12 Questions for Dwight Garner

The New York Times book critic on how to die well, clichés, the creeping horror of listicles, his time at Middlebury College, A.G. Sulzberger, Anthony Lane, mediocrity, and more.

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You go to an event, a friend’s play. Afterward, everyone is drinking and smoking cigarettes on the rooftop. You see an actress you met in the fall that you spent all night in conversation with, talking to her openly, freely, about all sorts of things, particularities, the humorous nuances of everyday life. Enchanted, you decide to walk over, tap her on the shoulder.

‘Hey! Nice to see you again, it’s been so long. The show was great tonight, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh hi, yes it was! But wait. I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘What was your name again?’

‘Oh, it’s Gordon.’ You respond. ‘Gordon Glasgow.’

She tilts her head, squints her eyes.

‘The writer. We met at that reading at 99 Canal.’

‘Gordon Glasgow, the writer… the reading at 99 Canal… Ahh! Ah hah! Yes, that’s right! I didn’t recognize you at all. It’s nice to see you as well.’

She then proceeds to walk away, joining a group of fatigued post-performance actors on the other side of the terrace.

You wonder for several weeks whether you’ve become fatter or skinnier, uglier or more handsome, and the truth is, you’ll never know. The friends you recount this story to will say it must mean you’re better looking, because otherwise she wouldn’t have said a word about ‘recognition’ — would’ve been too rude. But no, of course, you can’t trust these friends. I didn’t recognize you at all. Or, the word, Unrecognizable. This phrase, this idea, has the subtle elegance of criticism; an opinion and observation which elicits a singular perspective; one that exists in the neutral realm of neither positive or negative, yet indeed leads to certain avenues of rumination and thought. And it’s worth asking, is it art?

***

Writing in the second person always makes me think of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights Big City, a novel from 1984 about a coked-up man about town and wannabe author who fact-checks at the New Yorker, is married to a model who eventually leaves him, is obsessed with a news story about a baby in a coma, and has a difficult if not tortured relationship with his brother, as well as his mother. It’s a smooth and quick read. Dwight Garner might deem it ‘compulsively readable’, a phrase he recently used to describe a biography of Elaine May. An uncredited review of Bright Lights Big City in the now defunct Village Voice says that the novel has ‘wind-sprint passages that leave tattered mystiques in their wake,’ which is also a nice way to describe a pacey book.

Bright Lights Big City’s famous opening words begin: ‘You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are…’

When my father, the composer and lyricist Paul Scott Goodman, adapted Bright Lights Big City into an off-Broadway musical in 1999, he set the script in the first person as opposed to the second, a smart choice. Fighting a sense of childhood cringe, I listen to the first song of the show’s original cast recording on Spotify and can accurately now write that it begins with Patrick Wilson uttering the words — ‘I am not the kind of guy who should be in a place like this at this time of the morning Sunday morning six am’ — the lyrics slightly altered to match the rhythm of the composition.

A consequential, nasty review published by the New York Times deemed my father’s adaptation, directed by Michael Greif, to be derivative of Jonathan Larson’s Rent. The theater critic Peter Marks began by writing: ‘You are not the kind of a guy who would be at the wrong theater at this time of the evening. But here you are in your seat…’

The show made no money and didn’t last very long. My father slumped into a multi-year depression. I think he sent Peter Marks a note, saying, ‘I know where you live, man’ or something of that ilk, deliriously aggressive. Following this debacle critics were, in our household, regularly perceived as repressed, acrimonious lowlifes, certainly not given the same respect as artists, even the mediocre ones. Yet still, on a daily basis, year after year, I would wake up and see my father reading the likes of A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis, Ben Brantley, Janet Maslin, David Denby, and Elvis Mitchell. ‘Miserable bastards’ he’d aways say, putting the paper on the kitchen floor following a compulsively readable hour (that he’d spent not writing).

When it came to literary criticism, my parents had an inclination toward novelists who also served as critics, like Martin Amis, Joan Didion, Philip Roth or Pat Barker, not to mention John Updike. Though they never said it aloud, my parents general sentiment went something along the lines of: At least these authors know what it’s like to fucking do something, create something. We regularly referred to Amis as a critic in the non-pejorative sense, maybe even a positive sense, instead of a critic as a loser, which was what it normally meant. (Once, after a bad run of grades, my mother warned that I’d end up spending my life as some lousy critic. And with this I knew she was referring to Brantley, not Amis.) It’s fair to say that everyone in life is allowed their contradictions, so when I write now that my parents were often far more tersely critical of art and theater than Brantley at his meanest, Maslin at her harshest, Mitchell at his most dismissive, I allow my Mom and Dad that very conceit; everyone, in their heart of hearts, has the capacity to become a repressed-bitchy-loser-critic. And so anyway, I suppose that’s an example of one good distinction, the critics who also create art and the critics who merely critique, or review. And I guess it’s fair to say that the critic who writes literary novels, fiction or non-fiction (like Emmanuel Carrére), has a higher chance of writing criticism which can be considered artful.

Out of personal respect and admiration toward Dwight Garner, I’ll say quite bluntly, in dissent of my upbringing, that I don’t much agree with this distinction. I’ll propose a better one: The critic who acts in good faith as opposed to bad faith. Said differently, there exists the critic who loves art, who believes in the power of art and all it can do, who goes into every movie, book, or performance in hope of a transcendent experience. And then there’s the critic who hates art, is resentful of art, is disenchanted by art and all its supposed capacity. This critic is embittered and looks for nothing but flaws, is out for blood. The good faith critic’s negative review comes from a place of disappointment, even sadness, but certainly not attack.

There you have a disquisition and digression, but it still doesn’t answer my question of whether or not criticism can be seen as art, whether criticism can serve as art.

***

Let’s, for a few minutes, tone it down a notch and escape the abyss of literary theory. Let’s listen to, for example, I Want to Know What Love Is, by the cheesy British-American cringe band Foreigner. Another recommendation could be something more seductive and subtle, like Cucurrucucu Paloma, sung by Caetano Veloso, especially the arrangement from Pedro Almodovar’s 2002 masterpiece Talk to Her.

I’ve settled for the summer in the wonderful city of Valencia. Spaniards have miraculously found a way to make the days seem like nights and the nights seem like after-parties. It’s impressive. Out of character, I’ve been having a beer and a glass of red wine at lunch. I’ve found it keeps me sharp, and I don’t feel tired after, rather filled with ideas and new perspectives. Moreover, it’s incredible that I’ve been having lunch. This is something I don’t do in New York, where I’ll quickly shovel down a combination of breakfast, lunch, and dinner at any point between the hours of nine am and eight pm. Dwight Garner hates clichés, as do I, but some of them are true, like how the lifestyle in the U.S. feels vacuous on many levels when compared to the old world. I’m full here, of ideas, theories, alcohol, and pretensions.

The hours between three and five pm in the beach-adjacent El Cabanyal neighborhood are gorgeous, to say the least. Everything shuts down and there’s almost nothing but total rest. In Spain, from three to five pm, they have Shabbat every day. Some people defy this daily Sabbath to go the park, the beach, exercise, or ride around aimlessly on their bikes. Frantic insomniacs pace around smoking cigarettes (if you don’t sleep during the day in Spain, you’re an insomniac), reading the paper, or checking email on their phone. They’re aware of their disobedience and are productive yet bashful (conscious capitalism, one could say). The adhering types, the majority, lie peacefully at rest, sleeping, reading, masturbating, fucking, watching TV in bed, doing many things from bed, or the couch, or a styrofoam yoga mat. Whatever it is, the atmosphere is calm. I came to Valencia a couple days after Trump was convicted on thirty or so counts for something to do with money and porn and legal fees gone astray. Some documents, (campaign documents, business documents?), were molested and transformed. To the best of my knowledge this is what happened and then everyone, at least on the internet, went crazy with either delight or anger. It appears that everything back home is crumbling and I don’t feel very optimistic. Well, it’s the U.S., and the tone always has the appearance of blowing up and falling apart. What’s the point in using the word ‘atmosphere’ to describe anything back home? Atmosphere, vibe, feeling, energy. One gets a little sick to their stomach. It’s hardcore. Have you had the opportunity to guess that I’m happy to be away?

I’m still, though, very much myself, very much a New Yorker, which means, yes, very much an American. Your problems (yourself, being an American) stalk you like an eager Jehovah’s witness. Wherever you go, they follow; you may be through with the past but the past ain’t through with you, etc. Worse than a Jehovah’s witness, some problems, like cockroaches, have a ubiquity that never dies: my Americanness, the guilt of resting during the day, the need to be somewhat constantly on.

At the dog park, I talk to a weathered man in his fifties named Alvaro, a used car mechanic. He has a beautiful Alsatian Shepherd named Pau who’s seducing my dog, Alfie, an anxious golden Labrador, into games he’d rather not be a part of. Pau chases Alfie around and keeps nudging over a ball, barking at Alfie to fucking do something. Alfie, demure, hides behind a bench and barks in return.

Alvaro asks me what I do for work and I kind of shrug and then begin telling him about this interview series.

‘Who you, eh, interview now?’

‘Dwight Garner. He writes for the New York Times. Do you know him?’

‘Dwight Garner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Garnito.’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I dono him.’

‘He’s good, writes criticism about books.’

‘Oh OK. And now you criticism him?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Bueno. He get mad maybe though, and then, eh, you can never do it what you do for the New York Times.’

‘This is possible. But I don’t say very mean things. I’m not that kind of critic.’

‘OK. Si. You can be whatever you want.’

‘That’s a good point.’ I respond, and Alvaro calls his dog over and leaves.

‘Hasta luego, el critico’ he says, shaking my hand and looking me straight in the eyes with the intensity of a matador, which is really just my kitsch American projection. In reality he looks me in the eyes with the intensity of a used car mechanic.

‘Ah, well, more el escritor. No critico,’ I respond. And he flutters his lips in exhaustion, walks away. Yeah. A writer, a critic, an essayist, a polemicist, a playwright, a screenwriter, a speechwriter, a journalist, a novelist, a poet, a blogger, and a text artist; what, in the actual fuck, does this man care?

When they leave Alfie comes back from behind the bench and watches them disappear.

***

Sitting outside, reading Saul Bellow and drinking coffee, I’m privy to something fun, if not uncomfortable. A German man in his sixties is in a heated argument with a Spanish waiter at an L.A.-esque artisan café, with juices, salads, ginger shots and all. The German and the Spaniard are condemned to liaise in broken English. It’s similar to a romantic couple with poor communication skills, everything each of them says is either warped or incorrectly processed. Apparently, the German ordered a slice of banana-walnut-carrot-cake to go with his afternoon espresso but there tragically weren’t any walnuts in the piece that was served him. The German holds up the plate with the cake on it, ‘Look at this he’ra. Look. Only one valnut, not even a full valnut. And you charge over tree euros for it. What have you to say about zis?’ He wants a refund but the café owner rightly refuses. They bring him a new slice of cake but the problem persists, there’s not enough valnuts, this time only two. ‘There should be, for exaaample, four valnuts per slice, at ze least,’ The German says. The waiter shrugs and is getting very upset. You can tell she wants to kick him out but doesn’t have the words to politely do so. She’s about to explode. The manager comes out, an older Spaniard with a sunburn and a pony tail. Eventually they settle the matter. The waitress brings him a different kind of cake, something that looks like a brownie but isn’t quite. She tosses it onto his table and walks away shaking her head, mumbling to herself in Spanish. The German frowns in dissatisfaction but remains sitting, eating. He has the gall to order another espresso. He looks toward my direction in an attempt to make me complicit in his annoying, perverse scheme, his pathetic Deutsche neurosis. He points toward the restaurant with his left thumb.

‘Zey’re so cheap here, with everyting. Never giving you what you asking for. I am honestly getting sick of it.’ He says.

‘Yeah I don’t know, I don’t like cake so much at this hour.’

My response is formulated and somewhat of a lie. I enjoy cake at any hour. But I want to make him feel grotesque, because I stand in solidarity with my Spanish compańero. How the fuck are they supposed to measure how many walnuts go into each slice of cake?

‘Ah, vatever.’ he says. ‘It’s zo impossible to get anyting quite right he’ra. Ah. Aha. Ja. What you doing he’ra?’

‘Writing.’ I say. ‘Some shorter pieces and a book.’

‘Ah, ja? I am also a writer.’

Fuck, I think.

‘I write for the Suddeutsche Zeitung. Zis political analysis kind of ting. Twenty-five yea’ras now. Yet at the moment I am on holidays.’

‘Beautiful.’ I say. ‘What’s your name?’ And he tells me, but I don’t remember it at all, something with the surname Klinger or Klaus, a hard K indeed.

‘What are you working on toda’ya?’

‘An interview with the literary critic Dwight Garner.’ I respond. ‘He actually loves food, writes a lot about that as well. Less about cakes and walnuts, though.’ I point to his brownie, and then begin to gesticulate. ‘He writes more about, mmm, you know, savory cuisines, the pleasure of dining out in and around New York and some other of his other favorite cities. He’s quite good. Do you know him?’

‘Never hear of zis man.’

‘Ah well, if you read in English he might be worth checking out. I’m sure some of his stuff is translated to German.’

‘I’m sorry if zis is rude but, I don’t like art criticism really. I think it’s totally like… uh…’ and then he laughs, ‘jerking off your penis or someting.’

‘Could be.’ I respond, before closing my book and leaving him alone with his dessert. It is true, though, that when I get back home to continue writing, I take a mid-afternoon break to lie down and, well, jerk off my penis or someting.

***

Since arriving in Valencia I’ve heard a great many languages spoken, particularly by the sea. I’ve heard Mandarin, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, French, English, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Hebrew, Bengali, and Spanish, of course. All of these languages are spewed between interlocutors with confidence and flair, a coming together of sorts, an EU crony’s constipated fantasy of collective liberalism. I watch them all frolic and have fun, each of us dwelling in the rhythm of our very own cultural existence. I hear it all, taking it in like a meditation. Have any of these people, though, heard of Dwight Garner?

***

Pleasure can be taken in reading Garner’s work but at times I feel that, for whatever reason, what I'm reading is neither transcendent nor art. The question I have is, does it need to be? And more, I wonder if Garner is missing an opportunity to slip something more meaningful past the apparatchiks who edit. Is it possible, though, that I’m being a little too fussy, like the German and his valnuts? Is the popular opinion correct that Garner is more than capable of criticism at the highest level? And, even further, a kind of ultra-legible, entertaining criticism of the rarest, compulsively readable order? In addition to his work for newspapers, he’s written an excellent memoir on the subject of food, reading, and the general act of consumption, The Upstairs Delicatessen. (The phrase is borrowed from the critic Seymour Krim, who once referred to his mind as a ‘profuse upstairs delicatessen.’ The book’s title is neat and tidy in a very New York Times manner of style.)

Seeking to get a more direct answer to the question I’ve been pondering, I decide to write an email to two of my lovely mentors, Kate Sinha and Stefan Ruitenbeek of the Dutch art collective KIRAC:

Hello K + S, Can you please, if you have a moment, write a couple sentences I can quote as to why criticism in and of itself can qualify as Art -- and why/how do so many film/book critics now, from mainstream publications like the NY Times or De Telegraaf, miss out on this opportunity?

Stefan is the first to respond:

I think it doesn't qualify. Us pretending to be or behaving like critics was a way of being allowed into a museum. They always have to let criticism in. You can just send an email saying you are press. If I would say: “I’m an artist who wants to make something in your museum” they would say: “no entry because our curator did not select you and will never select you”. The criticism is more a vignette or mask. It also serves as a trick for contemporary audiences who hate art and only consume stuff when its labelled with a utility, such as criticism to improve society, or whatever. And of course, we lost ourselves in that role, and started to believe we must be critics.

‘Thank you,’ I reply to Stefan. ‘I think this is similar to what I'm doing with these interviews. I mean, how else was I able to have access?’

A few hours later Kate Sinha offers the dialectic a different perspective, writing that ‘the distinction between critic and artist doesn’t make sense at all.’ Kate cites Nietzsche’s The Gay Science as ‘the pinnacle of criticism as art, or vice versa.’ She tells me about how playing the role of the critic helped her understand why she felt so little engagement with contemporary art while still maintaining an interest in art from different ages, everything from the twentieth century to prehistoric work. She cites how Impressionism was itself a ‘critique of the academic style of mythological idealizations (Bouguereau), which severed the art of painting (the art of looking) from the subject-matter that surrounded the painter.’ Kate goes on to tell me how once she began articulating the problems with the exhibitions she visited, she was able to articulate what makes ‘good art, as opposed to bad art.’ She then says something quite powerful, if not unforgettable, a statement that both clarifies and diminishes the relationship between articulate criticism, emotional criticism, and art:

What I took from my background in archaeology and anthropology is that tradition consists of artists emulating each other, they modify and emulate the work of their predecessors. This is seen in hunter gatherer art, as well as Greek and Roman, Egyptian, Chinese art, as well as modern and contemporary art: all artistic traditions work like that. KIRAC (for instance) harks back to 19th century literature (Comédie Humaine), the traditions of postmodernism, structuralism and modernism as outcomes of the enlightenment.

The key words are, of course, emulation and modification. But it doesn’t necessarily work in that order. It can be modification (through one’s unconscious personality and style) followed by emulation, and then, I suppose, a form of visceral, avant-garde abstraction. Either way, the act of criticism, this vital and very personal process of articulation, simultaneously exists as the process of creating art as well as the very ‘thing’, or piece of art, in and of itself. It’s in this way that a work of criticism can stop and bend time, the process of performing, accomplishing, executing, doing, achieving, and retroactively contemplating all at once. It has the power to be a complex and fulfilling coalescence.

The romantic in me agrees with Kate. And still, from a more practical standpoint, I find much truth in what Stefan said. I admire the conflicting statements and find myself swayed by both. Knowing the clever nature of how KIRAC operates, Kate and Stefan might have, consciously or not, contradicted each other intentionally in order to produce the handsome effect of cognitive dissonance, a phrase which is also a kind of simile for art.

***

In a recent negative review of Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Parade, Garner writes about ‘the steep solipsism of Cusk’s fiction, and of the so-called autofiction of many other gifted writers.’  The sentence that follows: ‘How often can readers be made to care about the problems and prerogatives of the artist?’ Funny. Garner then quotes the British literary critic John Carey, who said that the fiction of Arnold Bennet ‘reminds us that what is most valued in most people’s lives has nothing to do with art, literature or ideas, and it admonishes us that such lives are no less sensitively lived for that absence.’ (I don’t like his use of the word ‘most’ twice in one sentence without any aesthetic effect, an anaphora is certainly do, but we can move on.)

Now I’ll put forth my critique of a critique that uses a quote from a third critique: The inclusion of that Carey sentence is a manipulative take on Cusk’s inclination toward self-investigation. Garner, reviewing a novel about the inquisitive solipsism of creative life, is bored by reading work that pontificates on the purpose of artistry, literature, and ideas. To illustrate his lack of interest, he makes a sort of populist appeal, and basically says that most people don’t really give a shit about this kind of work and these kinds of questions. I can’t help but feel that this is a lazy cop-out, as if to say: since most people aren’t interested, why should I be interested? There are many reasons why it’s useful to consider ideas that the majority of people shun, even if they’re superfluous. This is, in fact, one of the many purposes of literature, its raison d’être. Essentially, I get the sense that Cusk’s book didn’t open up to Garner, and instead of exploring why he was bored by it, he deems the act of an artist’s endless introspection as something haughty and self-important. A critique should never merely amount to something as simple as: a lot of people are dumb so this work should be more exciting. This kind of writing does not qualify as criticism, which, as we’ve covered, is perhaps one and the same as art. This kind of writing, in my opinion, amounts to a mere review, or, as another cliché goes, an off the cuff opinion; not something deeply felt or thoroughly considered. One can do better. One can, including myself, always do better.

Continuing my pontification on the purpose and definition of art, much to Dwight Garner’s hypothetical chagrin, I ask the literary critic Christian Lorentzen the same exact question I posed to KIRAC, and I’m provided with yet another elegantly unique response: ‘Criticism often becomes an art when critics dedicate themselves to a high level of refinement, to criticism as a conceptual practice that transcends the regular issuing of consumer reports, but instead an open-ended commentary on literature and the critic's evolving relationship to it.’

Over WhatsApp, I reply:

‘What’s your opinion of Garner’s style of literary criticism and how does it interact, or how do you think it’s confined, by the grander style of the the NY Times?’

‘When I was a staff book critic at a weekly magazine I often experienced what I thought of as Dwightxiety---the worry that he and I might be reviewing the same book in a given week and his review might be sharper, more insightful, and funnier than mine. I hope the pressure in my head made me a better critic, so I thank him for that.’

Lorentzen’s answer is something surprisingly similar to what I’ve heard from many other writers and artists. Setting aside the ontological perspectives on the nature of art, a lot of people enjoy reading Garner, enjoy listening to his opinions, simply because he’s a good writer. Similar to Pauline Kael, another quasi-populist critic, he’s an entertaining writer who has a sense of answering the plain questions posed by his audience, the straightforward inquiries posed by many of his readers: Will I find this book humorous? Will I find this book meaningful? And, most importantly, Will I become bored?

If this type of criticism is not for you, does not fulfill nor satisfy you, then we’re probably in agreement. We’d also perhaps be deemed, by Garner and many others, annoying and niche, if not entirely obnoxious. It’s all interesting to me.

***

My investigation continues. I text a good friend of mine, the playwright, director, and sometimes critic, Matthew Gasda. He provides a very on-brand reply.

‘Criticism is the art of choosing and discarding; it is not a science and resists scientism; in a future of infinite generative zombie creativity it may be more important than ever.’

‘Does criticism qualify as art in and of itself?’ I respond.

‘Sometimes. It plays point guard.’

‘Speaking in terms of soccer, not basketball, you mean a creative yet sturdy center-back like Sergio Ramos or David Luiz, or a wing-back like Roberto Carlos? Scoring and defending and moving with elegance?’

‘Carlos.’ Gasda says. ‘Occasionally a crazy strike on a free-kick.’

‘OK, thanks Shabbat Shalom ;)’ I reply. Gasda, Catholic, is about to marry a Jewish woman and I feel he must get ready to integrate Shabbat into his weekly life.

Amused but not totally satisfied by the sports metaphor, I decide to reach out, for good measure, to the actor, writer, and director Peter Vack.

‘Criticism is art if it’s funny or praises my work.’ Vack says.

‘Thnx. Shabbat Shalom ;).’

Peter Vack, Jewish, is Jewish. He does not integrate Shabbat into his weekly life. I do think, though, that he’d enjoy a siesta. A friend of mine who recently saw him on the dating platform Hinge told me that on the app, he specifies that he’s Jewish, albeit only spiritually. I’ve never really been clear as to what that means. Though I am one to talk, sitting here editing this on a Saturday.

***

Lately, people have asked me to make a moral judgment — where, Gordon, do you stand on Israel/Palestine? I find the question perverse, in the bad way, because of its trite simplicity. I’m aware that people who ask me this question are seeking one of two very straightforward answers. They’re not interested in a verbal disquisition on my relationship to Judaism, to my ancestors, or to hear about my desire for the Jewish people to have a state of their own. Like any decent person, I shudder at the multi-year conflict’s death toll and the current level of suffering; how could one not? But this is the extent to which I can answer the question without eliciting strong, often angry emotions from either side.

There’s a definition of intelligence I like very much: the ability to hold two conflicting truths at once. Right now, everyone seems to demand the opposite of intelligence, and even worse, of emotional wisdom. It’s all either one thing or another. Nuanced, complex, historically discursive opinion means you like to murder babies or that you sympathize with terrorists. These interlocutors, who demand my moral judgement on Israel/Palestine, often out of the blue, do so because I’m a Jewish writer that hasn’t written or said much about the war (as if everyone is obliged to). I’ve noticed much frustration when I begin to answer. I notice that they don’t want to hear anything at all about the complex history of Zionism, like how Zionism started off as an idea for Jewish people to have a sanctuary and a state, but after the Six Day War became more intensely focused on the concept of reclaiming the biblical homeland, and that Zionism is a broad term which encompasses hundreds, if not thousands of deeply thought ideological convictions. They, the people who’ve demanded from me this moral judgment, also don’t seem to desire a conversation about, for example, the vast positives and negatives of having pride in one’s country, pride in one’s religious background, pride in one’s ancestry, scripture, and culture. Where and how does this pride lead to a fulfilling sense of identity? Where and how is it harmful? Where and how could this pride lead to stronger, healthy, communal bonds, and when, of course, could it lead to murder and human suffering? Is the latter, as human history suggests, always inevitable? Or is there a different way forward that can be constructively thought out? It’s autistic that I even, as an adult writing to other adults, have to lay out the foundations of normal conversation. But it’s 2024 and this infantilizing rhetoric feels nothing but necessary. What a shame. Can’t one at least, at the start of any given discussion, be given the benefit of the doubt that they despise the idea of innocent people being killed? Martin Amis said that it’s the novelist’s role in society to answer the question of ‘How one lives today.’ This volatile level of discourse is how one lives today.

There’s much pleasure, and I should say beauty, in dynamic complexity, in making an effort to look past what appears on the surface, the many illusions of a veneer. At the same time, I recognize quite well that I’m a person, a mammal, with communal instincts and bonds, an appreciation for customs and rituals. Organized religion can very well be a healthy destination for the meandering of one’s consciousness. Jew, that’s mine. It’s a beautiful religion, filled with intellectual and moral debate; a never-ending conversation. As the descendent of Holocaust survivors, I do find much pride and contentment with the traditions that Judaism has to offer. There’s the animal brain and the logical brain and the social brain and the spiritual brain and the body brain and then the apparatus of veins and joints that binds it all. And there’s the feeling of energies, otherwise known as vibes, otherwise knows as atmospheres, between each and every person that’s spooky and that no one can explain. I’m no political expert (neither are you, but the German with the valnuts is) and I distrust all sensational news, on whatever side, that can be found on social media. There’s much to be said about doing a bit of research, critically reading a few books, and having open conversations with strangers, listening, very much listening, and then inevitably coming to contradictory conclusions. This is just another facet of being alive in a world that no one quite understands. Further, there’s much to be said about living with these ideological, intellectual, viscerally challenging contradictions and accepting them as part of life. This is the ideal way of living. Almost no one, at least in the U.S., adheres to this. I would end the sentence by saying ‘adheres to this anymore’ but I suspect that, on some level, things have always been this way. This is a good example of the human ideal versus brutal human reality.

Unfortunately, there are only a few people whom I trust enough to speak with openly and freely on such delicate matters, and when we begin talking we’re both fundamentally aware that the conversation will not end with a tidy conclusion. And that’s OK, because, again, at least theoretically, we’re merely people, limited in our power. Why am I bringing this up as part of my intro for Dwight Garner, one of the most respected literary critics in the U.S., if not the entire English speaking world? Because I believe that what I’ve just described, the simple reverence for nuance at all cost, for having debates that don’t lapse into vitriolic polarization, for the ability to observe, listen, respond, and change one’s mind several times throughout the course of a conversation, is yet another essential definition of criticism, well, proper criticism, and our society needs more of it. And I need a drink.

So now where does the word art come into the equation? It starts with the word perversion. All roads lead back to the aforementioned Kate Sinha, who regularly pontificates with grace on the relationship between perversion and art. According to Kate, perversion is the inability to enjoy something beautiful and pure without having to distort it. A pervert creates moments of potential beauty in order to destroy that very moment, like how someone with no intention of having a real discussion puts forward a provocative question. Ugliness and the destruction of beauty are very much related to perversion. At the same time, though, Kate doesn’t believe that perversion is excluded from the realm of beauty, in fact, it’s one and the same, and this is what art is all about, turning things around, flipping elements on their head, transforming something ugly into something beautiful and vice-versa, finding pleasure in it all — the perversion of socio-cultural tropes which can eventually lead to grand perspectives, a certain freedom. Criticism, like art, is a destination, both written and oral, where conversational taboo can transcend into the sublime. Minds are changed, lives are lived differently, elements are seen anew. I’m still naive enough to maintain this ideal, romantic. I hope that’s one thing I’ll never lose.

***

For the past couple months, I’ve been holding on to this interview like a possessive, uxorious husband. It’s time to let it go. Trouble’s been encountered, resistance as well: I don’t want to write an introduction for the New York Times literary critic. He’ll pick it apart, no doubt about it. I’ll be ruined before my career even begins. And there’s no avoiding that; I must go ahead. Ambitiously, like a man of manifest destiny, delirious with illusion, intoxicated heavily by, as one says, the false promise of the horizon, I step forward with confidence. Fuck it, in other words.

Dwight, I relate to your love of literature and cuisine. I like it when you say that a good meal is usually owed to the chef who took the time, similar to a good writer. I also, unrelated, agree with how you don’t enjoy lettuce in your salads; like bad writing, lettuce based salads are often tasteless and without texture, complexity. Further, ‘cheese is the fat man’s candy,’ is a fantastic observation. I deplore the way Anthony Bourdain wrote about food and I think you do it much better.

It makes good sense to respect both food and art, something to do with an admiration for craft and a desire for continuous enchantment. To be a critic is to have, on some level, on a consistent level, a pleasure and yearning for greatness in regard to everything you consume. One can also call this hope. With this level of expectation, disappointment is inevitable. And the lyrical articulation of this disappointment in relation to one’s optimistic, faithful yearning is, in my opinion, the sweet spot of criticism. In order to be a great critic, you must have but the highest respect for art and its transcendent qualities. I think this is how you get your socks off, from a book or a meal that alters your sense of space and time, from a book or meal that has the power to change how you interact with the world around you. What I’m talking about is receptivity.

Through this sensitivity, receptivity, and continuous hope lies the power for criticism itself to be a work of art and not just a review. Unfortunately I think that at the Times, and many other large publications, the latter is usually preferred. This is a shame. Some people respond that it’s better to have something than nothing at all and I should stop complaining, but this a useless perspective. One should always hold art and writing to the highest of standards in order to keep breaking bounds. I do understand that sometimes, at the end of the day, a job’s a job — and, just so you know, from someone who often has trouble holding one down, that’s something I do respect. ‘Our species knows little about being free,’ Saul Bellow says. It’s hard to be free and maintain a job. If one can write, and read, and eat well while keeping a solid, steady income, supporting a family (as you do), good for them. Surely worse lives have been lived. I also strongly agree with something you write in your book, about how literature has the ability to teach people how to live, a source for learning how to exist. It’s in this way that literature changes and by corollary saves lives. Yes, c’mon, let’s not beat around the bush, it’s a matter of life and death! This is the approach one should take, that we should take. Enjoy it, love it, play with it and dance, but by all means and manners take it seriously. Your contributions to the form are positive, altogether delightful.

***

My friend, the Turkish actress Asli Mumtaz, believes I have a complex when it comes to art, overthinking it, over-philosophizing, similar to how Garner criticized Rachel Cusk. ‘Just like, do your art and chill,’ Asli often says. ‘You don’t need to think about it so much.’

After one of her recent performances in an off-Broadway play, Asli was theorizing about the best nights and times to perform, and how depending on the different times, whether matinee or evening, weekend or weekday, audiences will respond to certain elements of her monologues and reactions. Ultimately, she was trying to answer the question of why, on certain evenings, she performs better than others. She goes into painstaking detail, interminable, but eventually answers her question by saying that the less she thinks about it the better she does.

‘I need to be in the flow, you know?’ And yet still, she thinks, she thinks and considers and it’s all part of the process, something natural to any form.

‘What happened to — Just do your art and chill?’ I say to Asli with a grin.

‘Hah, Hah!! Fuck you.’ She responds, before continuing her never-ending self-questioning.

Asli’s worry is criticism and exists as part of the eternal question, the nature of one’s purpose, the manner in which we can be most effective within the realm of our vocation. It’s yet another aspect of the never-ending argument about art, our relationship to art, which can become, in and of itself, when played with and worked over, a thing of beauty. It’s the dialogue that allows her to continue performing, to never cease to continue becoming a stronger actress, a better artist.

I’m reminded of a section of Lucy Vogel’s anthology Aleksandr Blok: The Journey to Italy, published in 1973. Discussing his perspective on a particularly adventurous episode of his journey, Blok writes:

I feel the need to share it with others. Why? It is not because I want to tell others something amusing about myself or have them hear something about me that I consider poetic, but because of something else—an intangible ‘third force’ that does not belong to me or to others. It is this force which makes me see things the way I do and interpret all that happens from a particular perspective, and then describe it as only I know how. This third force is art. And I am not a free man, and although I am in the government service, my position is an illegal one, because I am not free; I serve art, that third force which from the world of outer reality brings me to another world, all its own—the world of art.

It’s indeed this ‘third force’ that impels a critic to first consider, deeply, and then eventually create. The consideration is the result, and the result is the consideration.

***

Tuesday, June 18th. 10:41 P.M. Eastern Standard Time

Dwight Garner:

When are you going to run that thing?

Wednesday, June 19th. 2:31 P.M. Central European Time

Gordon Glasgow:

Hi Dwight, the piece is running this Sunday morning, the 23rd. I’ve noticed the interviews get the most reads/reception when published on Sunday mornings, which makes sense. I suppose Saturday morning would also be a good day to publish, but my Jewish neuroses serves as an obstacle; this is something that makes no sense. I do all sorts of other things on Shabbat like use my phone and ride my bike (I also don’t keep kosher anymore). Still, I’ve never put out a piece on a Saturday. This could be because writing feels on par with the ‘spiritual,' more dogmatic aspects of myself, of my Jewish upbringing. Not sure. 

I’m sorry this took so long. I put a lot of thought and effort into my intros and got into my own head when approaching yours. The reason is simple: you’re a well regarded book critic for the world's most esteemed news organization and you’re a rare breed of excellent critic who writes with both erudition and optimism, as opposed to ignorance and cynicism. There’s no dread in your prose. You really have a love and reverence for literature and I suspect that your critique of the books you don’t enjoy comes from a disappointment in being let down, in not having the experience of being swept off your feet. You critique in good faith. I trust your opinion and I respect your hunger for artistic transcendence, to be taken away by the power of a great novel, to have it change the way you think and approach life. If the impediment to writing is in an abstract noun called resistance, which Bolaño said is just the fear that whatever we write won’t be any good, then in writing your intro I've had more than my fair share. Well anyway, it’s all done now. I’m looking forward to publishing. 

New York’s been direly expensive so I subleased my apartment for a couple months and went with my yellow Labrador, Alfie, to Valencia, Spain to write and eat and swim a lot in the ocean. It’s wonderful here and the food is interesting, if not extremely salty (especially the lauded paella, which I’ve surprisingly found disagreeable, whether with seafood or meat). I haven’t quite figured out what’s going on with the cuisine. It’s not as easy to grasp as the different regions of Italy, or even of France, for example. We’ve got to get you or Buford on it. More than any other European city that I’ve spent time in I’ve noticed that they enjoy texture, the Valencians — there must be a crunchy or crispy element to almost everything they serve. I like fried food and overly toasted bread just as much as anybody else, so for this cultural proclivity I’m grateful, even if the crispy edges of the Paellera are far too Umami (in this case a soury salt, an overly reduced broth) to be consumed. The chorizo and Iberian jamon are obviously distinct and addictive, as are the wide varieties of very affordable sheep and goat's milk cheeses. I could eat the fresh Manzanilla olives and Valencian tomatoes with every meal for the rest of my life. Clochinas (Valencian muscles) are not too bad either. Almost everywhere they serve something called Esgarraet (basically a salade cuite, or matbucha, with Bacalao instead of tomatoes). It’s a bit on the aforementioned salty-acerbic side, but is more than satisfying on a toasted pan candeal (Castilian round loaf); the bread has to be cut quite thickly though so as to offset the Esgarraet’s strong taste.  

Almost every day I eat a tortilla, which is regularly served with sliced pan de barra and a mustard-mayo-garlic aioli kind of thing that I enjoy but don’t really understand. It costs around two euros and fifty cents. A cortado is only one euro and twenty cents. One Valencian orange is around fifteen to thirty cents, at most. Pan con tomate is pleasurable but can start to get boring. Funnily, it’s the one thing without much salt, and when you’re here for long enough you become addicted and start to crave sodium in very large quantities. Every Valencian I’ve spoken with about the saltiness of their cuisine appears oblivious to it, which makes sense in a Foster-Wallce fish-in-water kind of way. Every expat is quick to point out the saltiness, including the many Argentinians and Venezuelans living here who regularly complain that they’re sick of how prideful the Valencians are about their paella, about their cuisine in general, and that the food is much more balanced and subtle back home in South America; I can’t confirm whether or not this is just another bias; I’ve never been to South America. Upon returning to New York I’ll again begin to subsist on the produce at Trader Joe’s and the slices at Grand St. Pizza. I do not yet miss the food back home and am totally fine here with the lack of subtlety and balance. Did I mention that a glass of Ribera is only two euros and seventy cents? Did I mention the childish glee ('childish glee,' is that a cliché?) that Spanish baristas take when you give them permission to spike your espresso with something cinnamony called Licor Quarenta Y Tres. In the Cabanyal district, the old fisherman’s neighborhood where I’m staying, droves of Spanish men and women sit outside at 10 am drinking three-quarter pint beers (un doble) as well as coffee filled not with milk but whiskey and licor. With astounding pleasure, they joke around with each other in indiscernible Spanish and laugh louder than the sound of an ambulance and a firetruck combined. It’s a joyous sight that in New York would be depressing. 

Is there anything you recommend that I must eat before I leave? 

Thanks again for your patience and I’ll make sure to send you a link this Sunday so that you can share the interview. I’m looking forward to it finally being read. 

-GG 

Wednesday, June 19th. 9:29 A.M. Eastern Standard Time

Dwight Garner

Thanks for the update, Gordon, and for the gorgeous letter. I have no food recommendations, alas, but it sounds like you are doing great on your own. 

Best, 

Dwight 

***

And now allow me to reiterate, he called my work gorgeous!

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GG: I sense, I don’t know, given your literary integrity and intelligence, that you mustn’t love publishing articles in the form that is now deemed, colloquially and professionally, The Listicle. Why do you publish listicles? What bothers you about it? Other than for purposes of easy consumption for a reader, is there anything about the listicle, the process of writing a listicle, that you enjoy? 

DG: Lists are a creeping horror because they’re replacing real criticism. Having said that, I don’t despise lists, though Don DeLillo was possibly right to call them “a form of cultural hysteria.” When I was in high school there was a fat gray paperback called “The Book of Rock Lists” that I loved and read with Talmudic interest. If I see a list from a critic or writer or musician or filmmaker I respect, I’ll click. Greil Marcus has a terrific long-running column called “Real Life Rock Top Ten” that has appeared over the decades in many publications (Artforum, Salon, Interview) and it’s been collected in book form. He still writes “Real Life Rock Top Ten” on his Substack. It’s one of the great recurring events in American journalism. I only rarely write lists myself. But they are not a chore, and it’s not necessarily a degraded form. It depends, as with all writing, on what a writer brings to it.

Nice what you recently wrote: “humor is a bulwark against complacency and conformity, mediocrity and predictability.” How does a weak and diminishing artistic culture dull people into spiritual and personal complacency? How does it lead to a general sense of mediocrity? What are some examples (with conforming works of art and their consequence) of how this is playing out right now? What are some examples of contemporary works of art/literature that defy this depressing norm? 

Gordon, that’s a lot of questions. I’ll start by saying I already miss Anthony Lane’s film reviews in The New Yorker. Someone once said that, at bottom, all you really want from a server, in a restaurant, is that they be in a better mood than you are. In addition to being perceptive, Lane was always in A better mood, and he always put me in one. How many critics can you say that about anymore? I don’t sense we’re wallowing in an age of mediocrity. There has always been vastly more bad writing than good. Already this year I’ve read Sheila Heti’s memoirs, Rita Bullwinkel’s amazing boxing novel and Percival Everett’s “James,” each of which is sublime. On the side I’m reading Philip Larkin’s letters. I like the way he curses. And in the kitchen, Vertamae Grosvenor. I’m a glass half full person when it comes to literature. Life is too short to read crap, so I try not to.

Like you, I’m really into food, constantly searching for food made with artisan-level passion and care. I always have a sense of guilt, though, (the Jewish guilt, not Catholic) that what I’m doing is indulgent and purely consumerist. I then try to rationalize the amount of time I spend thinking about food, as in where to get the best wine, pasta, etc., as an endeavor that represents an artist’s care for craft. Yet I know this is somewhat bullshit, and I’m just a hedonistic animal that likes to eat things that taste really good. Well anyway, I love to read you and Bill Buford write about food. What’s the literary merit of food-writing, food-seeking, food-loving? How does this compare to one’s voracious appetite for culture and the arts? Also, what’s your favorite slice in NYC? 

I’m way behind on the new slice places. I can’t say I have a favorite, though I had a blissful slice in Chelsea Market last week. And I return to the Mecca, John’s of Bleecker Street, two or three times a year. I know the sort of guilt you are talking about. I always go back to what Kenneth Tynan said when he was asked how he could eat well and still call himself a socialist. He replied, “Good food should be available to everyone; socialism which denies the pleasures of the gullet is socialism disfigured by the English puritan tradition.” I’m lucky to be friends with the food critic Robert Sietsema, who considers the politics of every bite he puts in his mouth. He’s a Marxist omnivore. I like people who are game for things, open to new experiences. Food provides, daily, if you put a little bit of thought into it, a way to exercise your mind and your senses and to see your friends.

Is there a figure in literary history, real or fictional, that you’d like to have a romantic affair with? If so, why? How would you court this person? How do you think it would turn out? 

Jessica Mitford. She was the den mother, as someone put it, of the New Journalism. She looked great with a cigarette. She was a stalwart drinker of Bloody Marys. She would never walk two blocks if a taxi could be had. When she learned her death was imminent, she decided to eat only chocolate mousse because it was her favorite. Her book “The American Way of Death” is a touchstone for me, in terms of its ideal substance to style ratio. I love her letters. I think we’d have fun talking. I fear she would step over me, romantically, as if I were a puddle. 

In an otherwise positive review of Blake Butler’s Molly, you wrote that, as a consequence of some trying and lengthy pages of self-help verbiage, you wouldn’t mind sending him up on a Ferris wheel and stranding him there for an hour or two. That’s awesome. I like the punitive Dwight Garner. What are some other forms of punishment that writers should endure for the sin of cliché? Who in history deserves it most?

I can’t believe cliché still exists to the extent that it does. What editor would let someone write, in a book, “paint the town red”? But it happens all the time. There should be a computer program that makes loud squishy farting sounds if the words “sea” and “legs” appear in the same sentence, or “patience” and “saint,” or “loose” and “cannon.” And so on. Every editor should have this program forcibly installed, at volume, on their laptops. The only way to stop the farting would be to delete the cliché. I think I’ve written about this before, but my friend Susie Bright, who for years edited the “Best American Erotica” series, said there is sometimes a place for cliché, at least in sex writing. What you want, she said, and I am paraphrasing wildly, is delicate and exact description right up to the crucial moment, and then cliché, cliché , cliché ! So there are exceptions to every rule.

Any healthy, thriving literary/arts scene has rivalries, and I think these rivalries are integral for the production of art that’s any good, any worthwhile. Who are your rivals and why? What would say to this rival if you’d really want to get under their skin? Further, what, in your opinion, makes your work stronger, more vital, more necessary, than the work of your rival?

“Is there a nemesis in the house?” Stanley Elkin asks in “Dick Gibson,” his great radio novel. I don’t go out of my way to be punitive, but book reviews are enemy-making machines, so I’m sure I have more than my share. But not from my end of things. I do suffer from envy. I will read a perfect ice pick of an observation from another critic (or any sort of writer) I admire and want to die on the spot, from shame that I could never write anything so good.

Is it better to give an adolescent a smartphone or a carton of cigarettes? Why?

We gave our kids smartphones when they were young, and I sneak them cigarettes now. They’re in their mid-20s. About smartphones, we placed limits. But you have to let your children live in the times they’re in. My kids are very limited smokers; they only do it at parties. And sometimes after dinner in our apartment. I always keep two cigarettes in a little copper stand in the bathroom, next to a box of matches. It never feels like a real dinner party until someone lights one of them. It’s a sign that someone is thinking, “Let’s keep this going for a while.”

I’m suspicious of scenes within all sectors of art. At first they’re cool, alive, and then, inevitably, given human nature, no matter how punk or fringe, they turn into a fiasco of politics and group-think. Do you think this is happening right now in the downtown literary/theater world? If so, how? Moreover, how can an artist manage to stay on the periphery of a scene, to be in it but not of it, reaping the benefits of community and connections without falling into the traps of group-think within art?

I’m not a “scene” guy. I’ve never had the right clothes, for one thing. Good art can come out of them, but rarely. Real artists keep their heads down and do the work.

How did your time at the Addison Independent come to define you as a writer and an editor? Is there any other early professional experience that might have had a fundamental impact on your writing life? 

I was very lucky. I was still in college when I started working at the Independent, a small independent Vermont semi-weekly. The editor, Tim Peek, who was maybe four years older than I was, was a skinny muckraker with a handlebar mustache and rumpled untucked Oxford cloth shirts and a sideways sense of humor. I had an inkling of the great journalistic values, but he lived them. He turned me on to Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Mother Jones and Gang of Four (the band). Peek was a First Amendment guy, and he held local government to high standards. He despised greedheads. And he countered mischief with mischief. When he sent me to cover my first monthly town meeting, in Vergennes, Vermont, I had my little notebook and I was expecting zoning talk and, I don’t know, total tedium. He told me, “These bastards are going to try to go into a private session, which they are not allowed to do, so when they do, I want you to sneak around the back of the building and crouch down and listen though the open window.” And I did. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that it was legal to search through people’s trash cans, he said to me, “Doesn’t William Rehnquist have a summer place upstate?” Rehnquist was Chief Justice then. A few weeks later, three of us got into his car and we drove up to Rehnquist’s grand house and we waited like beatnik detectives for someone to put out the trash. We were going to snatch it and print the contents. It was a great idea. But Rehnquist was never there. Long stakeouts are boring beyond belief.

Where in the US, in 2024, can someone find a sense of dignity?

I don’t know. The voting booth? I always feel better, and maybe more dignified, when I work for a few hours in the high-ceilinged Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library and then have an oyster pan roast at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, with its tiled and vaulted ceilings, a few blocks away. Like most New Yorkers I live in a small apartment. We need our high-ceilinged spaces, to let our thoughts expand, and to allow us to feel less like rodents.

Do you think polyamory is a realistic ideal? What about monogamy? How might polyamory and monogamy be related to capitalism? Which one, would you say, is more capitalist? How?

How best can I avoid these interesting questions, which are somehow above and below my pay grade at the same time? Whenever I think about polyamory, I remember why Nora Ephron said she didn’t attend orgies. “It would be just like the dances at the YMCA I went to in the seventh grade,” she said, “only instead of people walking past me and rejecting me, they would be stepping over my naked body and rejecting me.” I liked learning recently that, in romance novel terminology, when a woman has three or more love interests the situation is known as a “reverse-harem.” As if it were a figure skating move.

What’s your opinion on AG Sulzberger? Do you think he’s doing a good job? In what way could he improve? 

Is this a trick question? Do I still beat my wife? A.G. Sulzberger took a vital American institution, its best newspaper, that was on the verge of failing, and he revived it. We’re all in his debt.

Can you tell me a bit about your time at Middlebury College? What kind of social animal were you? How would it be different if you were to attend Middlebury as a student in 2024? Is there anything that you think would be the same? 

I was a bit older than most freshmen when I arrived, because of when my birthday falls and because I took time off to travel. I wasn’t a great attender of parties. I’d done enough of that in high school. I had friends, though, as well as two long-term girlfriends I feel lucky to have known. I was fortunate to attend Stephen Donadio’s monumental lectures on American literature, and to have him as my thesis advisor. (His daughter, Rachel Donadio, later worked with me at the Times Book Review and became the paper’s Rome bureau chief.) At Middlebury I mostly educated myself. Frank Zappa said, or I hope he did, “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” I went to the library. I ingested books and movies and music and magazines like a starving person, which essentially I was. I had an old car and I’d drive to Burlington for concerts and the French fries at Al’s, and to Montpelier for its art house movie theater. In July and August, I’d drive up to the Northeast Kingdom for summer stock theater and sleep in the back because I’d want a drink after, and because it was a long drive home.

When you write, who are you speaking to? What is it that drives the need for self-expression? Is this something an artist should know about themselves?

I write for Cree, my wife, who is the most discerning reader I know. And doesn’t every writer write, on some level, for their editor? Mine, Dave Kim, has a perfect ear. I fear disappointing him. I have a longtime friend, a rare book dealer in New Orleans, who is the smartest and weirdest and funniest person I know. Deep down, maybe, I want to please him most. Because he’s hard to please.

What’s your relationship with death? How often do you think about it? How does death define your work? How does death define your approach to life?

Have you ever read J.P. Donleavy’s “The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners?” It’s one of my favorite books. He has a whole section on dying well. It includes this advice: “Do not rush out to a night club or the latest celebrity joint and scare the hell out of everybody.” I do like to talk about death. I’d like to start a small “lemon table” like the one Julian Barnes described, where you meet occasionally for a meal during which death is the only permissible topic. I was once on a bar crawl through lower Manhattan during which the discussion was strictly limited to “the end of the world” – that is, what we’ll do when the grid fails or the bomb drops or the zombies arrive, etc. One of our group was a former military guy who has kept in shape. He tried to dispense tips. The rest of us lack guns and medical kits and stores of rice and plans of any sort; we’ll probably just take whatever drugs are in our apartments, then gaze out the windows. We began at the Old Town Bar on West 18^th Street and ended six hours later at Auntie Guan’s for Chinese. They had a dish called cumin-fried chicken bones that, to my family’s dismay, has been dropped from the menu. My son came along. It was weirdly cheerful. It was a great day.

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