Books, Design and Culture
Paula Fox, storied author of Desperate Characters, talks about writing and her memoir Borrowed Finery with Eleanor Wachtel in this archive interview for Writers & Company from 2002:
CBC RADIO WRITERS & COMPANY: Paula Fox Interview 2002
The cover above, from Fox’s collection of stories and essays News From the World published earlier this year by W. W. Norton, was designed by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich.
2 Comments
Author Jennifer Egan discusses music, Proust and, of course, her Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad with Eleanor Wachtel for CBC Radio’s Writers & C0mpany:
CBC RADIO WRITERS & Co. – Jennifer Egan
The paperback cover for the US edition of A Visit From the Goon Squad (pictured above), was designed by the talented Jamie Keenan.
Comments closed
CBC Radio’s Nora Young interviews Ingrid Fetell, a designer, researcher, and writer, based in New York who focuses on the “aesthetics of joy” and the emotional relationships between people and things:
CBC RADIO SPARK: Ingrid Fetell, Designing for Joy
Comments closed
Terry O’Reilly’s radio show Age of Persuasion is always a fascinating half-hour of social history regardless of whether you are interested in advertising or not.
In this recent episode, O’Reilly looks at the great women of the advertising world, including the first advertising woman ever, the woman who created the first images of wives as “Happy Homemakers”, the woman who revolutionized the retail business, and the female creative director who inspired the “I Love New York” campaign.
Comments closed
A little digression from books/design for a Monday:
Eleanor Wachtel, host of Writers and Company, talks to American artist Richard Serra for her other CBC Radio show, Wachtel on the Arts:
CBC RADIO WACHTEL ON THE ARTS: RICHARD SERRA
(Image above: Schunnemunk Fork by Richard Serra, 1990-91. Photograph by Ken McCown, used under a Creative Commons License, from the Richard Serra Flickr Pool)
Comments closed
In a recent interview for CBC Radio show Spark, Jason Fried, the founder of 37signals, talked with Nora Young about his book Rework:
CBC RADIO SPARK: JASON FRIED | REWORK
Also doing the rounds is Fried’s article ‘How to Get Good at Making Money’:
People are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. If you pour your heart into something and make it great, sell it. For real money. Even if there are free options, even if the market is flooded with free. People will pay for things they love.
This lesson is at the core of 37signals. There are plenty of free project management tools. There are plenty of free contact managers and customer relationship management tools. There are plenty of free chat tools and organization tools. There are plenty of free conferences and workshops. Free is everywhere. But we charge for our products. And our customers are happy to pay for them… Charging for something makes you want to make it better. I’ve found this to be really important. It’s a great lesson if you want to learn how to make money.
What I didn’t know, but learnt today, was that Jeff Bezos is the sole investor in 37Signals. Make of that what you will.
Comments closed
Anthony Gottlieb writes on the renewed interest in 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne for The New York Times:
Like Socrates, Montaigne claims that what he knows best is the fact that he does not know anything much. To undermine common beliefs and attitudes, Montaigne draws on tales of other times and places, on his own observations and on a barrage of arguments in the ancient Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition, which encouraged the suspension of judgment as a middle way between dogmatic assertion and equally dogmatic denial. Montaigne does often state his considered view, but rarely without suggesting, explicitly or otherwise, that maybe he is wrong. In this regard, his writing is far removed from that of the most popular bloggers and columnists, who are usually sure that they are right.
And, funnily enough, Sarah Bakewell author of How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer — one of the books mentioned by Gottlieb — recently spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about Montaigne for CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
CBC RADIO WRITERS & Co. WITH SARAH BAKEWELL
The cover of the US edition of How To Live, published by Other Press, is by Mr. John Gall (pictured above). But you knew that already of course….
If you are still stewing over last night’s lacklustre Oscars (or even if your not), take a listen to Terry O’Reilly’s entertaining history of movie trailers for The Age of Persuasion. He kicks it off with this genius trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds:
And, for it’s worth, movie trailers were originally created to get people OUT of theatres, not into them. Brilliant.
Listen to The Age of Persuasion podcast:
CBC RADIO: AOP GOES TO THE MOVIES
Comments closed
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, Edmund de Waal’s memoir about his extraordinary Jewish family and an inherited collection of ornamental Japanese carvings called netsuke, was on many of last year’s “best-of” lists and is high on my current ‘to-read’ list. The author talks about the book with Eleanor Wachtel on CBC Radio’s Writers & Company:
CBC Radio Writer’s & Co: Edmund de Waal Mp3
Edmund de Waal, who is also a successful ceramicist, is also profiled in The Guardian:
Comments closedDe Waal and his netsuke have been much discussed over the past seven or eight months, but even now he is “completely taken aback” by the success of a book which is an “odd matrix of personal obsessions”. (We talk in the upstairs room of his south London studio – downstairs are three kilns, his wheel and a bag of clay, ready for him to get to work in the afternoon.) Yet that it is so personal and springs from these obsessions (Japan, objects, memory), drawing on his expertise as a potter, is surely a clue to its enormous appeal. How things are made and handled, he writes, and what happens to them “has been central to my life for more than 30 years”.
Ben Fullerton, Director of User Experience at Method Design in San Francisco, talks to Nora Young about design that supports solitude and mindfulness for CBC Radio’s Spark:
CBC Spark: Ben Fullerton Designing for Solitude Mp3
(I love this idea).
Comments closed
Amanda Cox, graphics editor at The New York Times, discusses data visualization with Nora Young for CBC Radio’s Spark: