WEBVTT - From Paris To the Moon with Adam Gopnik 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:05.520 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:11.480 Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is uniquely 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:16.880 blessed with intellectual curiosity, air udition, and an insightful wit. 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.079 He's also been called one of the greatest thinkers and 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:24.280 wordsmiths of our age, and is rumored to read up 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:28.800 to four books a day. He's also a true New 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:34.120 Yorkers New Yorker, the brilliant Adam Gopnick. Gopnik has been 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.240 a writer at The New Yorker for over three decades, 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:41.640 first as an art critic and then as their Paris correspondent. 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.720 He's written fiction, non fiction, humor, memoir, and criticism for 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.479 the famed magazine, covering everything from sports to spirituality with 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:57.600 equal aplom He's the international best selling author of ten 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:02.600 books and an accomplished lecture and storyteller. He has appeared 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:07.080 regularly on the Moth Radio Hour the CBC and created 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:10.920 a series of one man shows, including The Gates, an 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:15.080 Evening of Stories with Adam Gopnik. For someone with such 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.600 a prolific and varied body of work, I was curious 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:23.920 to learn about his writing process. I'm right in the 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:25.800 kind of the back room. We think of it as 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.720 the engine room of the Titanic, right where Daddy has 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:32.280 stripped to the waist shoveling coal into the furnace while 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:34.800 to keep the boat going for another day. We hit 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.160 the iceberg long ago, and we're listening, but we're gonna 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.080 keep moving forward. And I always have my door open. 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:43.160 The kids always know seven days a week, six hours 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:47.000 a day too, Yes, and they were always aware. Someone 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:49.680 teach you that, to someone lends you that. Yeah, Actually 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:51.960 someone did teach me that. I had a great teacher 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:54.960 and inspiring teacher who I wrote an essay about called 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.920 Last of the metro Zoids, when he died tragically and 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.560 stupidly young of cancers. Name was Kirk Varnetot, and he 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.320 ended his life as the director of Painting and Sculpture 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:06.000 at the Museum of Modern Art. But he had been 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.160 my professor in graduate school, and he was someone of 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:15.440 impeccable talent, the greatest lecture I've ever heard, an inspired curator. 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:17.960 But he had a work effort like no one I've 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.760 ever known, which he had derived, as he would tell 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:23.840 you himself and did tell you often, from playing football 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.480 and coaching football. That had been his passion In college, 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.600 played defensive line, though he was wildly undersized then and 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:33.079 going out to Stanford, and couldn't decide whether to continue 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.480 coaching for Bill Walsh, who was at Stanford then here, 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:38.400 or to become an art historian. And he said to 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:40.080 me a memorable line, He said, the thing about being 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.079 a football coach is you have to be smart enough 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:45.000 to do it well and dumb enough to think it matters. 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:48.600 My father was a football coach, was he really? My 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:51.320 father coach high school where he played at SU and 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:53.600 then he went to They caught high school football where 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:57.079 we grew up, and my memories of that mentality. There 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.280 was a sign above the entrance to the coach office 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:02.600 as you walked out the door, and the sign said 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.360 if you score, you may win. If they never score, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.720 you will never lose. And the boulder letters said defense 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.519 wins championships. Well, that was very much. Though Kirk was 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:17.200 the most sophisticated of intellectuals, he was at heart a 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.000 football coach. And when I arrived in graduate school in 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.560 New York in nineteen eighty, I was something of a 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.240 wise guy. I grew up in an academic family, but 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.560 in a very contentious, smart when the argument at the 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:31.160 dinner table kind of family, what'd your dad do? My 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.359 dad was a professor? No, no, when when you when 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:35.920 you left Philadelphia? How old were you when you went 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.760 to Levin? When we left Philadelphia? And then I and 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.680 then grew spent the next nine years in Montreal, really 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.640 kind of grew up in exactly. And my mother to 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:47.800 my mother was a professor too, And actually I should 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.840 add them in many ways a more distinguished scientist and 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:52.840 scholar than my dad was. My dad spent a lot 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:54.880 of time as a dean, was extremely good at it. 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:57.920 My mom is famous in her field for having discovered 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:02.760 the first identifiable chromosome linked to grammar, linked to language, 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.280 which is called if I used to know my heart 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:10.040 show f XP you forgotten? Yes, exactly twops. Anyway, So 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:12.280 I came I came of age very much in that 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:15.600 kind of Jewish intellectual family, with elements of the Glass 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.599 family of Salinger and of the Corleone family of Mary 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:20.799 Open leaving at eleven, I wonder, I mean, I always 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:26.159 identified that period as a huge transition childhood. It's very 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:28.800 sent you to say that it was hugely tough, hugely tough, 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:30.760 because I had just sort of begun for the first 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:32.719 time to have a circle of friends. And we smoked. 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.279 We couldn't get marijuana, we smoked marigold cigarettes and all that. 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:39.400 It was hugely tough moving to a strange city, and 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:43.200 it took me quite a while to adjust. As in Philadelphia, 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.520 where I spent my childhood, really I had actually been 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.200 a kid actor, and I had been the kind of 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.680 the Jackie Coogan of Andre Gregory's avant garde theater. You 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.599 know Andrew Gregory, it's still to this day a very 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:57.520 dear friend, my oldest friend in the world. And he 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.400 had an avant garde theater in Philadelphia. Oh do you 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.160 really yes? Yeah, Well that was that that family. And 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.960 so I had played countless parts for Andre and as 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.320 I say, we're still intimate friends. And so I had 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.200 a very uh incandescent and some always a blessed child. 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.560 And so that transition was extremely, extremely difficult for me. 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.440 And you went undergrad to McGill. I went undergrad to McGill. 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:19.600 I've got many friends because mcgils such a great school. 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.240 I have many friends whose children have gone there. And 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:24.440 my neighbor in my first home and I m Aganson 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.560 was skip Sheldon Huntington's Sheldon who was on the medical 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:30.760 staff there or the hospital staff. That he was a 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.599 medical doctor who also I think his family him or 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.599 his mother's family were heirs to the merc drug and 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.920 he was my guy. And I'm McGill such a great 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:41.000 school when you were there growing up. Was it a 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:42.800 feder company you were going to go to McGill, Yes, 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.599 there was no, There was no question. It was the 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.320 It was the family tavern. Really, not only I tell 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:49.520 my kids. In fact, they ended up because I got 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:51.880 a discount because my both my parents were professors, and 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:55.120 then I did well and I got various fellowships and 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:57.799 ended up paying me to go to college, so which 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.960 was in this day as unusual. My friend Malcolm Bladwell, 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.440 who's also a Canadian of the same generation, points out 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.680 accurately that that's the Canadian model, that you go to 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.640 the nearest good school to your home. And the whole 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:12.760 insane American rigmarole which we have gone through is I'm 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.839 sure you have gone through and will go through of 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.039 college visits and the insane competitive overdrive that takes places 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:23.800 essentially unknown in Canada. My nieces and nephews live in 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.120 Edmonton and they went to the University of Alberta, which 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:28.800 is a terrific school and is nearby. But yeah, I 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:33.680 went to McGill and art history. I did art history. 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:35.920 I did our history because I was torn between doing 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.880 psychology and art history. My older sister, with whom i'm 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.960 extremely close intellectually did psychology and it's the psychologist to 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.760 this day. But I have four sisters. I should add, 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:48.920 you're one of how many six? I'm one of six, 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.720 so it's positive science, right, one of six I had. 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:54.240 This is a whole other subject, but we I had 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.640 an extraordinary childhood, which I hope to write about it 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.560 in my next book after this one. But I had 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.279 seen an incredibly pretty girl going into the art history 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.760 department and I thought, that looks interesting. We're interested in psychology, 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:11.240 which tended to study what is she studying? And I've 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.880 found out and I followed her in and forty two 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.840 years later we're still married, so that worked out all right. 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:18.800 But it was also nice because I was talking. I 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:20.120 was you know how it is when you know that age, 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:23.320 you're agonized about everything. Everything is in agony. And I 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:25.720 said to my psychology advice, but what should I do 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.000 Should I do art history of psychology? It seemed hugely 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:29.920 important at the time. And he said, is this a 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.640 difficult decision? And I said yes, And he said, then 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.360 it's unimportant. He said, all difficult decisions in life are 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:37.840 unimportant because if they're difficult, that means there's a lot 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.080 to be said on both sides, so you can't really 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.000 take a wrong turn. My wife has a degree in 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.360 art history from n y U. And when I said 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.320 to her at one point, why that in a menu 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:49.840 of things you might have said, I said, why that? 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:51.640 And she goes cool. It's because it's the history of 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.680 the world of humanity, history of humanity and the history, 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.920 and it has this magical element, and that is that 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.880 you look at ill fixed pictures, at things that don't move, 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:08.200 that don't dramatize, that don't have you know, attached them, 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.920 and suddenly they seemed to sum up a period and epoch, 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.080 a mood of meaning you understand the Italian Renaissance better 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:20.440 by looking at Leonardo than you do by reading six 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.080 volumes on the period. So I loved it and still do. 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.800 I came to New York with, as I've written about 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.000 in my book, at the Stranger's Gate. We got on 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.120 a bus leaving Montreal like kids out of a nineteen 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.880 forties musical, and came to New York. The building where 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.040 we are right now we're writing, was where Martha had 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:39.959 her first job. She was a film editor at that time, 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:41.960 studying to be a film editor. Was was actually a 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.280 film editor. She was with eventually too, the Masals, but 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.280 she had trained with her parents were founding filmmakers for 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:49.360 the National Film Board of Canada. I don't know if 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:51.400 that means anything in American now, but it was the 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:56.120 great documentary are familiar and this was her first job, 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:58.320 and it is a sign of how different New York 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.760 is now. And then that this building on Ninth Aven 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.400 and was so isolated that I would come, I would 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:07.720 take her down on the subway in the morning and 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.280 pick her up again at night because they routinely found 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:12.760 dead bodies in the dumpster. And there was truly on 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:15.480 this block where now there's ah. You have your choice 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:17.920 between a great French, great restaurant of the south of 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.160 France and a fine bistro from Alsace. There was nothing. 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:23.520 There was absolutely nothing. So when you leave and you 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:27.280 come to New York, what motivated that decision. Why did 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:29.600 you want to come to go to graduate school at 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.040 n y U and not remain in Canada, go somewhere 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.040 else because it was a period of your life for 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.559 your fairly peripateticus. Yes, absolutely, but because we had fallen 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:39.360 in love with New York and it was I had 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.920 fallen crazy New York. Oh no, No, she was Icelandic 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:45.600 girl from Montreal. She was. It couldn't have been more 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.520 Canadian in background and temperament is to this day. But 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.080 we had been to New York and we had fallen 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.120 crazy in love with it the way you do, or 0:09:54.679 --> 0:10:00.040 people have done historically. And then even then, even in 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.680 the seventies, and and my you know, my folks thought 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:04.400 we were a little bit crazy because there was the 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.880 Tali into the seventies in New York was still taxi 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.400 driving New York, you know, with steam coming out of 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:14.320 the manholes and psychos driving the cabs. But we had 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:16.320 fallen crazy in love with it, and I as I 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:18.280 am to this day, it's not. That's an emotion that's 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.360 never changed for me. And it seemed like a time 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:23.720 of possibility. And when you're twenty years old, you don't 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.520 it's hard to keep anybody away from anything. My father 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.640 came with me when we got on the bus going 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.480 down to Manhattan, and he said to me, you know, 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:36.959 it's like, you know d'artagnan's father and the three musketeers 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.240 seize him off from Gascony, if you remember, and says, 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.720 when you get to Paris, fight duels with everyone you meet, 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.240 which he then does and becomes a musketeer. My father 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:45.920 said to me when I was getting on the bus, 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:48.560 he said, when you get to New York, remember never 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.440 underestimate the other person's insecurity. And those turned out to 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.280 be the wisest words anyone has ever given me. And 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.560 every mistake I've made subsequently was because I underestimated someone 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.480 else's insecurity. And every time I've had an empathetic insight 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.120 into a situation, professionally or or personally, it's because I 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.199 remembered that. Remember my uncle, my father's youngest brother, who 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:11.760 was a bit of a for lack of a better 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:14.360 way of putting, was kind of a Karawackian figure like 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:18.120 around the road, very bohemian and very never had a job, 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:20.840 lived off of his Korean War pension, and you know, 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.679 a very strange guy, but super bright, super intellectual guy. 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:27.240 You're reading books, consult he said. Remember one thing, he said, 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.120 even if you really are one in a million, there's 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.680 seven other people like you in this city. So you 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:34.520 can form a little club with that. Then you can 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.680 hang out with your mind. People absolutely make a you 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.000 make a cohort instantly. In New York and my dad, 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.199 though it was the tail into the seventies, there was 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.600 still it was still in some ways a more if 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.240 I made attractive city than it is now because exactly 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.400 because there was so much that was decrepit and there 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.280 was so much that was despairing, there were these wonderful 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.560 little islands of light and poetry and music. When we 0:11:57.600 --> 0:11:59.439 first came to New York, we used to go and 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.200 here the G eight jazz pianist Ellis Larkins play at 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.319 the Carnegie Tavern, which was this little bar right behind 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.520 Carnegie Hall, and there was this amazing jazz poet who 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:11.200 just played it sets a night. For the price we 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:12.840 weren't even we didn't even know enough to drink in 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.120 those days. For the price of a perier, you could 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.480 be in this cool dark room where this genius was, 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:23.280 this artatum level pianist was playing for free, reflectively, with 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.719 melancholy elegance night after night. That was part of the 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:31.040 magic of New York in that period before Uber and 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.120 so forth, mid to late eighties. I would get into 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:36.040 a cave only calves or the subway back then I 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.120 would say to the driver, how's the driving business. That 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:40.960 would strike a conversation with them. And the one guy 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:43.560 that I think he was Russian, he said that, he said, 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:45.720 New York is not the same in the more. He says, 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:48.920 all the artists are gone, he said, because of the 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:51.240 rent is so high. He said, all the artists are 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:54.319 leaving the city. He said. Now it's only these bankers 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.280 who get up in the morning and go running along 0:12:57.320 --> 0:12:59.800 the reservoir, then go downtown and try to kill each other, 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.160 you know. And I remember there was I felt much 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.200 more romantic about New York. And then I think that's 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.400 true and the only um antidote I have to I mean, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:10.839 we were lucky enough to come of age in a 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.240 rat infested loft in Soho at a time when Soho 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.000 was still an art village, and you would wake up 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:19.240 in the morning and you would see Richard Sarah walking 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:24.000 along Brent Street, scowling as he envisioned another monstrous wall 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.280 of cortense steel or uh. Donald Judd, the great minimalist, 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:30.920 was still occupying his house, which is now a little museum, 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.760 So you had a sense of those very specific energies 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.200 of art. I remember there was even a couple who 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.760 were literally manacled together for a year as a conceptual 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:42.120 art exercise, and you would see them going up and 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:45.920 down West Broadway in a state of total bliss and equanimity. 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:48.640 And so we were lucky enough to see that last frontier. 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.480 And it's true that one of the tragedies of New 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:55.040 York in my lifetime is is that those frontiers of 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:59.240 bohemia that had persisted since the Civil War really have vanished. 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.720 And yet when I say that, I recognized the limitations 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.480 of my own vision, because for my kids didn't experience 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.719 it that way. They experienced bed Sty, and they experienced Williamsburg, 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.640 and they experienced Brooklyn. You know, it was one of 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.000 the great transformations of our time. You know, I'm sure 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:15.760 you've read because it's a favorite book of all of 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.640 us who love the theater, Moss Hearts, Act One, which 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:22.200 is a story about the subway. Basically, it's about getting 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.120 on the Subway in Brooklyn and being brought into the 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:29.680 wonders of Manhattan, and generations of imaginative New York pilgrims 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:31.960 made that trip from the Bronx of Brooklyn into town. 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:34.240 And then suddenly it was like the suction on a vacuum. 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:36.480 It suddenly turned the other way around right, and everyone 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:40.200 was departing Manhattan for Brooklyn and the Bronx. Remember my son, 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.320 Luke said to me at one point, very seriously, he said, Dad, 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:45.320 he said, you know, I know you like this neighborhood, 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.840 the Upper East Side, which you know I had mortgaged 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.680 every atom of carbon in my body in order to 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:53.800 provide for them as an abode. He said, but you know, 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.480 the food is so much better than Williamsburg. He said, 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:58.840 I really wanted to come out with me for my generation. 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.720 I I joke, I said, oh my god, Brooklyn was 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.600 where you would go to buy like serious hardcore drugs 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.680 or a gun. But there's two things when I look 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:10.920 at your your facts and so forth in your CD 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:13.360 that stand out to me that I'm always kind of 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.480 fascinated by. One is expatriotism. And you go live in 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.240 Paris for five years now? Was that the only long 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.520 term stay you had outside the United State. That was 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:24.080 the one and only. That was the one and only. 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.480 I mean we've gone, you know, likes, we visited London, 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.880 and we've been kind of you know, regular habituaies of 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:32.760 Paris since, but that was the only extended time was 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:35.680 you know, what was it like for you to, like, 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:40.040 I'm assuming what was the Paris idea? Your idea someone 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.240 sent you because of you were you were, you were 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:44.400 commissioned because you were going to write these journals if 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.440 you will know you keep journals. It was our idea. 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.000 Martha and I had fallen in love with Paris and 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:52.720 with the idea of Paris. I guess we're sort of 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.760 constantly just loyal love is fall in love with New 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:56.480 York and fall in love with Paris and go on, 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.360 and we're not cheating on New York Paris exactly exactly. 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:02.280 It was our that was our lover. New York. New 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:06.200 York is our our spouse, and Paris our mistress. Someone 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:07.880 wrote a book with that title. By the way, Paris 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:09.680 was our mistress. But in any case, we had fallen 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:11.640 in love with it. And when our son Luke was 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.680 born in knew that if we didn't go now, then 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.160 we would be entrapped, if not entombed by New York 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:23.560 necessities preschool exactly. And so we decided to do it. 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.520 And I threw my cap over the wall. You know 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:29.000 a beautiful story of Frank O'Connor's, you know, when they 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.720 growing up as a poor Irish kitten cork and whenever 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:33.800 they came to a wall that was too high to scale, 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:36.440 all the little Irish ways threw their caps over the wall. 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:38.240 Because once your cap was on the other side of 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:40.320 the wall, you had no choice but defined a way over. 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:42.760 You couldn't go home without your cap. And I've always 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.120 thought that's a lovely image of the key moments we 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:46.880 have in life. So threw my cap over the wall, 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:48.840 said to the wonderful Tina Brown, who was then the 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:51.280 editor of The New Yorker, Listen, I really really want 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:53.280 to go to Paris. And bless her, she said, all right, 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:55.240 go go to Paris. Right to us from right for 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:57.800 us from Paris, And so we off, off we went. 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:00.240 And it was I don't think I had this fully 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:02.520 formed as a thought, but it was some kind of intuition. 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:04.480 I knew Paris would be a more interesting place to 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.880 write about than London exactly because it threatened to become 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:09.679 a bit of a backwater. You know, it was a 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:12.960 time I loved the nineties. I thought the nineties were great. 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:15.000 They were as good as the nine nineties, were as 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.040 good as the eighteen nineties, and lots of ways. But 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:22.639 there was this encircling girdle of American life, in American influence, 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:24.640 which you felt very strongly in London. In those days 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:28.320 it was kind of triumphant Anglo Saxism, and France and 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.679 Paris were the last place to resist that, so you 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:35.200 were actually witnessing the alternative, like the little Gaulish village 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.600 in the Asteris comics. This was the last place that 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:38.760 was going on. So I knew would be a more 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.720 interesting place to write about, because losers, so to speak, 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:44.840 are always more interesting to write about than winners. And 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:48.000 and we settled in and those were five amazing years. 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:49.720 They were also, you know, there's a moment I think 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:53.760 in every from nine till two thousand and one really 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.760 came home to nine eleven. Also, I think in every 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:00.560 writer's life, and this may be true of every artist's life, 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:02.400 I think it is true of every artist's life there's 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:04.280 a moment when you sort of know you've hit it, 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.040 when you find your voice, you find your stance, and 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.199 you sort of know, even if you don't like me, 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:11.240 you have to admit that this is good. And I 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:13.520 felt that way writing in Paris for the first time. 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:15.880 I've been writing for a decade for The New Yorker already, 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:17.800 but I sort of knew when I wrote my first piece, 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.800 I said, Oh, this voice is mine. This voice is appealing. 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.600 There's something about the way I can write here with 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.159 a certain kind of ride attachment, but also with a 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.440 certain kind of lyrical enthusiasm. I felt, I knew that 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:33.320 it was working. And there's just there's no feeling as 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:36.879 good in a writer's life as that moment when you 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.919 when you know inside there's literally a kind of physical vibration, 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.159 a hum when you sit down to your typewriter or 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:46.080 computer when you feel that. And I felt that so 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:54.679 strongly in Paris, author Adam Gopnik. If you're enjoying insights 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:58.000 into the inner workings of The New Yorker, listen to 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.679 my conversation with an author formerly at the helm of 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:06.840 the publication, Editor in Chief Extraordinaire, Tina brown Well I 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.520 think I'm a compulsive reporter. Actually, I mean I have 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.679 what I think of as observation greed. Right most of 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.439 the time, I'm propelled to go out, not because I 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.800 actually want to go out, but I think I got 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.040 to see that, you know, I need to see that. Curious. 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:26.320 I'm really curious, and I have a great desire to 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.679 report on the action. Here the rest of my conversation 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.480 with Tina Brown in our archives at Here's the Thing 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:38.240 dot org. After the Break, Adam got Nick shares the 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:56.399 secret to a perfect marriage. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.119 listening to Here's the Thing writer Adam got Nick. This 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.880 family spent five years living in France. In his time there, 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.959 he composed the Paris Journal for the New Yorker magazine, 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.000 as well as a collection of essays the New York 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:16.440