Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is uniquely
Speaker 1: blessed with intellectual curiosity, air udition, and an insightful wit.
Speaker 1: He's also been called one of the greatest thinkers and
Speaker 1: wordsmiths of our age, and is rumored to read up
Speaker 1: to four books a day. He's also a true New
Speaker 1: Yorkers New Yorker, the brilliant Adam Gopnick. Gopnik has been
Speaker 1: a writer at The New Yorker for over three decades,
Speaker 1: first as an art critic and then as their Paris correspondent.
Speaker 1: He's written fiction, non fiction, humor, memoir, and criticism for
Speaker 1: the famed magazine, covering everything from sports to spirituality with
Speaker 1: equal aplom He's the international best selling author of ten
Speaker 1: books and an accomplished lecture and storyteller. He has appeared
Speaker 1: regularly on the Moth Radio Hour the CBC and created
Speaker 1: a series of one man shows, including The Gates, an
Speaker 1: Evening of Stories with Adam Gopnik. For someone with such
Speaker 1: a prolific and varied body of work, I was curious
Speaker 1: to learn about his writing process. I'm right in the
Speaker 1: kind of the back room. We think of it as
Speaker 1: the engine room of the Titanic, right where Daddy has
Speaker 1: stripped to the waist shoveling coal into the furnace while
Speaker 1: to keep the boat going for another day. We hit
Speaker 1: the iceberg long ago, and we're listening, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: keep moving forward. And I always have my door open.
Speaker 1: The kids always know seven days a week, six hours
Speaker 1: a day too, Yes, and they were always aware. Someone
Speaker 1: teach you that, to someone lends you that. Yeah, Actually
Speaker 1: someone did teach me that. I had a great teacher
Speaker 1: and inspiring teacher who I wrote an essay about called
Speaker 1: Last of the metro Zoids, when he died tragically and
Speaker 1: stupidly young of cancers. Name was Kirk Varnetot, and he
Speaker 1: ended his life as the director of Painting and Sculpture
Speaker 1: at the Museum of Modern Art. But he had been
Speaker 1: my professor in graduate school, and he was someone of
Speaker 1: impeccable talent, the greatest lecture I've ever heard, an inspired curator.
Speaker 1: But he had a work effort like no one I've
Speaker 1: ever known, which he had derived, as he would tell
Speaker 1: you himself and did tell you often, from playing football
Speaker 1: and coaching football. That had been his passion In college,
Speaker 1: played defensive line, though he was wildly undersized then and
Speaker 1: going out to Stanford, and couldn't decide whether to continue
Speaker 1: coaching for Bill Walsh, who was at Stanford then here,
Speaker 1: or to become an art historian. And he said to
Speaker 1: me a memorable line, He said, the thing about being
Speaker 1: a football coach is you have to be smart enough
Speaker 1: to do it well and dumb enough to think it matters.
Speaker 1: My father was a football coach, was he really? My
Speaker 1: father coach high school where he played at SU and
Speaker 1: then he went to They caught high school football where
Speaker 1: we grew up, and my memories of that mentality. There
Speaker 1: was a sign above the entrance to the coach office
Speaker 1: as you walked out the door, and the sign said
Speaker 1: if you score, you may win. If they never score,
Speaker 1: you will never lose. And the boulder letters said defense
Speaker 1: wins championships. Well, that was very much. Though Kirk was
Speaker 1: the most sophisticated of intellectuals, he was at heart a
Speaker 1: football coach. And when I arrived in graduate school in
Speaker 1: New York in nineteen eighty, I was something of a
Speaker 1: wise guy. I grew up in an academic family, but
Speaker 1: in a very contentious, smart when the argument at the
Speaker 1: dinner table kind of family, what'd your dad do? My
Speaker 1: dad was a professor? No, no, when when you when
Speaker 1: you left Philadelphia? How old were you when you went
Speaker 1: to Levin? When we left Philadelphia? And then I and
Speaker 1: then grew spent the next nine years in Montreal, really
Speaker 1: kind of grew up in exactly. And my mother to
Speaker 1: my mother was a professor too, And actually I should
Speaker 1: add them in many ways a more distinguished scientist and
Speaker 1: scholar than my dad was. My dad spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time as a dean, was extremely good at it.
Speaker 1: My mom is famous in her field for having discovered
Speaker 1: the first identifiable chromosome linked to grammar, linked to language,
Speaker 1: which is called if I used to know my heart
Speaker 1: show f XP you forgotten? Yes, exactly twops. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: I came I came of age very much in that
Speaker 1: kind of Jewish intellectual family, with elements of the Glass
Speaker 1: family of Salinger and of the Corleone family of Mary
Speaker 1: Open leaving at eleven, I wonder, I mean, I always
Speaker 1: identified that period as a huge transition childhood. It's very
Speaker 1: sent you to say that it was hugely tough, hugely tough,
Speaker 1: because I had just sort of begun for the first
Speaker 1: time to have a circle of friends. And we smoked.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get marijuana, we smoked marigold cigarettes and all that.
Speaker 1: It was hugely tough moving to a strange city, and
Speaker 1: it took me quite a while to adjust. As in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: where I spent my childhood, really I had actually been
Speaker 1: a kid actor, and I had been the kind of
Speaker 1: the Jackie Coogan of Andre Gregory's avant garde theater. You
Speaker 1: know Andrew Gregory, it's still to this day a very
Speaker 1: dear friend, my oldest friend in the world. And he
Speaker 1: had an avant garde theater in Philadelphia. Oh do you
Speaker 1: really yes? Yeah, Well that was that that family. And
Speaker 1: so I had played countless parts for Andre and as
Speaker 1: I say, we're still intimate friends. And so I had
Speaker 1: a very uh incandescent and some always a blessed child.
Speaker 1: And so that transition was extremely, extremely difficult for me.
Speaker 1: And you went undergrad to McGill. I went undergrad to McGill.
Speaker 1: I've got many friends because mcgils such a great school.
Speaker 1: I have many friends whose children have gone there. And
Speaker 1: my neighbor in my first home and I m Aganson
Speaker 1: was skip Sheldon Huntington's Sheldon who was on the medical
Speaker 1: staff there or the hospital staff. That he was a
Speaker 1: medical doctor who also I think his family him or
Speaker 1: his mother's family were heirs to the merc drug and
Speaker 1: he was my guy. And I'm McGill such a great
Speaker 1: school when you were there growing up. Was it a
Speaker 1: feder company you were going to go to McGill, Yes,
Speaker 1: there was no, There was no question. It was the
Speaker 1: It was the family tavern. Really, not only I tell
Speaker 1: my kids. In fact, they ended up because I got
Speaker 1: a discount because my both my parents were professors, and
Speaker 1: then I did well and I got various fellowships and
Speaker 1: ended up paying me to go to college, so which
Speaker 1: was in this day as unusual. My friend Malcolm Bladwell,
Speaker 1: who's also a Canadian of the same generation, points out
Speaker 1: accurately that that's the Canadian model, that you go to
Speaker 1: the nearest good school to your home. And the whole
Speaker 1: insane American rigmarole which we have gone through is I'm
Speaker 1: sure you have gone through and will go through of
Speaker 1: college visits and the insane competitive overdrive that takes places
Speaker 1: essentially unknown in Canada. My nieces and nephews live in
Speaker 1: Edmonton and they went to the University of Alberta, which
Speaker 1: is a terrific school and is nearby. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: went to McGill and art history. I did art history.
Speaker 1: I did our history because I was torn between doing
Speaker 1: psychology and art history. My older sister, with whom i'm
Speaker 1: extremely close intellectually did psychology and it's the psychologist to
Speaker 1: this day. But I have four sisters. I should add,
Speaker 1: you're one of how many six? I'm one of six,
Speaker 1: so it's positive science, right, one of six I had.
Speaker 1: This is a whole other subject, but we I had
Speaker 1: an extraordinary childhood, which I hope to write about it
Speaker 1: in my next book after this one. But I had
Speaker 1: seen an incredibly pretty girl going into the art history
Speaker 1: department and I thought, that looks interesting. We're interested in psychology,
Speaker 1: which tended to study what is she studying? And I've
Speaker 1: found out and I followed her in and forty two
Speaker 1: years later we're still married, so that worked out all right.
Speaker 1: But it was also nice because I was talking. I
Speaker 1: was you know how it is when you know that age,
Speaker 1: you're agonized about everything. Everything is in agony. And I
Speaker 1: said to my psychology advice, but what should I do
Speaker 1: Should I do art history of psychology? It seemed hugely
Speaker 1: important at the time. And he said, is this a
Speaker 1: difficult decision? And I said yes, And he said, then
Speaker 1: it's unimportant. He said, all difficult decisions in life are
Speaker 1: unimportant because if they're difficult, that means there's a lot
Speaker 1: to be said on both sides, so you can't really
Speaker 1: take a wrong turn. My wife has a degree in
Speaker 1: art history from n y U. And when I said
Speaker 1: to her at one point, why that in a menu
Speaker 1: of things you might have said, I said, why that?
Speaker 1: And she goes cool. It's because it's the history of
Speaker 1: the world of humanity, history of humanity and the history,
Speaker 1: and it has this magical element, and that is that
Speaker 1: you look at ill fixed pictures, at things that don't move,
Speaker 1: that don't dramatize, that don't have you know, attached them,
Speaker 1: and suddenly they seemed to sum up a period and epoch,
Speaker 1: a mood of meaning you understand the Italian Renaissance better
Speaker 1: by looking at Leonardo than you do by reading six
Speaker 1: volumes on the period. So I loved it and still do.
Speaker 1: I came to New York with, as I've written about
Speaker 1: in my book, at the Stranger's Gate. We got on
Speaker 1: a bus leaving Montreal like kids out of a nineteen
Speaker 1: forties musical, and came to New York. The building where
Speaker 1: we are right now we're writing, was where Martha had
Speaker 1: her first job. She was a film editor at that time,
Speaker 1: studying to be a film editor. Was was actually a
Speaker 1: film editor. She was with eventually too, the Masals, but
Speaker 1: she had trained with her parents were founding filmmakers for
Speaker 1: the National Film Board of Canada. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that means anything in American now, but it was the
Speaker 1: great documentary are familiar and this was her first job,
Speaker 1: and it is a sign of how different New York
Speaker 1: is now. And then that this building on Ninth Aven
Speaker 1: and was so isolated that I would come, I would
Speaker 1: take her down on the subway in the morning and
Speaker 1: pick her up again at night because they routinely found
Speaker 1: dead bodies in the dumpster. And there was truly on
Speaker 1: this block where now there's ah. You have your choice
Speaker 1: between a great French, great restaurant of the south of
Speaker 1: France and a fine bistro from Alsace. There was nothing.
Speaker 1: There was absolutely nothing. So when you leave and you
Speaker 1: come to New York, what motivated that decision. Why did
Speaker 1: you want to come to go to graduate school at
Speaker 1: n y U and not remain in Canada, go somewhere
Speaker 1: else because it was a period of your life for
Speaker 1: your fairly peripateticus. Yes, absolutely, but because we had fallen
Speaker 1: in love with New York and it was I had
Speaker 1: fallen crazy New York. Oh no, No, she was Icelandic
Speaker 1: girl from Montreal. She was. It couldn't have been more
Speaker 1: Canadian in background and temperament is to this day. But
Speaker 1: we had been to New York and we had fallen
Speaker 1: crazy in love with it the way you do, or
Speaker 1: people have done historically. And then even then, even in
Speaker 1: the seventies, and and my you know, my folks thought
Speaker 1: we were a little bit crazy because there was the
Speaker 1: Tali into the seventies in New York was still taxi
Speaker 1: driving New York, you know, with steam coming out of
Speaker 1: the manholes and psychos driving the cabs. But we had
Speaker 1: fallen crazy in love with it, and I as I
Speaker 1: am to this day, it's not. That's an emotion that's
Speaker 1: never changed for me. And it seemed like a time
Speaker 1: of possibility. And when you're twenty years old, you don't
Speaker 1: it's hard to keep anybody away from anything. My father
Speaker 1: came with me when we got on the bus going
Speaker 1: down to Manhattan, and he said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know d'artagnan's father and the three musketeers
Speaker 1: seize him off from Gascony, if you remember, and says,
Speaker 1: when you get to Paris, fight duels with everyone you meet,
Speaker 1: which he then does and becomes a musketeer. My father
Speaker 1: said to me when I was getting on the bus,
Speaker 1: he said, when you get to New York, remember never
Speaker 1: underestimate the other person's insecurity. And those turned out to
Speaker 1: be the wisest words anyone has ever given me. And
Speaker 1: every mistake I've made subsequently was because I underestimated someone
Speaker 1: else's insecurity. And every time I've had an empathetic insight
Speaker 1: into a situation, professionally or or personally, it's because I
Speaker 1: remembered that. Remember my uncle, my father's youngest brother, who
Speaker 1: was a bit of a for lack of a better
Speaker 1: way of putting, was kind of a Karawackian figure like
Speaker 1: around the road, very bohemian and very never had a job,
Speaker 1: lived off of his Korean War pension, and you know,
Speaker 1: a very strange guy, but super bright, super intellectual guy.
Speaker 1: You're reading books, consult he said. Remember one thing, he said,
Speaker 1: even if you really are one in a million, there's
Speaker 1: seven other people like you in this city. So you
Speaker 1: can form a little club with that. Then you can
Speaker 1: hang out with your mind. People absolutely make a you
Speaker 1: make a cohort instantly. In New York and my dad,
Speaker 1: though it was the tail into the seventies, there was
Speaker 1: still it was still in some ways a more if
Speaker 1: I made attractive city than it is now because exactly
Speaker 1: because there was so much that was decrepit and there
Speaker 1: was so much that was despairing, there were these wonderful
Speaker 1: little islands of light and poetry and music. When we
Speaker 1: first came to New York, we used to go and
Speaker 1: here the G eight jazz pianist Ellis Larkins play at
Speaker 1: the Carnegie Tavern, which was this little bar right behind
Speaker 1: Carnegie Hall, and there was this amazing jazz poet who
Speaker 1: just played it sets a night. For the price we
Speaker 1: weren't even we didn't even know enough to drink in
Speaker 1: those days. For the price of a perier, you could
Speaker 1: be in this cool dark room where this genius was,
Speaker 1: this artatum level pianist was playing for free, reflectively, with
Speaker 1: melancholy elegance night after night. That was part of the
Speaker 1: magic of New York in that period before Uber and
Speaker 1: so forth, mid to late eighties. I would get into
Speaker 1: a cave only calves or the subway back then I
Speaker 1: would say to the driver, how's the driving business. That
Speaker 1: would strike a conversation with them. And the one guy
Speaker 1: that I think he was Russian, he said that, he said,
Speaker 1: New York is not the same in the more. He says,
Speaker 1: all the artists are gone, he said, because of the
Speaker 1: rent is so high. He said, all the artists are
Speaker 1: leaving the city. He said. Now it's only these bankers
Speaker 1: who get up in the morning and go running along
Speaker 1: the reservoir, then go downtown and try to kill each other,
Speaker 1: you know. And I remember there was I felt much
Speaker 1: more romantic about New York. And then I think that's
Speaker 1: true and the only um antidote I have to I mean,
Speaker 1: we were lucky enough to come of age in a
Speaker 1: rat infested loft in Soho at a time when Soho
Speaker 1: was still an art village, and you would wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning and you would see Richard Sarah walking
Speaker 1: along Brent Street, scowling as he envisioned another monstrous wall
Speaker 1: of cortense steel or uh. Donald Judd, the great minimalist,
Speaker 1: was still occupying his house, which is now a little museum,
Speaker 1: So you had a sense of those very specific energies
Speaker 1: of art. I remember there was even a couple who
Speaker 1: were literally manacled together for a year as a conceptual
Speaker 1: art exercise, and you would see them going up and
Speaker 1: down West Broadway in a state of total bliss and equanimity.
Speaker 1: And so we were lucky enough to see that last frontier.
Speaker 1: And it's true that one of the tragedies of New
Speaker 1: York in my lifetime is is that those frontiers of
Speaker 1: bohemia that had persisted since the Civil War really have vanished.
Speaker 1: And yet when I say that, I recognized the limitations
Speaker 1: of my own vision, because for my kids didn't experience
Speaker 1: it that way. They experienced bed Sty, and they experienced Williamsburg,
Speaker 1: and they experienced Brooklyn. You know, it was one of
Speaker 1: the great transformations of our time. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've read because it's a favorite book of all of
Speaker 1: us who love the theater, Moss Hearts, Act One, which
Speaker 1: is a story about the subway. Basically, it's about getting
Speaker 1: on the Subway in Brooklyn and being brought into the
Speaker 1: wonders of Manhattan, and generations of imaginative New York pilgrims
Speaker 1: made that trip from the Bronx of Brooklyn into town.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly it was like the suction on a vacuum.
Speaker 1: It suddenly turned the other way around right, and everyone
Speaker 1: was departing Manhattan for Brooklyn and the Bronx. Remember my son,
Speaker 1: Luke said to me at one point, very seriously, he said, Dad,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I know you like this neighborhood,
Speaker 1: the Upper East Side, which you know I had mortgaged
Speaker 1: every atom of carbon in my body in order to
Speaker 1: provide for them as an abode. He said, but you know,
Speaker 1: the food is so much better than Williamsburg. He said,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to come out with me for my generation.
Speaker 1: I I joke, I said, oh my god, Brooklyn was
Speaker 1: where you would go to buy like serious hardcore drugs
Speaker 1: or a gun. But there's two things when I look
Speaker 1: at your your facts and so forth in your CD
Speaker 1: that stand out to me that I'm always kind of
Speaker 1: fascinated by. One is expatriotism. And you go live in
Speaker 1: Paris for five years now? Was that the only long
Speaker 1: term stay you had outside the United State. That was
Speaker 1: the one and only. That was the one and only.
Speaker 1: I mean we've gone, you know, likes, we visited London,
Speaker 1: and we've been kind of you know, regular habituaies of
Speaker 1: Paris since, but that was the only extended time was
Speaker 1: you know, what was it like for you to, like,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming what was the Paris idea? Your idea someone
Speaker 1: sent you because of you were you were, you were
Speaker 1: commissioned because you were going to write these journals if
Speaker 1: you will know you keep journals. It was our idea.
Speaker 1: Martha and I had fallen in love with Paris and
Speaker 1: with the idea of Paris. I guess we're sort of
Speaker 1: constantly just loyal love is fall in love with New
Speaker 1: York and fall in love with Paris and go on,
Speaker 1: and we're not cheating on New York Paris exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: It was our that was our lover. New York. New
Speaker 1: York is our our spouse, and Paris our mistress. Someone
Speaker 1: wrote a book with that title. By the way, Paris
Speaker 1: was our mistress. But in any case, we had fallen
Speaker 1: in love with it. And when our son Luke was
Speaker 1: born in knew that if we didn't go now, then
Speaker 1: we would be entrapped, if not entombed by New York
Speaker 1: necessities preschool exactly. And so we decided to do it.
Speaker 1: And I threw my cap over the wall. You know
Speaker 1: a beautiful story of Frank O'Connor's, you know, when they
Speaker 1: growing up as a poor Irish kitten cork and whenever
Speaker 1: they came to a wall that was too high to scale,
Speaker 1: all the little Irish ways threw their caps over the wall.
Speaker 1: Because once your cap was on the other side of
Speaker 1: the wall, you had no choice but defined a way over.
Speaker 1: You couldn't go home without your cap. And I've always
Speaker 1: thought that's a lovely image of the key moments we
Speaker 1: have in life. So threw my cap over the wall,
Speaker 1: said to the wonderful Tina Brown, who was then the
Speaker 1: editor of The New Yorker, Listen, I really really want
Speaker 1: to go to Paris. And bless her, she said, all right,
Speaker 1: go go to Paris. Right to us from right for
Speaker 1: us from Paris, And so we off, off we went.
Speaker 1: And it was I don't think I had this fully
Speaker 1: formed as a thought, but it was some kind of intuition.
Speaker 1: I knew Paris would be a more interesting place to
Speaker 1: write about than London exactly because it threatened to become
Speaker 1: a bit of a backwater. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: time I loved the nineties. I thought the nineties were great.
Speaker 1: They were as good as the nine nineties, were as
Speaker 1: good as the eighteen nineties, and lots of ways. But
Speaker 1: there was this encircling girdle of American life, in American influence,
Speaker 1: which you felt very strongly in London. In those days
Speaker 1: it was kind of triumphant Anglo Saxism, and France and
Speaker 1: Paris were the last place to resist that, so you
Speaker 1: were actually witnessing the alternative, like the little Gaulish village
Speaker 1: in the Asteris comics. This was the last place that
Speaker 1: was going on. So I knew would be a more
Speaker 1: interesting place to write about, because losers, so to speak,
Speaker 1: are always more interesting to write about than winners. And
Speaker 1: and we settled in and those were five amazing years.
Speaker 1: They were also, you know, there's a moment I think
Speaker 1: in every from nine till two thousand and one really
Speaker 1: came home to nine eleven. Also, I think in every
Speaker 1: writer's life, and this may be true of every artist's life,
Speaker 1: I think it is true of every artist's life there's
Speaker 1: a moment when you sort of know you've hit it,
Speaker 1: when you find your voice, you find your stance, and
Speaker 1: you sort of know, even if you don't like me,
Speaker 1: you have to admit that this is good. And I
Speaker 1: felt that way writing in Paris for the first time.
Speaker 1: I've been writing for a decade for The New Yorker already,
Speaker 1: but I sort of knew when I wrote my first piece,
Speaker 1: I said, Oh, this voice is mine. This voice is appealing.
Speaker 1: There's something about the way I can write here with
Speaker 1: a certain kind of ride attachment, but also with a
Speaker 1: certain kind of lyrical enthusiasm. I felt, I knew that
Speaker 1: it was working. And there's just there's no feeling as
Speaker 1: good in a writer's life as that moment when you
Speaker 1: when you know inside there's literally a kind of physical vibration,
Speaker 1: a hum when you sit down to your typewriter or
Speaker 1: computer when you feel that. And I felt that so
Speaker 1: strongly in Paris, author Adam Gopnik. If you're enjoying insights
Speaker 1: into the inner workings of The New Yorker, listen to
Speaker 1: my conversation with an author formerly at the helm of
Speaker 1: the publication, Editor in Chief Extraordinaire, Tina brown Well I
Speaker 1: think I'm a compulsive reporter. Actually, I mean I have
Speaker 1: what I think of as observation greed. Right most of
Speaker 1: the time, I'm propelled to go out, not because I
Speaker 1: actually want to go out, but I think I got
Speaker 1: to see that, you know, I need to see that. Curious.
Speaker 1: I'm really curious, and I have a great desire to
Speaker 1: report on the action. Here the rest of my conversation
Speaker 1: with Tina Brown in our archives at Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot org. After the Break, Adam got Nick shares the
Speaker 1: secret to a perfect marriage. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing writer Adam got Nick. This
Speaker 1: family spent five years living in France. In his time there,
Speaker 1: he composed the Paris Journal for the New Yorker magazine,
Speaker 1: as well as a collection of essays the New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling Paris to the Moon. I was curious
Speaker 1: why he decided to leave the City of Lights after
Speaker 1: what seemed to be such a charmed and eventful time there.
Speaker 1: That was our decision as well, Martha. We had just
Speaker 1: had our new baby, Olivia, and which was sort of
Speaker 1: the climactic, the culminating episode, and what I knew would
Speaker 1: be the book that I had organized, and Martha said
Speaker 1: to me, you know, in New York we have a
Speaker 1: full life, but an unbeautiful existence, and in Paris we
Speaker 1: have a beautiful existence, but not a full life. And
Speaker 1: we had to make that choice. It's a choice I've
Speaker 1: often regretted. Frankly, Alex and I still love Paris deeply
Speaker 1: and have thought of it, but it Our son Luke
Speaker 1: was about to start serious school, and he had been
Speaker 1: to preschool, in kindergarten and first grade in Paris. And
Speaker 1: I love France and I love French culture, but the
Speaker 1: worst side of French culture is French education. It's brutal,
Speaker 1: it's very effective, and you know, the kids emerge being
Speaker 1: able to recite Ruscine and give you the square root
Speaker 1: of sixty in a way kids in our schools, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't necessarily, but it's a hard life.
Speaker 1: You know, you're there from eight in the morning till
Speaker 1: four and in the afternoon. A good thing about it
Speaker 1: is that French kids tend to be sensitive in a
Speaker 1: way that American kids are often spoiled, because they're aware
Speaker 1: from a very early age that existence is unappeasable, authority
Speaker 1: is unappeasable. We don't teach our kids that authority is
Speaker 1: unappeasable until it smacks them on the side of the
Speaker 1: head when their nineteen or twenty and they start working
Speaker 1: or joined the army or whatever. I often think, Luke, my,
Speaker 1: my wonderful son was a philosopher. Now, on his first
Speaker 1: day at school, went in New York. And I came
Speaker 1: home and said, how was it? And he said, Dad,
Speaker 1: the teachers are too nice. And I said, what do
Speaker 1: you mean, teachers? Everything you do they say is good.
Speaker 1: He said, I drew a picture of myself. It wasn't good, Dad.
Speaker 1: The nose was too big in the ears were wrong,
Speaker 1: and they said it's wonderful. We're going to put it
Speaker 1: right up on the Picasso. Hello. Yes, And I said,
Speaker 1: what would they have said in Paris? Oh, in Paris
Speaker 1: they would say, no, it does it's nothing. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's nothing. And he spotted instantly the profound insincerity of
Speaker 1: American education, the superficiality of the encouragement that we often
Speaker 1: give to kids. It's unearned, you know, he just as
Speaker 1: you've done it, so it's good. I find that for me. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sixty four years old, and I got
Speaker 1: remarried and I have six children. The oldest is eight.
Speaker 1: I have I have six children, eight, six, five, three
Speaker 1: about to before one and a half and one because
Speaker 1: the sixth one is a surrogate and my wife is
Speaker 1: pregnant again with our seven child. So, and I have
Speaker 1: an older daughter, SO who's twenty seven this year, she's
Speaker 1: twenty seven. But my point is is that you know,
Speaker 1: in school with them now, the thing that we're navigating
Speaker 1: not in some overwhelming way or some you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's sporadic. Is this me two time up thing where
Speaker 1: people's behavior which is like, you know, innocent boys will
Speaker 1: be boys and people say off handed things as kids
Speaker 1: just shock each other. Now it's like people are marched
Speaker 1: down to an office and a report is filled out
Speaker 1: and filed, and you know, it's like a zero tolerance,
Speaker 1: zero tolerance for some acts of childhood. Y. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't experience that directly because our kids kind of
Speaker 1: just missed it. Right we're in college, but by that time.
Speaker 1: But I certainly, and it's the subject of the book
Speaker 1: I'm working on I'm trying to finish for tomorrow, literally
Speaker 1: for tomorrow right now, is that American life is attuned
Speaker 1: to achievement. Past the next test, get into the next grade,
Speaker 1: get into the right college. And there's something very empty
Speaker 1: about that hamster wheel of achievement that we put kids on.
Speaker 1: And your kids are aware now they're how old and
Speaker 1: there are there beyond college? Luke, No, they're both still
Speaker 1: in University Lucas twenty six and he's getting his PhD
Speaker 1: in philosophy at University of Texas at Austin. And Olivia
Speaker 1: is uh twenty one, and she's five years younger to
Speaker 1: the day, which tells you, I'm thinking the same birthday,
Speaker 1: the same birthday, and and they and she's at Harvard,
Speaker 1: she's in her third year at Heart. She's switched. She
Speaker 1: was in government originally. You know, they only have really
Speaker 1: one subject at Harvard that they teach world domination, and
Speaker 1: so she switched from the government side of world domination
Speaker 1: to the history side of world domination. Now I'm told
Speaker 1: by friends who know you and I know a bit
Speaker 1: about you, they told me that you have the perfect marriage. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I hope that's true. We have been married
Speaker 1: for a very long time and have been through every
Speaker 1: twist and turn that life can offer. From migration to
Speaker 1: New York at the age of twenty on a bus,
Speaker 1: to children, raising children, watching children leave home, which is
Speaker 1: a big one. And through it all we've been remarkably
Speaker 1: harmonious and happy. I give Martha all the credit in
Speaker 1: the world for that. It's not I'm the difficult, jumpy,
Speaker 1: moody one. And she's a woman of incredible equanimity and
Speaker 1: insight and general steve spirit. And she's the caregiver to
Speaker 1: the kids, to the dog, to me, and she's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary woman. So I feel that that's, you know, the
Speaker 1: most profound blessing in my life. Certainly in your writing
Speaker 1: career where you go from g Q onto the New
Speaker 1: Yorker was writing? I mean, you're making these observations about
Speaker 1: art to fantastic schools, and you go on to do
Speaker 1: it at the graduate level. And is the soul of
Speaker 1: the writer always there and you're writing during your college career,
Speaker 1: or when do you you become the guy that gets
Speaker 1: hired by the GQ magazine. I never wanted to be
Speaker 1: anything else but a writer from the age of ten,
Speaker 1: I can I can locate it to a particular moment.
Speaker 1: First of all, I was a crazy reader as a kid.
Speaker 1: I love to read. I read The Therber Carnival literally
Speaker 1: till the pages came off in my hands in bed
Speaker 1: when I was six and seven. But at the age
Speaker 1: of ten, I wanted to go see a spy movie,
Speaker 1: very bad spy movie, a Man from Uncle movie. And
Speaker 1: my parents had said, yes, you could go on Saturday,
Speaker 1: then on Friday the way parents will as I'm sure
Speaker 1: you do, as I have done. So oh, no, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna work, because we have to do this. And
Speaker 1: I was so hurt and indignant. I went back to
Speaker 1: my room and I a ten page letter of protests,
Speaker 1: which I slipped under their door, and my dad's sweet
Speaker 1: good manity is and was came and said, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize you felt this strongly about You really have
Speaker 1: expressed yourself here. Of course you can go. And I said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. You can put words down on paper in
Speaker 1: ways to change the inner workings of someone else's mind.
Speaker 1: And I felt an enormous power that was implicit and
Speaker 1: inherent in that activity. Never wanted to me anything but
Speaker 1: a writer. And though I did do art history, and
Speaker 1: I was blessed, as I said at the at the
Speaker 1: beginning of our conversation to have worked with a genuinely
Speaker 1: inspired and great teacher. I never really wanted to do
Speaker 1: art history. Art history was just an excuse. I mean,
Speaker 1: I never wanted to do it professionally. It was an
Speaker 1: excuse for getting to New York and being able to
Speaker 1: tell my parents I was going to study, not to
Speaker 1: walk the streets and try and sell my songs, which
Speaker 1: was the reality of what we're going to get to
Speaker 1: music in the world of magazines and that publishing world.
Speaker 1: I grew up and you took about reading as a child.
Speaker 1: I devoured everything from when I was ten to twelve
Speaker 1: years old. I was reading The Godfather when I was ten,
Speaker 1: yars or all or whatever. And and my point is
Speaker 1: that g Q, you know, the Nick Poleeggie era New
Speaker 1: York magazine, when Felker was running all the that bike
Speaker 1: on era. I mean, I feel like magazines were very,
Speaker 1: very different. Obviously then all magazines were the heart of
Speaker 1: American culture in in that period, even when I mean
Speaker 1: there had been since the nineteen twenties at least, and
Speaker 1: they still were in the nineteen eighties. And you know,
Speaker 1: Condemnast was a kind of temple. It was a strange
Speaker 1: mysterious os run by the remote figure of signed new house.
Speaker 1: With all of these glamorous magazines, everyone had a car.
Speaker 1: So when I went to work, you know, I just
Speaker 1: wanted a job. I really just wanted a job that
Speaker 1: involved putting words on paper and seeing them in print.
Speaker 1: I would have taken any job that there was, and
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to get a job as the
Speaker 1: at first the fashion copy editor of GQ magazine. That
Speaker 1: was my first grown up job, and that meant, you know,
Speaker 1: fashion copy of the little blocks of type that appear
Speaker 1: next to close in fashion magazines, you know, where they
Speaker 1: have little kind of illiterateti tags. They're called, you know,
Speaker 1: summer shirts, and then there's a like ten line description
Speaker 1: of the of the summer shirts. And my job was
Speaker 1: to edit and rewrite those things. And I thought I
Speaker 1: was at the heart of show business. I thought it
Speaker 1: was the greatest job anybody had ever given. And as
Speaker 1: I tell in at the Stranger's Gate, I came up
Speaker 1: with a two line and a literative tag to word,
Speaker 1: a literative tag so potent it was simply Kiara scoro
Speaker 1: chic for a group of glowing linen shirts. Kiara scorer
Speaker 1: cheek that they promoted me on the strength of those
Speaker 1: two to become the grooming editor. And then I was
Speaker 1: responsible for all of the copy about lotions and moisturizers,
Speaker 1: and they're in shampoo's except for fragrances, which was specially
Speaker 1: because basically those magazines depend on Yes, there's another floor
Speaker 1: and another thing and the thing I can't convey adequately.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I
Speaker 1: never thought for a moment, why am I wasting my
Speaker 1: talent splitting words and hairs and coming up nodly? Did
Speaker 1: I give it a go? But I else it's and
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to recreate this time for our kids.
Speaker 1: You know, Now you write something and you posted online
Speaker 1: and a million people can see it. Right at that period,
Speaker 1: it was sort of I said to my kids. It
Speaker 1: was there were like two hundred computers and all of
Speaker 1: New York, and you wanted to get your hands on
Speaker 1: one of them, and it kind of didn't matter which
Speaker 1: one you got your hands on. The village voice of
Speaker 1: the Soho News obviously not to be disingenuous, The golden
Speaker 1: machine was the New Yorker, and that's very much where
Speaker 1: I wanted to go and where I dreamt of going.
Speaker 1: But I was just delighted to be in this business
Speaker 1: of turning words on paper into words in print. It
Speaker 1: just filled me with joy, and so I had to
Speaker 1: I had terrific, a terrific couple of years doing that,
Speaker 1: and my kids is still astounded because in a couple
Speaker 1: of occasions I crept into a fashion story as a
Speaker 1: haircut story once. That's how I met the wonderful photographer
Speaker 1: Brigitte Lacombe. She came in it did my portrait, and
Speaker 1: that wonderful French woman. It gets more French with every
Speaker 1: succeeding year that she's in America, and she came into
Speaker 1: my picture, and the kids, having a a glimpse of
Speaker 1: that moment of improbable glamour, are still impressed. Martha actually,
Speaker 1: who had modeled in Canada and was extraordinarily beautiful woman
Speaker 1: still is, had a whole story about her and Mademoiselle,
Speaker 1: and the kids still think that this is, you know,
Speaker 1: just unreal. This is not your parents, This is the
Speaker 1: two other people. What other magazines do you think are
Speaker 1: holding their own in the world today. Oh, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a good question. I read the New York Review
Speaker 1: of Books which I think is still a thriving enterprise.
Speaker 1: I read specific people a lot, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that for good or ill, that the digital
Speaker 1: areas and it's disaggregated magazines a lot. So I read
Speaker 1: John Chait in the in New York, for instance, not
Speaker 1: that I don't read New York Magazine, but I read
Speaker 1: that specifically. Or I read David Frum in The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: and not to the exclusion of other Atlantic right, not
Speaker 1: to the exclusion of other people. Yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it comes more naturally that you you're online and you're
Speaker 1: you see that someone's tweeted something interesting. I try and
Speaker 1: read our magazine and New Yorker, of course, but I
Speaker 1: do think we've done a pretty good job of staying
Speaker 1: I hate the word relevant. I hope we've done a
Speaker 1: good job of staying irrelevant in the sense that I
Speaker 1: that you when you open the magazine, I would hope
Speaker 1: that you don't know what you're going to read about,
Speaker 1: and that the basic gambit of The New Yorker has
Speaker 1: always been well, it was not unlike when I was
Speaker 1: in Paris. As you say, Paris, I'm not interested in Paris.
Speaker 1: Why should I be interested in Paris. What's this guy? Oh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of interesting, This is kind of funny. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll stick with this. No, we're in your wheelhouse. Do
Speaker 1: you see a place or did you ever contemplate a
Speaker 1: place for a film? Oh? I always kind of played
Speaker 1: a place for film and that. And Martha, my wife,
Speaker 1: is a filmmaker and all of that, and like every
Speaker 1: she's still doing that totally. Yes, indeed, she's she's producing
Speaker 1: and writing screenplays now gone on from editing. So it's
Speaker 1: very much a presence in our house and has been
Speaker 1: for forty some years. I've tried my hand a couple
Speaker 1: of times at screenplace and never really, you know, never
Speaker 1: quite felt at home doing that. I've collaborated with her,
Speaker 1: and I think we've done some nice things, but I've
Speaker 1: never really I love movies, you know, in my life.
Speaker 1: In fact, I will be honest with you, you know,
Speaker 1: I would have been delighted and had my life taken
Speaker 1: a slightly different turn, and that had been a bigger
Speaker 1: part of it. I love I love him. I truly
Speaker 1: love the theater, and so writing for the theater is
Speaker 1: at the center of my my feelings and something I've
Speaker 1: I've been able to do. But there was an, if
Speaker 1: I can tell a funny story, that was a moment
Speaker 1: because all you know, like every writer, your stuff gets
Speaker 1: optioned for the movies and then bought for the movies,
Speaker 1: and then the script has developed and so on. And
Speaker 1: there was a moment in our history when I had
Speaker 1: written a story called Bumping into Charlie Ravioli about my
Speaker 1: daughter Olivia's imaginary friend, which had become a well known
Speaker 1: and anthologized and the studio wanted to option it for
Speaker 1: a movie. And then they looked into the contract and
Speaker 1: discovered that Harvey Weinstein had bought outright Paris the Moon
Speaker 1: for another movie, and he had bought the characters in
Speaker 1: that book in perpetuity, and the leading characters. So since
Speaker 1: the leading characters in that book where me and our
Speaker 1: son Luke, we couldn't be in the movie of Charlie Ravioli.
Speaker 1: So there was a moment, Man, how's this for a
Speaker 1: twenty one century moment when half of our family was
Speaker 1: owned by Mirramax and the other half were owned by
Speaker 1: Sony Pictures, right, and they would have to negotiate like
Speaker 1: the gopnic cinematic universe to have us all in in
Speaker 1: one movie. But no, I've never I've never written a movie.
Speaker 1: I was telling that my producers that in my lifetime
Speaker 1: there were two names that would vex me because I
Speaker 1: was around super sophisticated people who would pronounce their names differently.
Speaker 1: They called him Richard Avden. Yes, Brits would call him
Speaker 1: Richard Avedon, and I thought, that's not how I learned it.
Speaker 1: And a woman I worked with, who was a very
Speaker 1: famous and internationally famous model, pronounced the designs named Balanchanga
Speaker 1: but described to me you being I guess adopted by Avedon.
Speaker 1: Dick Avedon was with Kirk Varnett of the great influence
Speaker 1: on my life, and when I think about everything that
Speaker 1: I wear, eat, look at, was very much still under
Speaker 1: his influence and spiritual agis. He was an extraordinary man,
Speaker 1: obviously a great photographer, but also a man, an incandescent
Speaker 1: force in the world, a man of limitless energy and
Speaker 1: and mischief and fun, but also a very serious artist.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that he wanted to implant
Speaker 1: in me, and as I say, he really adopted Martin
Speaker 1: me as as kind of surrogad kids, was that it
Speaker 1: was possible to live a very rich and good and
Speaker 1: pleasure enhanced life, pleasure, affirming life, and at the same
Speaker 1: time be a serious artist author Adam Gopneck. If you're
Speaker 1: enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Hear is
Speaker 1: the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Adam Gopnick tells us the most audacious thing he's ever written.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio. From art criticism to children's literature to
Speaker 1: food writing, no genre is off limits for Adam Gopnik. Recently,
Speaker 1: he expanded his resume even further into musical theater as
Speaker 1: a book writer and lyricist. When I first came to
Speaker 1: New York, it was to be a songwriter. I had
Speaker 1: a cassette of my songs, and I had written The
Speaker 1: College Show, which was based on the life of Vladimir Tatlin,
Speaker 1: the Russian constructivist architect. And I assumed I was three
Speaker 1: weeks from Broadway, when are we gonna get our hands
Speaker 1: on that on that musical? So I I actually have
Speaker 1: promised our friends Marcy Hysler and seen a good rich
Speaker 1: that I would do one of the songs from the
Speaker 1: show at one of their four Below evenings. So that
Speaker 1: was my ambition, and I wasn't able to push it forward.
Speaker 1: I was going to be Stephen Sante, not not John Updyke,
Speaker 1: could have become either one, but I've you know. But
Speaker 1: my other ambition was to be an essayist from New
Speaker 1: York Is. So that did work out. And then it
Speaker 1: had always been very much part of my life, caring
Speaker 1: passionately about the musical theater and writing songs for all
Speaker 1: occasions and writing lyrics. And then um, the great American
Speaker 1: composer David Shire approached me about writing a musical with him.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it at the time, but he had
Speaker 1: said to his wonderful wife, d d Con why don't
Speaker 1: guys like this everyone to write for the musical theater. Indeed,
Speaker 1: he had said to well, you don't know, maybe he does.
Speaker 1: And she approached me at a theatrical thing and said,
Speaker 1: would you be interested in writing a show with my
Speaker 1: husband David Shire? And I said, I can't imagine anything
Speaker 1: in the world I would rather do. So David and
Speaker 1: I got to work and we wrote a show together
Speaker 1: called Our Table. We wrote more than sixties songs, I
Speaker 1: mean complete finished piano vocal songs about a little restaurant
Speaker 1: struggling to survive in New York, and Melissa Erico came
Speaker 1: in to play the lead of the female lead in
Speaker 1: a workshop and I was astounded by her gifts because
Speaker 1: my stuff is literary and it involves a lot of
Speaker 1: complicated puns and ambivalent emotions. She's super bright woman, and
Speaker 1: she was It was like in a fairy tale. She
Speaker 1: was the first musical theater performing edition. Very beautiful. I
Speaker 1: haven't an unbelievably voice like a Mozart flute, as someone
Speaker 1: once said. She understood everything that I was writing and
Speaker 1: could deliver all of those bitter sweet, ambivalent, complex emotions.
Speaker 1: So we did a full production of it, which unfortunately
Speaker 1: she couldn't be in out in New Haven. Like every
Speaker 1: musical goes to try out and often die. And it's
Speaker 1: still the thing. I'm proud of stuff. We have a
Speaker 1: very good live concert recording of it that we did
Speaker 1: at fifty four below with Melissa singing the lead along
Speaker 1: with Andy Taylor and Constantine Marules. Is that available? Yes,
Speaker 1: it is on Spotify with a beautiful cover by Brigitte Lacom.
Speaker 1: Actually Brigitte did us a wonderful cover image. You go
Speaker 1: on Spotify our table Adam Copnick, Melissa Erico. So we
Speaker 1: did that, and then Melissa and I enjoyed working together enormously,
Speaker 1: So I started writing all kinds, especially material for David.
Speaker 1: And I wrote a song which I love called Cry
Speaker 1: for Joy, this kind of a theme song for her
Speaker 1: swing show. Wrote a lot of parodies, and then she's
Speaker 1: just done a beautiful album of film noir inspired music,
Speaker 1: but no music. Oh no. On the tray, I was
Speaker 1: just about to say on the country, it's occupying an
Speaker 1: ever larger part of my life. I have two new
Speaker 1: shows underway with Andrew Lippap, who wrote The Adams Family
Speaker 1: and The Wild Party, and David Shayer and I are
Speaker 1: in the middle. Were about one acting to a new
Speaker 1: show for Melissa called Troubadour right now, about the invention
Speaker 1: of the love song at the court of Eleanor of
Speaker 1: Aquitaine in the in the thirteenth century. As I say,
Speaker 1: I love the theater nothing in life. There's a song
Speaker 1: in our table called It's Never Reigning in Seattle, which,
Speaker 1: of all the countless things I've done political books and
Speaker 1: family memoirs and and so on, is a single thing
Speaker 1: I probably proudest stuff because it's a song about the
Speaker 1: necessity of lying to your children. In the situation in
Speaker 1: the in the show is that the father that chef
Speaker 1: has been telling his beloved daughter, who was very much
Speaker 1: modeled on my Olivia for years, that they have an
Speaker 1: offer in Seattle, but never moved to Seattle because it
Speaker 1: rains all the time in Seattle. You have to bring
Speaker 1: the customers out like sponges before you see them never
Speaker 1: going to Seattle. Rains all the time. And finally they
Speaker 1: have to go to Seattle because they lose the restaurant.
Speaker 1: And then he's she says to him, you know, it
Speaker 1: rains all the time in Seattle, and then he sings
Speaker 1: to this song it's never raining in Seattle. And for me,
Speaker 1: that's what we do with our children, you know, we
Speaker 1: have to There never been a song about how we
Speaker 1: have to lie to our children sometimes to reassure them
Speaker 1: of the of the salubriousness of the world. That's the
Speaker 1: thing I'm proud of. Stiff. What are you working on now?
Speaker 1: I'm just I mean literally finishing four to send to
Speaker 1: my publisher tomorrow, a book called tentatively the Real Work
Speaker 1: on the mystery of mastery, and it's it's about the
Speaker 1: business of of learning to master things, particularly in middle age.
Speaker 1: You know, I learned to drive when I was in
Speaker 1: my fifties, got my driver's license only my fifties. I
Speaker 1: think I am the only New Yorker ever to get
Speaker 1: to pass his driver's test on the same day as
Speaker 1: his son. Luke was twenty and I was fifth, and
Speaker 1: we took our test on this on the same day.
Speaker 1: I learned to draw in the last few years, learned
Speaker 1: to write music and all of those things. So it's
Speaker 1: all of these essays about learning to do things, but
Speaker 1: it's not a collection of essays. It's a book about
Speaker 1: the ark of doing things. It ends, I think hope affectingly.
Speaker 1: It includes a chapter that is the I won't even
Speaker 1: try and describe. It is probably the most audacious thing
Speaker 1: I've ever written in deeply embarrassing in some ways, but essential.
Speaker 1: And then it ends with I've been taking boxing lessons
Speaker 1: for the last year and because I just I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by mastery, something that's so alien to a little Jewish
Speaker 1: intellectual like me as boxing, being able to enter into
Speaker 1: it and learning the great perpetual lesson of all accomplishment,
Speaker 1: which is that you break it down into small parts.
Speaker 1: You learn the small parts, the little segments, and then
Speaker 1: over time, miraculously the little segments become a seamless whole
Speaker 1: and you find, oh my god, I'm actually throwing a
Speaker 1: sequence of punches. So I'm simultaneously was taking boxing lessons
Speaker 1: and I'm doing ballroom dancing with my daughter Olivia. And
Speaker 1: so the last chapter is just about the ways in
Speaker 1: which the steps of your feet in ballroom dancing and
Speaker 1: the jabs of your hand in boxing compliment each other.
Speaker 1: And it's the you know, the perpetual cycle. The other
Speaker 1: thing that fascinates me, Alec is the way that when
Speaker 1: you're being trained box, you're always made to be aware
Speaker 1: of the invisible opponent, the invisible enemy, right, because everything
Speaker 1: you do is in response to this person who you
Speaker 1: never actually see and you never do exactly And I
Speaker 1: find that a very powerful metaphor for life generally. Right,
Speaker 1: we construct ourselves in the eyes of an invisible other.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Just delighted to be here, My
Speaker 1: thanks to writer Adam Gopnick. This episode was recorded at
Speaker 1: CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Zack McNeice and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is brought to you by my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Who about the fun Time