Update: Listen to it now. There’s also an excerpt here—the useful and engaging introduction—which Pruzan expanded into that great New Yorker piece that wasn’t online. Ah, I see, a vast left-wing conspiracy! Not to mention a great picture of ol’ Favell, poor old soul. (A bit more about her here.)

Why would you miss that? You wouldn’t. If you’re lucky, the shade of Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer will join them. Either she’ll be touched to be rediscovered or she’ll be very, very indignant and hurl ethnocentric epithets (read aloud from the book). Tune in at 5:50 (or your local time) and wait for the signal. Then break out the nasty ethnic food of your choice.

Don’t miss this riveting piece by Tony Valenzuela in the L.A. Times about gay men and crystal meth. An HIV-positive man who’s pretty much done it all and lived to tell the sometimes frightful, sometimes troublingly thrilling tale, Valenzuela dramatically and thoughtfully expands the context of why talking about how to kick the habit isn’t enough:

But it is worth noting that in the gay community, the sky is always falling—because it did once, because we fear it might again, and so we shouldn’t be shocked when an alarming number of us respond to endemic fatalism by practicing nihilism by rote.

One doesn’t have to have a problem with drugs or be infected with HIV to feel the painful legacy of AIDS or to know the slow suffocation of homophobia. These cataclysms reside beneath the surface of our skins and come up as boils every time another state writes anti-gay discrimination into its constitution, another school board erases us from textbooks, or more parents teach their children to revile us. The future of drug addiction is all but guaranteed in a population of gay kids growing up in today’s savagely anti-gay, Constitution-hating age of hyperbole.

In case you missed it, here’s Michael Specter’s story in similar territory for The New Yorker.

Love the radio! We’ve been having a happy reunion these past few days.

Here’s the archived show. Wilsey’s a charming speaker—great voice, self-deprecating. He clearly has a highly developed sense of humor (it’s in the book, but it’s revealing to hear these stories told aloud) about the over-the-topness of his family drama. This is not an ungrateful child.

Wilsey on his mother, whose memoir he quotes extensively in Oh the Glory: “She would love to have her book get published!”

Lopate to Wilsey: “You do not dress like the child of wealthy parents,” indicating his T-shirt, and Wilsey laughs. “Yes, well, I was thinking since I was doing a radio show…” and notes that Lopate isn’t wearing a tie.

Lopate: “My brother [Philip] and I often have this argument—should you open yourself up to people slowly, like a rose, or rip off big chunks of yourself at a time, like a loaf of French bread?”

Wilsey on readers outside San Francisco: “Who am I, who are they, to your average reader?”

On book-party-location kerfuffle: “The U.S. miliary ultimately sponsored the party, which is kind of ironic considering my mother’s efforts for peace.”

On his father: “He had a huge file on me in his office.”

On Eggers and McSweeney’s: “I was very lucky—I met Dave out at a bar and we just really hit it off.”

On whether his own young son might someday write a memoir: “I’m being SO nice to him.” Laughs heartily. “He’s got every right to his own opinion, but I’m going to try to be as good a father as I possibly can be.”

Wilsey’s at the Chelsea B&N tonight at 7.