In this new feature, I'll try to post more accounts of the cultural events that I attend.
Last night I enjoyed an entertaining talk at the 92nd Street Y, featuring New Yorker columnist and essayist Adam Gopnik and humor writer and novelist Patricia Marx on the topic of "At Home in New York." Adam and Patty are neighbors and their conversation had an easy familiar charm, which was unexpectedly pleasant.
Patty was wearing an armful of gold bangles, a short grey cropped sweater over a black outfit and textured tights with knee-high boots. Very chic. Adam was also stylishly dressed in a grey windowpane plaid suit. They discussed topics of enduring local fascination like getting stuck in elevators, uncommon living situations, pests and the appeal of the city to outsiders.
Both read stories published in The New Yorker about apartments, and Patty introduced hers by saying, "I love revenge stories." Adam discussed an artist who lived above his family in SoHo and "worked in dead carp" and later, hay, which memorably festered one night and led to his helping her frantically bale it. Fun fact: Adam Gopnik does not know how to drive, and for this reason finds it difficult to imagine living anywhere other than New York or Paris because most cities are "organized around the car." Patty feels she could live anywhere for a year -- she notes without affectation, "I don't even hate LA" -- but only in New York forever.
They discussed their friendship, their respective romantic relationships, Adam's experiences raising children, Patty's joys (and the schadenfreude) of single life, and myriad other aspects of being here that make it a life worth living. In response to an audience question, Adam named Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye, Joe Gould, and Basil March of A Hazard of New Fortunes -- a little known 1890s novel about "something real, as opposed to say, whale-hunting or rafting... a guy in the magazine business trying to find an apartment in New York" -- as his favorite "New York characters." Patty, being one herself, had none.
Both have new books out that I'll definitely check out: Through the Children's Gate (a sort of follow-up to Paris to the Moon, which I enjoyed) and Him Her Him Him Again The End of Him, a fictional chronicle of "an on-again, off-again obsessive love affair" that sounds very wry.
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