Episode 9: Wayne Koestenbaum
Rachel Zucker speaks with Wayne Koestenbaum, an artist of multiple mediums and a cultural critic, about nudism, the shame of writing, sensual upsurge, ecofeminism, the different challenges posed by writing and painting, and what he calls “the cage of language.” They explore questions of self-validation, changing one’s relationship to language, and what it means to be a cautious person who “bares all” in their work. In the latter part of the conversation, Zucker and Koestenbaum discuss the implications of book purging, and the difficulties of managing and letting go of the things one inherits.
Wayne's Books
Poetry
Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background (Turtle Point Press, 2012)
Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films (Turtle Point Press, 2006)
Rhapsodies of A Repeat Offender (Persea, 1994)
Ode to Anna Moffo and Other Poems (Persea, 1990)
Model Homes (BOA Editions, 2004)
Criticism and essays
Notes on Glaze: 18 Photographic Investigations (Cabinet Books, 2016)
The Pink Trace Notebooks (Nightboat, 2015)
My 1980s and Other Essays (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013)
The Anatomy of Harpo Marx (University of California Press, 2012)
Humiliation (Picador, 2011)
Andy Warhol (Lipper/Viking, 2001)
Cleavage: Essays on Sex, Stars, and Aesthetics (Ballantine Books, 2000)
Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting An Icon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995)
The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (Poseidon, 1993)
Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration (Routledge, 1989)
Fiction
Hotel Theory (Soft Skull Press, 2007)
Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes (Soft Skull, 2004)
The Milk of Inquiry (Persea, 1999)
Opera libretto
Painting
Other Books Mentioned
The Bad Wife Handbook, Rachel Zucker
Naked Poetry: Recent American Poetry in Open Forms, Stephen Berg
Other Relevant Links
Adrienne Rich’s Poetry Became Political, but It Remained Rooted in Material Fact by Wayne Koestenbaum, published in the New York Times
The Visceral Visual Art of Wayne Koestenbaum by Ashlie Danielle Stevens, published in Hyperallergic
Option 3, Rachel Zucker, published in At Length magazine (second of two prose pieces on this page)
Conversation with Wayne Koestenbaum, Rachel Zucker and Matthew Rohrer, published in The Believer
The Class Politics of Decluttering by Stephanie Land for the New York Times
Donate Your Books!
Many thanks to 192 Books for allowing Commonplace to record and share Wayne’s reading and Q& A.
