Episode 522: Abraham Josephine Riesman

Longform

Education, Arts, Books, News

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Abraham Josephine Riesman is a journalist who writes often for New York and is the author of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. Her second book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, will be published in March. “You’re sure that there’s a level of unreality, but you’re not sure that it’s all fake. There’s stuff there that seems either plausible or sometimes you go ‘there’s no way you could fake that.’ And sometimes you’re right, and a lot of times you’re somewhere in the middle. It’s not as easily distinguished as saying this is fact and this is fiction, this was scripted and this was improvised, whatever. You can’t make those distinctions easily, and one of the things I sort of hope comes out of the book—if it has any impact at all—is to try to get us past this false binary of true and false.” Show notes: @abrahamjoseph abrahamriesman.com Riesman on Longform Riesman’s New York Magazine archive 16:00 "She Was WWE’s First Female Referee. She Says Vince McMahon Raped Her." (New York Magazine • June 2022) 27:00 "There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America" (Jamelle Bouie • New York Times • Feb 2023) 28:00 "My Grandfather the Zionist" (New York Magazine • June 2021) 37:00 "How Los Bros Hernandez Stayed Punk for 40 Years with their Epic Comic-Book Saga, Love and Rockets" (GQ • Nov 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the long form podcast. I'm Aaron Lammer. I'm here with my co-host, Evan
0:14.3	Ratliffe, and Max Lensky. Hello. Hey, Aaron. Aaron, Evan. Hello. How are you guys? Aaron,
0:20.5	who is on the show this week? Very excited about this episode. Got excited when the book
0:25.0	arrived in my mail. Was excited while reading it. And then the excitement continued to talking
0:30.8	about it. I talked to Abraham Josephine Reesman. She's the author of Ringmaster, Vince McMahon,
0:38.9	and the Unmaking of America, which due to me not being able to read press releases is not actually
0:44.9	out yet, but is available for preorder. It will be out in March. I don't know if we've done that
0:51.3	before on the show. I hope so. Sorry, guys. I talked to someone about a book that only I could read
0:57.6	and no one else could read. She has previously been the author of a biography of Stan Lee from
1:05.4	Marvel. I kind of wanted to get into what putting together one of these biographies and tales,
1:11.8	especially for both of these are living subjects who have an immense number of skeletons in their
1:19.7	closet and also how she got people to reveal those skeletons in their respective closets. She's
1:27.9	been a journalist, places like Fulcher at New York Magazine, Daily Beast, and I've been into her work
1:33.9	for a long time. Great conversation. Yeah, nothing wrong with getting some preorders lined up.
1:38.6	As an author myself, I can tell you, preorders are very important. I was like, I'm so sorry. And
1:43.4	then I was informed that preorders are actually more valuable than regular orders. So if you want to
1:49.1	save me the embarrassment of this poor scheduling decision, go out. And I'm saying this as a person
1:56.3	who is, this is addressed in the interview, not a wrestling fan, like not a watcher of wrestling,
2:02.5	but have always been fascinated by wrestling's role in American life. If you are like me, you might
2:11.3	enjoy this book that both debunks and also shows the grandeur and history of wrestling and the
2:20.3	whole empire that Vince McMahon built. I will say I think that I'm doing an interview for a book
2:26.4	that is not yet out in order to drive preorders. It's kind of a WWE move. Yes, it's got WWE
	...

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