Stan Lee got his start during the first Great Depression, and even if he's enduring a second, he's managed to avoid the ill effects by virtue of his talent and his work ethic. Both are eminently visible as I join him in his Beverly Hills skyscraper office to talk about his books 'Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics' and 'Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics.'
I knew a bit about Lee's history, but hearing him tell it in his own voice is a unique and inspiring experience. This is a man who just celebrated his 89th birthday and is still kicking ass like the 16-year old kid who started out writing two-page stories so that the comics could be mailed second class. He doesn't have an ounce of pretension or self-importance. He's clearly having one hell of a good time getting the job done, working with the creative partners and overseeing the sort of details that keep his company in grand form.
You can hear it in the interview, as we talk about his history, even his writing style; he did much of his writing standing up, on the porch of his apartment in New York. And he's a busy guy. While I was packing up, one of his gents brought in a new series of character busts, which he carefully examined and approved. And before I managed to get clear (I do fold my tent pretty quickly after all these years!), he was on to his next meeting, a phone conference. I felt honored to get the huge slab of his time that I did get. You can hear our half-hour conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
01-31-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read, Episode 29: Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, 'Lunatics'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the twenty-ninth episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
The twenty-ninth episode is a look at Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel and their new book, 'Lunaticss'.
01-30-12:A 2011 Interview with Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel
Click image for audio link.
"From there, the book gets a little odd..."
—Alan Zweibel
I was more than a little surprised that I even had the chance to talk to two superstars like Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel about their book 'Lunatics'. The challenge for me was to figure out a way to keep my mouth shut and let them do the talking. Fortunately, these gentlemen were so at home together in front of the mics at KQED, you'd think they'd been doing a live radio show forever. All this and hilarious as well.
When you read a wonderful work of comedy like 'Lunatics,' it's easy to just laugh your way through the book and think that it's all just a bunch of good jokes. But in fact, 'Lunatics' is an intricately written and here's the fun part, improvised novel. And just as importantly, the two writers were just as funny when they were talking about writing as they were in the novel itself.
I will warn listeners who prefer to know absolutely nothing about plot that portions thereof are discussed here. But as the gentlemen themselves point out, you can't really spoil the novel on the plot level. The humor happens by and large at the sentence level and by virtue of how clueless the narrators are about their own experiences and perceptions.
This is a great way for listeners to hear how comedy is crafted by two masters of the genre. Barry and Zweibel were extremely informative about how they created this novel, both in their individual passages and as a collaboration. You can hear their conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
02-01-12: Commentary : Stan Lee Splashes 'Stan Lee's How to Write Comics' and 'Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics' : Lessons in the Form, From the Master
01-23-12: Commentary : Sara Paretsky Nails 'Breakdown' : The Machine Stops
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Interview with Sara Paretsky : "Everything in a courtroom is a story; it's not justice, it's combating narratives."
01-18-12: Commentary : Téa Obreht Conjures 'The Tiger's Wife' : The Grammar of Vision
01-13-12: Commentary : Hard Case Subterranean Block : Not from Bob's Basement Tapes
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Lisa Randall : "...there seems to be some evidence, especially from one of the experiments."
01-10-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Terry D'Auray Catches Lawrence Block and 'The Burglar on the Prowl' : "A show well worth the price of a ticket."
12-29-11: Commentary : My Life in the Bush of Books : Island of Vice by Richard Zacks, Iago by David Snodin, The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith and The Dipatcher by Ryan David Jahn
12-21-11: Commentary : Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman : From the Seedy to the Sublime
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : 'Kill Bin Laden' ; Ryu Mitsuse, '10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights' ; Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, 'Micro'
12-20-11: Commentary : David Blackbourn Visits 'Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village' : Externalizing a Culture Clash
12-15-11: Commentary : Ayize Jama-Everett Reveals 'The Liminal People' : The Powers That Be
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live with Lisa Goldstein and Ayize Jama-Everett, and music by Fenyang Smith, December 10, 2011 : "... let's look at what happens if people have abilities that other people don't have ..."
11-28-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Scott Wallace : "Within months of first contact, these groups experience a huge die-off."
11-22-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Charles Frazier, Part Two : "It's not me telling you, there's this storyteller voice."
11-21-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Charles Frazier : "If we're going in the wrong direction, we could turn around and go back."
11-17-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Gianni Mola : "The only way you can learn, I told them, is to watch me cook it."
11-11-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Karl Marlantes : "...the way I "think" about things, with quotes around think, is I tend to write them down..."
10-31-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Colson Whitehead : "In the Apocalypse, somebody's gonna have to do the grunt work..."
10-17-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Russell Banks : "They are in a sense, permanently marked and thrown into this darkness..."
