About this episode

Julie Carr interviews poet Susan Gevirtz about her experiences in Hollywood and her project Guide School, exploring themes of origins and identity.

In episode 27, I talk with poet Susan Gevirtz about her childhood growing up in Los Angeles, within the two “religions” of Hollywood and Freudian psychoanalysis. We talk about her early experiences in the world of Hollywood films through her grandfather’s work as the musical director for Universal, and her sense, even as a young person, that the world that was presented to her was a made place, invented and therefore radically open to inquiry. We dig into her ongoing project, Guide School, a multi-faceted blended-genre manuscript that interrogates the longing for a “homeland,” and the unsatisfiable and therefore motivating desire for “origins” of all kinds - epistemological, historical, textual, and spiritual. Susan talks about her travels in Eastern Europe, the phenomenon of “the guide schools” in which tour guides are trained to present particular versions of history, and her encounters with the YIVO archive for Jewish Research of both Vilnius Lithuania and New York City. We end by discussing our somewhat vexed curiosity about Kabbalah, and mystical traditions in general, thinking together about how reading/writing as a practice of unknowing and infinite encounter might itself…

People in this episode

Host: Julie Carr

Guest: Susan Gevirtz

Topics covered

• identity
• origins
• Kabbalah
• Hollywood
• psychoanalysis
• Jewish history
• mystical traditions

Keywords

• Susan Gevirtz
• Hollywood
• Kabbalah
• Guide School
• origins
• Jewish history
• mystical traditions

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Guide to the Perplexed, The Burnt Book, In the Midst of Civilzed Eur

Places: Los Angeles, Eastern Europe, Vilnius Lithuania, New York City

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