Chris Ware, Dilys Rose and Michael Fry interviews

Book Talk

In this edition of Book Talk, Ryan Van Winkle speaks to Chris Ware, Dilys Rose and Michael Fry about stories, memories and histories. Chris Ware is an American graphic novelist whose latest book is Building Stories. The book, which has no beginning or end, is designed to reflect the non-linear way we remember our lives. Chris talks about why he decided to focus the intangible world of memory and how he develops work that can be read in multiple ways. “It’s like composing music. You have a sense of a feeling you’re trying to get to but the second you start playing a note or hearing the notes that you’re playing you think, ‘oh that doesn’t sound right’ or ‘that sounds better than what I had in mind’.” Scottish poet and novelist Dilys Rose picks up the thread of memory and its deception. The narrative of her new novel Pelmanism developed from the interconnected and fragmented nature of remembrance. Is there such a thing as a real memory when “once you start remembering, you start inventing as well”? Dilys also reads the homage to RD Laing she wrote for the novel as a creative solution to copyright clearance! Finally, we finish our tour of the past by speaking to historian Michael Fry. The title of Michael’s newest book A New Race of Men: Scotland 1815-1914 references a contemporary description of Scotland at a time of huge progress. How did Scotland transform a country and its people? By looking at the past, Michael identifies how old Scotland connects to a new Scotland, “we don’t have to assume our history has been lost... People in Scotland are too unaware of the facts of their history, how those facts hang together, how they have survived, and how they still influence us in the present day.” Podcast contents 00:00 – 00:51 Introduction00:55 – 13:05 Chris Ware13:05 – 21:52 Dilys Rose21:52 – 33:00 Michael Fry