Rick Kleffel, NPR contributor, long-time friend of our store, and author of The Agony Column, recently had the chance to interview writer Gary Shteyngart when he came to Bookshop Santa Cruz to discuss and sign copies of his bestselling novel, Super Sad True Love Story. The following is an excerpt from Rick’s blog about the experience, complete with links to the audio files from that night.
But wait, there’s more. Or less, at least recording time, because not only have I managed to leave the thing on batteries, I’ve also put in the wrong card. And then, while interviewing Gary in front of the audience, I realize that my voice isn’t going through the PA, which implies I’m recording only half the interview. While that proves not to be the case, I find myself thinking it is, and animating the corpse in front of the audience while under the impression that all my current wound-up tension and terror will result in exactly zero minutes of usable audio.
Apparently this daydreaming about the (audio) apocalypse in order to avoid it has some merit. I do think that Gary’s dystopia is unlikely to arrive intact, mostly because he’s given us such a great trailer that we’ll likely decide to avoid the feature. And in the end, I had all the audio, usable and audible. I’ve divvied this particular podcast into two segments. You can hear Gary’s nearly twenty-minute reading by following this link to the MP3 audio file; and you can hear our nearly forty-minute dialogue, with the audience Q&A, by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
read the whole post on The Agony Column
You can also read Rick Kleffel’s review of Super Sad True Love Story on The Agony Column.
