Willard Spiegelman Unbound

Willard Spiegelman is the Hughes Professor of English, Emeritus, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the longtime former editor-in-chief of the Southwest Review. The author of numerous books on English and American poetry, as well as two volumes of personal essays, Spiegelman has spent a career writing about literature, art, music, and the ways culture shapes our understanding of ourselves. His most recent work before My Lucky Stars was Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt, published by Alfred A. Knopf. He is also a longtime contributor to the arts and books pages of The Wall Street Journal. A lifelong reader, writer, and teacher, Spiegelman brings to his work a particular attentiveness to language, voice, and the pleasures of cultural life.This week on Authors Unbound, we talk with Willard Spiegelman about My Lucky Stars, his forthcoming collection of essays and unconventional memoir of taste. The book grew from individual essays on figures such as Mabel Mercer, Ruth Draper, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, and Patsy Cline, which gradually revealed themselves as a way of telling Spiegelman’s own story through the people, performances, music, and entertainments that have shaped his life. He reflects on his early love of Gilbert and Sullivan, his discovery of country-western music after moving to Texas, and his enduring fascination with the Great American Songbook and the power of a singer to honor the words of a song. Along the way, he considers the middlebrow—not as something to be dismissed, but as a cultural space capable of offering pleasure, community, generosity, and relief from hardship. He also explores the relationship between listening and writing, the importance of articulation and repartee, and what moments of theater and performance can still offer an audience willing to sit quietly and pay attention.Don't miss this rich conversation about taste, memory, language, performance, and the enduring pleasures of the cultural middle.This is Willard Spiegelman Unbound.Purchase your copy of My (Lucky) Stars directly from Unbound Edition Press.For more from Unbound Edition Press, visit us at unboundedition.com.