The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 40: Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter and a Poet Fighting Cancer

Episode Date: July 22, 2016

In this episode, the ghostwriter behind “The Art of the Deal” tells all, and Andy Borowitz reviews highlights of the Republican National Convention. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

There is only one choice in this election, Donald Trump. America is an ideal, a simple yet powerful idea. Freedom matters. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stand and speak and vote your conscience, vote for candidates, up and down the ticket. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Redmond. This week in Cleveland, among all the,

multitude of reporters at the Republican National Convention, the New Yorker deployed its own crew of riders to cover what happened inside and outside the arena, a journalistic dream team, including Evan Osnos and Jill Lippoor. Have you seen a vendor of Trump wigs at any Trump rally? I've never seen a Trump wig for sale, actually. Come to think of it, which is very suspicious, actually. We had a... One of my kids was Trump for Halloween in the fall,

and it was a real struggle. But he's yellow yarn. What did you go with? Oh, you went with a bespoke product that you made. We did a bespoke. Like the real thing. That makes it something. He's not an off-the-shelf guy, and neither should his wake be.

Evan Osnose has been focusing on politics and domestic issues lately, including an incredible piece about the gun industry in the NRA. Oh, make sure to leave your gun outside. But Evans also spent a lot of time reporting on and from China, years in fact. And for another look at the Trump phenomenon, caught up with Drang Yuan-Anan, a journalist from the Chinese publication, Taishin. So, Tai Xin is a, we could call it like, it's a combination of maybe business week and the New Yorker. Would that be kind of roughly?

Now it's kind of like a combination of economist and Bloomberg. I think, am I right in imagining that actually a lot of people in China had never really heard of Trump until recent? until the election. Yeah, this makes me laugh because Trump is always saying, I beat China. I beat China all the time. And I had to actually call some friends and said, you know, what do you know? And everybody's like, Trumpu. I've never heard of him before.

Trumpu. What is his name in Chinese now, Trump's name? Some translation is Trumpu. Yeah, Trumpu. Like us is Telang Pu. Oh, okay. Telang Pu. Yeah.

And what are the kinds of things that your readers want to hear, want to learn about the U.S. presidential race? Well, I think this year, you don't really need to try very hard because everybody wants to read the stories, especially it comes to Donald Trump and when he talks about China. So when I'm here

I'm trying to make sense of what he said about China as well. So I was walking around, especially today. I went to the Fifth Street Arcade. There are many stores in there and there's a very young guy who's selling socks close to the arena.

And he said he's importing. He's importing. from China because he couldn't find any textile companies manufacturers to produce the kind of stuff he wanted at a reasonable price. And he said, okay, you know how much is the cost that I get from China? Do you know how much? No, how much? Eighty-three cents a pair. Wait, I should be in the socks business. Yes. That's amazing. Do you know how much is the cost if you get from the United States. How much?

$11. Wow. I'm not going to hear Trump talk about that tonight, I don't think. That's really interesting. Yeah. Now he's selling these socks at 2016, a pair. $20 and $16? Yes.

Those are expensive socks? Yes. I'm surprised. What's with the socks? Why are socks such a thing? I mean, is that a thing now? Oh, I think it's because just the election season. Oh, okay.

So they're selling, he's only selling the Trump socks. And he's a Trump supporter. Wow. And I asked them, Donald Trump said he would want to impose a very high tariff on Chinese imported goods. Then would that impact your business? And he said, yes, I support that. And asked why. And he said, the cost is totally manageable.

And he really wanted the manufacturing jobs to come back to the United States. He said he's willing to pay like twice, three times, four times. the cost. What do you think the, when people hear that in China, what would they think? I think they will want to come to the United States to sell socks. Donald Trump has made China a part of this campaign in a way that really it hadn't been in previous presidential campaigns. Do you get the feeling in China that that worries people or actually that they think

this is sort of the normal part of politics? I think generally in the election year, the U.S.-China relations were not be very good. And many people in China still believe that the United States is trying to contain China. Right. That's a people basically, even though the United States says, look, we're not trying to contain China, you think that's still the widespread belief? Yes. And when the candidates are saying things that very explicitly targeted at China, people are saying, look, that's what they're saying. In some ways, maybe it feels as if Donald Trump is being more honest than other candidates have been. Yeah. I think it's interesting that way because, yeah, I mean, as you know, living in China, I used to ask that question, what do you think the United States wants of China? And people would often say, I think the United States might never say it, but you want to keep China down. And actually now Donald Trump is saying exactly that.

Right. And for Chinese people, I think it's a very interesting year. It's because when I went back to China and I heard people saying, United States is always so proud. proud of its democracy system. And they believe it doesn't matter who the president is, the system will keep him checked. It will be no problem at up. Stable. Yes. And now you have Donald Trump.

Let's see whether this system really works as you think. Do you get the feeling that among perhaps some people in China who have had positive feelings about democracy in the past that this election is making them reconsider? No, I think it made them worried because people are looking at the United States, the chaos here. They are looking at the referendum in the UK and they are saying, okay, the democratic countries are doing these things and they're calling each other stupid. So how can we convince our people that democracy is better?

Evan Osno is speaking with Drong Yuanan from the publication Tai Shin at the Republican Convention in Cleveland. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Now, when all was said and done late on Thursday night, after Donald Trump's speech, I called up America's leading political commentator, a man of great probity, the author of the Borowitz report, my colleague and friend Andy Borowitz.

Well, it completely ruined my theory of the convention that I was starting to assemble. Can I share that with you? Please. Well, I had this theory that, you know, while the press was saying that the convention was a train rack with, you know, Melania, quoting Michelle Obama and Rudy Giuliani just seeming to have some sort of chemical imbalance, I thought what they were setting us up for was, you know, that tonight we would see a Donald Trump who was subdued and presidential and would seem so much more normal than everything we had seen up to that point. Boy, was I wrong. I was, I totally got that wrong. And so what did you hear? What did you, what did you make of it? Well, you know, I think it's important to put in context. I mean, did you see that kind of Ken Burns documentary they did? It was like he built the railroad. He invented the car. He transformed the sky. He transformed the sky.

skyline. Exactly, all of that. And then Ivanka came up. And then she basically reinvented Donald Trump as a proto-feminist. He was like Betty Friedan all of a sudden. So then Donald comes out and I would say about 13 seconds into his speech, there was a minor adjustment. I don't know if you noticed this, but he said, we did this. He went through. Somebody did like a fine replace. I'm his text of the speech and took out all the eyes and then put in wheeze in the first and he seemed so uncomfortable with this pronoun and he used the word generous well you noticed that and i actually have the direct i was scribbling this down david he said we must be a country of generosity and warmth but you must also be a country of law and order and you know what he said generosity and warmth, he got crickets from the audience. No one was into generosity and warmth. And then Law and Order, people roared. And that kind of set the tone for what was to come. The late great Molly Ivans has this unbelievably brilliant quote about a similar speech at a Republican

convention given by Patrick Buchanan. You know this quote? No. It said the speech must have sounded great in the original German. And I mean, it was like this was a speech that would make Laura Ingram stand up and salute. And yet, Andy, this was supposed to be a week in which the convention was going to be a transformed event. It was going to have show business glamour. Did you think they delivered on that? Well, that really depends on whether or not you were a fan of the TV series Joni loves Chachi. Are you familiar with the Eurovision song contest? I sort of felt, I sort of felt like that was the level. It was a series of people who you didn't really know who they were. A lot of them were former soap opera stars. Or, you know, interestingly, underwear models very well represented,

not just Melania, but also this guy, Antonio Sabato. He did see him. But I should say that underwear models are people too. So there might not have been many African Americans in the hall and Hispanics, but underwear models, you got them. And it was really, you know, it's interesting. That's an immigrant story that Trump really likes. He likes immigrants who come over here with nothing but the underwear on their ass, and who turned that into a great American success story. And I guess his view, you know, he's seen as being anti-immigrant, but I think his real view is immigrants are okay if they're hot.

I'm down with that. That's cool. Now, it was amazing that the Trump kids got up one after the other. What did you make of the Trump kids and did you have a favorite? Well, okay. Well, first of all, there were too many Trump kids. They could have lost it. few. We could have lost maybe Tiffany and Eric, sort of the marginal ones. Just get them out of the

picture. But I would say of the ones remaining, despite all the hype for Ivanka, my favorite by far was Donald Trump Jr. Why is that? Well, can you imagine growing up with the name Donald Trump and the pressure on him to be as odious as his dad someday. And I think he is coming along in that direction really well. He had one really bad moment. He was trying to establish his father's construction site cred. And at one point he said, you know, my dad was at the construction site pouring sheet rock and hanging concrete. And then he realized, oh, wait, that's not exactly what you do with those two things. And he got kind of flummox. But I think maybe on the campaign trail, he should stick to things he knows about like tanning. He really knows a lot about that. Just stick

with that kind of stuff. But we're leaving out the greatest moment of all, and it's the one I almost missed is the Ted Cruz moment. Well, you know, I think Ted Cruz, from my point of view, was the hero of the convention because it was late Wednesday night, and I was really getting sick of watching the whole thing.

And then Ted Cruz got boot off stage and completely restored the entertainment value of the RNC. I was right back in. It was must-see. I think Ted Cruz is really a remarkable guy, Because in the space of a few minutes, in a room filled with 10,000 Republicans, he's capable of turning the entire room against him. I mean, he almost has a superpower when it comes to making people hate him.

He really is amazing. What do you think Hillary Clinton will do in reaction to this spectacular in Cleveland? Well, what I would do, if I were Hillary Clinton, her entrance, I think, should be that she comes in in manacles. and she is actually locked up. And then she just grits her teeth and breaks free with her own sheer force of will and just proves sort of like Hulk, you know, and it just sort of proves that, you know, they can try to lock her up, but it ain't going to work because she's Hillary.

That's what I would do. Andy Borowitz writes the indispensable Borowitz report for the New Yorker. Still ahead this hour, the author of the best-selling memoir and business advice classic The Art of the Deal, And no, I don't mean Donald Trump. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Donald Trump's pitch for the idea of President Trump is that he doesn't have any politics exactly. No ideology or firm-set policy ideas. He makes deals. And he says he's going to get a better deal for America, whatever that means. When he announced his candidacy last year, one of the qualifications he listed was his best-selling book, The Art of the Deal.

Our country needs a truly great leader. We need a leader that wrote the Art of the Deal. Part memoir, part business advice book, and 100% flim flammery.

The Art of the Deal presented Trump as a kind of genius negotiator. Trump didn't actually write the book. It's not even 100% sure that he's even read it. But he does. go around claiming that he did write it, at least according to the co-author or ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz. Schwartz spent over a year with Trump starting in 1985, and until the publication last week in the New Yorker of a piece by Jane Mayer,

Schwartz had never talked about that process or the regrets he has about it now. So, Tony, you've got some amazing insights into Donald Trump from how. having written the art of the deal. Some are really quite revelatory. But you've kept your silence on this subject for almost 30 years. Why did you decide to speak up now? It didn't feel important to me to say anything about Trump during the period that he was simply a real estate developer. And indeed, we'd had a very good and successful experience together writing the book 30 years ago. But when he decided to run for president in the United States, it was something else altogether, and it made me feel that I needed to share what I knew with the public as widely as I could because I believed he was so ill-suited and dangerous as a potential president. You know, I guess, Tony, I should go back and get a little bit of the story about how you got into this project in the first place and how you came to observe him so closely.

Did you know Donald Trump back in the 80s? Or where did this, how did this all get going? I was a staff writer at New York Magazine in the 80s. And I was constantly on the lookout for interesting stories. Donald Trump was just emerging as a significant figure in New York, wasn't known much beyond New York. But he was associated most of all with building Trump Tower, which has been finished a reason. short time before I became aware of him. And I discovered, and I no longer remember how, that he was also the owner of a building on a Central Park South, 100 Central Park South, overlooking Central

Park, that in the way that many buildings were at the time, was filled with tenants who were under rent control or rent stabilization. So they paid very low rents. And Donald Trump wanted to convert that into a luxury condominium, and he hired a notorious company called Urban Relocation to help get the tenants out. And those companies typically would use a whole range of tactics. They would break the lights. They would let the elevator not run. They would sometimes put very unseemly people into apartments. And I wrote a story called the Cold War on 100th Central Park South, another kind of Donald Trump story, something like that. And it was really about this attempt that actually hadn't been very successful, but this attempt to move all those tenants

out of the building. That's how I met him. And the actual article that ran, the cover article that ran in New York Magazine pictured Trump as a, in an illustration as kind of a thug, sweating, you know, unshaven, just looking like a thug. And he loved it. What was it, do you think, in looking back, that made him like the piece? Well, I think it was one of the very first times, maybe even the first time that he'd been on the cover of a magazine, and he had and has an insatiable thirst for attention. So I think he loved that. I think the second thing is, and I had no way of anticipating this particularly,

but he loved the image of himself as a thug. He wants to be the tough guy, and this article made him into the tough guy. guy. So was, was it the end? Obviously not. What happened next? Well, about a year later, I got an assignment from Playboy magazine to do what's called the Playboy interview, which is a long and at that time, pretty prestigious interview. And what the wonderful thing about it was, you know, you could went on for thousands and thousands of words. So you could really get a picture of a human being if you did a reasonably good job interviewing. So I went to Trump Tower, knowing that he liked me you know, more or less based on the piece I'd written. And I started to ask him questions and

the answers he gave me were so brief and cryptic that I, after about the fifth or sixth question, I said, listen, this is just an interview in which the piece depends entirely on what you say. So if you don't say much, there isn't going to be an interview. I can't do this without you. And he said, yeah, yeah, I know, but I've just been signed up to do a book. Sy Newhouse, the owner of Random House at that time came to see me and personally signed me up to do a book. So I really don't want to give away what it is I'm going to put into the book. So what did you do? I was kind of surprised by that.

I was trying to think to myself, this guy's 38 years old. He hasn't done very much. So, you know, what kind of book is he going to write? So I asked him, you know, well, what's the book? And he said, well, it's my autobiography. And I said, well, you don't have an autobiography really yet. And he said, yeah, yeah, I know, but, you know, I got a good deal and I'm going to do it. And I said spontaneously and without any thought, you know, if I were you and you're going to write a book, I'd write a book called The Art of the Deal.

Because I think people really do believe this is a big era of deals, the 80s. And I think people really do believe that you have some, you know, knowledge, at least the people who are aware of you, some knowledge of expertise around deals. And did he have any reaction? He said, that's a really good idea. Do you want to write the book? Right on the spot? Right on the spot. That's, that is quintessential Trump. He's not going to spend a long time reflecting on that or anything else. So that was his spontaneous response. So was that a hard decision for you to make at the time, whether to say yes? You know, it was absolutely a hard decision to make. Um, and, it's pretty obvious what the what the two sides were on one side if I did it there was an opportunity to

potentially make a lot more money than I had ever made and it was at a time when my second child was just about to be born I was living in an apartment in New York with a mortgage that my wife and I couldn't afford and I was very worried about money so that was the lure the cost which was equally obvious to me was this is not a guy I particularly want to align with. I don't share his values. And it'll probably end up that I will get criticized by my peers in journalism and I'll feel worse about myself as a journalist and maybe even undermine my credibility once I finish. Well, so how did you come down with an answer on what to do? You know, I came to a fork in the road and I took it. I mean, it really was, it really was, in many ways, some of them unexpected,

a kind of life-changing decision to go ahead and do it. I did it for the money. I mean, there's no other way of putting it, Jane. I did it for the money. I didn't think it was particularly consequential one way or the other. This was just a modest size, very brassy real estate developer. And that was pretty much the net of why I decided to do it. Well, so how, you know, we've talked about this before. You expected that in a number of interviews over Saturday mornings in his apartment at Trump Tower, you would sort of get this information from him. But I gather it didn't go the way you expected. Is that right? Well, I knew that it was possible that he might not provide as much information as I needed, I didn't begin to imagine

how little that might turn out to be. So the very first day I went to see him on this agreed-upon Saturday morning slot where I would spend a couple hours with him. That was the intention. You know, again, I got three or four questions or ten questions into the interviewing process and I could see him getting restless and rolling his eyes and being distracted and being kind of petulant and, you know, shortening his answers. And, you know, in less than an hour, he had said to me, maybe even less than 30 minutes, he'd said, you know, boy, this is, this is, there's a lot of questions. I mean, you know, do we really have to talk about all this stuff?

And I said, yeah, yeah, we do. And we have to actually spend a lot of time doing this, you know, 300. pages, which is sort of the target for the book, is a lot of space to fill, and I can't make it up. Well, so what happened next? How did you, did you keep trying? And if he was not that forthcoming, why do you think that? And what does it show people about him? Well, it's not that he was private or, you know, purposely not telling me things, or at least I don't believe that's the case, it was that he just was bored and distracted. So what it's telling you is this is a person who even when it comes to talking about events from his life had a really hard time keeping his focus

on doing that. He wanted the next sensation, the next distraction, the next source of pleasure. And retelling the story of what happened when he was young didn't fit. that bill for him. So it was like pulling teeth week in and week out and very frustrating. So how did you manage? Because you did eventually produce what became a giant bestseller of a book. So what did you do? It dawned on me that the way I might be able to get this book done was to go to his office and listen in on his calls, assuming he would give me permission, because I knew he spent almost the entire day on the phone at work. And I also knew that what else would he be talking about on those calls, but his deals. So I proposed that to him the next week. And what it meant

was I would come in every day and I would sit down, you know, right around the time he got there. I mean, maybe a little bit after him. And I'd sit down on an extension. eight feet away from his desk or so, and I'd just listen with a notebook, and I'd take notes. And he was fine about my doing that because it didn't require any effort on his behalf. Now, when we've talked before, you said that the process of then reporting the book out

beyond these phone calls became complicated, though, right? I mean, because when you tried to check out sort of the details of the stories that he told you, not all of them checked out. What happened? And how did you handle that? Well, I had agreed with Donald, and he had set it up to make it possible for me that when I was listening to these calls and it would be about a deal if there was a banker involved or there was another broker involved or whatever, that I could go and interview that person to fill in details, which was actually going to be a critical way that I would be able to write the book. So I'd be writing the book in his voice,

but actually I'd have to create that voice from a blend of what he said, what other people said, whatever I could bring to it. And so I went and started doing those interviews. And frequently what would happen is I would walk through what I understood of the deal from Donald's perspective up to that point. And at some point, those people would smile or shrug or roll their eyes. and their description of how it happened would often be quite different than his. Well, a lot of people probably aggrandized themselves in their memoirs.

Does he do this on some kind of different level? Why is this such a concern? Well, because there were enough times where we were simply talking about facts where somebody could point me to a fact that directly contradicted something he had said, So in effect, there's no better way to put it, he was lying. And what I came to understand is that there wasn't really any distinction for him between the truth and falsehood. All there was was what story will serve me best?

What story will, in fact, most aggrandize me? And that's the one I'm going to tell. And so for him, lying was second nature. You know, there's a phrase when I was talking to you, You said more than any other that in a way you regret from the book, which was a phrase where you have Donald Trump in his voice saying that what he likes to use is something he calls truthful hyperbole. Why is that such a problem for someone running for president? No, that's a problem for anybody. Truthful hyperbole is a phrase that I came up with.

as a way of trying to reconcile the fact that he wanted to say things in a certain way, and in some cases I knew they weren't true. And the word truthful hyperbole were a way to kind of bridge that gap. And the reason it's not okay is because it is simply another way of saying, I'll say what I want to say because it serves me, but it isn't necessarily true. It's putting a fine gloss on it. It's rationalizing it.

It's making it seem kind of almost funny and harmless. The book opens with a kind of a lot of verve. And you have Donald Trump saying, I don't do it for the money. I've got enough much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully

on canvas or write wonderful poetry, I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks. So when you look back on that, is it really true that money is not a factor for him? Well, first of all, I completely made it up. He didn't say any of those things to me. I mean, I was very much in his head and knew his voice. So I think it gives a very accurate feel for the way he speaks. But in terms of the substance of it, this is a perfect example of putting lipstick on the pig. I mean, a pig is greedy and avaricious. And I have them start out by saying, I don't do it for the money, which is an awful lot more appealing than saying I only do it for the money. But the reality is Donald Trump

did everything for the money. I mean, no one in public life that I can remember in my lifetime has been more preoccupied with telling you how rich he is. So money was an enormously compelling piece of his motivation. And the notion that he had enough was not something he actually felt. But I knew that to say that made him more charming and kind of appealing. So this was me, you know, doing something that's hardly not been done by others before, including other ghost writers, but it's trying to put the person's best possible face forward. And that's what I was hired to do. And that's what I did. Tony, how do you feel about the book looking back? Do you feel that did it do anything for his future prospect? Well, it's hard to remember now given, you know,

how incredibly well-known he is. But in 1987, when that book came out, people had no idea who Donald Trump was. It had a huge impact on his visibility. I think it even had a huge impact on his self-concept. You know, he believes, I think, in his mind that he wrote The Art of the Deal. And I did create a character in that book

that was not, not nearly as brutal a character as he actually is. And I definitely believe that it had an impact. And in honesty, I feel as if in many ways I've spent significant portions of my life trying to do penance for having written that book. Well, you know, I'm sure, Tony, some people will say, oh, you're only speaking out now because you have some kind of political differences with him and that this is all just kind of contrived. But one of the things that I found

interesting was that you kept a personal journal and that even back in 1986 you had these insights about him. And so I was thinking maybe it would be interesting for people to hear what it was that you wrote about what you saw of him and really thought of him privately for a minute from your journal. Sure. So here's an entry from October 21st, 1986, which would have been maybe 50% of the way into the writing of the book. I'd been reporting it starting in January of 1986.

So I'm about nine months in, and I've got another six months left to go. And I'm sort of thinking about my life, and I say, for example, while I'm fascinated by Trump, and while it's been an interesting experience, The last thing you could call it is nourishing or enriching. It's in fact precisely the opposite. It's draining.

It's deadening. It's one-dimensionalizing. It pulls me away from all that is best in life, complexity and subtlety and caring and nurturing, because all Trump is is stomp, stomp, stomp, recognition from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in particular, that are a black hole.

That's one. So when you're up close watching him, what was it you saw that has unnerved you? Because you've written about how it became more disturbing as you kept going. And what is it that's unnerving you now that's made you want to speak out? Well, let me be absolutely most blunt about it. What was most disturbing to me is that we live in a fragile world with nuclear weapons. and he would have access to the codes for those nuclear weapons. And the Trump I know, trying to prove his value and his worth and his coolness and his toughness

in a confrontation with some other world leader who also has access to nuclear weapons, the image I have is that he'd just get pissed off and want to show how tough he was and the world would get obliterated. And I know that's a huge thing to say. And I know that it sounds potentially overblown. But, you know, it's one button you have to push. And the evidence is that nobody can stand in the way of a president who makes that decision. And I profoundly don't trust Donald Trump's judgment or character or patient.

or patience or reflective ability, any of it, to make me feel safe that he won't do that. I know that for many years, you and Donald Trump didn't have much of a relationship, maybe a cordial phone call here or there, but when I called him up to talk to him, to interview him, and ask him how he felt about you, First, he said that you were a very good co-author, but when I explained then that you were not going to be voting for him likely and had some critical things to say about him, his mood changed.

And soon after, as I understand it, your phone rang. Can you say what happened? Yeah. So I assume it was moments after you hung up with him, Jane. And the phone rang in my car and it said, unknown, I, and I often don't even pick those up, but I, you know, I was in the middle of engaging around this story and I thought, who knows who could be calling. So I picked up the phone and the voice on the other side said, Tony, Donald Trump. So I hear you're not going to vote for me. And then he said, well, I just got off the phone with the New Yorker and I heard you said a lot of critical things about me. And I said, well, I did say a lot of critical things about you. You're running for president of the United States. And I disagree with almost everything that you're

saying. And he said, well, fine, but then you should have remained silent. You're totally disloyal. And it went on like that, Jane, for about another five minutes, which were 95% monologue and 5% conversation. And it ended when he said, have a good life and slam the phone down. Tony Schwartz was a journalist and is now CEO of the Energy Project, a business consulting firm. Jane Mayer's a staff writer, The New Yorker. This past Monday, the day Jane's article about the art of the deal came out, Tony Schwartz received a cease and desist letter from Trump's general counsel. Schwartz has said he will neither cease nor desist.

You can read the full article at new yorkerradio.org. Next week, our coverage of the conventions continues, and I'll be talking with New Yorker staff writer Jolani Cobb about how the Democratic Party is talking about race and police violence. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm here with my friend and colleague Gary Steingard, whose last book was his memoir, Little Failure, which of course he isn't.

But, oh, thank you. And we always have friends and colleagues come by and recommend things that they're reading, looking at, feeling, seeing. So I thought I'd do the same with you, Gary. Are you reading anything lately, or are you seeing anything lately that you want to urge on our listeners?

Yeah. So starting July 22nd, on Netflix. My favorite show of the last couple of years is coming back. It's called BoJack Horseman. What is it? It's a cartoon. It's an animated show about a washed-up middle-aged talking horse.

So it's Mr. Ed for grown-ups. Yes, it's Mr. Ed for Grunnam. It's Mr. Ed for Our Times, I would say. The casting is hilarious. Amy Sedaris is the horse's agent, who's this cat. Lisa Kudrow is this talking owl that the horse falls in love. with, you couldn't ask for anything better. But it does this thing that is very strange.

So, you know, when I write tragic comic fiction, so-called, it's joke, joke, joke, sigh, joke, joke, that's the pattern. That's the pattern, usually. But this is just joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, and yet at the end, it ends up being the saddest thing you've ever seen. I actually have finished season two feeling absolutely bereft for my own prospects as well as for this horse's prospect. So while the rest of the world is watching Orange is the New Black, you're watching.

that. Yeah, and I think there's a growing movement of BoJackians who really are into it. So what else is on your list? As I enter middle age, just like this horse, I become obsessed with watches. Watches. Yeah. So I began to read obsessively a watch site called HODinky.com, H-O-I-D-I-N-K-E. H-D-I-N-K-E. H-D-I-N-K-E. H-D-N-K-E-E-E-E-H-D-N-E-E-N-C-E. And it's really the sort of most nitty-gritty-gritty, nerdiest website on watches I've ever seen, and it's actually brilliant. You know, I look at it before I look at the actual news. This is what's so scary. What do you got on here? This is a watch that Haudenki is champion quite a bit. This is a nomos, and nomos is a new watch company made in Glashute in Saxony, and it's a kind of a challenge to the sort of ornate Swiss watchmaking. Look at it. It's

just, first of all, it's very feminine. Look how curved the lugs are. Oh, yeah. The lugs. I didn't even know the term. The term of art. The lugs are very curved. Look at the accent on the dial. It's a pure Bauhaus design. And people like myself who read Haudinkie before we read The New York Times, etc., every morning are known in the argument of the people who use the site as whisses, watch idiot savans. And I look at these watches, and all of a sudden I feel safe about this very unsafe world. And then I tune in and Trump destroys that little break. Yeah. So, Gary, are you listening to anything these days? Well, I've gone back, and this is partly because the movie straight out of Compton came out last year.

But I've gone back to my friend Ice Cube. And, you know, when I went to the... Oldies. All these with goodies. When I went to the Oberlin Institute for Special People in the 90s, early 90s, that's all we listened to was Ice Cube. So the way this ties in, I don't know if you remember, but several years ago I wrote for this magazine about my inability to drive.

Since then, my inability to drive has continued, but I've bought a car. Baby steps. Baby steps. But the car is so safe that it actually drives itself almost. So I put on the Ice Cube, and the Ice Cube motivates me to actually step on the accelerator

and get out of the driveway. So I listen to these lyrics and each lyric needs its own trigger warning. There's no question. They don't make lyrics like this anymore, right? I mean, no, I can't even do it. Give it a shot. It's public radio.

With no vassal, no. Giving up the... No, see, every... I'm trying to do it, but every word is so frightening. It really, you know, the Volvo was my safe space, but that's where I put on the stuff

that needs the trigger warnings. And this was big at Oberlin? Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Ice Cube was huge. Huge. NWA, the whole the whole neshbocha, if you will.

Gary, thanks a lot. Thanks so much. Great to see you and great to be back. Novelist Gary Steingart recommending the animated show BoJack Horseman, the wristwatch nerd website Hodinky.com, good luck spelling that, and the music

of Ice Cube. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. A few weeks ago, we rent a poem in the magazine by Max Ritfo. He's a young guy, just 25, and this is his first poem in the magazine. It's a very tough piece. The poem is about an experimental treatment that Max is undergoing involving mice. Ritfo was diagnosed when he was just a teenager with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare, and for Ritfo an incurable cancer. In the poem, he addresses the mice being used for the experiment.

It's called poem to my litter. Hey, hi. How are you? He talked about the poem with Mary Harris, the host of WNYC's podcast, Only Human. I've been thinking of this interview as kind of a celebration because the last time we talked, you were shopping your manuscript. And now... It happened. It happened. And you have a poem in The New Yorker.

And you told me Tom Waits is going to blurb your book. I can read you the Tom Waits blurb. It's really good. You wrote a poem. Let me get it. Tom Waits was the first musician that I... listen to cover to cover, and it really deeply influenced my poetry. So I would write these like poems like about hobos and stuff that were just really cringe-worthy, but also just this

idea of like having really theatrical cinematic voices in my poems and, you know, a series of plot points happening in my poems. That's stuff that I got from Tom Waits and it never really left the DNA of my writing. So this is Tom Waits. A Max Ridville poem is. A map. I won't do the whole thing in his voice. A map drawn by hand to show where the body is buried. A card trick with words.

Don't show me how you did it. Like reading the last sentence in a book first. Dragging words across the page like a bow across a string. A piece of candy covered with ants. It's my favorite one. Like Silverfish ate the words off a page and left you a riddle all of the above. Oh, I love it. He wrote you a poem for your book of poetry. Yeah, he wrote a poem to my poems.

So you guys just came out to New York? We did, yeah. Goodby tour. That's pretty dark. Yeah, I'm just trying not to think about that too much. So is it weird to travel now? It was hard. I brought an oxygen tank with me, and I loaded myself up on painkillers and stuff. And the airport was very difficult. But, you know, I'm home here and I love it here.

Do you write more now? Yeah. The poetry I'm writing less of this instant. Last January, I got some bad news that, like, if this immune therapy doesn't work, it's going to be terminal soon as, you know, what we heard. And I got really sort of catastrophically depressed and wrote some searingly, searingly beautiful poems, if I do say so myself. And I poem to my litter is, you know, of that era and some of the newer poems in the book.

That was this rare moment where my physical illness and my mental illness twinned into this little twin flame of despair. And it was very productive for my poetry. Why don't we have you read the poem for The New Yorker? And then we'll talk, because it's such a specific, it's very specific. Sure. I want to talk about the mice's, yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about the mice's too. Poem to my litter.

My genes are in mice and not in the banal way that man's old genes are in the beasts. My doctors split my tumors up and scattered them into the bones of 12 mice. We give the mice poisons I might in the future want for myself. We watch each mouse like a crystal ball. I wish it was perfect, but sometimes the death we see doesn't happen when we try it again in my body. My tumors are old, older than mice can be. They first grew in my flank a decade ago. Then they went to my lungs and down my femurs and into the hives in my throat that hatch white cells.

The mice only have a tumor each in the leg. their tumors have never grown up uprooted and moved learned to sleep in any bed the vast body turns down before the tumors can spread they bust open the legs of the mice who bleed to death

next time the doctors plan to cut off the legs in the nick of time so the tumors will spread but I still have both my legs to complicate things further mouse bodies fight off my tumor We have to give the mice aids, so they'll harbor my jeans.

I want my mice to be just like me. I don't have any children. I named them all Max. First they were Max I, Max One, Max 2, but now they're all just Max. No playing favorites. They don't know they're named, of course. They're like children you've traumatized and tortured, so they won't let you visit. I hope.

Maxes Some good in you is of me Even my suffering is good In part Sure, I swell with rage Fear The stuff that makes you see your tail As a bar on the cage

But then the feelings pass And since I do Absolutely Nothing My pride Like my pride like my fur all gone

nothing happens to me and if a whole lot of nothing happens to you Max's has peace which is what we want trust me that was beautiful

thank you thank you did therapies work in the mouse that didn't work in you yeah I mean variously There was a drug that was over a year away from clinical trials. So this is a drug that has never been tried in humans. It has never been tried in humans, and it's side effect-free in the animal models,

and it offers remission if it works. Are you still taking it? The drug? Yeah, I am. I am. Can you tell me what your day-to-day life is like right now? So the scans came back. They were pretty bad. like we're staying on this drug but um they were bad and my health conditions deteriorated um I have tumors in my pelvis and I have tumors in my femurs and I'm I'm in pain um it's hard for me to breathe one of my lungs is basically clogged up with tumors so I you probably notice my

voice sounds a little less robust and you're coughing and I'm coughing yeah um and that's scary um it's very scary to have. I've been getting fevers, neoplastic fevers, fevers that they're called tumor fevers. It's just at a certain point a tumor gets so big it starts leaching off into your body. And it's exhausting to run a 102, 101 degree fever for two, three weeks in a row. And in L.A. I've just been with my family and been with Victoria, having friends come visit me. It's like I'm watching my death play out in the people that I love the most. It's like the opposite of survivors guilt. As awful of a time as I'm giving them by having to like hobble me around the house and watch me throw up and, you know, as horrible as that all is for them, it's going to be way worse when I'm not there

bothering them. And that I can't do anything about. And that, that really, that eats me up, you know. when we were planning this interview, you said the one thing that makes you uncomfortable that nobody really thinks about is how much we talk about the future when we talk. Yeah. So much of conversation is future-oriented. So much. People talking about they make these plans, you know, I want. Watch these people and they go, this time is going to be different. I got the whole next six months figured out.

I'm going to start running. I am going to adapt an even vegan or diet. And I am going to call my father, though we are estranged, I'm going to call my father once weekly and discuss with him things of his interest. This next six months are the next six months of my life. And when you hear that, what do you think? I think, sorry, I should wash my language. I think I envy that reset button that people seem to be able to press, you know, and I miss that.

And I feel like they're disrespecting the present, which is all I have. I'm a big partisan for the present now. The thing about your poems, they have so much life. You are, I'm so glad you're publishing this. Is it hard to read these poems? Yeah. I mean, the poem, um,

the poem is a safe space. It's a place for the imagination. And as you said, it's a place for life. Um, these poems, they have images that come from my imagination, which,

um, my interactions with my imagination are the closest things I've ever gotten to the wellspring of life itself. Like, the imagination is a very, um, sacred place for me. It's the place where I've made things,

where nothing was. And then I, felt these irresistible kind of sort of out of my control flashes of imagery and my mind made itself and it made something at the same time, you know? There was nothing in my mind and then an image ruptured out of it and got roped into language and my brain imprinted on it and it made my brain and then it also made this thing outside of me and that that's really cool. These poems are your babies. Yeah, they are.

I've never been upset when writing a poem. You can't be selfish or self-centered or self-pitying when you write a poem. You're serving something else. You're trying to make sure the poem gets into the world safely that it survives. Because some poems die during childbirth, you know. You can't successfully get all of them, but I can show you my way of thinking. You know, and what poetry teaches, philosophy is way better at communicating thoughts and truths. But poetry is great at showing how a mind works, the leaps and the associations and the way a bunch of different images will be clattering all around and suddenly braid together into a metaphor at the last minute.

And that I think I can give you. And if I can loan you the steps that my mind took, the little dance that my mind did, maybe your mind will do it at some point without me for thoughts that matter more to you. and that would make my life have meant a lot, you know? And if I die but my tricks keep on, all the little slates of hands that my mind does, that's what I want in the world is for people not to think what I think, but to think like me. And I hope that you read my poems and then you try to do that. Max Ridfo talking with WNYC's Mary Harris from the podcast Only Human. You can find poem to my litter at New Yorker Radio.org.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us. Next week we'll be talking about the Democratic presidential convention, and just think. After that, it's just three more months of presidential campaigning to go. I'm David Remnick. See you next time, and have a good week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards,

with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced by Emily Botein. Ava Careo, Riannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Owen Agnew, Alex Barron, Rob Byers, Becky Cooper, Rick Kwan, Eric Malinski, and Corey Shreple. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.