On this episode of Arts & Letters, we talk with Little Rock novelist, short story writer, prodigious list maker, and former 7th grader Kevin Brockmeier. He is the author of several national bestselling books of fiction including, A Brief History of the Dead, The View from the Seventh Layer, and The Illumination.
His latest effort recounts a character named Kevin Brockmeier and his present tense misadventures throughout his 7th grade year growing up in Little Rock.
Writer Karen Russell calls A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip "a truly stunning hybrid--a memoir told with the imaginative vibrancy and the uncanny precision of the best fiction."
The memoir begins on the last weekend of summer 1985--the last weekend before 7th grade for Kenneth, Thad, Bateman, and Kevin Brockmeier, who we find hanging from a cliff "bracing his sneakers against chunks of stone and the whip handles of baby trees, twenty-five feet above the parking lot."
So let's lace up our Reeboks, pull on our izod polos, don jelly bracelets and Swatch Watches, zip up our bomber jackets, take a deep breath, hold it, and return to middle school in 1985 in order to become a part of it all.
Supplements
Music
We humbly thank Brian Nahlen, Jeh-sea Wells and Max Gomez for their musical contributions.
If you'd care to write us a comment about this show or any other, please email us at artsletters@kuar.org
Support for this program comes from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
