Culturetopia: All About The Sonic Edition from NPR: Culturetopia Podcast

This week on Culturetopia: Hitmaker Jerry Wonda on building platinum sound; author Danielle Evans on her new collection of short stories; the extraordinary existence of blues singer Robin Rogers; remembering jazzman James Moody.

Download the podcast of this show, here. NPR's All Things Considered also did a show, covering the set of short stories by Danielle Evans; the host introduced the author this way: Fiction writer Danielle Evans burst onto the literary scene in 2007 when her first short story was published in the Paris Review. At the time, she was just 23. Now she's released her debut book. It's a collection of short stories called "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self."

Evans grew up moving from city to city with her mother. She writes about some of those places: New York, Tallahassee, northern Virginia, and about navigating those worlds from the perspectives of mixed race and African-American teenagers. The stories have a fly-on-the-wall quality, as if you're listening in on private conversations about race and gender and class. But when she stopped by our studios recently, Evans told me she doesn't want her characters to be defined by only those things.

Download that podcast here. Danielle Evans was also listed as an "Attention-Getter" of 2010 by the Washingtonian, which noted the author as the "American University professor published one of the year’s best short-story collections, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self." See that list of 40 folks that had "shaped 2010" here. By the way, we're not talking about American's Next Top Model, here; this isn't that kind of blog (though we get teased a lot for using Blogger.com; hey, Reich uses it; at least, he used to, quite regularly). And finally, cultural periodical, PopMatters writes this about one of the stories by Evans:

In “Wherever You Go, There You Are” a 20-something narrator takes a road trip from Delaware to Raleigh to visit her friend, Brian. She has unresolved feelings for Brian, but he’s recently engaged, and she will be meeting his fiancé. Complicating matters further is her 14-year old cousin, Chrissie, who comes with her at the last minute. Their car ride consists of a series of conversations about boys and sex that are both funny and sad. Chrissie is described as “the wrong kind of pretty, the kind that’s soft but not fragile, the kind that inspires the impulse to touch.” This is just one of several examples in the collection where Evans captures the confusion and vulnerability that young women face as they grow into adulthood.

Read that PopMatters articles here. See also: Color Me Butterfly: A Novel Inspired by One Family's Journey from Tragedy to Triumph, Some Sing, Some Cry: A Novel

This Song Will Be Right Back, After This Pause from WNYC's Soundcheck by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Yesterday on the show, author Jennifer Egan was talking about her new novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, where music and the music business are the connecting thread among the various different characters whose stories are unfolding in different decades. One of those characters becomes obsessed with pauses in music – what they mean, why they can be so powerful, etc.- and she compiles a list of pop music’s greatest pauses. There are lots of examples of very pregnant pauses in music. Classical music is full of them, from the beginning of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture (and the old Perry Mason TV show theme that seems to have been, um, “inspired” by it) to the three oddly-spaced pauses that end Sibelius’s Symphony #5. But rock and pop have their share as well. Egan’s book lists some classics: “Foxey Lady” by Jimi Hendrix, “Young Americans” by David Bowie (who actually used pauses even more effectively in songs like “Time,” and his cover of “Let’s Spend The Night Together”), “Time of the Season” by the Zombies, and “Roxanne” by the Police – notable because its pause is not a “false ending,” as so many pauses in pop music are. I’ve been trying to think of other great pauses, where the pause really makes the whole song better. There’s “Mahna Mahna,” the song associated with the Muppets show; that song is nothing without its pauses. (Producer Joel Meyer’s reply: “that song is nothing without its puppets.”) I think the pause in The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life,” just before the final chord, would also make the cut. But as fans of the Rocky Horror Picture Show know, there is probably no song more dependent on its pauses than the one I’m about to list next.

Listen to the podcast here.

Danielle Evans and 'Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self' from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

At 26, Danielle Evans is already the kind of writer who makes other writers jealous. She's still fresh from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but she's already been chosen – twice – for The Best American Short Stories, and both Salman Rushdie and Richard Russo have praised her work. There's already a lot of buzz around her new book, a collection of eight short stories called “Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self” She joins us to read a bit, and to talk about the challenges of being a young black writer in a world that's not over race... but is kind of over talking about it.

Amazing story and context, but amazing read as well. Listen to the podcast here.