relations theory".
Produced by Alan Minsky
Sep 29, 2016 • 30min
LARB Radio: Nicholson Baker, "Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids"
Novelist Nicholson Baker joins Tom, Laurie, and Evan Kindley to discuss his new book, "Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids," the story of Baker's time as a substitute teacher in the Maine public school system. This morphs into a fascinating discussion of pedagogy in light of the everyday realities of contemporary American public schooling and the issues modern schoolteachers confront to teach children.
Sep 22, 2016 • 30min
LARB Radio: Ron Arias The Wetback and Other Stories; plus Monica Coleman's Bipolar Faith
Ron Arias, author of the acclaimed novel The Road to Tamazunchale, joins Tom and Laurie to discuss his new collection The Wetback and Other Stories; as well as his career in journalism and his encounters with Jorge Luis Borges and Ernest Hemingway. Also, Janice Littlejohn returns to recommend Monica Coleman's Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman's Journey with Depression and Faith.
