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Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,

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Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to

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Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change

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Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. The New Yorker

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Speaker 1: magazine is having a momentous year. Two thousand fifteen marks

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Speaker 1: its ninetieth anniversary and the year it moved offices from

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Speaker 1: Times Square to one World Trade Center. David Remnick became

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Speaker 1: the magazine's editor almost twenty years ago when Tina Brown

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Speaker 1: named him as her successor. Remnick, who first started as

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Speaker 1: a staff writer, continues to report and write profiles. Everybody

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Speaker 1: has a cartoon of themselves, says Remnick. Mine is I

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Speaker 1: write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.

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Speaker 1: He's written six books and edited more than his share

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Speaker 1: of anthologies. It's no surprise that David Remnick carefully considers

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Speaker 1: how he spends his day. I'm very wary of not

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Speaker 1: consuming time unnecessarily, and that's that's marital that's the modern battle. Well,

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Speaker 1: not to eat it up with what ends up being crap.

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Speaker 1: And I have a lot of friends who use Twitter

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Speaker 1: and are on Twitter and are tweeting during the day

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Speaker 1: and you know, meaningful lives present. Yes, but and I've

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Speaker 1: amended that. You know, I'll do it far less than

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Speaker 1: I used to write. But what I found for with

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Speaker 1: people in jobs like mine who were tweeting, they did

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Speaker 1: one of two things, and they both seemed mistaken. One

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Speaker 1: is that they use it as a promotional vehicle, and

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Speaker 1: they say, we you know, uh, we have a really

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Speaker 1: swell piece on blah, and then three days we go by,

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Speaker 1: we have a real we have a we have a

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Speaker 1: great piece on data. And that's not with Twitter's for

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Speaker 1: there You're not joining any conversations, You're just you know,

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Speaker 1: you're just showing your backside, you your advertising. That's one

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Speaker 1: kind of The other kind is the inadvertent overshare that

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Speaker 1: you then spend weeks cleaning up after after your own elephant.

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Speaker 1: And I didn't want to do that either. I figured

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Speaker 1: that I had enough of a platform, either implicitly as

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Speaker 1: an editor or explicitly as a writer, and once in

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Speaker 1: a while to talk with somebody like you, or go

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Speaker 1: on television or whatever once in a blue moon, and

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Speaker 1: and that was enough. I think that's the right decision

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Speaker 1: for me. When you not that the world is shaking

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Speaker 1: in a desire for for for me to tweet. I

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Speaker 1: love this quote. Michael Specter says the only person he

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Speaker 1: knows who watches more television than Remnick is his own

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Speaker 1: ex wife, Alessandras stayed with Stanley, the TV critic for

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Speaker 1: The New York Times. He remembers calling Remnick one of

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Speaker 1: their favorites. The BBC version of Look Are Smile These

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Speaker 1: People came out on DVD. I said, are you watching it?

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Speaker 1: And Remick said yes, he was writing a piece. He said.

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Speaker 1: I said, I'm giving myself three hours of writing one

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Speaker 1: hour of Smiley. I think that may have been the

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Speaker 1: best thing I've ever seen on television. Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: Alec certainly in the high brower area. I mean Alec

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Speaker 1: ginn is playing Smiley in Tinker Taylor and then Smile

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Speaker 1: these people? What is Yeah? That was heaven the So

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Speaker 1: you wake up in the morning and how do you

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Speaker 1: plug in? What do you do me for news? And

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Speaker 1: things like that. Look in general the New York The

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Speaker 1: New York Times, either because it just is or because

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Speaker 1: out of force of habit is the weather that we

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Speaker 1: live in. In terms of what's going on, in the world.

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Speaker 1: And that's why I think never more so than now,

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Speaker 1: despite the profusion of all the websites that you and

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Speaker 1: I could both name and maybe overlap on Medium, Vox,

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Speaker 1: whatever it is, Slate or whatever rings your bell. But

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Speaker 1: for me, the New York Times as a news gathering

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Speaker 1: organization is still the most ambitious. It just is, and

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Speaker 1: so I'm not going to miss that. Would you like

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Speaker 1: to see them do better? Wow? Where I think they're

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Speaker 1: holding up the the store is on things like international news,

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Speaker 1: where it's just getting worse and worse. There are fewer

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Speaker 1: and fewer places of endbition that can cover the world.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to see the cultural coverage be a little different, really,

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Speaker 1: I think it could be as ammbitious in certain areas

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Speaker 1: as as the international coverage of political coverage. There's things

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Speaker 1: that they cover in pop culture. I sit there, I

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Speaker 1: go they put that on the front page of the

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Speaker 1: arts section of the New York Times. I think that's okay, though,

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Speaker 1: I think that so yeah, I do. I think I

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Speaker 1: think it's it's important for somebody who's my age to

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Speaker 1: remember that Kanye West is for his audience, and I'm

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Speaker 1: part of his audience. What Bob Dylan was for Bob

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Speaker 1: Dylan's audience thirty years ago. Pop culture is something that

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Speaker 1: you're never going to love as acutely, especially in music

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Speaker 1: as when the Pharaonomes were just flying through and when

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Speaker 1: those songs meant something to you. Yeah, and so as

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Speaker 1: somebody who still goes to see the Bobster and uh

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Speaker 1: and others and it still means everything to me. It's

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Speaker 1: so I don't mind seeing those things on the frontage

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Speaker 1: because I know he's someone's Bobster. You bet, you bet.

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Speaker 1: So that's okay. Now with what you do there, is

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Speaker 1: it more management and you're involved in finances and marketing

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Speaker 1: and the move downtown and so or is it just

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Speaker 1: mostly editing. It's all of it. It has to be

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Speaker 1: all of it. Look, my job is week to week

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Speaker 1: and months and month, but it's also has to have

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Speaker 1: some sense of what where we're going, what we're about,

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Speaker 1: who we are, what our internal moral, journalistic, literary purposes

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Speaker 1: in the world. And I have to think about X

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Speaker 1: years from now, and I hope it's a lot of

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Speaker 1: years from now where I hand off this thing in

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Speaker 1: shape in every sense that it that it means what

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Speaker 1: it should mean. But it's also financially healthy. What kind

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Speaker 1: of shape with the magazine in or how would you

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Speaker 1: describe the magazine when you took over. It was losing money.

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Speaker 1: I don't say that, you know, to pound my chest,

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Speaker 1: but it was losing money, was going through a hard

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Speaker 1: Why do you think it was because she was very

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Speaker 1: pop culture centric? It wasn't about that, I think. I

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Speaker 1: think it was The peak of advertising for The New

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Speaker 1: Yorker was in the late sixties. And it's why, Alec,

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Speaker 1: when we think, you know, we make a cartoon of

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Speaker 1: certain periods, of certain things. The reason there were four

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Speaker 1: parts series that weren't so interesting sometimes was because they

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Speaker 1: needed the editorial matter to put next to the ads.

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Speaker 1: It was that rich. And there's, you know, contrary to

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Speaker 1: popular belief, there's just so much great writing out there.

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Speaker 1: You know, advertising began to decline, and yet we were

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Speaker 1: charging of minuscule amount for the for the magazine, you know,

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Speaker 1: And my feeling is you should be able to charge

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Speaker 1: each week for The New Yorker, maybe even as much

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Speaker 1: as a cup of Starbucks or half of the movie costs.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, So now we as a movie

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Speaker 1: or a bad movie, and and now we do and

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Speaker 1: together with advertising. It's a very healthy business. And we

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Speaker 1: try to pay writers decently. Um, And is that a struggle? Well,

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Speaker 1: we need a lot of good stuff. We come out

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Speaker 1: every week and now we come out every second. And

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Speaker 1: I don't want to see any diminution in in quality

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Speaker 1: just because it's just the web. I don't. I'm not

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Speaker 1: saying this for you to be kind. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: obviously have great writers and and and but you want

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Speaker 1: to pay them decent. And how do you compare, Like,

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Speaker 1: who's paying the most money in your field right now? Well,

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Speaker 1: who's sitting up there and just throwing money at nobody's

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Speaker 1: throwing but nobody's nobody's an idiot, nobody's in here. Competitive absolutely, Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Is if somebody comes to us from the New York Times, say, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Dexter Filkins comes from the New York Times

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Speaker 1: to the New York He's not going to come for less.

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Speaker 1: What he's doing is coming mainly to do something different.

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Speaker 1: I think that's the main attraction. That's what happened with me.

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Speaker 1: I was a newspaper reporter. I wanted to do something different.

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Speaker 1: I had been I had the best newspaper job in

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Speaker 1: the history of the Second half of the twentieth century

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Speaker 1: was a Moscow reporter. It was heaven. But I was

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Speaker 1: also writing, you know, faster than I could type. I

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Speaker 1: was three times a day and no time to think.

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Speaker 1: So got lucky this way to do something where you

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Speaker 1: could right, if not for the ages, then at least

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Speaker 1: not for the ten minutes that you were a looted

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Speaker 1: so when you have But if I just finished one

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Speaker 1: point you asked me about, I don't want to give

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Speaker 1: the impression that being the editor the New Yorkers it

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Speaker 1: is business all the time, but you just too. You

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Speaker 1: have to pay attention to it. The pleasure of the job,

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Speaker 1: the heaven of it is somebody down the hall has

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Speaker 1: read somebody who's twenty four and puts in front of

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Speaker 1: you his or her writing in some small magazine or

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Speaker 1: on some website, and we aside to give her a shot.

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Speaker 1: And the piece comes in and this person has a

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Speaker 1: whale of talent that's enormously ground to give them what

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Speaker 1: kind of a piece to write? Well, it depends on

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Speaker 1: who they are. There's a woman named Sarah Stillman, for example,

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Speaker 1: say her mid twenties, and she had written a few

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Speaker 1: pieces here or there, and every piece she has written

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Speaker 1: for us now, which maybe half does. She seems seems

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Speaker 1: to win an award for it's it's amazing, she's got it.

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Speaker 1: Rachel Levive for this guy Patrick Keith, who just did

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Speaker 1: this piece on Jerry Adam. I was in touch with

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Speaker 1: Rachel to try to get in touch with the woman

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Speaker 1: who she talked about the the adoption case after California,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't eventually email that woman because I wanted

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Speaker 1: to get the rights to her story. I love Rachel's writing.

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Speaker 1: She's terrific. And you know, she hadn't she had been

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Speaker 1: in the I guess she had been in the village voice.

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Speaker 1: She had been here and there. She wasn't invisible. It's

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Speaker 1: not like she's right out of the eighth grade or something.

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Speaker 1: But that is it's enormously gratifying. At the other end,

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Speaker 1: So Roger Angel is ninety four years old, imagine that.

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Speaker 1: And he hands you a piece he's that he's slyly

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Speaker 1: been working on in which he's describing what it is

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Speaker 1: to be old, what it is to lose your powers

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Speaker 1: here and there two experience the loss of his wife,

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Speaker 1: who he certainly figured he would, you know, go go first.

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Speaker 1: And yet he's not through desiring. His sexual desire is

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Speaker 1: still there, and he gets married again and he writes

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Speaker 1: the most astonishing piece on year old text about what

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Speaker 1: it is to desire it and you don't stop. The

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Speaker 1: sap is still in the tree. God man. So when

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Speaker 1: you have the magazine, obviously one's assuming that there's you know,

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Speaker 1: pieces that are three months out, six months out. You

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Speaker 1: have many pots on many stoves cooking, and do you

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Speaker 1: sometimes I don't remember which pots are cooking? Were sometimes

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Speaker 1: I really don't go going on long lead that way.

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Speaker 1: These pieces take months to write and so forth, or

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Speaker 1: maybe longer. And do you sit there and look at

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Speaker 1: pieces and go, that's not a march piece. I don't

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Speaker 1: want New Yorkers to read that in the dead of winter.

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Speaker 1: I don't you know, Like, do you have a sense

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Speaker 1: of how the magazines put together on multiple levels? Yes,

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Speaker 1: and you're you know, there are a lead pieces and

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Speaker 1: then there are shorter pieces, and by by New Yorker standards,

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Speaker 1: a shorter pieces of four thousand word piece, you know,

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Speaker 1: a profile. The longer piece can run twenty words. These

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Speaker 1: are these are considerable things. And if you've delivered week

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Speaker 1: after week of leads that are isis or some grim

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Speaker 1: piece of life. You need to have some sense of rotation.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the magazine is not the magazine if it

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Speaker 1: doesn't have a sense of humor. You're not in business

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Speaker 1: to depress the hell out of the reader. Unremitted, It's

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Speaker 1: like a band having a set list. If you do everything,

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Speaker 1: it's all sixteenth notes fermented. So or will you sound

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Speaker 1: like the remotes? Although I've heard of worse things boom.

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Speaker 1: So you want some variation in tone, invoice, and that's

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Speaker 1: your responsibility, you feel, I feel all of it's my responsibility,

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Speaker 1: you know. Even the cartoons you don't choose. I do.

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Speaker 1: So the way that's done is is is there's a

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Speaker 1: cartoon editor that gets all these roughs you've had, Ross

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Speaker 1: Chest come by Rosal send in ten roughs, and she's

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Speaker 1: cooking with gas. If one of them each week gets picked,

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Speaker 1: that's the highest hit rate there can be. And and

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Speaker 1: and and she's it. It's a hard way to make

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Speaker 1: a living, and it's a hard way to be an artist.

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Speaker 1: And even there you want variety of voices. You want

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Speaker 1: they can't all be about frustrated men in bed with

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Speaker 1: their you know, non giving girlfriends or something or it

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Speaker 1: can't all be that joke. Can't all be desert islands,

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Speaker 1: or or even meta desert island jokes. You've got to

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Speaker 1: have some sense of variety. I told you my favorite

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Speaker 1: of all time, Gaine Wilson had a fish in a suit,

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Speaker 1: I think I told Rose this, and the fishes in

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Speaker 1: a suit and an elevator, and a man is in

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Speaker 1: the elevator, and the elevator doors have parted, and out

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Speaker 1: there was an aquarium. There's water and bubbles and plant

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Speaker 1: life and other fish. And the fishes turned to the

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Speaker 1: man and says, I guess this is me. It was

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Speaker 1: just my favorite cartoon in the New Yorker that I'm

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Speaker 1: a refrigerator for twenty years, and you know, you get

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Speaker 1: a nearer to this kind of stuff, You forget that

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Speaker 1: this is this is not the kind of job that

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Speaker 1: most people have picking cartoons for a living. In the

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Speaker 1: other night, Esther and my wife, Esther and I have

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Speaker 1: with three kids in one of them has autism. When

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Speaker 1: we go to this Night of Too Many Stars, which

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Speaker 1: John Stewart and Robert Smigel, and they do this amazing thing,

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Speaker 1: and I, you know, said Ester, so what can we

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Speaker 1: offer in the auction part? She said, well, you can

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Speaker 1: auction off attendance at the cartoon meeting. I said, you know,

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Speaker 1: the whole last twenty five minutes. You know, Robert Mankoff

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Speaker 1: and I sit there and we make stupid jokes and

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Speaker 1: we picked cartoons. How interesting can this be? Sixty four

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars we get on the on the auction. Two

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Speaker 1: different people for thirty two dollars a piece want to

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Speaker 1: be in this meeting. I don't know what the hell

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Speaker 1: to do with them. I think I'm going to have

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Speaker 1: to bring in entertainment and addition to take care of themselves.

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Speaker 1: I hope they're happy to be there. I hope. So.

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Speaker 1: So when you're doing the piece you we're talking about

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Speaker 1: Sarah Stillman, Yeah, I look at the New York and

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Speaker 1: I think, you know, do you develop or do they

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Speaker 1: get ready? We have to but they but they But

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Speaker 1: this is this is the ethos of the magazine in

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Speaker 1: the in the early days. It's gonna make you. It's

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Speaker 1: it's hysterical to to to think it was true. But

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Speaker 1: the big money makers for fiction writers way back when

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Speaker 1: with short stories, so Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and to some extent,

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Speaker 1: well before O'Hara comes along, they're making their living on

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Speaker 1: selling short stories to the Saturday Evening Post, to magazines

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Speaker 1: like that. So the New Yorker comes along and eventually

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Speaker 1: Katherine White, Roger Angel's mother, is the fiction editor, and

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Speaker 1: she's got to figure out where where can we make

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Speaker 1: our bones. Well, we don't have the money to compete

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Speaker 1: with the Saturday Evening Post and such magazines for for

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Speaker 1: the big names, Hemingway, fitz Jaralin's son, So we're going

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Speaker 1: to discover new talent. So that became the ethos of

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Speaker 1: the magazine, and they just she discovers, for example, living

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Speaker 1: in a railroad flat in Chelsea, which used to be

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Speaker 1: railroad flats, not the you know, the buffed Chelsea that

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Speaker 1: we know today, which is a you know, upper middle

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Speaker 1: class neighborhood. John Cheever, now there's no question that now,

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Speaker 1: because there is no Saturday Evening Post and the world

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Speaker 1: has changed that sometimes writers will come to us and

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Speaker 1: if not fully formed that they're certainly getting there. Do

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Speaker 1: you have an affiliation with any kind of university programs

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Speaker 1: where you you know, we we've we've done farm system

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Speaker 1: so to speak. The farm system is the mail. The

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Speaker 1: farm system is whoever sending us stuff. You know people

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Speaker 1: think I'm kidding around. People email me every day. I

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Speaker 1: probably get fifteen emails a day that go directly to

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Speaker 1: me because my email is not that hard to figure out,

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Speaker 1: and I have an idea, here's my short story. Now.

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Speaker 1: Most of them are not going to work. We have

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Speaker 1: a big staff. The pieces that come to me that

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Speaker 1: way are not always masterpieces. Once in a while, though,

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Speaker 1: it happens when you have people like that Rachel Vive

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Speaker 1: and listen, Tad Friend and all your mass head. There

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Speaker 1: the the top writers in the in the in the world.

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Speaker 1: What's editing them like for you? When you when you edit,

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Speaker 1: because I am ignorant about this, when you edit them,

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Speaker 1: you just sit there and say, well, you edited for size.

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Speaker 1: You said, well let's lose this. Unless you don't go

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Speaker 1: to say this is a run on sentence that you

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Speaker 1: need a strong gra Absolutely do you do? You absolutely

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Speaker 1: do every writer. Look John Updike editing John Updyke, which

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Speaker 1: I didn't personally do, but you know, you're presiding over

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Speaker 1: various editors and stuff. He's about as perfectionist and handing

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Speaker 1: it as close to what's appearing in the magazine as

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Speaker 1: as possible to be. And then there's the other side

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Speaker 1: of it. Different people do think different things. An investigative

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Speaker 1: reporter is not necessarily a master of prose. That what

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Speaker 1: you're shooting for there is well some of the I

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Speaker 1: just love that statement, But nor is John Updike capable

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Speaker 1: of uncovering the Pentagon papers. So what you're aiming for

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Speaker 1: there is is lucidity and clarity and you know a

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Speaker 1: kind of organization where the story unfolds in the proper way.

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Speaker 1: Your your your goal there is different. But each writer

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Speaker 1: has different stuff that he or she's you know, prone too.

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Speaker 1: You know, as a writer, I've taken too much time

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Speaker 1: clearing my throat in the beginning of the piece, and

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Speaker 1: I hope I've learned myself to get rid of a

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Speaker 1: lot of the crap after finding the group, after finding

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Speaker 1: the rhythm, after finding what it is I want to

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Speaker 1: say and where it wants to go. But very often

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Speaker 1: my editor, Henry Finder, will just very quietly take a pen.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's who edits you. Oh yeah, and he's great,

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Speaker 1: He's unbelievable. You know. The way it works is I'll

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Speaker 1: send him the piece. Now I've been doing this for

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Speaker 1: a while too, but nevertheless, I'll send him the piece,

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Speaker 1: and back will come an email and the tone is

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Speaker 1: very measured. Um, A lot of good stuff here, A

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Speaker 1: lot of good stuff here, which is a little bit

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Speaker 1: of a way of saying, there's some good things in

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Speaker 1: your pockets, some lens as well, maybe old gum rappers.

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Speaker 1: Maybe we don't need the old gum rappers quite so,

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Speaker 1: maybe fewer gun rappers. I know how to read this editor.

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Speaker 1: I he we know each other for a long time,

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Speaker 1: and I get the point. Outgoes the gum rappers, outgoes

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Speaker 1: the bilge about you know, Hillary Clinton's emails or whatever,

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Speaker 1: the kind of extraneous crap of this first try as

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Speaker 1: And I got this from Barbara Epstein as an editor

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Speaker 1: of the late Barbara Apstein at the New York Review

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Speaker 1: of Books. I was really honored to be invited to

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Speaker 1: write something from Russia for her. The assignment was about

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Speaker 1: Boris Yelson's memoir, but obviously the piece was to write

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Speaker 1: about Yelson and the yeltsa phenomena. And I got back

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Speaker 1: what she called a biggie. What's a biggie? It was

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Speaker 1: a gigantic galley sheet, and it was gigantic because there

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Speaker 1: were so many comments about how much I had screwed

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Speaker 1: up or had run off at the mouth, or didn't

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Speaker 1: explain sufficiently. And it was, you know, the signal that

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Speaker 1: this process was going to take a little time. It's

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Speaker 1: going to take a little time. And in the New

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Speaker 1: York there are a lot of layers of editors, not

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Speaker 1: just there's not just the editor that you have. There's

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Speaker 1: also me kibbittzing in the background. There are fact checkers

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Speaker 1: you've experienced this, and there are copy editors and what's

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Speaker 1: called okayers. And there used to be a woman named

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Speaker 1: Eleanor Gould, miss Gould, who would do her own proof

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Speaker 1: and she was like a super grammarian. And I swear

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Speaker 1: to God Alec, this is no longer. She once found

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Speaker 1: four errors in a three word sentence. I will neither

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Speaker 1: tell you who the writer was, nor tell you the sentence,

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Speaker 1: but it was the most stunning achievement editorial achievement UM

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Speaker 1: since Rosium and John Hersey. It was amazing. I remember

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Speaker 1: listening to UM. You know, as my day is always

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Speaker 1: the same. I'm more of an NPR person than a

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Speaker 1: New York Times person these days. You're being interviewed and

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Speaker 1: you talked about how your childhood I guess I think

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Speaker 1: what was your mother's illness. I tried to write this down.

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Speaker 1: I forgive me, but I tried to remember how I

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Speaker 1: think what you wrote about your mother was very ill

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Speaker 1: when you were young. Correct, she's still alive. Yeah, she

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Speaker 1: had got m S when I was a very small boy.

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Speaker 1: And it was there some comment you made about how

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Speaker 1: that shaped the work you do. It was something about

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Speaker 1: it it's more than the work to do, because the

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Speaker 1: person you are. Right. So I grew up in a

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Speaker 1: house where my mother had MS, which you know, was

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Speaker 1: a kind of slow path down ward's now what's called

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Speaker 1: a burnt out case. It stopped getting worse. So she's

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Speaker 1: in a wheelchair, but she's you know, she's eighty three,

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Speaker 1: and you know, okay. And my father was a dentist.

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Speaker 1: He had a small dental practice. But by the time

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Speaker 1: he was I think he concealed it because I think

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Speaker 1: he the pressure on him to bring home the bacon.

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Speaker 1: And although in our house no bacon, um was immense,

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Speaker 1: and you know, his hands started shaking in the whitefish

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Speaker 1: to bring home the white whitefish, very expensive um. His

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Speaker 1: hands started shaking, and clearly this was you know, if

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Speaker 1: it wasn't so tragic, it would have been funny. It

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Speaker 1: was like Buster Keaton, the Parkinsonian dentist. And so by

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Speaker 1: the time he was in his early fifties, he had

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Speaker 1: lost everything. So I had some sense that I was

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Speaker 1: going to have to make a living as my brother.

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Speaker 1: Remember now you're saying this, and I so I had,

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Speaker 1: you know, as a young guy, dreamed of being a novelist.

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Speaker 1: But that the notion that I just kind of set

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Speaker 1: myself up to be a novelist. Um, nobody was waiting

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Speaker 1: for my novels. So I got a job. I was very,

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Speaker 1: very lucky, got a job at the Washington Post. I

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Speaker 1: mean that that's it. From a nervous world. Right out

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Speaker 1: of college, I did well what my it's the major

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Speaker 1: was called comparative literature and what my father called fancy English.

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Speaker 1: And you were supposed to know a couple of foreign languages. Well,

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Speaker 1: and I knew really well. You know, I grew up

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Speaker 1: in a very different Jersey, right and Princeton looked like

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Speaker 1: a country club. Oh my god, yeah, not even just

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Speaker 1: it was just beyond yeah on Jupiter or something. And

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Speaker 1: that part of it. I didn't like the intellectual part

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Speaker 1: of it. This this sort of the pockets of people

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Speaker 1: like you could. Yeah, I know I didn't get into

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Speaker 1: a lot of places, but intellectually I loved it. And

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Speaker 1: I also got lucky in a few teachers, and that

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Speaker 1: that's the best thing that can happen to you in

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Speaker 1: places like that. One of them was John mcphgeh, who

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Speaker 1: taught writing and still teaches writing in Princeton. He's in

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Speaker 1: his he's in his might be one or something like

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Speaker 1: that still teaches, and to this is what's very rare.

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Speaker 1: You when you're studying literature in college, you're studying somebody

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Speaker 1: who's a literary scholar or a literary critic in the

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Speaker 1: defense sense. He was a practicing writer and talked about

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Speaker 1: things that writers talk about, um, the mechanics of it,

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Speaker 1: how you the structure of it, how you break things down.

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Speaker 1: So to have somebody concerned with the practicalities and just

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Speaker 1: to hear that language that was life changing. Your first

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Speaker 1: job as the Washington Post, Yeah, which is you know,

426
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: preposterously lucky cops and sports cops, cops, uh, covering night police.

427
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:39,520
Speaker 1: I was the world's wars price. Yeah, but he's great

428
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:41,119
Speaker 1: at it. What you did is you sat at a

429
00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 1: desk in the newsroom of the Washington Post, and it

430
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 1: was the night shift, which began at six and Washington

431
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: back then, Yeah, crack murder and the racial breakdown Washington

432
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: was horrible and and and you would call the various

433
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: cop shops around the city and the suburbs and the hospitals,

434
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: and you'd say, this is David Remnick in the Washington Post.

435
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 1: Are there any crimes, fires, or accidents I should know about.

436
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:13,359
Speaker 1: That's what you'd ask every every forty five minutes. And

437
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: the answer, usually by seven thirty thirty, was yes. And

438
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:19,680
Speaker 1: then you jump in a car and go see some kid,

439
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:25,399
Speaker 1: invariably African American um shot to death somewhere on you

440
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: know you street or an Anacostia. And we'd published two paragraphs,

441
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: and there were people that are good at it and

442
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:35,760
Speaker 1: developed the stories, and I wasn't all that great at it,

443
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: and I was in a big fat rush to write

444
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: with a capital W. And so what happened was I

445
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,320
Speaker 1: had this job. It was a temporary thing, and the

446
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 1: guy from the sports department said, you know anything about sports? Oh? Yeah,

447
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 1: you know. I watched stuff on TV in the weekend,

448
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: and probably too much of it, and I knew what

449
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:57,280
Speaker 1: this meant it meant a job, a real job, and

450
00:25:57,320 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: I said yeah, And I became a sports writer for

451
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: two years. How was that? Well, you didn't get the

452
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 1: A plus assignments right out of the bat, but you

453
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 1: just ran around the country and covered any you know,

454
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 1: any game, and oh my god, I was on near

455
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:17,639
Speaker 1: plate all the time. And I covered boxing in a

456
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 1: period when nobody cares about boxing. I covered something called

457
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 1: the USFL, the United States Football League, which was in

458
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: the summer. Huge, and this team that I had, and

459
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 1: it was all sort of NFL cast off people who

460
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,399
Speaker 1: had aged out. You know, Koy Bacon, would you know

461
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 1: he'd been at the I think he was a ram

462
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: or something, and then he washed up, you know, like

463
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: an old horseshoe crab at the USFL. How awful it

464
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: was that the horseshoe crabs. Oh my god, exactly. It

465
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,120
Speaker 1: was the Washington Federals. Craig James was the big star.

466
00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:57,960
Speaker 1: He was a running back, came from s and you

467
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 1: and he's it said, it was, It was grim but fun.

468
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 1: David Remnick moved from sports to the Style section, and

469
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:12,119
Speaker 1: then he took a very different job as a Moscow correspondent.

470
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 1: More on that coming up. Listen to other episodes of

471
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:19,919
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing in our archives, like my conversation with

472
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: Chris Columbus, the director of Home Alone, among other films. He,

473
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 1: like Remnick, got a big break early on. A friend

474
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: had suggested he writes something about monsters. So I spent

475
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: the next six weeks writing the script called Gremlin's and

476
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: I sent it to my agent, who um liked the

477
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: script but felt it was a little dark, and still

478
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: sent it to about fifty producers and everyone passed on it.

479
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: And Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was leaving his office on a

480
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: Friday and passed the script and saw the title and

481
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,280
Speaker 1: he said that looks interesting, picked it up, read it

482
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 1: that weekend, and decided he wanted to option the movie.

483
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:57,679
Speaker 1: Now I didn't know this. I gotta call up my loft.

484
00:27:57,840 --> 00:27:59,880
Speaker 1: I get the phone. He got Chris, it's Steven Spielberg.

485
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: I was stunned. Take a listen at Here's the Thing

486
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:18,439
Speaker 1: Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to

487
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: here is the Thing. My guest today is David Remnick,

488
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 1: editor of The New Yorker magazine. He and his wife

489
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: moved to Moscow to cover Russian politics for rival papers,

490
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: he for the Washington Post and she for the New

491
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: York Times. And while they found themselves in the whirlwind

492
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: drama that was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it

493
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: wasn't a popular post at that time. Nobody else wanted

494
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: to go. It's cold, miserable. Why do you think that is?

495
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: I have no idea. No one was clamoring for that job. Well, look,

496
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 1: you've probably been to Moscow since it's changed. I don't

497
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: know if you were there before. No money started showing

498
00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: up when my wife and I got to Moscow in nine,

499
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 1: in very beginning of eight eight and glossin Peristoi and

500
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 1: gorbag we're now well underway there. Food shops said really

501
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,479
Speaker 1: attractive things like bread, That's what the shop would say,

502
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: and there was no bread in it or PRODUCTI meaning groceries,

503
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: and there were none of those either. It was really

504
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: us um Stark. I loved it. People wanted to talk

505
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: to us for the first time in decades, us being

506
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: the tribe of journalists. They wanted to talk and you

507
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: were there for how long? Four years? They wanted to

508
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 1: talk about books. They wanted to come back often or

509
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 1: very rarely. I was I lived there. You know what

510
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: I mean to do, travel back to the United States

511
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: from or you there from basically were there. Maybe we

512
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: came back once a year, or any of your children

513
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: born during the first child spent his first year there,

514
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: and and yeah, and and we have I have pictures

515
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: of him. He's not twenty four, you know, in a

516
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: big giant, old fashioned pram that we put out on

517
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: the little teeny balcony. Looks like we lived in co

518
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: op City or something. It's kind of sturdy of to

519
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: go get bread and PRODUCTI yeah, And and we would

520
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: wrap him up in blankets with just his little nose,

521
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: and plumes of steam would come up into the winter

522
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:24,480
Speaker 1: Moscow air. And his first words were Varona, the crow

523
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: is flying. Okay, very smart. Boy doesn't know a word

524
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 1: of Russian. Now, so you come back after four years

525
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: to do what well I had thought. I we had thought,

526
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:39,600
Speaker 1: and we had discussed the possibility of men going in

527
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: the Middle East. It's what foreign correspondence do you go

528
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: to the next place. It's what foreign corresponds, by the way,

529
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 1: talk about all the time, the next place. And I

530
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 1: came home and it was very clear that my father's

531
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: health had degenerated and the next place was going to

532
00:30:56,120 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: be New York. There's just no going away. Family. Family. Yeah,

533
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 1: And so this is ninety one to his teammate in

534
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: charge of the magazine. Then, so this is what happened.

535
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 1: Tina took over the magazine from Bob Gottlieb and I

536
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: had written exactly one story for The New Yorker one

537
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 1: and one story for Vanity Fair for Tina, and I

538
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: get called will you please have lunch with Ms? Brown?

539
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: Four seasons. I get there and I don't think i'd

540
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: even met her before. If I had, it was for

541
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: two seconds in the office, and she was still out

542
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: of Vanity, and all she talked about was The New Yorker.

543
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: And as they say in Monty Python, I may be stupid,

544
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: but I'm no idiot. And I thought something's up here,

545
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: but I didn't quite figure it out. And then two

546
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: months later she became the hetter than New Yorker and

547
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: asked me to come right there, and and I was

548
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: a very happy camper, which dead New Yorker writer. Do

549
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: you wish you had met and worked well? A J. Leebling?

550
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:06,720
Speaker 1: So a J. Liebling, Yeah, A J. Lebling? I think

551
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: a J. Liebling was this red blazeon enormously fat gourmand

552
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 1: who literally dug his own grave with his teeth. He

553
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: ate himself to death and enjoyed life if if his

554
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: prose can be believed immensely. I don't like the early

555
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: kind of you know, telephone booth Indian stuff where I

556
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 1: think he's kind of making it up half the time

557
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 1: and it's not and it feels jokey and dumb and

558
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 1: comes from old world telegram feature writing style stuff. But

559
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: what I love is the stuff about the Second World War,

560
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: his boxing writing. He's the best sports writer along with

561
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: Roger angel I can I can even conceive of his

562
00:32:56,040 --> 00:33:03,719
Speaker 1: His work about Paris, about food um is just enormously warm.

563
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: And I liked his lucky attitude about writing. He loved

564
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: to be doing it. People would come into the office

565
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: late at night, no air conditioning at the New Yorker

566
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 1: in those days, and this pound guy would be stripped

567
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 1: to the waist, typing and laughing at his own jokes

568
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:27,160
Speaker 1: to soap. And that's that not the normal bearing of

569
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 1: your average writer. Mostly, there's a there's a certain self

570
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 1: lacerating or lacerated field to writing, this sense of suffering

571
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: a sense that this work is well. I think, first

572
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 1: of all, writing is really hard. It's sold my memoir

573
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: to Harpercolm. Now you have to write the damn thing.

574
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: I wrote one book about my critique of the California

575
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:52,719
Speaker 1: family law system. So I wrote that book. And then

576
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this quickly. Because I went to go

577
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,719
Speaker 1: to the the big synagogue on Fifth Avenue. I went

578
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: to go to Temple Manuel. I'm going to Temple Manuel

579
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: to read for uh. The Library of American release for Roth,

580
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:09,399
Speaker 1: and the producers of the event put me in touch

581
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: with Roth, and I call Roth on the phone. It

582
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 1: was in Manhattan. Number is a little place in the city,

583
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: I guess, and I get him on the phone and

584
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 1: he said, I'm very sorry. I don't think I'm gonna

585
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:19,840
Speaker 1: be able to come because I'm not here, you know.

586
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:21,800
Speaker 1: He said, I wanted to thank you for coming and

587
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: for doing this and doing the reading. It was myself

588
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:25,759
Speaker 1: and two other actors. Thank you, thank you, thank you,

589
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to say thank you. I said,

590
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 1: my god, I'm so touched him with the great Philip Roth.

591
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: So I hang up, I do the event. He emails

592
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:35,600
Speaker 1: me and says, um, I heard you were wonderful, and

593
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 1: again I wanted to thank you by email, so I

594
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 1: emailed him back and I go, you'll have to forgive me.

595
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I said, I'm going to write a memoir.

596
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: I want to write a fictional memoir. I want to

597
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 1: have my character, you know, Joe Sweeney, go through life,

598
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:51,920
Speaker 1: and everything that happens to me happens to Joe Sweeney.

599
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna transpose this and do this. And if

600
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 1: you saw, I have it in my phone, if you

601
00:34:56,160 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 1: saw the email he sent me back and all of

602
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: his emphasis and capitals when he wanted to be he said,

603
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: first of all, there is no such thing as a

604
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 1: fictional memoir for you. The second of all, you must

605
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 1: spare no one, he says, especially yourself. And he gives

606
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 1: me this. That's the career. You know. We all read

607
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: memoirs because either for a salacious reason, or we want

608
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 1: the gossip, or we want to we like that person,

609
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: or we admire or fear or something that person. We

610
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 1: want to get to this story. But on the occasions

611
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: that it becomes like a real book, Act one or

612
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: I love I Love Lordering with intent terrific. But they

613
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 1: they take you by surprise that was the thing that

614
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 1: was the experience with Patti Smith. I mean, I love

615
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 1: and love her as a musician and as a songwriter.

616
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 1: Or or Dylan's Chronicles. You know, I grew up with

617
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:55,000
Speaker 1: that book Tarantula, which was this you know, kind of

618
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:59,320
Speaker 1: affected surrealism. But I because I so revered him, I

619
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: memory eyes that the way Rabbi's memorized passages of the tumul.

620
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:06,360
Speaker 1: But it made no sense whatsoever. And I, you know,

621
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: as an editor, went to read Chronicles um with the

622
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:14,439
Speaker 1: hopes of excerpting it, which is a long story, and boy,

623
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: that's a real book. It's a terrific, honest book. And

624
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: that's by the way, and that's wrath soul thing is

625
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: just unsparing honesty. That's that's the career that's at the

626
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: center of everything about that writer. What's a profile you

627
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:30,279
Speaker 1: were hoping you'd be able to do, or that the

628
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: magazine was able to do that eluded you. Well, when

629
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: I was growing up, everything I cared about culturally came

630
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:42,839
Speaker 1: from one person. It came from my obsession with Bob

631
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:47,800
Speaker 1: Dylan obsession. My parents sent me to a yeshiva for

632
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 1: kindergarten because I was ready to go to school, but

633
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:52,919
Speaker 1: the public school wouldn't have me yet, I was too young.

634
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 1: So I would go with these older boys in a

635
00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: van to Patterson, New Jersey, to a yeshiva called Yavna,

636
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 1: and they started talking about the Beatles. I was really young,

637
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 1: six or so, the Beatles, the Sky, Bob Dylan, and

638
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,759
Speaker 1: so I bought my first album a year or so later,

639
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 1: called the Best of Sixties six and it contained the

640
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: song I Want You Now. I was pretty young. I

641
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 1: had no idea what that song was about, desire whatever,

642
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 1: no idea, but something, something magical entered my brain. It's

643
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: the combination of the language, the music, the excitement, the cool,

644
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: the fact that he was named Zimmerman probably had no

645
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 1: small amount to do with it. All of that, so

646
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 1: that everything that I started to care about was because

647
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: he mentioned it. Oh there's this thing called the beat Poets.

648
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: So I started reading Alan Ginsburg. Oh this is this

649
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: thing called Rambo. I started, without any comprehension at all,

650
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: reading Rambo as the Drunken Boat or something like that,

651
00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: or Elvis or all my cultural uh u interest came

652
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: from that hub. From that hub, and it was maybe unhealthy,

653
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: but you know, got me, gave me a brain. It

654
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: started the curiosity. Curiosity in many, many directions and very

655
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: much of a time. So I always wanted to do

656
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:25,759
Speaker 1: a profile of him. And one fine day I get

657
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: a call. I'm now the editor of the New Yorker.

658
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:32,680
Speaker 1: Bob has actually written his book Chronicles Great And he

659
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:36,239
Speaker 1: wasn't offering. There was no profile in the offer. I'd

660
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: love to read it, send it, he said, because that's

661
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: what happens. People send you a PDF. They send you

662
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 1: a manuscript, and you read it and you promise not

663
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: to give it to anybody. No, no, no, no, uh,

664
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:47,959
Speaker 1: we can't send you the book. You have to come

665
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 1: to the Dylan office. Now. Is that there's an office downtown.

666
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 1: It's like a c I a front press. The button

667
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: that says Dada obviously doesn't say anyth about Dylan. You

668
00:38:57,600 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: go up six flights whatever and you go into this

669
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:05,440
Speaker 1: huge office and it was like it was like erotica

670
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 1: for me. Right, it's just nothing but Dilliana an Dylan stuff,

671
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: his albums closet. And they sat me in a little

672
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:19,360
Speaker 1: room smaller than this with the manuscript with a bear table,

673
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: and I read it. Took me about three three hours.

674
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 1: I said, I'll do it. How many in the book

675
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 1: is terrific. If I don't know if you've read it,

676
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:31,040
Speaker 1: but it's really good, you should. And and he wrote it,

677
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 1: and he did write it unmistakably, unmistakably isn't a good writer.

678
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: He's him, he's him. He starts the book, you know,

679
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: coming to New York, a whole child, nothing about that.

680
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:47,680
Speaker 1: Then as soon as you get to the point where

681
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: he's going to write those unbelieved what he calls his

682
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: own golden period, he skips that and he goes to

683
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: the eighties where he's screwing up and he's sick of

684
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,800
Speaker 1: his own sound, of his own voice. It's a wild

685
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:02,880
Speaker 1: interesting book the way he chooses to tell his story.

686
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:04,880
Speaker 1: He's He's He's He's now in a stage of his

687
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: life he wants a possession of his own narrative. But

688
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: in a very Dylan esquay, I come to an agreement

689
00:40:11,239 --> 00:40:14,080
Speaker 1: with the publisher, but I don't make I don't sign

690
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:19,719
Speaker 1: a contract because we had a handshake agreement. And it

691
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: comes the summer, right before publication, said, I call the

692
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:24,319
Speaker 1: publisher and I say, okay, we're ready to go. Um,

693
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: you know what week should we do it? We'd agreed

694
00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:30,360
Speaker 1: which five thousand words to do. It's Dylan's arrival in

695
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:32,959
Speaker 1: New York. He had basically hitched to come to arrive

696
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: in New York, and he starts singing at Gertie's folks

697
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: sitting and becomes himself. He said, there's one problem. Bob

698
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 1: wants a cover. What I said, we don't have covers.

699
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: This isn't Rolling Stone or Life magazine in the seventies

700
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: or we we have. We have these funny drawings on

701
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:55,719
Speaker 1: the cover. He said, well, the long pause, Bob wants

702
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: a cover. I said, you told me Bob loved the magazine.

703
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, yeah, he does. He yeah, yeah. I said,

704
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:03,960
Speaker 1: what's going on here? He said, well, if there's no cover,

705
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 1: we're gonna give it to Newsweek. Yeah. I said, what

706
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: we had an agreement, he said, long pause, meaning and

707
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: you could have translated, we don't have a somebody walking

708
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: down the street carrying a dealon album in retrospect. I

709
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: probably should have caved like that, and I dug in

710
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: my heels and the next thing, you know, the Dylan

711
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: appeared on the cover of Newsweek. And you know, at

712
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 1: this point he looks like David. He looks like, um,

713
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:35,280
Speaker 1: I don't know, he looks like Vincent Price playing a cowboy,

714
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: right with that kind of pencil mustache and and so on,

715
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 1: and I lost it being of a David Lynch movie

716
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: and I, you know, I don't have a bad temper,

717
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: but I kind of flipped out. And Dylan's got a

718
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 1: very nice guy named Jeff Rosen calls me and he says,

719
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,000
Speaker 1: we'd like you to come here the new dealon album.

720
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:55,360
Speaker 1: Know when he's heard it, I thought, God, come on,

721
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: what am I nine years old? Here? Yes, I will

722
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,160
Speaker 1: come because I can't resist. And I go down to

723
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: the studio on Tenth Avenue and I'm put in a

724
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: room and they play the album, which had yet to

725
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: be released, called Love and Theft. Okay, great, so I

726
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:12,120
Speaker 1: don't know what to do next. The album meant so

727
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 1: I really liked it. I would love to have heard

728
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 1: it again. And I come out of the room and

729
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 1: there he is. There's Dylan. I thought, oh God, I

730
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 1: don't know what am I gonna do here? And he

731
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 1: he comes up, he saying, and your book about Mohammadan,

732
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 1: Yeah he's and he's he's acknowledging my presence in the universe.

733
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:37,919
Speaker 1: And we have this kind of awkward, five minute, six

734
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: minute conversation. I didn't have a stop watch. And that

735
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: was it. That was my encounter with Bob Dylan. And

736
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,479
Speaker 1: and and I'm not sure I'm glad it happened either,

737
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: because it kind of pierced the mythological aspect of it.

738
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: He was perfectly I don't know if polite is the word,

739
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: but he was himself a cipher. He's not he's anything,

740
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: but he's not a cipher. This this this just a cipher.

741
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 1: But he can appear to be what he's dealing with

742
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: people he doesn't know. Just I mean, Alex, I got.

743
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine what it is to be you,

744
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,719
Speaker 1: much less this guy. Who ever, since he's twenty one

745
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: years old, people think he's a deity. He has a

746
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,399
Speaker 1: like a minor motorcycle accident. It was like the earth

747
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: spun off its axis. And it's been like that since

748
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:26,320
Speaker 1: he's twenty one years old these now and his seventies.

749
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:29,359
Speaker 1: So everybody that comes up to him all day long

750
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 1: wants to tell him the obvious that he changed my life.

751
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: And so I determinedly did not do that, but was

752
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:39,360
Speaker 1: suitably respectful. And but I the conversation, I don't know

753
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: that whether it felt like one second or three and

754
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: a half hours, it was very very strange. Was the

755
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: same with McCartney when you were when you're on Long

756
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 1: Island and McCartney is out and about and people he's

757
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 1: very personable, right, he's very Oh no, he's very warm,

758
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:54,839
Speaker 1: and but people start crying like a like a forty

759
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: year old woman was start sobbing. You have no idea.

760
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 1: He probably puts his arm stuck. Understands he says, he

761
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,960
Speaker 1: hugs him. But my favorite walk in the other direction

762
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: like a lot of you know, when I think of

763
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: you when your work and you know this is just

764
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: my characterizing it. Your you know, your DNA is so

765
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: strongly political and we live in this national security state,

766
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 1: this post nine eleven world and the government and secrecy

767
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 1: and what it's like to cover politics today, and is

768
00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 1: it frustrating for you? Very very I compare it to

769
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:32,759
Speaker 1: Roger Angel's description of covering baseball when he was young.

770
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 1: You could get up next to the ball players, and

771
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 1: ball players had some sense of who you were, and

772
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:43,800
Speaker 1: there were casual relationships, particularly spring training. He used to

773
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: go down to spring training for weeks and just yammer

774
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:48,880
Speaker 1: with these guys, and they you know, they were rich

775
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:52,360
Speaker 1: because they made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars dollars.

776
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:55,760
Speaker 1: Derek Jeter no more needed to talk to a reporter

777
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: than he needed to dress up like a chicken. It

778
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: just didn't occur to him. So it became harder politics

779
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 1: to cover a campaign. Now you the campaign bus. I

780
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: think it's well portrayed in the newsroom, where basically it's

781
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: it's um, it's very very young people filing from the

782
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 1: bus every five minutes. It's not interesting, or it's it's interesting,

783
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: but it's radically different. Um. It's hard for me as

784
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 1: a writer to get interested as a profile writer if

785
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: I if if somebody says, well, we'll give you twenty

786
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: five minutes, and it's such in such a hotel room,

787
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: and you're not allowed to ask this that age, there's

788
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:38,360
Speaker 1: just nonsense. It's crap. We're about to enter it's really interesting.

789
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,799
Speaker 1: We're about to enter political race in which the main

790
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: character is the most disciplined person in history when it

791
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:48,720
Speaker 1: comes to the press, Hillary Clinton. And I think most

792
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: of my readers are a lot of my readers are

793
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: not facing the dilemma, do I vote for Hillary Clinton

794
00:45:56,200 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 1: or do I vote for a right wing Republican or

795
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 1: or center right Republican, if there is such a thing.

796
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:05,840
Speaker 1: It's how do I feel about Hillary Clinton. On the

797
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 1: one hand, it is now decades and decades and decades

798
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:14,799
Speaker 1: past time when a woman should be in the White House.

799
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:19,400
Speaker 1: There's a New York Times piece I don't know yesterday.

800
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:23,760
Speaker 1: I think it was about the preposterous levels of violence

801
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:30,839
Speaker 1: against women, rape, sexual aggression, sexual violence, countries where it's

802
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: legal to beat your wife. It's just and that's just

803
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:36,879
Speaker 1: the beginning of it. Say nothing of economic unfairness. It's

804
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: just it. It is so long past time. And on

805
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 1: the other hand, you know, her other qualities are also manifest.

806
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 1: We may well forget about this email piece of business,

807
00:46:57,080 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: but it revives um dilemmas that you have about this

808
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: and how to write about this when she really you know,

809
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: you're dealing with both her and a press machine that

810
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:14,360
Speaker 1: is beyond disciplined. And I understand why. I know what

811
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 1: it comes out of. It comes out of many things,

812
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 1: not least the the the whole impeachment Monica Lewinsky drama

813
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: is the spiriting. David Remnick was highly critical of Hillary's

814
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: press conference to address her use of private email and

815
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: a secret server. It's one thing for a politician to

816
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: be stupid, which Hillary is not, he told ABC's This Week.

817
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: It's quite another for a politician to believe that we're stupid.

818
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: The fast writing David Remnick will be following the upcoming

819
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:55,800
Speaker 1: election carefully. Go to New Yorker dot com for his

820
00:47:55,920 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 1: latest work. This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's

821
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 1: the thing o.