"The author and editor of the New Yorker, 51, on his memories of the Kennedy assassination, meeting Bob Dylan, and the last time he criedMy earliest memory is the Kennedy assassination. I was in kindergarten and the headmaster intoned the dramatic news over the loudspeaker. Then we were told, weirdly, to take a nap until our parents came.
Language is the great human invention and to be a master of that, a real master, is to me an astonishing thing.
Like every non-fiction writer, I started out thinking I'd write fiction. But I grew up with disabled parents and knew I had to make a living. I didn't have the notion that I would take two or three years on the largesse of home and see if I could become Philip Roth.
I'm just as happy seeing a Godard film as I am seeing a Bruce Willis movie. But I'm very unhappy in the theatre. Nine times out of 10 I'll wonder why they are shouting and spitting so much.
The last time I cried was watching The West Wing. For people like me, The West Wing was an alternate political reality in which people were working hard to do good and noble things.
My worst habit is excessive work. I wake up thinking about work and go to bed thinking about it. I'm also terribly impatient, which is not a good mindset for an editor.
When I was 19, I was a busker on the Paris metro. I told my parents I was studying at the Alliance Française. An Australian collected the money for me. He'd just arrived from Kenya where he'd helped reap the hash harvest and had a family-sized shampoo bottle full of hash oil. It was a good time.
I met Bob Dylan once. By that time he looked like Jesus in a cowboy suit. He didn't say much. It was 10 or 15 minutes, but it seemed like three and a half hours.
I know a little about a lot. That's the psyche of a journalist. I look at people who know a lot about one thing with awe.
I've never fulfilled my ambitions. I'm always disappointing myself. But I don't have regrets either."
I like almost all of the responses, but especially the one about Dylan.
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