At the end of this interview, Dan Wakefield says ‘’I guess that’s it. That’s everything I know. That’s doubtful of course, but the amount of insider history covered in this podcast is wide ranging. One of the first practitioners of what was cal

Episode Nine: Poetry

Aug 25th, 2021 58m 55s

In this episode, prose writer Dan Wakefield talks about the importance of poetry in his own life and in his writing. This is a wide-ranging conversation that touches on many poets, writers, and musicians: including the teacher who gave him the

Episode Eight: Hollywood and James at 15

Aug 25th, 2021 1h 24m

In perhaps the most personal of these podcasts, Dan discusses the time he spent in Hollywood working on the television series James at 15, a period of his life that began with an offer he couldn’t refuse and ended with the crisis he describes i

Episode Seven: 'LA Woman' Eve Babitz

Aug 25th, 2021 1h 18m

When Wakefield first moved to Los Angeles to start a novel in Joan Didion’s basement and later on the beach in Venice, where he lived at the Chateau Marmont and entered a tumultuous relationship with Eve Babitz, former girlfriend of Jim Morriso

Episode Six: Civil Rights Reporting (Journalist)

Aug 25th, 2021 1h

Wakefield began his journalism career as a civil rights reporter for The Nation, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The New York Times. After his coverage of the Emmett Till trial, he continued being fascinated by trials. “It was like reading a novel,”

Episode Five: The Man From Occupied Territory (Israel)

Aug 25th, 2021 1h 2m

As a young journalist, Wakefield was inspired by Hemingway’s notion that you have to face death to be a writer. “I wanted to put myself at risk,” Wakefield says in this interview, “test my courage and integrity” and so he “jumped at the first o

Episode Four: The Columbia Years

Aug 25th, 2021 54m 40s

Dan had the opportunity to study under some of the greatest teachers/writers/critics of the 20th century, including Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren. Rabbi Harold Kushner was also there. He also lived in New York at the height of the populari

Episode Three: Emmett Till Trial and C. Wright Mills

Aug 25th, 2021 57m 29s

In 1955, Wakefield graduated from Columbia University and went looking for his first job. Through Indianapolis connections, he landed an interview with Barney Kilgore, editor of The Wall Street Journal. He wasn’t, Kilgore told him, quite ready

Episode Two: Kurt Vonnegut

Aug 25th, 2021 1h 23m

At the time of this taping, Wakefield was Kurt Vonnegut’s “oldest living friend.” It was Vonnegut who wrote the New York Times review of Wakefield’s Going All the Way and it’s Wakefield who posthumously edited Vonnegut’s stories, letters, and g

Episode One: Old White Guy Gets Woke

Aug 25th, 2021 1h

When Dan Wakefield moved back to his hometown of Indianapolis in 2005, he saw it with a different lens and was re-awakened, in his 80s, to the history of racism and the erasure of Midwestern black culture that he had been blind to as a child. H

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