Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life [Hardcover]

Michael Krasny (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2007

KQED Radio's Michael Krasny is one of the country's leading interviewers of literary luminaries, a maestro for educated listeners who prefer their discourse high and civil. He is a writer's interviewer.

But it didn't start out that way.

In Off Mike, Krasny, host of one of public radio's most popular and intellectually compelling programs, talks of his strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Bellow and Philip Roth, and then discovering his real talent as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor.

In a mix of memoir and reportage, Krasny takes readers inside his world. He gives an account of the polarizing transformation of talk radio, from his early days at KGO commercial radio, through to his current role at NPR, where he manages to keep the flow of talk in his San Francisco based show animated and politically balanced.

Forum fans and lovers of literature will be riveted by the insightful and amusing vignettes and behind the scenes accounts. They will get a taste of the sharp commentary from his encounters with panels of experts, and interviews with cultural and political personalities as well as writers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Long-time host of KQED's Forum, Kransy always lusted after literature, pursuing a degree in it despite the protestations of his mother, who warned it might impress girls but would never make him money. Instead of pushing out a worthy novel, however, Krasny canonizes his talk radio career in this memoir, placing stories from his juicy backlog of interviews alongside tales of a neglectful father, his Ohio State fraternity, procreating and purchasing a home. His steadily honed love of language is palpable and infectious, suited more to the book party-hopping literary junkie than the broadcast historian. Eminent newsmakers, literary greats and iconoclasts open up to him like patients on a psychiatrist's couch; the self-proclaimed "writer's interviewer" reveals that for Michael Chabon, "it's irritating to come up with technical matters like plot and character"; that an "owl-like" Joyce Carol Oates allowed him to cradle her "as she went speechless on air... over her beloved deceased literary agent"; and that T.C. Boyle believes his wild story "If the River Was Whiskey" could have been written by anybody. Though dense at times, the text's winding path toward self-definition is rewarding. Krasny posits how little he actually knows after a lifetime of reading and questioning, happily concluding that, like most everyone else, he has experienced over his life a confluence of ordinary and extraordinary, and been fortunate enough to live to write about it.
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Review

"Off Mike is an insightful homage not only to his craft, at which he has few peers, but also to the impressive litany of writers and personalities who have appeared on his show. He is as thoughtful and gracious on the page as he is behind the mike."—Khaled Hosseini, best-selling author of The Kite Runner

"Krasny agonizes over not having achieved the great dream of his youth—to become 'a respected and valued author.' Now, arguably, he has achieved with nonfiction what he failed to do as a novelist: Off Mike is reminiscent of the enormously entertaining fiction of Herman Wouk and Neil Simon. Even if Krasny is not a bird, his writing soars."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Krasny canonizes his talk radio career in this memoir, placing stories from his juicy backlog of interviews alongside tales of a neglectful father, his Ohio State fraternity, procreating and purchasing a home. His steadily honed love of language is palpable and infectious, suited more to the book party-hopping literary junkie than the broadcast historian. Eminent newsmakers, literary greats and iconoclasts open up to him like patients on a psychiatrists couch... "—Publishers Weekly

"Perhaps the biggest plaudit to give Krasny—who aspired his whole life to be a novelist, but settled for hosting talk radio and television shows, doing live interviews and teaching college—is that this book is well written, and will equally please literati and listeners of commercial radio."—San Jose Mercury News

"Krasny's true literary accomplishment is befriending America's intellectual elite in a public forum, giving the lay audience aural Cliffs Notes of modern classics without condescending to them. In that sense, Krasny is to literature through Off Mike what Al Gore is to global warming in An Inconvenient Truth: a trusted communicator of profundities, whose one excusable mistake is that he tells us more than we wanted to know about himself in the process."—SF Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Stanford General Books; First Edition edition (September 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804756716
• ISBN-13: 978-0804756716
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,431,184 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book I've Ever Read, March 1, 2008

By 

Lani Silver "oral historian & activist" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life (Hardcover)

Michael Krasny's new book, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life is one of the best books I have read. Michael Krasny is an icon to San Franciscan's, not because of his accumulated fame as a radio talk show host and English professor, but because of his big heart. In his book, Krasny answers many philosophical questions about life. His words enlighten and inspire us, making us all the more peaceful in the process.

Krasny teaches us lessons from his sixty years. For example, he teaches readers how to be a good listeners in order to enrich our lives, be polite, let people speak and not dominate every conversation. We also learn about his thoughts abhorring racism and how he embraces equality and feminism.

Krasny's personal story is fascinating because it involves transformation. Krasny tells of his humble beginnings in Cleveland Heights surrounded by bigotry and anti-Semitism. We watch his rise to radio fame and at the same time get a survey of world literature. His life lessons, adventures on radio and in the classroom are intercut with vignettes of time spent on and off the radio with the greatest names in literature in the 20th century, Bellows Mamet, Didion, Kingsolver, Hong Kingston, Tan, Coppola, Ishiguro, Smiley, Angelou, and Allende.

Krasny intuits that everyone wants to be a storyteller, and that if our hearts are open and our minds are quiet, we will see that everyone has something to share and teach others.

Krasny's show, KQED's `Forum' and his book have a distinctive truth to them. Krasny reveals things we often do not talk about in everyday life.

Among Krasny's hi-lites:

Interviews are an intimate exchange between the person being interviewed and the interviewer, an exchange that profits society. The interviews are also a gift to the person being interviewed. An interview gives a person a voice and opens the door for them to have a transformative experience. I witness that on a daily basis. I'm an oral historian and many of the interviews I conducted were with Holocaust survivors, who consistently look ten years younger after they were interviewed. We all need to tell our stories.

Krasny explains that people have better lives if they improve their listening skills. If someone is a good listener, they'll experience life at a deeper level.

By studying these very same issues myself for decades and after reading Krasny's book, I realize that I am continuously training myself to be still and pay attention to everything around me. With this kind of quiet energy, we can develop the ability to help society. Listening, according to Krasny, bears the fruit of compassion. I see now that I can now sit through long meetings, or aggressive situations and feel cool and calm, if I listen well. I don't need to feel aggressive and agitated myself. I'm delighted to see that I've learned something from all the interviews I conducted! I had not realized how much I transform from the interviewing process until I read Krasny's book.

So if you are an oral historian, or a lover of books, or a professional or amateur interviewer, or a radio talk show host, or just a person who wants to keep rising up, read Off Mike.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love the author Love the book, January 22, 2008

By 

MotherLodeBeth "MotherLodeBeth" (Sierras of California) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life (Hardcover)

Have listened to and appreciated Michael Krasny (Dr Krasny in our home since he has a PhD) since he was at KGO 810 ABC in San Francisco and since he joined KQED FM San Francisco. Have a called in to both programs and have been honoured to have done some email back and forth.

What makes this book a gem for anyone who loves him on radio (KQED's Forum) is how the book helps his listeners better appreciate the man and how he has evolved and become for some of us a gifted bibliophile who colours outside the lines. Unlike so many interviewers he asks damn interesting questions and shuts up long enough to let his guests answer.

And then having actually listened to his guest, he then is able to ask better and better questions. And I appreciate how even handed he is with his guests no matter their political, religious, sexual etc leanings. Doesn't mean he's a sappy interviewers, but simply one who seems to understand that one can get more by being a thoughtful adult vs a smart a**.

He has turned me on (pun intended) to publications like Yellow Silk to serious political, religious, bios and science works. My late husband used to smile and shake his head when the UPS guy would deliver books each week that I had bought from Amazon, which I had heard about on Michael Krasny's show.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great intro to contemporary authors, June 6, 2008

By 

Angela M. Hey (Portola Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life (Hardcover)

What makes this biography different is:
(a) the stellar use of vocabulary
(b) the book's structure - each chapter of life starts with biography and ends with Michael's opinions of roughly 3 interview subjects (mainly authors)

I am not a big fan of fiction - preferring the real to the made-up. However, I may get round to reading some, based on Michael's enthusiasm for literature. For, besides being a biography, this book is a highly readable introduction to contemporary authors and literature. It's a great book to have around when you are thinking "What shall I read next?" or "Who's a famous author that I really ought to know more about?".

It's about finding one's purpose in life too - should one try to be a writer, a broadcaster or a professor, or all three? Should one try to go on national radio or stay in funky California? Thankfully, podcasting makes the latter question irrelevant!

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about:
(a) being a radio interviewer
(b) contemporary authors and books
(c) how to enrich one's vocabulary - there were plenty of new words for me in the book
(d) Mike behind the mike
(e) the difference growing up in Cleveland and living in the San Francisco Bay area
(f) inter-personal relationships with school friends, bosses or colleagues

A very enjoyable read.