“We’re All Curating Our Personal Cultures” – Talking to Pulitzer Prize-winner Margo Jefferson

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

Society & Culture, Government, News, Politics

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pulitzer Prize-winner Margo Jefferson tells Dorian Lynskey about her wide-ranging career as a critic. She discusses shedding light on the lives of everyone from Tina Turner to Michael Jackson, being the first Black woman book critic at Newsweek, and writing on race, class and gender at the New York Times. They also discuss her new book, Constructing a Nervous System, and ask can you ever separate art from the artist? “We're all curating our personal cultures.” "I felt I had to be impeccable to brilliant... there's a certain high standard you don't slip beneath." "I realised I could bring the critics tools of questioning and probing to myself." https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Lead Producer: Jacob Jarvis Producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Audio production by Jade Bailey. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602237/constructing-a-nervous-system-by-margo-jefferson/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker daily I'm Dorian Linsky. My guest today is a professor of writing at Columbia University. She began
1:14.9	her writing career as a critic in the 1970s and won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995. A memoir Negro Land won the National Book Critics' Circle Award.
1:23.2	A new memoir constructing a nervous system is a follow-up, but definitely not a sequel.
1:27.2	It's a very different way to explore a life.
1:29.6	Thanks for joining me, Margot Jefferson.
1:31.2	Thanks for inviting me.
1:33.4	So I don't know if you know Mark Marion's podcast, but he often sort of breaks the ice by asking
1:37.0	interviewees who were your guys, meaning gender neutral, who were your influences and inspirations growing up?
1:42.6	And that seems to be the sort of the heart of constructing a nervous system.
1:46.8	Do you think building a sense of self out of the artists and the public figures that you love
	...

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