Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Master Of Fiction: Ken Follett

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

This week, Anthony talks with one of the world’s best-loved authors, Ken Follett about his latest book The Armor of Light.  Having sold over 188 million copies of his books worldwide, Ken reflects on his decades-long career, sharing why storytelling remains the “core” of his life. He discusses the transition from a reader to a writer, the love affairs he has with his characters, and the incredible lengths he will go to for historical accuracy.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open book where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better.

You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. As you'll hear in the conversation, I've been a Ken Follett fanboy since I was 14, so a pretty long time ago. Well, I guess how long depends on whether or not I choose to lie about my age. I hate Wikipedia for that reason. That's a whole other topic. Mr. Follett is a master storyteller.

He creates compelling characters and combines history with a personal detail better than anyone. It's a great honor for me to have him join us on today's show. show. Let's go to the conversation. So joining us now literally my favorite author, living author, I should say. You know, there's a few like Plato that may be up there too, but Ken Follett is an internationally best-selling author of 37 books, quite frankly, one of the most successful authors of all time. This book, perhaps his finest, at least it's up there, the arm of light. I got to tell you, Ken, it was a brilliant read. I'm glad that we delayed our podcast so I could finish the book, by the way, because I enjoyed reading. I wasn't sure

if I was going to be able to finish it at the time you and I got together. Of course, I won't spoil the ending because I want all of our viewers and listeners to go out and buy the book. It's brilliant. And as I mentioned last time, I got introduced to Mr. Follett at the age of 14 in 1978, where my English professor gave me the eye of the needle and said that I have to read this book. And of course, since then I've read, I think every one of your books are. So it's an honor to have you back on. New York Times bestseller hit number one in many countries around the world. I was in my grandparents' country, Italy, last week. There were large signs up for the book in its Italian translation, which I know is very popular there as well. Sir, tell us about this book. Tell us where

all of this comes from. The ancient Native Americans call it indigo, where something is guiding you in life that allows you to express art in this way. Tell us how you manifested this book. I, thought of the industrial revolution. It's a time of great conflict. And of course, conflict is what drives a novel. There's no conflict. There's really no novel. And I thought about the fact that a technical revolution such as happened in the late 18th century creates winners and losers. It puts some people out at work and other people get opportunities and get better jobs to get paid more money. And that kind of balance is for me is good in the novel because you don't always want the novel to be a straightforward battle between good and evil. It's kind of better if there's some good and some wrong on both sides.

No question. And the Industrial Revolution struck me that way, which was promising. And then I realized that the period I was looking at really coincided with the terrible European war that's called the Napoleonic Wars. And Britain was at war with France for 23 years. And that war made the trials of people in the Industrial Revolution much worse because it exacerbated all the problems. So there were war taxes which created inflation. There was inflation, particularly in food prices. The price of a four-pound loaf of bread, which was the staple for many decades, doubled. And there was also the issue of people being forced to join the army when they didn't want to. So it's a regular crisis caused by technical changes and it's made much worse by a very long war. And I decided,

Sadist, that I am to put my people of Kingsbridge through that terrible period and see them come out at the other end, not too badly off. And when you say Sadist, though, I don't, I say, there's so much in each of us. I mean, let me test this on you because this is what I learned from Ken Follinger. novels. I learned great history in a historical context, but great history. You're the Leo Tolstoy of our generation, in my opinion, in terms of the way you capture people and their times. But there's a, there's an abraxis. Herman Hesse called it in a braxus. When he wrote the book Damien, he said that there's good and evil in all of us. And so there's contradiction. We try to code over for the people that were only good. But down deep, there's elements of both. And you capture that in these

protagonists and these antagonists. And so I guess the question I have, sir, is where does this come from? Where does this enlightenment come from where you're able, I feel like when I read your book, it's a course lesson in psychology for me in human emotion. So where does this come from? Well, I guess like most people, I've learned as time passes. And 50, 55 years ago, I would not have been so sensitive to the fact that most issues are complicated. You know, there's a scene in Never, which I know you've read because you interviewed me about that. There's a scene in Never where the president is a woman who has a teenage daughter. And the teenage daughter comes up with these.

Why can't we do so and so? Why can't we do? And in the end, she gets fed up with her mother explaining things to her, explaining why things can't be done. And she says to her mother, why is everything so complicated? And her mother says, because the simple problems get solved straight away. So we're always left with the complicated ones. And I suppose that's something that we all learn, you know, that the teenage, the teenage protester in Never is definitely based on the teenage Follett, who was passionate about things like Vietnam War. And over the years, I've been involved in politics. My wife,

My wife was a member of Parliament for years. And I've realized that all the problems we're facing are complicated because we already solved the simple ones. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, when I had my first briefing, I had a short stay in the White House, obviously, but I had a briefing. And the gentleman that briefed me, he had two lines that I always share with people. Number one, he said to me, Anthony, there are workhorses and there are show horses in our

government. And you're going to figure out very quickly who the workhorses are, the ones that are actually doing the work of the people. It could be our field agents. It could be Ken Follett protagonists and some of your early spy novels that are out there securing nuclear weapons for Israel or defending the Commonwealth against Hitler. And he says, you'll always know there's a, you'll, you'll discern quickly who the workhorse is, who the show horse is. He said, the other problem is, if it comes to your desk and it's on the way to the president, that means there were 5,000 other people in the American government that couldn't make the decision. And now it's going to be this very troublesome decision, you know?

Yeah, I get it. I get it. You're a chop end there. Yeah, exactly. And you capture a lot of this stuff. So, so let's go to some of the struggles of our time and the struggles of the time in the armor of light. Trade unions, we have the United Order workers are striking, although it looks like they may have settled now with Ford. People's rights in terms of discrimination or the right to work, all these things that are out there. The cost of living crisis, you just mentioned it about the book and the bread price. but we're also experiencing that for the common men and women in both of our countries, the UK and the United States. The cost of living has really gone off. People feel the disposable income they have has shrunken, even if the economy feels strong from the data, it feels tight

from the middle class. Are these problems intractable, sir? You're writing about these problems from 200 years ago. Are they intractable? We seem like we have the same problems today. Well, I think problems are often solved very slowly. And looking back on the historical novels that I've written, it's quite common for the people in the story to be struggling for some kind of freedom. And it's often a freedom that we take for granted today. And I found it interesting to tell a story about a time when you couldn't take that for granted. And most people thought it was foolish. For example, the right to religious freedom. which I wrote about in a column of fire. And at the time, it was shocking and horrifying that some people did not adhere to the established religion, and people killed one another over it. And now, if you think of, you probably don't know whether your next door neighbor is Protestant or Catholic or neither.

And you don't care, and nobody cares. We won that, or our ancestors, our forebears, won that battle. But boy, it took hundreds of years. And I think that's the thing that's frustrating about politics is that change takes so long and often costs so many lives. Well, it's very well said. And you tell this through your characters. And again, I don't want to give up the book to people. I just want to encourage them all to read it.

You're just this wonderful storyteller. But there's one woman in the book. My wife will probably be jealous of me even talking about this one woman. But you have a crush on this woman, Arabella, that you write about, sir? Well, yes. She's kind of gorgeous. And she's not a teenager. And actually, all my life I've had a weakness for, well, when I was young, it was a weakness for older girls.

And then later it was a weakness for older women. And she's an older woman. She's much older than the guy she falls for who's called Spade. And the other thing that I liked about their relationship is that she's a little. She is a sexy woman who has spent 30 years married to a guy who's not that interested in her. And so there's terrific, terrific, under her surface, there's a terrific, there's a volcano. And it just wants a guy to come along who can understand that and who can understand her and treat her with respect. And the love affair becomes very, very passionate.

I think we've talked about this before, but I've got to mention it again for some of my new viewers and listeners. You remember the legendary novelist Herman Wook. Yeah. And he had that way with characters, too. I mean, you are, when I read your characters, I'm living with them. I can feel their personalities. I can't see their facial expressions, but you write about their facial expressions in a way that I've overseen them, meaning I don't need to see their faces. I can feel the essence of their soul coming onto the page.

And for those of us who are the salieri's of writing, where you are the Mozart, for those of us that are the Salieri's of writing, where does that come from? Is this something that you feel you were born with? Clearly, you've refined it over the years. But where does it come from, this gift that you have? I think all of us who write novels are born with extraordinary imagination. And I think all the writers I've ever talked to about this have felt the same. When I was a boy, I was never playing myself.

I was always pretending to be a cowboy or a pirate or the captain of a spaceship. And that imagination, people say, where do you, you know, how do you get your ideas? I suppose I sometimes say, how do I stop? Because it just never stops. And I think we're all like that. And I suspect you're born with it. And so you have to have that. And then you have to spend a lot of the first 20 or 30 years of your life reading because that's how we learn about how to tell a story, how we learn, you know, we learn about chapters.

We learn about cliffhangers describing a landscape. We learn how to do dialogue in such a way that it doesn't, it's, it's fast and it's interesting and it's never boring. We learn all that. But then, so we get to our 20s or 30s or 40s and start to try and write a novel. We already have 90% of what we need, but there's more that you need. And actually getting something that I had to learn because I hadn't figured it out from what I'd read was the way that you have to get the reader to share the emotions of the characters so that when a character is scared, the reader sits on the edge of a chair. And when something sad happens, the reader has a tear in the eye. And when somebody is bullied or treated in some way unjustly, the reader says, this is not right.

This has got to stop. And that's what holds the reader to the story. The reader starts to care about these people as if they were real people. And I think all successful popular novelists do this, for me, it was something I had to focus on. As you know, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I had a hit. And one of the things I was learning during that period was how to get you and how to get all the readers to feel the emotions of the people in the story. But there's a brand that you have. I mean, honestly, when I see that your book is in Q is coming back to the bookstores, I'm like, all right, I'm going to have a fantastic few weeks here of reading this book.

You mentioned never. And so after our last interview, I sent that book out. We have like this Trump recovery program, you know, like Alcoholics Anonymous. It would include people like Mark Esper and Bill Barr and now General Millie's part of that program. And I sent your book out to all of these guys that I work with in the administration because, you know, because it's reminiscent of the Sinclair Lewis book, which I'm sure you either had to have read or you built some of it in there.

You know, the book titled, It Can't Happen Here. You know, I think it's, you know, because you're saying never, it can't happen. Yeah, you're writing a story that actually could happen, and we're watching a manifestation of some of the things that are happening right here right now as we're speaking that we're actually foretold in never. And so the question I have is, as you think of your historical writing, and that was a contemporary piece, there is a current of history. And the questions sometimes the current can get adjusted or moved depending on leadership. I think we understand that we had Roosevelt in this country, that you had Churchill in your country, and they were loving. of the institutions of democracy, a result of which they didn't fall prey to the sinister nature of totalitarianism. And so my question, after reading this book, I want to get to Napoleon in a second,

but reading this book, what is your theory on that, the great man or the great woman in history? Can they change the course of history or can they protect the society? I think it's such an interesting question. What is leadership? What is it that enables those people to get everybody on their side. You know, it wasn't just that Roosevelt had those ideas about how to fire up the American economy and how to take care of people who were suffering. It wasn't just that he had the ideas.

He had the power to explain them to people in a way that made people say yes. Yes, geez, that's right, isn't it? We've really got to do this. And I think that's the great. And of course, it can be, those talents can also be used, negatively. They can be turned to the sinister. It can be a sinister edge of the meal.

You have people who can say dumb things, you know, lock Hillary Clinton up, and a crowd goes, yeah, yeah. And so it can be an evil talent as well as a good one. But it's certainly the core of it is that ability to make people go along with what you're saying. I mean, again, I don't want to ruin the book, but there's an amazing scene in this book, the Battle of Waterloo, which we've all read about in European history. I've had the opportunity on the 2nd anniversary of that battle to visit the area of Waterloo. Of course, we know the great protagonists like the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon. You tell such a great story. And I guess the question I have for you is, how do you recreate that scene? I've seen Sarah do it actually

at Gettysburg. You know, he wrote a great book about that, Michael Sara. How'd you do it? How do you, like, where, where are you getting, are you, is this a manifestation of your reading? Did you go visit the site? Did you talk with other historians? How did you piece that to gather from a forensic perspective? All of those things, I started off by reading books and, and there must be a thousand books that have been written about the Battle of Waterloo, but the books and the maps tell you a lot, but it was important to me to go there. I spent a week on the battlefield with a friend of mine who is a retired general in the British Army and whose hobby is Waterloo. And so he walked me around. We went everywhere and he explained it to. And actually being there, of course,

enabled me to visualize much more clearly exactly how everything went along. And I know that when you're in the heart of a battle, often things are very confusing. And to some of the people in the battle, some of them don't have any idea what's going on. But that's not the way to write it. I mean, you can say that things are confusing, but the reader mustn't be confused. The reader must know exactly what's happening in this battle. Where the tension comes from and the satisfaction. So getting all the facts straight, and then, of course, you know, not overdoing it with the facts, but describing the course of the battle and what the issues are and what the tensions are, clearly that's important.

And then doing that, you also have to tell the story through the eyes of the people who are there and who are looking at this and trying to figure out what to do and who are scared. Or maybe they're terrifically brave. Maybe they're eager to get at the enemy and maybe they're thinking about running away. and they probably can't run away because they'd be caught. So if you've got the battle clear in your head, you can make it clear in the readers head. And then you can tell the story of that battle

in terms of the feelings and experiences of characters who are there and they're seeing it at ground level, they're seeing it like that. And I think if you could put all of those things together, a battle can be really fascinating. I'm careful not to overdo it. There's often one big battle in one of my knob, but I don't overdo it. I don't think my readers love history often, but they don't want an awful lot of military history.

They want a fairly basic story that engages them and explains to them why the battle was won and why the battle was lost. Well, I'm going to say something to you, and I want you to react to it if you don't mind. So I read the book. I get to the battle scene. Again, I don't want to ruin things, but I always come away with a revelation from one of your books. If you named a title of your book, I could say this was my revelation. As an example, Triple, I didn't understand the full dynamic of how important it was. I mean, I was a young kid when I read Triple about how important it was to get the nuclear device.

And the whole thing that was behind the Mossad and the way you described it. on wings of eagles, the entrepreneurial character of Ross Perrault that goes on to become a presidential candidate. And by the way, your protagonist, who is a real life person, upsets the American political system. I'll explain this to you. My opinion is he so threatens the duopoly that they strengthen the duopoly. It's almost impossible as a result of Ross Perra to mount a third-party challenge to the duopoly because of all the legal moats and so forth that they put up. But anybody that read on Wings of Eagles would be like, okay, I get this. This SOB's crazy.

He's ready to throw the Molotov cocktail. Pillars of Earth, you're getting a sense for the way people thought of the church at a time where we didn't have science like we do today. I think some of our agnosticism about our neighbors is related to the advances of science, frankly, because we were all clinging to this religious faith, and therefore my faith had to be better than your faith. So let me hit you in heaven, a rock if you don't have my faith. Now that we're looking at all the science, we've become more indifferent to each other's face.

I got that out of your books. But in this book, the battle scene, I'm going to test this on you, I'm like, okay, this is actually the first Industrial Revolution battle. They're massacring each other. They're using weaponry that is way more advanced than the Revolutionary War even, you know, 30 years prior or 25 years prior. And obviously, you write about this in, you know, World War I. and obviously World War II was the great devastation with the bomb.

But I guess my point is that the technology is moving faster than our morality, isn't it, Mr. Follett? Always, always, I think. And then there are new forms of weapons and there are arguments. And people say these weapons have been invented and they must never be used. And there's a discussion about that. But it's a futile discussion because if those weapons exist, then they're going to be used. So yes, and we struggle.

I mean, we've been arguing, certainly all my life, people have been arguing about the morality of having nuclear weapons at all. And there's always been, in the UK anyway, there's always been a substantial minority of people who said, we shouldn't even have these. We should destroy them. And look at all the happy and prosperous countries that don't even have nuclear weapons. And they're closer to the Soviet Union that we are. So I think you're right. You get a moral argument about new weapons, but the moral argument never actually stops anybody using them. And of course, we've, well, listen, let's hope this is the first time, you know, because they've been used once. Nuclear weapons have been used once. And let's hope that this time the moral argument wins and they're never used again. But boy, it's a scary. It's scary. Well, you write about that, obviously you write about that in the book, never. But I want to, I want to, I want to, I ask you, I get to this section of my interviews, of my authors, and my producer and I, we come up with five words. I'm going to say the word, and then I want you to give me your reaction to it. It could be

a paragraph. It could be a word, just your stream of consciousness. And in reading the book, the first word that comes in mind is character. What's your reaction to the word character? It's the first thing and the last thing. That's what we're interested in, in both sense. of the word, the characters and their personalities, two senses of the word character. And it's at the heart of everything. And if you don't get that right, you're finished. Yeah, and I think that's a central element of your storytelling. The definition of these characters, both the protagonists and the antagonists, I think this is ultimately your genius. I'm going to say the word history. What do you think of when I say the word history?

Well, I think that of all that I've learned, you know, I hated history at school. I was bored by it. And in my working career, I've become absolutely fascinated by it. And as you know, it's part of my life and it's very much part of my work. And the great thing about it is, although there aren't always, it doesn't always repeat itself. And you can't always talk about lessons to be learned because that's too simple. But I think what you get by reading history is just a broader and more accepting view of the present day. Because you think, although this hasn't happened before, things like this have happened before,

and you've studied the conflicts that there have been in the past. And you, instead of saying, oh, my God, this is terrible, well, you may say this is terrible, but you also know that it's not new. Well, it's so fascinating because, you know, a recent book was written a few years ago. Governor Christie gave it to me, and it's called the accidental president. And it's about Harry Truman. And the book is really about what happened to him. He wasn't educated.

You know, he never went to college, but he fought in the First World War. He had the benefit of the effect on his character, the effect on his character of failure. He had a haberdashery that went out of business. This is Lincoln-esque in terms of, like, having these self-conscious failures that you have to get through, which teaches some resilience. and now he is inheriting the job from somebody who was a larger-than-life figure. And frankly, for a lot of American adults, was the only president that they knew. And the only voice they recognize as president. And there's a scene in this book where he calls one of the cabinet officials and he says,

you know, I want you to do blah, blah, blah, blah. And he says, he says, well, the president, he says, the quote is, the president wants you to do blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, when did the president ask this? And he says, right now, meaning because he's thinking of Ruzum. So this is the smaller stature, you know, and he's one of your characters. He shows up in your books, this man of commonality, this common man who has good character, but also understands history. He's thrust into the historical moment, but Truman was a great reader. And so this is my third thing that I want to ask you, the word underdog. Well, you know, it makes me think of our king,

who people still refer to as Prince Charles. Right, exactly. Well, of course, she has 70 plus years as Prince Charles, yep. And if you say the queen, they think you're talking about Queen Elizabeth II. And it must be so infuriating for King Charles that people still think his mother is the queen, even though she's been dead for some time now. But I think the underdog is a very interesting character. And if we're talking about, you know, the basic plot of a book.

book like the armor of light. It's really about how the underdogs fight a battle. What we have is working people fighting for freedom of speech and the right to form a union. And the odds are against them because the powerful people don't want to give in to them and powerful people, by definition, usually get their way. And so what's happening in the armor of light is a fight of the weak against the strong. And of course, that makes it a great story. It's especially if the weak win. You see, it's fascinating what you said, because even with royal blood,

you can see yourself or be perceived as an underdog. You know, I mean, ultimately, the reason why we all love underdogs is that we all see ourselves as underdogs. Do you know what I mean? It's very funny. Okay, two last words. I'm going to let you go, sir.

Thank you for all this time. You're giving me what a privilege. Storytelling. I say the word storytelling. You say what? Oh, I use that word a lot. I talk about, a lot of the time I talk, don't talk about my books. I talk about my stories. That's what I've got. You know,

there was a time when Bob Dylan lost all his money for some reason and he said, all I've got is these songs. Needless to say, that was enough. And, you know, that's why I've spent my life the way I have spent it. It's because I have these stories in my head and I'm able to share them with people. So storytelling is absolutely at the core of my life. Okay. So the last word is a fusion of two, actually. It's Ken Follett, and I say Amos, you may say Amos, but there's a character in this book. And I've heard, because I listen to your interviews, and you said that there's a little bit of Amos in you, or you in Amos. And so tell me about Ken Follett, and tell me why you said that about this character in the book.

Okay, well, he is, he's a young man at the beginning of the story, and he is something of an innocent. You know, he doesn't really know. that there are people in this world who are sly and conniving and will cheat you if they possibly can. He kind of thinks most people are reasonable and decent. And the story begins with him having a huge problem. He inherits his father's business when his father dies. And he's, he has felt for a long time he's ready to run this business. And now he discovers that he's not as smart as he thought he was. Now, I, you know, that's an experience I've had more than once, realizing I'm not as smart as I thought.

I was and it's probably not just me, it's probably everybody. Well, it's definitely me, sir. I can tell you my, you don't have enough time in the day for me to tell you my shortcomings. Okay. And then he gets, Amos gets through this crisis near the beginning of the story. He has other crises, but this one, he gets through and he basically succeeds because he's a real worker. And there's a little bit of me in that.

You know, I'm a perfectionist. I rewrite a lot. I listen to my readers. I listen to my editors. You know, if a chapter needs to be rewritten, it's natural to feel, oh my God, I've already written that. Why am I going to do it again? But you just have to say, if it needs doing, it needs doing, and I've got to do it. So Amos's approach that if he is honest and works hard, he'll come through. I think that has been part of my success has been that fit. If I really work hard at this, I can probably do it. is for all of us, you're working on something again. Yes, indeed. Well, I delivered the armor of light last Christmas, and since then, I've been writing a new story. Okay, great. And it's, you know,

because I don't like to, I don't, I don't want to stop. I don't take three months off. People say to me, I suppose you take a year off when you finished a book. I might take a week off, but, uh, yeah, don't, don't take any time. This is a solid. You know, you got to stay active, you know. Don't worry, you know, it's so interesting. It absorbs me so much. I have difficulty stopping. I don't have difficulty doing it. I have difficulty stopping and doing something else. Well, it's always such a pleasure for me to talk to you.

I'm grateful for your time. The title of the book is The Armor of Light, but it's just a fascinating story about the Industrial Revolution, the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and the conflicts in Europe. And it's just also very contemporary. When I read your stories, it's part of the past, but it's connected to the president.

It makes it so relevant to today's viewers. and listeners. And I hope you'll come on again. When this next book comes out, I'll have, I've got you bookmarked, so on Google. So when this next book comes out, my team's going to reach out to you, sir. That'll be great. I'll appreciate that. And I always enjoy talking to you. Thank you. Well, the same year. Well, what a phenomenal conversation that was with Ken Follett. I always say to my kids, it's important to read fiction. I think it's as important to read fiction as much as it is to read nonfiction. Why? Great fiction writers. have tremendous insight into human beings. And when I read a great fiction writer, I'm not only learning

about myself and human behavior, but I'm learning about the mosaic and patterns of others. And I think Ken is absolutely brilliant at capturing that. Moreover, because his novels are historically accurate, you're actually learning a lot of history through historical fiction like Ken's. Most people will have picked up a fallout novel. If you think about it, there's tens of millions of things. of them in publication. But if you haven't, I would encourage you to pick up a book and at least read one chapter. Because if you read one chapter, you'll finish that book and then you'll wade into his entire body of work, which I have found personally fascinating since I picked up the eye of the needle at the age of 14 in 1978. And so it was a great honor for me to talk to Ken.

He's been one of my heroes for a very long time. And it's a pleasure to have him on the show. All right, you ready to go on the air, ma? Yeah, go ahead. So this week, I interviewed one of my favorite authors. His name was Ken Follett. And he's... Ken Follett. And so he's one of my heroes.

So the question is, when did you meet one of your heroes? Didn't you meet Jackie Onassis once? Yeah, I did. And a store of Gauti in New York. Okay. And what did you think of her? What was your impression of her? Very regal.

Very regal dressed, and I still remember what she had on. She had on a tear of pants and sweater and cashmere. She looked very, very beautiful, very regal. Okay. Very poised. What about Luciano Pavarotti? Didn't you meet him? Because you're big time into the opera, right?

Very early. He had a gorgeous, gorgeous voice, and I met him in the pier hotel, and he was invited by Sam Appalcoco. Okay. And he, what, he sang at a dinner, or what happened? Yeah, he didn't sing a lot of songs. He sang two songs at the dinner, and his voice was like, I've never heard anyone like that. Even better than Bocelli, who you listen to on Alexo all day? Or not? Two different types. Okay, what's to explain the

difference between Andrea Bocelli and Luciano? Cheli is quieter when he sings. This one sings like your son, AJ. He's a baritone. So he's, his voice is booming. Booming. And you get the chill, completely when you listen to him. He died, but when he was alive and you listen to him, you would get the chills listening to him. I thought he was absolutely fantastic. Who was more handsome, though, Luchiano? He's more handsome.

Yeah. Tell me why. He was very heavy. He was too heavy for you. Yeah. Okay. It was very burly. His hair was thinner.

You know, I think Borellie's much better looking. All right. This guy can follow it as quite a storyteller mine. But aren't you a pretty good storyteller, Ma, or no? What do you think? Yes, I mean, yeah, I think I am. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Who's a better gossip than you, Ma. Is there anybody in the town of Port Washington that knows more gossip? Oh, yeah, but I can't say the names. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but there's people that know more than you about what's going on? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah? The Italian people from Italy, somehow they figure out more things than the average American. Oh, is that right? And you, but you're in the know though, right? Yeah, I'm in the no, because they tell me. I don't even have to leave the house. You don't have to, they just call you and tell you what's going on, right? Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you were like Siri before there was a Syria. I knew if I went to you with the information, you knew right away, you know? Remember that night when Amelia had the date, my daughter, Amelia, and you knew before I did where she was and what she was doing? Yeah, of course. Yeah, you got tipped off by all the people in the different areas of the town, huh? Absolutely. Then she got really mad and then she started going to like New Hyde Park and shit. Try to get away from you.

You're funny. Yeah. Yes, love. All right. Well, one of the characters in the armor and the light reminds Ken followed of himself. He wrote it about himself. Oh, really? What celebrity do you think you're the most like, Ma?

In comparison to people? Well, I think you like Marie and everybody loves Raymond. That's what I think. Are you funny? Well, who do you think you like? Go ahead. You know, you used to watch. watch that show. Well, I read the book about Natalie Wood, and when I was very young,

that's the matter where I went. Now, where I went, even though she was Russian descent, they thought I'd look like Natalie Wood in any store, anywhere for sure. Mm-hmm. And she was from Russia, right? She was from Russia, and I read the whole book from cover to cover. Very interesting person. Mm-hmm. And she got, she fell off the boat, though. You think she really fell off the boat or somebody took her out, Ma? What do you think happened? Well, they say that he did, but I don't think he did. Why would he do that, though? Right. Well, that's why he never got arrested. That's conspiracy because he didn't have the motive, you know. They were fighting, but he actually loved her. And I don't think he wanted her to die, but maybe too much drugs and alcohol, you know?

So if you say, who do I relate myself to or relate myself when I was young to her? I have a picture of me. And my nephew doesn't believe it's me because it's so close to her when I was young. Are you pretty confident, though, in your looks, though, how I'm on now? Well, I don't pass my age no matter where I go, but because I worked with cosmetics and I did makeup, you never lose that touch because I am 86, three months, I'll be 87, and I show like my nails done and my hair and my makeup. Me too, ma. I like my hair's hair done and my makeup. Me too. Well, I think you look like my side. I look like your side, right? I don't look like that side, right? Not at all.

No, right? I mean, didn't I? No, I really don't, though. But why the hell did you, if he's so bad looking, you'd say his nose was like a doorknob and all this stuff, why did you end up marrying him? What happened? Well, I can't. My dad bought me everything in life when I was a kid. He was very giving to me when I was 18 years old. He had bobby stuff, and he was very generous because he really wanted me to marry him.

So that's why I married him because I was just a material thing. All right. So the fact that his nose looked like a doorknob, it was okay? It was okay. All right. All right. So you overlooked the doorknob nose. Yeah. Like he was out. Yes, I did. All right. All right. I love you, Ma. You don't change. Don't change the thing. Okay. All right, baby. All right. Thanks for coming on. All right. I'll call you later.

I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating. or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at Plus 1, 917, 909-29-996. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.