Talks with Persons of Interest | John Reed

Vice: Seka

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:00:19 -0400

Vice: Seka

Talked with to Seka for Vice.

Sex in the 70s was Seka. Half Cherokee, half Irish, and looking like a perfect Hollywood trophy, or a divination of death from the Norse Gods—Seka was a flinty mirage of whatever fantasy you had. Porn mag High Society dubbed her the “Marilyn Monroe of porn." Her costars were just as effusive. Jamie Gillis: "She was porn, but a little above it—sort of a white trash queen in a way that I found really erotic." Veronica Hart: "As long as I have a face, Seka has a place to sit." ...

Read more: http://www.vice.com/read/seka-raising-penises-for-three-generations

Art in America: "To the Letter," Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:00:19 -0400

Art in America: "To the Letter," Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey

Talked with Peter Neumeyer about his collaborations with Edward Gorey, and their collected correspondence, Floating Worlds:

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2011-10-17/peter-neumeyer-on-edward-gorey/

Summer of 1968. Harry Stanton, editor and vice president of textbook publisher Addison-Wesley, arranged a day of sailing with Harvard Professor Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey, who was already well on his way to an impactful legacy. Gorey, working away on his own books, in addition to editorial and illustrative work that didn't always please him, warmed to the Neumeyer "children's book" project, which fixed its sentiments on a housefly. Donald and the ... was the first of three projects Gorey/Neumeyer collaborations, along with a fourth masterwork, tucked away in Neumeyer's secretary since 1969. A trove of correspondence, rich with insight into the Donald collaboration, and the aesthetic underpinnings of Gorey, an artist notoriously close-lipped as to his methodology and practice. In a gloriously designed and full-color edition from Pomegranate Books (September, 2011), the artful correspondence—post cards, letters, and even envelopes—is faithfully reproduced. ...

Rain Taxi: "Talking Animals"

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:00:19 -0400

Rain Taxi: Talking Animals

VOL. 16 NO. 3, FALL 2011 (#63)

Interview with Adam Hines about his book, Duncan the Wonder Dog:

In Adam Hines’s debut graphic novel, Duncan the Wonderdog (AdHouse Books, $24.95), the animals can talk, and their revolution is underway. Hines moves beyond superheroes and the crusty assumptions of many graphic novels to tell his story with the patience and sprawl of a grand novel, or an epic television series. Humanity, he posits, is less evolutionary miracle than environmental upstart. Gauging by the seven years he spent on the first installment, the next four planned installments of Duncan may well take Hines the remainder of his life to complete, a Gaian pace, to move mountains. …

http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011fall/print.shtml

Bomb Magazine: Charlie Smith

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:00:19 -0500

Bomb Magazine: Charlie Smith

Long talk with Charlie Smith for Bomb Magazine. With audio clip.

http://bombsite.com/issues/113/articles/3642

Another summer in the city. It’s a heat wave—as bad as it used to be, but a month early. Nowadays, August cools off, and in July, we’re still new to this new summer—and better able to withstand the heat. Maybe it’s the sense that material stuff doesn’t have quite the same hold on us, maybe it’s that the rents have gone down, maybe it’s the accumulation of happenstance that makes for fate, but this summer, the city is smiling, almost enlightened. Charlie Smith arrives at my office dressed for a divine day anywhere in the world: white linen and jeans.

Smith, the recipient of numerous accolades and the author of six novels and seven books of poetry, distinguishes his prose with precise metaphor, and insight that bridges lyricism and candor. His most recent novel, Three Delays (Harper Perennial), chronicles the deep love and bumpy journey of Billy Brent and Alice Stephens. Istanbul, Florida, Italy, Mexico—the geography is global, but the cartography is internal, and one of dissolute sameness. Through multiple partings and reconciliations, the lovers can never entirely leave one another—but nor can they find one another.

Brooklyn Rail: Frederic Tuten

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:00:19 -0400

Brooklyn Rail: Frederic Tuten

As published in the Brooklyn Rail:

http://brooklynrail.org/2010/09/books/frederic-tuten-with-john-reed

I met Frederic Tuten at the diner we only managed to identify as, “that place a block down from the Strand,” where we talked about his essays, his short stories, and his five novels—The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971), Tallien: A Brief Romance (1988), Tintin in the New World (1993), Van Gogh’s Bad Café (1997), and The Green Hour (2002)—and his interest in the visual arts.

Tuten’s writing has a painterly character—composed, visual, and very often with cartoonish, or cubist, or surreal elements. In a moment of the big, formulaic book, Tuten’s Self Portraits (Norton, 2010) is a deftly delivered group of highly crafted inter-related stories. The “Fictions,” as Tuten subtitles them, are diamond-faceted adventures, glistening with love and death, friends and strangers.

We spoke by phone, several times, while working on the interview—an email correspondence that spanned several days at the height of a New York City summer.

Bomb Magazine: Ann Lauterbach

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:00:19 -0400

Bomb Magazine: Ann Lauterbach

Long talk with Ann Lauterbach for Bomb Magazine:

http://www.bombsite.com/issues/999/articles/3359

The third week of August: historically, it’s the week when New Yorkers blow town. Air conditioners rattle and spit and give out, and windows are open wide, as if the rolled glass of the tenements would melt in the white sun. But New York is different now. The air conditioners work better, the windows are double-paned. Hot air spews into the streets, making the city an abandoned Martian metropolis, but everywhere inside it is cool. Almost everywhere. Ann Lauterbach—lifelong New Yorker and the author of five collaborations with artists, one book of essays, and eight books of poetry (including the 2009 National Book Award finalist, Or to Begin Again)—meets me in my grossly under-air-conditioned Crosby Street office. The window unit has declared war, apparently, with our digital recording device.

Lauterbach greets me warmly, though she has no idea what to expect; I have planned a series of questions and follow-ups to questions that I hope will give some articulation to not only Lauterbach’s poetry, but her longstanding involvement in the arts, and her expectations of our swiftly evolving era.

Brooklyn Rail: Stephen Graubard

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 15:00:19 -0500

Brooklyn Rail: Stephen Graubard

All The Presidents as Men

As published in the Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2005/02/books/all-the-presidents-as-men

Stephen Graubard’s Command of Office is a monumental and challenging analysis of what has come to encompass the contemporary U.S. presidency. The Brooklyn Rail recently caught up with Graubard to discuss with him the historical impact of the presidency on this hour in America.

John Reed (Rail): Has the U.S. presidency had a consistent reaction to disasters and human suffering around the world? What are the variables that come into play when presidents are looking at their involvement in crises abroad?

Stephen Graubard: I am not sure that I know what disasters and human suffering can be said to encompass. I would point out, however, that Theodore Roosevelt was very proud of his efforts to help persecuted minorities in Europe, that FDR literally “saved” Britain by what he did in 1940 and 1941 before Pearl Harbor, not only by pressing Congress but also by his executive orders. He helped in all sorts of ways to alert the country to the dangers of Nazism and therefore kept British resistance alive. He knew something of what Hitler was doing to the Jews, but never all that came to be revealed about the Holocaust. In any case, he did not see what he could do to help the endangered Jews, never taking in the full character of the catastrophe represented by Auschwitz and the other death camps. Harry Truman, by his Marshall Plan, but also by his help to Greece and Turkey and Point Four program, did much to reduce human suffering in the devastated societies that had experienced World War II. John Kennedy imagined that he was helping to liberate Cubans from their oppressors by his Bay of Pigs, a tragic mistake. Richard Nixon withdrew many of the American forces from Vietnam but believed he could not cut and run, that to do so would only increase suffering in the whole of Southeast Asia. Jimmy Carter sought to rescue hostages taken in the invasion of the American embassy in Tehran and failed entirely to do so. Ronald Reagan imagined that the policies advanced by his aides, represented by the unforgettable word “Irangate,” would liberate hostages and at the same time offer aid to “freedom fighters” in America. The plot, when revealed, was only embarrassing to him. Clinton took few risks, though he imagined that he had helped rid Serbia of its oppressor, as George W. Bush also imagined when he toppled Saddam Hussein and rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. Of yesterday’s inaugural speech by Bush II, one can only echo Robin Cook’s words, as given in The Guardian this morning. Cook, once Blair’s foreign secretary, writes: “The Bush administration is in denial about its disastrous failure in Iraq.” His article is entitled “Fireworks in Washington, Despair Around the World.” Presidents generally try to engage themselves when they think they can win popular and world support by doing so. At times, they make grievous mistakes in respect to both.

Brooklyn Rail: Karen Liebreich

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 15:00:19 -0400

Brooklyn Rail: Karen Liebreich

Karen Liebreich with John Reed

As published in the Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2004/10/books/karen-liebreich

In 1646, the Piarist Order, which had introduced education to the masses—and not only an education in Latin but also an education in basic reading and arithmetic—was disbanded by Pope Innocent X. The order had succumbed to myriad sexual abuse charges that had been buried by the founder of the order, Jose de Calasanz (who has since been named the patron saint of Catholic schools). The scandal, largely lost to history, and the subject of a massive suppression by the Roman Catholic Church, has been painstakingly reconstructed by Karen Liebreich’s Fallen Order. The work painfully establishes the inability of the Roman Catholic Church to put its children before itself; even today, the reforms of the Church are hardly impressive. In recent weeks, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn introduced a sexual abuse hotline—although the hotline is manned by its own lawyer.

Brooklyn Rail: Paul Auster

Fri, 01 Aug 2003 15:00:19 -0400

Brooklyn Rail: Paul Auster

Paul Auster with John Reed

As published in the Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2003/08/books/paul-auster

Paul Auster’s 10 novels include, most recently, The Book of Illusions, which comes out in paperback from Picador this August. He has also written several books of poetry, as well as screenplays including Smoke and Blue in the Face (both 1995).

The Rail’s John Reed caught up with him on the 4th of July, at Auster’s home in Park Slope.

John Reed (Rail): Is there a cultural war going on in this country?

Paul Auster: How so?

Rail: Well, for our purposes, a relationship between conservatism and sort of a squashing of creative endeavors.

Auster: I wouldn’t call it a cultural war. I think it’s a real political war that’s going on. We’ve gone through bad periods in the past. McCarthyism, for example, to cite something fairly recent. The Vietnam War was bad, tumultuous, but at the same time invigorating— because a lot was being aired about the nature of our society and culture that was very healthy. Now that the right wing has taken over, we’ve entered a new realm of danger. It’s certainly the scariest moment that I’ve experienced in my lifetime. In a serious way, we’re running the risk of eroding all that’s good about American democracy; and I think these sons of bitches are doing it on purpose, with their eyes wide open. What the right wing wants is to bankrupt the government. They want to make it impossible for any kind of social programs to be affordable. The only money— public money— they want is for the military. Everything else they want privatized. The thing that shocks me about what’s going on is not so much that it’s happening— but that no one is really screaming about it. I would think now, after more than two years of Bush, that the country would be hysterically, passionately against it, but he’s rolling over everybody. That’s appalling to me.