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A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life
Stanford University Press
October 2007
On Sale: October 1, 2007
344 pages
ISBN: 0804756716
EAN: 9780804756716
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
KQED Radio’s Michael Krasny is one of the country’s leading
interviewers of literary luminaries, a maestro for educated
listeners who prefer their discourse high and civil. He is a
writer’s interviewer. But it didn’t start out that way. In Off Mike, Krasny, host of one of public radio's most
popular and intellectually compelling programs, talks of his
strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of
Bellow and Philip Roth, and then discovering his real talent
as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an
interlocutor. Krasny remarks that, “Trying to meld life into
art as I read and interpreted and taught and wrote about
writers, I went on to talk and talk and talk with writers
until I had interviewed more writers perhaps than anyone
ever has or will or should. I was on the road. My own road
to literary Damascus. More than ever, I wanted to live a
life that could answer Bellow’s primary question: How should
a good man live.” In a mix of memoir and reportage, Krasny takes readers
inside his world—his coming of age during the heady times of
the 1960s with their blend of the civil rights movement and
political activism, to the vivid description of his journey
from a student of literature to a struggling novelist to an
educator and—somewhat accidentally—a radio host. Krasny
gives an account of the polarizing transformation of talk
radio, from his early days at KGO commercial radio, through
to his current role at NPR, where he manages to keep the
flow of talk in his San Francisco based show animated and
politically balanced. Forum fans and lovers of literature will be riveted by the
insightful and amusing vignettes and behind the scenes
accounts. They will get a taste of the sharp commentary from
his encounters with panels of experts, and interviews with
cultural and political personalities as well as writers.
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