Skip to content

Category Archives: Notebook on Cities and Culture

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E16: Autobiology with Kurt Hollander

Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City’s Colonia Condesa with Kurt Hollander, photographer, filmmaker, magazine editor, and author of Several Ways to Die in Mexico City: An Autobiography. They discuss his microbiologically informed view of life; the presence of death in Mexico, especially since people there now die developed-world deaths and, to an extent, developing-world [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E15: The Mexican Reality with Diego Rabasa

Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma with Diego Rabasa, co-founder of Sexto Piso press. They discuss why this might make for the most exciting moment in Mexican, or even Spanish-language, literature; Mexico’s past era of invincible intellectual giants, from whose shadow writers now emerge; these writers’ response to their country’s “total social [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E14: New York, Tokyo, and Back Again with Roland Kelts

Colin Marshall sits down in Echo Park, Los Angeles with Roland Kelts, visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Tokyo, contributing editor to the literary journals A Public Space and Japan’s Monkey Business International, which he will be launching in New York City with Motoyuki Shibata, Paul Auster and Gen’ichiro Takahashi and others this [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E13: Negative Appeal with Vincent Brook

Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake, Los Angeles with Vincent Brook, teacher at UCLA, USC, Cal State Los Angeles, and Pierce College, and author of books on Jewish émigré directors and the Jewish sitcom as well as the new Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles. They discuss the difference [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E12: Freaks and Outcasts with Kevin Smokler

Colin Marshall sits down in Westwood, Los Angeles with Kevin Smokler, author of Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven’t Touched Since High School. They discuss what makes him think of Holden Caulfield as a Bing user; why we study novels in high school at all, and what it might have to [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E11: Sad Characters with Clive Piercy

Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Clive Piercy, founder and principal of design studio air-conditioned and author of the photo book Pretty Vacant, an appreciation of Los Angeles “dingbat” apartments. They discuss Reyner Banham’s enduring definition of the dingbat; his time growing up in England enamored with American culture, and his surprise to [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E10: Trouble Sparks Creativity with Christopher Stephens

Colin Marshall sits down in Nishinomiya, Japan with translator, writer, and former Kansai Time Out editor Christopher Stephens. They discuss whether higher Japanese skills get a foreigner more suspicion; the nearby presence and touristic effects of novelist Haruki Murakami’s elementary school; the older writers, like Yasunari Kawabata, Junichiro Tanizaki, and Yukio Mishima, who stoked his interest in [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E9: The Poet’s Peak with Stephen Gill

Colin Marshall sits down overlooking greater Kyoto on Mt. Ogura with Stephen Gill, poet, BBC radio scriptwriter, and executive director of People Together for Mt. Ogura. They discuss the mountain’s place in a traditional Japanese poetry card game; how, after scores of Japanese noticed in it an opportunity for free trash disposal, the mountain generated [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E8: Pyongyang Style with Rob Montz

Colin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles’ Koreatown with filmmaker Rob Montz, director of Juche Strong, a short documentary about North Korea and its propaganda. They discuss reaching the same age as Kim Jong-un without a hermit kingdom to rule; the question of why North Koreans continue to believe in their state, despite having good [...]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E7: The Accidental Japanophile with Christopher Olson

Colin Marshall sits down near Nara, Japan’s Tōdai-ji temple with artist, critic, and teacher Christopher Olson. They discuss his thoughts, as a Winnipegger born and raised, on Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg; the displacement, discombobulation, and respectable bullshitting of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, a copy of which he keeps at all times on his phone; high-risk [...]