Wired for Books JACK MATTHEWS author that “time and the Internet forgot”? NO, NOT REALLY Neglected Ohio novelist Jack Matthews still raises his voice Don Swaim's interview with Jack Matthews: listen Don and Jack debate Ohio's Ambrose Bierce: listen Definitive profile of Jack Matthews by Robert Nagle at TeleRead: here photo of Jack Matthews by Dinty W. Moore DICK FRANCIS The former British jockey, 1920-1010, captivated mystery fans on both sides of the Atlantic with his well-crafted novels, all with a horse-racing motif. Dick Francis, who credited his wife, Mary Margaret, with the actual writing, braved no fewer than seven interviews with Don Swaim: Twice Shy  4/28/82:  listen Banker  4/18/83:  listen The Danger  5/7/84:  listen Proof  5/10/85:  listen Break-in  5/30/86:  listen Bolt  6/12/87:  listen The Edge  4/7/89:  listen BARRY HANNAH 1942-2010 A Gordon Lish "discovery," Hannah's wildly stylish prose wasn't for everyone. In 1993 Don interviewed him on the occasion of his story collection Bat Out of Hell: listen. J.D. SALINGER No, Book Beat, never interviewed Salinger, who died on January 27, 2010, at the age of ninety one. But Don Swaim did interview two important figures in the reclusive author's life and career: Joyce Maynard, Salinger's young live-in lover: listen Ian Hamilton, who was sued by Salinger for using unauthorized quotations in a biography: listen LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS 1917-2010 The premier New York City novelist chronicled the patrician world of WASPS. In 1986 Don spoke to Auchincloss about his life, career, and Yuppies: listen. THE WORLD'S BEST-SELLING NOVELIST IS... JAMES PATTERSON! Patterson's so successful he has a stable of writers to write his books for him, nine published in 2009 alone. Click here to read a cover-page article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine [January 24, 2010]. Don Swaim interviewed Patterson for Book Beat before he made it big: listen. Wouldn't it be great to be so successful that you can pay scribes to write your books for you? ROBERT B. PARKER 1932-2010 The prolific, Edgar Award-winning crime writer penned thirty-seven novels starring his Boston-based detective Spenser. Don Swaim interviewed Parker twice: 6/20/84 listen -- 7/21/86 listen THE CULT OF AYN RAND October 2009 marked the publication of two definitive biographies of Ayn Rand [New York Times Reviews], author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and whose "Ojectivist" philosophy led to a cult-like following. Don Swaim interviewed the three most influential people in her career. Nathaniel Brandon, Rand's leading advocate, intellectual heir, and lover: listen Barbara Brandon, early Rand deciple and husband of Nathaniel. His sexual relationship with Rand led to a self-destructive denouement: listen Leonard Piekoff, Rand's literary executor, on the philosophy of Ayn Rand: listen Leonard Piekoff, Rand's literary executor, on the early writings of Ayn Rand: listen STUART KAMINSKY 1934-2009 Detective novelist and screenwriter, Kaminsky was a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. Don's broadcast with Kaminsky on the occasion of his Edgar Award-winning novel A Cold Red Sunrise: listen. WILLIAM SAFIRE 1929-2009 Speechwriter, language expert, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, William Safire was a conservative even the Left could admire. Don's broadcast with Safire on the occasion of his Civil War novel Freedom: listen. JIM CARROLL 1949-2009 Poet and punk rocker, whose chaotic life blended sports, drugs, and verse, died of a heart attack at the age of sixty. Poignant article about the end of his sad, near poverty-stricken life by Alex Williams in The New York Times here. Don's broadcast with Jim Carroll: listen. E.L. DOCTOROW Book Beat Audio of an American Literary Icon Doctorow, celebrated for Ragtime, publishes Homer and Langley (Random House, September 2009), his sixteenth book Don Swaim's five-part interview with Doctorow: listen Doctorow vies with the more conservative John Updike, International PEN Congress 3/10/86: listen Doctorow receives 1986 American Book Award: listen Doctorow publishes classic essay about a failed and ruined president, Easthampton Star, 9/9/04: here Doctorow booed by George W. Bush supporters at Hoftra University, Newsday, 5/24/04: here Doctorow at home in an article in The New York Times, 9/2/09: here Don Swaim's unedited Wired for Books interview with Doctorow: audio HENRY LOUIS GATES Pluck & Scholarship The noted black studies scholar was caught in a firestorm when he was arrested for being impertinent to a white cop in Gates' Cambridge, Massachusetts, home. But far more important is that Gates unearthed what is believed to be the first novel written by a black woman in America. Hear Don's interview with Gates at Wired for Books -- and the actual broadcast listen. BUDD SCHULBERG 1914-2009 Schulberg shook up Hollywood with his novel What Makes Sammy Run, and he won an Oscar for On the Waterfront. Hear Don's 1990 interview with Schulberg at Wired for Books -- and the actual broadcast listen. INTERVIEW WITH ALIX OHLIN Montreal-born Alix Ohlin is the author of the novel The Missing Person and the story collection Babylon (both Knopf). She earned a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. Ohlin teaches creative writing at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania. To hear Don Swaim's 2009 interview with Ohlin click LISTEN SIDNEY ZION 1933-2009 Coloful writer and lawyer, whose daughter's untimely death led to major improvements in working conditions at New York hospitals. Hear Don's 1991 interview with Zion at Wired for Books -- and the actual broadcast listen. Norman Mailer, interviewed by Don Swaim on December 2, 1991. listen. Richard M. Nixon discusses books, authors, and his own writing in an interview with Don Swaim on February 6, 1984. listen. Updike JOHN UPDIKE 1932-2009 Arguably, the acclaimed Pennsylvania-born novelist should have won the Nobel Prize. Don Swaim interviewed Updike in 1984. Listen to the unedited interview at Wired for Books. For the actual broadcast: listen. ONE OF MURROW'S BOYS WILLIAM L. SHIRER, pioneering news broadcaster and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, talks about the first days of CBS News and Edward R. Murrow, godfather of broadcast journalism in a thirty-minute interview with Don Swaim on July 7, 1984. listen. ANOTHER OF MURROW'S BOYS DAVID SCHOENBRUN, one of the original CBS News correspondents in World War Two, talks about the old radio days in an interview with Don Swaim on October 6, 1984. listen. MURROW: HIS LIFE AND TIMES Definitive biography of Edward R. Murrow and the history of CBS News by Ann Sperber. listen. Purdy JAMES PURDY 1914-2009 Hard to categorize although with a cult following, the Ohio-born Purdy never enjoyed a wide audience, but he was truly an original. Despite his severe image, Purdy was friendly and courtly. Don Swaim interviewed him three times. The unedited interviews can be heard at Wired for Books. Purdy's obit here. Gore Vidal's profile of Purdy: The Novelist as Outlaw. MICHAEL CRICHTON Early Enthusiast of Personal Computers Crichton (1942-2008) was the Harvard Medical School-trained writer who blended science and technology into thrillers and sci-fi, such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. In 1983 -- before Macs, Windows, email, and the Internet -- he published a ground-breaking non-fiction book aimed at educating Americans about personal computing, Electronic Life: How To Think About Computers, and how, as he put it, "everybody's going to have to learn." He was prescient. In a two-part series, Don Swaim spoke to Crichton about computing: listen. For Don's four unedited Wired for Books interviews with Crichton go here. Unfortunately, in his last year, Crichton's fiction was used by the presidency of George W. Bush in a crude effort to prove that global warming is a hoax. SECRET MUSINGS click photos to enlarge Stanley Elkin, Don Swaim 4/16/85 "Stan, lemme try to explain something to you about the craft of fiction." listen John Irving, Don Swaim 5/24/85 "John, now if I'd written 'Garp' I would have ended it this way..." listen Jane Ann Phillips, Don Swaim 5/21/85 "This gal needs a personal writing tutor, and I'm just the guy." listen Paul Theroux, Don Swaim 5/27/85 "Paul, you may have gone to Timbuktu, but never to Asbury Park in January." listen BOOK "MARKS" TV DEMOS Two six-minute TV pilots with Don Swaim interviewing humorist Roy Blount, Jr., and novelist Hugh Nissenson for a show taped in 1987 for Walden Books. The project went nowhere, but the demos survive. Click on images below to start the Quicktime movies. Roy Blount Hugh Nissenson BOOK BEAT HISTORY Broadcasting was a different world in 1967 when CBS began an all-news radio operation on its 50,000-watt WCBS, New York, flagship of its seven owned-and-operated AM stations. Then, WCBS broadcast a daily book review with contributions from the staff voiced by Dick Reeves. Don Swaim, a former television news editor from Baltimore, contributed regularly to this feature, transcripts of which were distributed to the news media. An excerpt from Swaim's review of an oral biography of Harry S Truman appeared in the New York Post on March 2, 1974: click to enlarge By late 1982, Swaim, who had been reporting on books and authors for the station for several years (as well as a contributor to a CBS-FM broadcast, "Crosstalk"), proposed a daily feature, "Book Beat," to which staff members, one of whom was WCBS political reporter Steve Flanders, would contribute. Flanders' sudden death scotched that idea, and Swaim embarked on the five day a week feature alone. The executives in charge were Mike Ludlum and Lou Adler. Its first broadcast was January 3, 1983, with a profile of William Styron. The network's CBS Radio Stations News Service headed by Joe Durso made "Book Beat" available nationwide. Over the years, literally hundreds of America's greatest writers were interviewed. "Book Beat"'s final broadcast was September 9, 1993, with an interview with Ray Bradbury on the 40th anniversary of Farenheit 451. POSTSCRIPT There was uncertainty as to how to preserve this remarkable archive. Finally, the raw interviews, all on tape, were acquired by Ohio University in Athens, which digitized the material and posted it on its Wired for Books website. Wired for Books declined to post the two-minute radio features, as opposed to the raw interviews, so the features, as they actually appeared on the air, are broadcast here. BOOK BEAT, a daily feature about books and writers, was broadcast on WCBS-AM in New York from 1982 through 1993 and distributed nationally by the CBS Radio Stations News Service (CBS RSNS). Not mere commentary, the broadcasts featured the actual voices of prominent writers interviewed by Don Swaim at CBS in New York. Organized chronologically, they're posted in the ARCHIVE section below as mp3 files. Use Search Site at the top of the page to locate a specific author. The unedited, never aired interviews, used as the basis for each Book Beat feature, are posted separately at Ohio University's WIRED FOR BOOKS. Don Swaim ARCHIVE Some 3000 daily Book Beat broadcasts archived here in chronological order: Book Beat 1982 Book Beat 1983 Book Beat 1984 Book Beat 1985 Book Beat 1986 Book Beat 1987 Book Beat 1988 Book Beat 1989 Book Beat 1990 Book Beat 1991 Book Beat 1992 Book Beat 1993 Among the authors interviewed by Don Swaim on CBS Radio's Book Beat & posted on Ohio University's Wired for Books: American Book Award winners: Russell Banks | Sandra Cisneros | Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | William Kennedy | Paule Marshall | Toni Morrison | Gary Snyder | Art Spiegelman | John Edgar Wideman Booker Prize winners: Margaret Atwood | John Banville | Ian McEwan | Kazuo Ishiguro | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala | Thomas Keneally | Bernice Rubens | Graham Swift | Barry Unsworth Edgar Award winners: Lawrence Block | Mary Higgins Clark | Dick Francis | Frederick Forsyth | Tony Hillerman | P. D. James | Stuart Kaminsky | Elmore Leonard | Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) | Robert B. Parker | T. Jefferson Parker | Ruth Rendell | Joseph Wambaugh | Donald Westlake Hugo Award winners: Isaac Asimov | Ray Bradbury Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing : Oliver Sacks Literarian Award winner: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters winners: Judy Blume | Ray Bradbury | Joan Didion | James Laughlin | Norman Mailer | Toni Morrison | Adrienne Rich | Studs Terkel | John Updike National Book Award winners: John Barth | Kevin Boyle | James Carroll | James Dickey | Joan Didion | E. L. Doctorow | Richard Eberhart | Allen Ginsberg | John Irving | James Jones | Tracy Kidder | Maxine Hong Kingston | Jerzy Kosinski | Jonothan Kozol | Louis L'Amour | Barry Lopez | Paul Monette | Toni Morrison | Joyce Carol Oates | William L. Shirer | Susan Sontag | Robert Stone | William Styron | John Updike | Gore Vidal National Book Critics Circle Award winners: E. L. Doctorow | Stanley Elkin | John C. Gardner | William Kennedy | Toni Morrison | Reynolds Price | Jane Smiley | John Updike Nobel Prize winners: Gunter Grass | Doris Lessing Elie Weisel| Toni Morrison PEN-Faulkner Award for Fiction winners: T. Coraghessan Boyle | Michael Cunningham | E. L. Doctorow | John Updike | John Edgar Wideman | Richard Wiley | Tobias Wolff Pulitzer Prize winners: Carl Bernstein | Robert Olen Butler | Michael Cunningham | Richard Eberhart | Oscar Hijuelos | William Kennedy | Tracy Kidder | Alison Lurie | Norman Mailer | Toni Morrison | Jane Smiley | Gary Snyder | Studs Terkel | John Updike RECENT BOOKSclick images for purchase info OVER HERE! NEW YORK DURING WORLD WAR II Lorraine B. Diehl ASCENSION: ACCESSING THE FIFTH DIMENSION Elizabeth Joyce WEST OF PARADISE RUN J.J.R. Ramey Ramey Interview: listen Don's Radio Dreams A broadcast-journalist's early career through and including Book Beat—mp3 [runs 17 minutes] Email DON'S OTHER SITES WCBS Appreciation Site   Book Beat: The Podcast   Wired for Books   Radio Days   Aspinwall HS Class of 55   Ambrose Bierce Site   Bucks County Writers Workshop   Errata   Steinbeck in Bucks Co   Pennsylvania Sunsets   Growing Up in WW Two   Fighting the Hun in WW One   Official Stuart Cummings Ripley Site PC Magazine's BEST OF THE INTERNET cites Don Swaim's interviews on Wired for Books. Nov. 20, 2007, issue

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