Legendary cartoonist Bill Griffith returns to celebrate his fantastic new book, THREE ROCKS: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, The Man Who Created NANCY (Abrams ComicArts). We get into his lifelong history with NANCY, how that strip was like a lesson in what comics are, the time he brought his Zippy The Pinhead into Bushmillerland, why Bushmiller and Crumb are the only two cartoonists whose work gives him 100% pleasure (and don't inspire criticism or jealousy), how the idea for Three Rocks percolated for a few decades until he read Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden's book HOW TO READ NANCY, and why he decided not to draw Bushmiller's characters in his book (he collages existing Nancy, Sluggo, & Fritzi art instead). We also discuss how many of his cartooning students have never read NANCY but still wear T-shirts with her face (& trademark spiky hair), the problems younger cartoonists have with continuity in storytelling, and what he's learned from teaching. And then we talk about the death of Bill's wife, the great underground cartoonist Diane Noomin, and how he's gotten by in the year since. We get into the new comic Bill made about (& with) Diane, The Buildings Are Barking (Fantagraphics/FU), how he still hears her voice, what it's like to work on a new book without the person who read every panel of his for 49 years, keeping Zippy going while grieving, how having a daily strip all this time seems to have immunized him from anniversaries, the ferry ride he & Diane used to share, how the death of Aline Kominsky-Crumb two months after Diane's brought him and Robert Crumb closer, and more. Sign up for Bill's daily Zippy e-mail, and listen to our 2015 and 2019 conversations • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

"The word is far more real than the world": Jerome Charyn rejoins the show to celebrate his new novel, RAVAGE & SON (Bellevue Literary Press), a fantastic noir about the Lower East Side in 1913. We talk about his love for the LES and the Bintel Briefs in The Forward, why he wanted to write a Jewish Jekyll & Hyde story, and how adopting a cat changed the course of this amazing novel. We also get into life on the page, the music of the sentence, and the self-revelation of writing, why so many of his characters attend Harvard, the holiness of books and why he reads so little of others' books nowadays, treating writing as an apprenticeship rather than a career, and how he got overwhelmed for a year after writing in Abe Lincoln's voice. Plus we discuss his reverence of Joyce Carol Oates and Cormac McCarthy (and ambivalence toward Henry James, who makes an appearance in Ravage & Son), the reason so many of his characters attend Harvard, the sense of being transported by the ballet performances of Allegra Kent, how it felt to write a character who's in love with destruction, why gender fluidity is essential to human nature, and the one advantage to living long enough: understanding that nothing remains and everything disappears. Follow Jerome on Twitter, and listen to our 2019, 2021, and 2022 conversations • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

With the release of IN DEFENSE OF LOVE: An Argument (Doubleday), Ron Rosenbaum offers up a series of essays to save love from scientizers, extremists, the jaded, and anyone else who doubts whether Amor Vincit Omnia. We get into why love needs a defense and how it's not reducible to chemical surges on an fMRI scan, the overwhelming emotion of Linda Ronstadt's Long Long Time, the beauty of Philip Larkin's poem An Arundel Tomb and why Larkin may have been embarrassed by the honesty of its last line ("What will survive of us is love."), and the ways bullshit science can lead people ridiculously astray. We talk about seeing Tolstoy in the light of his late novellas, in which he puts forth an extinction agenda and wants to end human reproduction, the first and last times Ron fell in love, why he included a closing chapter on his own experiences of love & regret, whether dangerous passion outweighs a moderate marriage, and whether one can write about human nature without having a fully human nature. Plus, we talk about Ron's writing career, his arrival during the late days of magazines' golden age, how he discovered his superpower of close reading, why America's greatest love poems come from country music, and a lot more. Follow Ron on Twitter and listen to our 2013 and 2014 conversations • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

With MOTHER NATURE (Titan Comics), artist Karl Stevens adapts a graphic novel from an eco-horror screenplay by Oscar™-winner Jamie Lee Curtis & Russell Goldman. We get into how he wound up collaborating with JLC, the challenges in adapting a screenplay into comics and how it was sort of like directing his own movie, how he discovered his affinity for horror, and how nervous he was to show Jamie Lee his drawings of the character who's modeled after her. We also discuss comics-making & graphomania, the long-lost comic shops & record stores of Northampton, MA, his drive to make it onto the cover of The New Yorker, and why he's used the same pen nib for the last 30 years. Plus, we talk about the challenges and moving parts in making a biography of his father (and his dad's insane Vietnam draft experience), how his family history goes back to the 1720s pre-America, the Artist's Editions volumes he's been collecting lately, why his favorite era of Jack Kirby was the '70s, and of course, running. Follow Karl on Twitter, and Instagram, support his Patreon, and find out more about his work at his Linktree (and listen to our past conversations: 2019, 2020, & 2021) • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack