The Misread City: Literary Radio
Los Angeles, many told me, is the place where no one reads. This I learned in the first few days of moving here in 1998. No one reads books, not like they do in that other city — you know. The Mecca of Publishing. The tabernacle of world lit. Here, we do movies. We read contracts, we write (or sign) deals. We spread ourselves across the broad screen. You’re a writer? they said to me. Well son, you’ve come to the wrong place.
In my first few weeks here, my second novel was published. A local gentleman by the name of Marc Cooper invited me on his show at the KPFK Pacifica Radio studios. You know Marc. Only one of the most articulate journalists of our day; the English translator for Chile’s president Salvador Allende in the 1970’s, and now writer for the Nation. The guy who wrote the seminal memoir Pinochet and Me. That Marc. Marc and I had a fine chat on the radio about my book and the purpose of literature in contemporary society.
A few months later, Marc asked if I’d like to interview other authors for the radio. That sounded like fun. So I started driving across the illiterate tundra of my new hometown to discuss literature with novelists and poets with books coming out. Many were from out of town and had drivers who escorted them from their hotel to the station; others simply drove to North Hollywood after dropping their daughter off to soccer practice.
A year later the interviews morphed into a Regular Scheduled Program. We called it Shelf Life: Books from the Edge of the Shelf. It plays weekly in southern California on Mondays at two in the afternoon. It wasn’t long before I started receiving phone calls from — yes, you guessed it — New York. Publicists, to be specific. Publicists who had heard of a new radio book show in Southern California. Publicists who understood that Angelenos buy more books than do New Yorkers in any given year. They knew that a good 150,000 of those book buyers were trapped on the 405 or the 110 at around two o’clock on Mondays. Because let’s face it: people who listen to public radio? They’re the same people who claim Dutton’s Brentwood Books or Vroman’s as their favorite hangout.
For me, playing host to the radio show, it’s been great fun. The guest writers also seem to enjoy themselves. Many times they’re nervous, sitting in the coffee room at the station, waiting their turn. They’re afraid of that first prologue of a question, “Now, Ms. Smiley, I’ve not gotten a chance to look at your novel Horse Heaven, so tell us about it. Is it about horses? Or religion?” At Shelf Life, their host is a fellow writer who has as part of his vocation the necessity of reading, so he’s perused the book at hand with a writer’s eye.
At first I thought my being a novelist would have been a hindrance, as writers are a competitive, butt–sniffing breed. Yet the very opposite has proven true: they learn of my own background behind the typewriter and thus relax behind the microphone, with that familiar “You understand my loneliness!” flashing across their faces.
So for twenty–seven and one half minutes we talk about their book, the craft of writing, the development of their characters, their struggle over plot. We talk mysteries, historical fictions, political novels. Michael Ondaatje discusses the art of film editing for The English Patient. Gioconda Belli talks about the Nicaraguan Revolution. Jeffrey Eugenides takes on a hermaphrodite.
In its first year, Shelf Life has found a growing audience. I judge this from the emails I receive after each Monday broadcast: the usual “Really interesting interview today” or “what was that writer’s name again?” It’s not a deluge of emails, but a trickle that’s grown larger through the months. And I don’t fool myself: My show is but one of a legion of shows in Los Angeles. For this town relies upon radio to make it through the day. How many hours do we sit in traffic, making our way from Long Beach to the Valley, working through the expanding and contracting snake of cars on the 405? For many of us, radio gets us there and back.
We have a lot to choose from. In the public radio arena, there are Larry Mantle and his two-hour morning show, Kitty Felde and her afternoon hour and a half (both on KPCC). Switch to KCRW, you’ll hear Warren Olney on To the Point and Which Way L.A.?, two of the smartest talk shows I’ve ever tuned in to (Warren has the gift of Bob Edwards: questions so sharp you could cut paper with them, and an ability to make guests get to the point quickly. Each time I hear his “All right,” I know the interview will move on in a timely manner). We’ve got Tavis Smiley, Neil Conan, Terry Gross, all NPR hosts.
Then, when you want to get really radical, you move the dial over to the figurative left a notch or two and tune into KPFK, 90.7 FM. Pacifica Radio. So dependent on listeners that it’s perpetually poor, so free of ads and corporate funding and that it sometimes seems on the verge of ceasing to broadcast, the outspoken KPFK is public radio with an attitude.
And KPFK is where I’ve hung up a shingle for my little book show. At two o’clock every Monday, I do nothing more than join the constant conversation that happens throughout Southern California — doing my part to keep the driving public informed, entertained, and hopefully pulling into their driveway safely.
This town doesn’t just listen to radio. It needs radio to survive. To make it to work and back. To keep in touch with local communities and the globe. Public radio in Los Angeles does what any story sets out to do: teaches us and delights us. There are call–in shows, where we carefully cradle our cell phones to our necks and give our opinion on gay parents adopting and whether or not the Valley should secede. For those who are book readers, it’s my pleasure to be a part of this large conversation through Shelf Life.
I’m not blind to the fact that if you throw a stick out your window here, you’ll hit an actor in the head. Hollywood does run this town, just as German–based multi–billion–dollar corporations have bought up all the publishers in New York (Just wanting to be clear: wouldn’t want to have you think that the New York editors run the literary show!). Yet there’s something energetic about being a secondary character in the L.A. entertainment world: you’ve got to work at it to make your presence known. And if Shelf Life plays a tiny role in displaying the world of writers and readers in Southern California, as well as keeping in touch with everyone driving home, that’s just fine with me.
Excerpted with permission from The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles, published by Red Hen Press (June 2003).
The writer: Marcos M. Villatoro is a poet and novelist whose latest book, Minos: A Romilia Chacon Novel will be published in the fall of 2003. He has won the Silver Medal in the Foreword Magazine Literary Awards and the Latino Literary Hall of Fame Prize. He holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Writing at Mount St. Mary’s College. He is also the host of Shelf Life, a weekly program on KPFK 90.7 fm, in which he interviews novelists and poets from all over the world.
More about the The Misread City: “Literary Radio” is included in this eclectic anthology edited by Scott Timberg and Dana Gioia. The Misread City is a 34 collection of author profiles, literary journalism, and speculative pieces about Southern California’s writing and publishing scene. The publisher explains: “We want to get at the Los Angeles that came after the gumshoes, the wisecracking Englishmen, after the Boosters, the Beats, and the boozers, after the despairing heroines of Joan Didion and the coked–up rich kids of Bret Easton Ellis. What is literary Los Angeles about now? Do these old templates survive, the way Hawthorne’s Puritans still echo through the fiction of New England and Cooper’s frontiersmen still stalk the literature of the mountain West? Without ignoring the city’s rich past, we have tried to focus on the present–living writers active in the final decade of the last century and the first few years of the new one. One guiding conviction is that the literary arts have taken their own shape in Southern California; from its poetry to its pulp fiction, a shape that often baffles its Eastern and British visitors.”
More contributors: The Misread City also features writing by Brendan Bernhard, Laurel Ann Bogen, Wanda Coleman, Jenny Factor, David Fine, Kate Gale, Lynell George, Peter Gilstrap, Dana Gioia, Laurence Goldstein, Pico Iyer, Ken Kelley, David Kipen, Ron Koertge, Suzanne Lummis, Susan Moffat, John Powers, David St. John, Sara Scribner, Paul Skenazy, Timothy Steele, Ariel Swartley, Scott Timberg, David L. Ulin, Amy Uyematsu, Gina Valdés, Charles Harper Webb, Chryss Yost.
A recent review: “The Misread City finds its way to people and places that often go unremarked in books that claim to cover literary Los Angeles,” Jonathan Kirsch writes in the Los Angeles Times.
“Among many others, we hear from and about Doug Dutton of Dutton’s Books and Glenn Goldman of Book Soup, KPCC broadcasters Larry Mantle and Kitty Felde and KCRW broadcasters Warren Olney and Michael Silverblatt, all of whom figure importantly in introducing authors and their books to a Southern California readership. And David Kipen, the lively book critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, introduces us to ‘eleven reliably gifted contemporary screenwriters’ in ‘Auteurism's Great Snow Job’ — and explains why we should know them.”
More Literary Radio: Here are links to more radio shows cater to book lovers.
In Southern California:
Larry Mantle: Hosts the two-hour Air Talk show on KPCC.
Kitty Felde: Hosts KPCC’s Talk of the City, which features a “Book Club of the Air for Young Adults.”
Warren Olney: Hosts two public affairs shows, To the Point and Which Way L.A, on KCRW.
Michael Silverblatt: Features fiction and poetry on KCRW’s Bookworm.
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett: Hosts Writers On Writing on KUCI-FM, 88.9 FM in Orange County.
In Northern California:
Michael Krasny: Hosts the Forum show on KQED.
Ronn Owens: Morning host on KGO-AM 810’s NewsTalk.
Cover to Cover: KPFA show dedicated to books and featuring rotating hosts.
National Public Radio:
Various California radio stations pick up NPR’s superb public affairs shows, including All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Terry Gross’ Fresh Air. Check out NPR’s Summer Reading Guide.
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David Ulin admits to a fascination with seismicity. Penelope Moffet shares memories of Dorland Arts Colony. Wil Wheaton feels the love at his first reading. Kat Meads finds she is a California author afterall. Dayna Dunbar on the road from screenwriting to novels. Pamela Ribon on an unexpected outpouring for Oakland libraries. Gayle Brandeis on the dreaded author photo. Mark Lee tells us what it was like to ride with the Pulpwood Queens. Aimee Liu on the renewed interest in the international novel. | ||
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Helping the next generation of readers: click here for our literacy links. |
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