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Share11. The best piece of advice you actually followed?
When teaching a seminar, and there’s a point that rises out of the discussion that you think absolutely has to be made, wait. In five minutes someone in the class will say what, if you, the teacher, had said it, would have killed the discussion—but coming from a student, it will push the discussion forward, into richer territory than your own sterile interruption could ever have found. That was my own advice to myself, and every time I teach a seminar, I have to remind myself of it about every 15-minutes.
12. The best thing you ever bought, stole, or borrowed?
A gold bracelet for my wife from I. Vittori on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. There was something odd in the air, a glowing light in the overcast sky. The owner of the store wouldn’t take a check. He said, I can trust you. Take it home, and if you like it, you can pay me then.
A New Literary History of America
eds. Greil Marcus, Werner Sollors
(Harvard University Press; US: Sep 2009)
13. You feel best in Armani or Levis or…?
I wear Levis almost every day, but I love my Miyakes. As for Armani—one day in 2000, in New York, my wife and I went to a party at a private club in Manhattan held to welcome a new book editor from London, Frances Coady. I had heard about her and wanted to meet her. I was wearing a greenish suit and a gray t-shirt, but the club wouldn’t let me in: ties were required, I was informed. And, the person at the desk said, ties were to be worn with a collared shirt—not tied around the neck over a t-shirt.
I was so incensed I stomped away raving and cursing. But my wife said, “You really want to meet this editor, don’t you?” Yes, I did. “Well, there’s an Armani store around the corner.” We went in—and while I’d never been able to find a shirt or a tie that went with the suit I had on, this time we did. I put them on, went back to the club, met Frances Coady, and there was an immediate affinity. I knew I had to do a book with her.
That book turned out to be The Shape of Things to Come, and she turned out to be the best editor I ever worked with, someone who could see the whole arc of a book, what was part of that arc, what wasn’t, and also say, “You know, you used a very similar phrase back on page 127…”
14. Your dinner guest at the Ritz would be?
Is there still a Ritz? Where is it? To me the Ritz is the 1920s in New York. So I’d go back and sit down with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The food would be lousy, he’d get drunk, but every time I’d read him after that, each page would have a weight it would never have had if we hadn’t been there.
Today I’d go to Chez Panisse in Berkeley with Pauline Kael. She’d be cranky and funny and outrageously cutting. The food would be simple, gorgeous, so full of flavor it would stop the conversation. We’d argue about movies, books, she’d tell stories of Berkeley in the ‘40s and ‘50s, we’d argue about our own writing—“I was reading your book, every word seemed to lead to every other, and then there was this thud—what happened? What is that terrible sentence about ‘the catacombs of visible culture’ doing there? “But that was the sentence I was aiming toward all along—” “Your aim was off. Take it out. Believe me, you can live without it.”
We leave knowing the night could never be repeated, and then we’d go back.
15. Time travel: where, when and why?
I’d like to be in Montgomery, Alabama, just after the Civil War, when my great-grandfather Jakob Greil was building his liquor and grocery distribution business. I’d like to be in Hawaii in the 1870s, when my great-grandmother Belle Louisson was growing up. I’d like to be back in Menlo Park in the ‘50s, to see if it really was as wonderful a place as I remember it to be.
16. Stress management: hit man, spa vacation or Prozac?
Hawaii, one of these days.
17. Essential to life: coffee, vodka, cigarettes, chocolate, or ..?
Gin.
18. Environ of choice: city or country, and where on the map?
I’ve lived my whole life in the San Francisco Bay Area: born in San Francisco, grew up in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, Berkeley since I went to college in 1963. My parents were born there—San Francisco and San Jose—and never left. I’ve never been anywhere where I wanted to live more than where I’m from.
19. What do you want to say to the leader of your country?
Don’t let the bastards grind you down—and remember that they are bastards.
20. Last but certainly not least, what are you working on, now?
Earlier this year I published a short book on listening to Van Morrison—finding moments from throughout his career that seemed to catch the quest that runs all through it.
I’m going to write another short book, about listening to the Doors—but instead of having 45 years to work with, I’ll have four. Any day I drive over the bridge from Berkeley to San Francisco and back, I am all but guaranteed to hear the Doors at least three times: “LA Woman”, “Roadhouse Blues”, “Light My Fire” most often, a shuffle of half a dozen more.
I began wondering why they were still on the radio. I got lost in them every time.
