N ot much new to report this month, so I thought I’d do a little excavating.
Two years ago this July, I was interviewed by my son Kerry Zentner. He was interim arts editor for an online magazine called Mondo, and that’s where the text appeared: http://www.mondomagazine.net/art-f-aow-08.html
Since then, I’ve contributed a couple other pieces to Mondo. Below are links to a short “favourite books” article and an anecdotally expanded 25-year anniversary edition of an interview I did with Leonard Cohen (I was interviewing him, by the way): http://www.mondomagazine.net/2007/07/steve-venrights-top-five-books/ http://www.mondomagazine.net/2008/08/encountering-cohen-a-reminiscence-on-the-eve-of-a-new-world-tour/
(Cohen fans ought to take a look at the latter, if only to see the terrific shot of Lenny that Tom Robe took the day of the interview, back in May 1983.)
And here’s a recording of my reading at the April 2008 Ottawa International Writers’ Festival in — Well, I can’t remember where it was, actually, but I do remember that Stephen Brockwell was the host and everybody at the festival was so nice I’m sure they won’t mind my offering up this audio clip as an exclusive to Mansfield Revue visitors: http://www.venright.com/Audio/Venright_OIWF2008.m4a
Wait, there are two other things to report: a nighthawk just squeaped by my window and – at the suggestion of Jesse Huisken of This Ain’t the Rosedale Library – I’m reading an amazing and hilarious 1972 novella by David Ohle called Motorman (perhaps as funny as Fan Man, released soon after, by William Kotzwinkle).
I will leave you with these words from Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator, a great English band making its return to Canada this week after an absence of something like 31 years:
And though dark is the highway
and the peak’s distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past…
In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!
