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In 2019, at the age of 87, journalist/novelist/raconteur Dan Wakefield sat down with fellow writer Susan Neville to talk about his life and work. Because he was a working writer from the 1950s on, his life intersected with some of the major figures and events of the late twentieth century. In these ten podcasts you’ll hear their stories. The interviews were conducted at Butler University’s Irwin Library and on Mr. Wakefield’s front porch on Northview Avenue in Indianapolis. They were finishe ...
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At the end of this interview, Dan Wakefield says ‘’I guess that’s it. That’s everything I know. That’s doubtful of course, but the amount of insider history covered in this podcast is wide ranging. One of the first practitioners of what was called “The New Journalism,” he tells stories from the great age of celebrity profiles. Wakefield covered Sen…
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In this episode, prose writer Dan Wakefield talks about the importance of poetry in his own life and in his writing. This is a wide-ranging conversation that touches on many poets, writers, and musicians: including the teacher who gave him the Carl Sandburg poem that gave him permission to leave Indiana for New York; memories from his deep friendsh…
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EPISODE EIGHT: HOLLYWOOD AND JAMES AT 15
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In perhaps the most personal of these podcasts, Dan discusses the time he spent in Hollywood working on the television series James at 15, a period of his life that began with an offer he couldn’t refuse and ended with the crisis he describes in Returning. Along the way, he learns the ins and outs of the television and film industry, a world he wou…
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EPISODE SEVEN: ‘LA WOMAN’ EVE BABITZ
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When Wakefield first moved to Los Angeles to start a novel in Joan Didion’s basement and later on the beach in Venice, where he lived at the Chateau Marmont and entered a tumultuous relationship with Eve Babitz, former girlfriend of Jim Morrison, designer of album covers for Buffalo Springfield, and writer of essays and stories, including “Black Sw…
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EPISODE SIX: CIVIL RIGHTS REPORTING (JOURNALIST)
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Wakefield began his journalism career as a civil rights reporter for The Nation, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The New York Times. After his coverage of the Emmett Till trial, he continued being fascinated by trials. “It was like reading a novel,” he explains in this episode. He talks about the James Jones From Here to Eternity trial and the Adam Clay…
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EPISODE FIVE: THE MAN FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORY (ISRAEL)
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As a young journalist, Wakefield was inspired by Hemingway’s notion that you have to face death to be a writer. “I wanted to put myself at risk,” Wakefield says in this interview, “test my courage and integrity” and so he “jumped at the first opportunity to get himself shot at.” In this episode, Wakefield talks about fishing and being shot at in th…
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Dan had the opportunity to study under some of the greatest teachers/writers/critics of the 20th century, including Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren. Rabbi Harold Kushner was also there. He also lived in New York at the height of the popularity of Freudian analysis. In this episode, he talks about the people he knew at Columbia, his work with C. …
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EPISODE THREE: EMMETT TILL TRIAL and C. WRIGHT MILLS
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In 1955, Wakefield graduated from Columbia University and went looking for his first job. Through Indianapolis connections, he landed an interview with Barney Kilgore, editor of The Wall Street Journal. He wasn’t, Kilgore told him, quite ready for the Journal, but he was given a reporting job at a small paper in Princeton, New Jersey, where every d…
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At the time of this taping, Wakefield was Kurt Vonnegut’s “oldest living friend.” It was Vonnegut who wrote the New York Times review of Wakefield’s Going All the Way and it’s Wakefield who posthumously edited Vonnegut’s stories, letters, and graduation speeches. They both grew up in Indianapolis and attended Shortridge High School. Wakefield talks…
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EPISODE ONE: OLD WHITE GUY GETS WOKE
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When Dan Wakefield moved back to his hometown of Indianapolis in 2005, he saw it with a different lens and was re-awakened, in his 80s, to the history of racism and the erasure of Midwestern black culture that he had been blind to as a child. He brought a lifetime of his own civil rights reporting and things he hadn’t understood in long friendship …
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