Joseph Skibell #68

This was a delightful hour with award winning writer, Joseph Skibell. Imagine two boys, a short time before puberty, sitting in their room talking about music and legends. Mythology and truth. Throw in a few wisecracks about random things, and you have one of the most self indulgent Pauly Casts in recent memory.

I think we had this show to balance out all the brilliant guests of great stature who have agreed to come on the show, and almost… almost giving the program and slight air of relevance and respectability. Almost...

About Joseph Skibell

Joseph Skibell is the author of three novels, A BLESSING ON THE MOON, THE ENGLISH DISEASE and A CURABLE ROMANTIC, a collection of true stories, MY FATHER'S GUITAR & OTHER IMAGINARY THINGS, and a mythopoetic study entitled SIX MEMOS FROM THE LAST MILLENNIUM: A NOVELIST READS THE TALMUD (June 2016).

He has received numerous awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Award in Jewish Literature, and the Turner Prize. His work has been described as “daring in its … honesty” (New York Times); “witty and profound” (Jerusalem Report); “laugh-outloud humorous” (Forward); “brave … unafraid” (New York Journal of Books); “magical” (New Yorker); “high-energy, wild” (New Republic); and “wholly original” (JM Coetzee). Skibell’s novels, stories and essays have been widely anthologized and translated, most recently into Ido and Chinese.

He has written or translated essays for three books of photographs: Loli Kantor’s BEYOND THE FOREST, Neil Folberg’s THE SERPENT'S CHRONICLE, and FRED STEIN: PARIS NEW YORK. From 2008 to 2015, he was the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature. Recently a Senior Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, he is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities at Emory University. He lives in Atlanta and Tesuque, NM.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

* Bob Dylan's Chronicles
* Robert Johnson
* Robert Plant
* Led Zeppelin
* The Beatles' Anthology
* George Harrison Documentary Living In The Material World
* Yogananda Documentary Awake
* Hitchhiking With Larry David