On 18 February I talked with Philip Fradkin, whose books include A River No More and Sagebrush Country, about his new biography Wallace Stegner and the American West (Knopf). The longest chapter in the book discusses the controversies surrounding Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winning novel Angle of Repose (Penguin). Nevada City novelist and playwright Sands Hall, whose play Fair Use deals with a barely fictionalized version of those controversies, joined in the conversation. Fradkin will appear at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park at 7:30 PM on Thursday 21 February.
I then talked with Nevada County writer Dale Pendell about his latest book Walking with Nobby (Mercury House), which recounts five walking conversations between Pendell and Norman O Brown in the Santa Cruz area during the 1990s. Brown, who lept to fame with his 1959 book Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (several editions), taught at at UC Santa Cruz from 1968 to 1981. Pendell is best known for his trilogy on psychoactive substances Pharmako/Poeia, Parmako/Dynamis and Pharmako/Gnosis (all published by Mercury House).
To hear this program, click here.
To hear a 22 August 2005 interview with Sands Hall, click here.
To hear a 20 March 2006 interview with Dale Pendell, click here.
posted by Eric Tomb and others 8:30 PM