Forthcoming: in conversation with Ben Katchor

20 July, 2007 in Ben Katchor, Comics, Connections, Interviews, Nostalgia, Storytelling, Travel, Urbanism

selfportrait_katchor.jpg

In addition to this week’s news that I will be travelling to the Netherlands in August to meet and talk with the comic artist and illustrator Joost Swarte, I can also now confirm that I will be in New York City in September to interview the artist Ben Katchor. This trip has also been supported by the Stephenson Travelling Studentship awarded to this project by the University of Sheffield. Katchor’s sophisticated evocation of nostalgia, memory in urban narratives are of particular personal interest to me, and I’m looking forward to discussing the techniques employed by Katchor in his popular serialised comics Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer and The Jew of New York.

I’m also going to be celebrating a birthday in New York City, before perhaps taking off for a mini road trip and vacation in the mid-west, so excerpts and highlights of the interview will probably appear online in late September or early October.

If any interested readers are going to be in New York City between 11 and 16 September or Chicago between 17 and 27 September, drop me a line, and I’d be delighted to say hello.

3 Replies

  1. Andrea

    20 July, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    Me and my girlfriend are going to Canada in September and in that period (5-19) we will probably fly to New York for a week-end. In case I’ll surely try to get in touch.

  2. James

    20 July, 2007 at 3:22 pm

    Flying to New York? No! Do it the realyl shambolic and trully unreliable American way, and take the train! Daily service from Toronto and Montreal on Amtrak to New York Penn Station is the cheapest but also slowest way to the Big Apple (Montreal - NYC takes almost 12 hours instead of 6 hours by car :)

    Some previous trips…

    http://jamesbrownontheroad.wordpress.com/2006/08/26/snapshot-back-on-the-train/

    http://jamesbrownontheroad.wordpress.com/2006/01/28/trains-planes-automobiles-buses-ferries-streetcars/

    http://jamesbrownontheroad.wordpress.com/2005/10/08/snapshot-train-68-the-adirondack/

    http://jamesbrownontheroad.wordpress.com/2005/10/08/james-is-in-new-york/

    *j*

  3. Andrea

    21 July, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    Thank you very much for the infos! I love moving by train.
    Anyway I write it here even if it’s not the “right” thread: I’ve heard of an incoming book about City and Comics made by an American (I think) author. I don’t know anything else about it. Take it for what it is: just a rumor.

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