The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 7: The Mayor and the Mormon Church, and Roger Angell

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

High school students in Queens mount a fraught election simulation, Salt Lake City’s openly gay mayor-elect talks about the Mormon Church, and Roger Angell speaks to David Remnick about writing in his tenth decade. And Lena Dunham tries to make plans with Allison Williams in “Let’s Get Drinks” -- it shouldn’t be this hard, should it? 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.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Hey, girl. So great to see you at Mike's party on New Year's. Do you want to grab drinks? Yes, I'd love to. Tuesday? Tuesday's my friend Rachel's birthday. I'm the worst.

What about Wednesday? Wednesday works. Let's email next week about where to go. Yay! I am total garbage at scheduling and forgot we were supposed to meet up tonight. Could you do Monday? So sorry. I feel terrible.

OMG, do not feel terrible. If you're garbage, then I am like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill because Monday doesn't work. What about tomorrow? I am worse than the rollout of healthcare.gov. Tomorrow's no good. Hopefully I'll get my act together by next week. Hugs! Hey, yeah, we both totally dropped the ball on this.

We are like the subprime lending crisis of hanging out, right? You around on Wednesday? I want to go back to that tapas place. Shoot. Wednesday doesn't work. Dare I say Friday? Friday's no good. I am literally Operation Rolling Thunder.

mixed with the NFL's policy on domestic violence. But what's you going to do, right? Monday? Lunch? Lunch it is. So excited about our lunch date. 1230? This is basically just a joke at this point,

but I have this dumb meeting about records retention that got pushed back to one. You don't have to tell me that I'm mercury poisoning hooking up with the crusades in the bathroom at Transfats wedding to voter suppression because I know. Sorry. Don't worry about it, dude. How's tonight?

Can't tonight, tomorrow. Oh, no. Sorry to be Aaron Sorkin eating toothpaste right for. from the tube, but my writing group meets tomorrow. Then Wednesday I have a thing. It's too hard to explain. And on Friday, I have dinner with some work people. You're going to think that I'm the Salem witch trials giving Osama bin Laden a massage at a spa run by the California drought.

But I'm also pretty busy next week. How about the ninth, though? The ninth works great. Yay. Yay! So dumb. They're so dumb. They're so smart.

Do you need us to do one more time to see you have it? I'm Lena Dunham. I'm Allison Williams. And you're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Why are we both doing this? I don't know. I also almost said I'm Lena Donovan. We should mix it up.

I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining us again at the New Yorker Radio Hour. That was Lena Dunham and Allison Williams from HBO's show Girls. They were performing a piece by Kelly Stout. Let's Get Drinks. Now, our next story is about young people, but even younger, high school kids, to be exact. Josh Rothman, who's an editor at The New Yorker, spent a lot of time this fall at a public high school where every year the senior class gets involved in reenacting elections. One year it can be a city council seat or a judge.

This year it's the whole shebang. This year, they're doing the presidential race, Donald Trump and all. If any of you don't know, I'm Donald Trump. But, I mean, everyone here should know that by now, if they've even watched the news. I mean, the media loves me, guys. I'm all over it all day, every day, right? If you're wondering who you're listening to, His name is Matthew McCandrew, and he's a senior at Townsend Harris High School.

He's been given the most coveted assignment of the fall, being Donald Trump. Luckily, with so many candidates running for president right now, there are a lot of starring roles to go around. Max Lachoma, I'm playing Jeb Bush. Hi, my name is Yasmin Ali. I'm a senior at Townsend Harris, and in the election simulation simulation, I'm playing Hillary Clinton. Hello, my name is Jacob Hunter, and I played Bernie Sanders in the election simulation game. Do you like Ben Carson in real life? No, not at all. So why did you want to be able to?

What drew you did? He's a neurosurgeon, and I thought this might be the closest I ever gets to being a doctor. I visited Townsend Harris for their big kickoff rally, which the whole senior class comes together in a courtyard outside the school. Everyone gives big exciting speeches. These are incredibly smart students. They're some of the smartest kids you'll ever meet. And the whole senior class participates. So there are pollsters.

There are newspaper reporters. There are even super PACs and fundraisers. And money is a really big part of the simulation. So when I met them, some of the students were just getting into their roles and others were totally naturals. To turn this country around, we need to stop being losers, guys. We're losing to China. We're losing to Mexico. Financially, in our education and on the border.

And something you should know about me, I refuse to lose. All right? Trump is not a loser. Ten seconds. Don't rush me. We need to turn this country around before it's too late, and I'm your man, okay? We are going to make America great again. Thank you.

You are listening to Hawk Radio 201.6. Just like in the real presidential election, the kids make the rounds on political talk shows. Hello, welcome to Morning Hawk. I'm your host Danielle, and I'm Jacqueline. It's time for the Townsend Minute. Last Friday, students gathered to attend the presidential primary election simulation kickoff rally, where candidates and special interest groups were able to discuss their goals for the future of America.

At the kickoff rally, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton were very confident with their speeches and seemed to win over the crowd. I'm Hillary Clinton, and I'm Hillary Clinton. Hey, everybody, I'm Jeb Bush. America's in a big problem right now. Donald Trump brought a comedic approach with his statement, don't rush me. Ten seconds. Don't rush me. Carly Fiorina seemed distant, and although Bernie Sanders started off roughly, he managed

to regain composure. our future children and grandchildren to live the life that they should by allowing universal health care. And that's your Townsend Minute. We have Jeb Bush in the studio today. Remember, this is a call-in show, so please call us at 5113 with questions or comments. Hello, Jeb Bush. How are you? I'm good, Jacqueline. How are you? Good. So, Jeb, Hillary Clinton is currently in the lead of the Democratic race. Why do you believe you deserve the presidency over her and what makes you as a candidate the right fit for the presidency of America. Okay, caller, please hold. I think Hillary Clinton is a criminal and a liar. She can't be trusted. There's too many blurry things about her, like the

Benghazi scandal and the email scandal. And we don't need a president who can't be trusted. And for me, I've proven myself. I've fixed the economy in Florida. I grew it by 4% for eight years and created millions of jobs, and I'm fit for president. So I've proven myself. Thank you for visiting us at Morning Hawk, Jeb Bush. You know what time it is? The campaign's also run political ads and they take a lot of creative liberty. C to the A to the RLY. Vote Carly Farina. I'll tell you why.

She's not going to fail our nation with any more problems. Unlike her opponents, she can actually solve them. Education makes you want to walk out of the door no more. She's off the common court. She supports small bids in the dream. I'm not even scared of Vladimir Putin. Doesn't Trump, Carson, Bush, and even Ted Cruz. Because unlike them, she is never, ever going to lose.

If you want to live in a greater USA, then, So I should point out that Townsend Harris is a pretty unique public high school. It's incredibly elite, it's incredibly competitive, kids from around New York City apply to get in. On the whole, it's pretty liberal, but there are definitely some conservative kids. So you're Jeb. Yes. Hey, I'm Josh. Hi. Nice to meet you. Do you like Jeb Bush? I do. I'm one of the only conservative people in this school, and I agree with his views. I agree with a lot of the conservative candidates' views,

so it will be pretty easy for me to portray that. Is there any possibility that it would actually be better to be unsympathetic to your candidate's point of view? I don't necessarily agree with his immigration policy. He's a little more moderate with his immigration. I'm more towards Trump on immigration policy in real life. So that's, I think, the most drastic thing that I'll have to per se lie about. Okay, now Townsend Harris is in Queens,

which is the most diverse borough in New York City. and more than half of the students are from immigrant families. So that means that the real Donald Trump's message about immigration is not one that's going to go over very well with the student body. And unfortunately for the fake Donald Trump, he's just stuck with it. He has to mirror the candidate that he's been assigned. I agree that there are some good Mexicans, but right now the ones that are coming into this country

are bringing with them their crime, their drug use, and it's really just not helping our country get better. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Now let's take a quick commercial break. These kids really learn the facts about their candidates. In some ways, they're more informed than the average voter, but they also have to confront the pervasive BS of our political system. The media love to ask gotcha questions,

and the candidates get really good at dodging them. Hillary in particular is a master of the art of the pivot. Your husband is former president of Bill Clinton. Do you feel that you're running in his shadow, and if elected, how would you run things differently? Well, I don't like to compare my campaign to my husbands, because I am running a separate campaign. This is the Hillary Clinton campaign, not the Bill Clinton campaign.

And I don't believe you can truly compare our economic policies because his policy was enforced during a completely different financial situation. But my plan does call for more investment in infrastructure, scientific research, a greater tax relief for the middle class, and a system that can create affordable education. So it seems like the major challenge that you guys have to overcome is like boredom with Hillary, like familiarity. It's not like Donald Trump.

Like everyone wants to interview Donald Trump. But you guys don't have that, right? I think. Yeah, I think, I don't think Hillary is looked at as an entertaining candidate. But I believe that if we inform ourselves to the best of our abilities, that a candidate for presidency should be knowledgeable and not necessarily an entertainer. Just like in real life, the media and the candidates have partly an adversarial relationship. where, you know, hard-hitting reporters are asking tough questions.

But also, just like in real life, they also work together to make politics as entertaining as possible. Jack, it's time for the Goldenhawks. All results were taken from either the newspaper or information gathered from social media. I'm sorry, caller, we're not taking any of calls. So the best Facebook page goes to Donald Trump. He had the most posts and lights. And the worst candidate in the polls is John Kasich with only 30. 3% of freshman support and 0% from sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Mr. Kasich, would you like to respond? I don't know. Vote for me on Election Day. Okay. That's all I have to say. Obviously, we're listening to high school kids. But at the same time, the longer that I spent at the election simulation, the more I started to wonder, how different is real politics from high school fundamentally? And the best TV commercial is Bush, Rubio, and Cruz with their popular ad,

the Trump. Okay, I mean, it's not exactly like high school, but I have to say it would be pretty amazing if the real Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio got together to make one anti-Donald Trump attack at. So it's all pretty fun, but it's also pretty serious because there are real issues that are really at stake, and real feelings really do come into play. And that all came to a head during the debate when those feelings really blew up. You said climate change was real. And then when you started running for Senator for Florida,

you said that it didn't exist because can you explain your public Clinton here? It's a little hard to understand, but what just happened was, Jeb Bush challenged Marco Rubio's statements about climate change by saying, you flip-flop. just like Hillary Clinton. At this point, Hillary, who's been waiting in the wings, strides on stage, and she is pissed. Naturally, she defends herself. Then Donald Trump crosses a line.

He accuses Hillary of PMSing, and the crowd goes absolutely nuts. You've insulted every woman in this room, she says. 70% of the students in this school are women. When you're in the debate and you're being Donald Trump and you're saying crazy Donald Trump stuff, Like, do you have to, I don't know, did that give you any insight into the real Donald? There's definitely like a line to be drawn

when you're talking in the school, but, I mean, I don't think he sees that even when it's like national TV. But, I mean, it was definitely like a different experience where you can really just say whatever's on your mind and, like, not really have any punishment for it, even though there was almost, like, consequences in the school after that. No way, really.

Yeah, there was talks of kicking us out of the campaign like just eliminating our campaign in general after that because they felt it was not something that should be said in the school, but the government teachers argued that it was, we were staying accurate with our candidates, so they decide to let us keep running. In general, do you think that your experience here and the dynamics between Hillary and the Republicans here

are representative of what's happening in the real world? I think so because I think our both debates were very, like, were basically a mirror image of what happened in the actual debate. The Republicans were very off topic. The Democrats were very common on topic. But what Hillary does most of the time is she doesn't really attack her fellow Democrats. She more so attacks the Republican candidates. And especially Donald Trump, I know she has her and Donald go back and forth all the time.

So I think, I'm pretty sure this does go on in real life. Harris, welcome to Morning Hawk. Don't forget to vote next Monday during lunch bands 4, 5, 6, and 7. You'll need to know your Townsendharris.org login information, and voting will hopefully be available before and after school as well. Good morning, Townsend Harris. Here are the results of the election simulation primary election. In the Republican Party, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, thank you everybody for coming out to vote, and thank you for a wonderful election simulation. And here are the morning announcements. Looking back on the whole simulation, I have to say, I'm of two minds.

On the one hand, it made me really optimistic about the future. I was so impressed by these students. I thought they were amazing. And not only did they learn a lot about politics, but they really care about the issues. And I hope a lot of them are in charge someday. On the other hand, the political system that they so effectively emulated is totally messed up. That's one of the things that it captured. So, if I had to sum it up, I'd say, I wish the system they were simulating was a little more admirable and a little less like high school.

Chilling on the first floor, strolling around, wondering what all the fuss of floating was about. She was giving big styles and laughing like hyenas and all of us aren't heard by Carly Farina. Ooh, she's too real. Down with the dream hack and the cancer randio. Now that I know her, I haven't been left to say, except now I know what I'm going to do Monday. I'm voting Carly on election day. She'll really make her country great. Equality for women and men and power to the state will be given again.

Her crew was ill. Her intelligence have no chill. So on election day, don't forget, Carly Fearina is your best bet. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to look at Carly Fiorina the same way again. That was Josh Rothman with students from Townsend Harris High School in New York. I'm David Remnick. Still to come on the New Yorker Radio Hour, a conversation with the new mayor of Salt Lake City who's gay about how she, he's dealing with the Mormon church.

And I'll talk in a minute with the great Roger Angel who's been writing for the New Yorker for, it's amazing, 70 years and still going strong. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Roger Angel first wrote for the New Yorker in 1944. And in the 70 years since, he's published just about everything imaginable. He's been fiction editor.

He's written an annual Christmas poem. He sat in as a movie critic for Pauline Kale and reviewed John Luke Goddard's Breathless. Last year, his essay on aging and loss and love won the National Magazine Award. And that piece, this old man is the title piece in his new book. But chances are, if you know Roger Angel's work, you probably know him as the best baseball writer in the history of the game. And for this, he was inducted two summers ago at Cooperstown in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Let's hear a little bit of his speech at that induction. So this is a thrill for me as well as an honor.

The roster of spink honorees is stuffed with old heroes of mine like Redsmith and Tom Meaney and with baseball writer friends who have also been models and heroes, folks like Jerome Holtzman and Peter Gammons and Bill Madden, who were so quick to put me at my ease in the clubhouse and to fill me in whenever I turned up again. My gratitude always goes back to baseball itself, which turned out to be so familiar and so startling,

so spacious and exacting, so easy-looking and so heartbreakingly difficult that have filled up my notebooks in seasons in a rush, a pastime indeed. That was an amazing day, Roger. I just wonder, you know, a year and a half later, looking back at what it meant to you. You've been writing about baseball for a long time since the early 60s. I was extremely anxious beforehand, and I was anxious about so many friends of mine

who were coming up this enormous distance. I thought it was not going to be very good. And I actually was using a little Maylocks near the end, and I lost some weight. But the middle I got there, it was just terrific. But you had to invent a voice for this. You had to figure out a way of covering baseball. God knows that baseball, especially when you began, was the focus for sports writers. In fact, in the 50s, the most the prestige sports.

The best sports guys were in baseball. Yeah, in baseball. Yeah. I approached it with sheer terror. I didn't know what I was doing. I was a baseball fan. I'd been a writer, but I'd not written about baseball, only a little bit. And I was very self-conscious talking to the players, really quite scared.

Why is that? Well, I felt that they would know more than I did. What's this guy doing here? I was shy and a little bit nervous. So what I did was to sit in the stands at first because I felt I didn't realize that nobody was writing about the fans. And I was a fan, and I could sit in the stands

and be a fan and also be a writer. Is the press box a bad place to cover things from? No, I don't think so. But once you get used to it, but I wasn't at ease in the press box yet. One of the things that always amaze me about your baseball writing is that you have a tone of a happy man, of someone who's going at this at his leisure, and that all the difficulty of writing, which we know to be the case, is somehow way out of the frame, that there is this voice of someone just in love with what he's watching. That's hard to achieve. Well, it developed over the years.

I mean, I didn't really plan it in advance. It was just some kind of me. What was the kind of sports writing that you couldn't stand? What were you trying to avoid? Actually, when I started, Sean said... William Shaw and the editor of the magazine for decades. My editor said, why don't you get on the spring training and take a look? And he said, we don't want to be sentimental and we don't want to be a tough guy.

You know, the two things to avoid. Did Sean know anything about baseball? Nothing. Nothing. My first piece, he came into my office, carrying the galleys, my first piece from that spring training. And he pointed to a place on the page, and he said, what's this? And I looked and I said, that's a double play, Bill. And he said, what's a double play?

And I explained it to him and his cheeks glowed with excitement. There was something new. Did you find it harder to talk with players as time went by, as you got a little older, did you gravitate more toward coaches and managers than players? Once they call you, Syria, you're in big trouble. I gravitated toward good talkers, as I've said before. But did they thin out, was what I mean. Did the good talkers become less and less numerous?

Yes, I think so. When I got over 80, it was impossible for me to talk to players, really, because they would say, sir. And also, as you've said, the habit of talking openly as a person, not as a very well-pillar. paid celebrity, semi-celebrity, ballplayer is pretty well gone. It's because it's a big difference when the ballplayers are making about as much as a solid orthodontist and now they're making as much as an oligarch. Sure, sure. But you did pay attention as I did.

I would carry notes and write endlessly like long notes and keep my ears open and listen for something. I remember being outside the office of Jim Fry, the Kansas City manager, after his great star, George Brett had another extraordinary day at the plate. And I'm waiting to go in to see the manager. And there are two old coaches at their locker is just outside the door in their underwear and clogs talking. A couple of country guys. And one of them says to the other, everything that George hits goes through the infield like a stream of milk. And this country image, and I wrote it down.

I wrote it down. Wow, thank you. You wait days for things like that in the non-fills. fiction game. Roger, you practice nonfiction, as it were by night and fiction by day. For years and years, you were a fiction editor of the New Yorker to this day. You read short stories for us and in the fiction department. Tell us a little bit about what that life is. What does it mean to be a fiction editor? The image of an editor is somebody who is taking away the wonderfully original, perfect writing above a young, talented or brilliant writer. crushing their spirit forever. It isn't quite that way. Writing is very hard, as you know.

It's really hard to get it right for anybody. And if you're doing it all your life, and it's still hard to write a good sentence and a good paragraph sometimes. And the flood of fiction that we buy had a great variety. Some of the best fiction writers we had needed heavy, heavy editing.

Who, for example? Well, I came aboard in the 50s and John Cheever was still writing. and I saw of Cheeverproof, which had just all the way through, all the way down, every column there was heavy editing by an editor. He did not write finished copy. What he wrote was great, but it needed a lot of tailoring. That's an amazing thing to hear, that John Cheever, who reads in this incredibly crystalline way,

was edited unto a fairly well. Well, edited with him. I mean, we never edited without the writer being there. There was never anything added to a story or taken away without the writers being right. theory and agreeing to the process. And how did he react to the editing to know that each sentence was getting altered in some way? Well, I think Cheever hated the editing, but Thin knew that he needed it. His editor was a wonderful editor was my editor when I was writing fiction, Gus Lebrano, and they got along well.

But he wasn't a very good-tempered writer, let's say, and so I don't think he took too happily to it. but the process is really becomes a very intimate one, and the writer depends and counts on the editor, and they're doing this together. You're there either on the phone or by letter or somewhere side by side looking at the text, and you're going through it, and in fiction editing,

a very significant thing. The tone is right. Is this too cynical? Is it too sentimental? Is it too brisk? Is it too distant? The difficulty lies on the page, and between the two of you are trying to get this right and to tone something down, take something out. Did any writers refuse this process at all? Some are much more difficult than others, but as a writer myself, I relied on my editor, so I knew that I need editing like everybody else.

And I had very close relations with wonderful editors like Garda Botsford or Chip McGrath or now Anne Goldstein. Was this bread in the bone with you? I think some of our listeners will know that your mother was really had singular responsibility for introducing serious fiction to the New Yorker. Catherine White was the the person who brought real fiction to the New Yorker. And you must have grown up hearing about this process and knowing this process. My stepfather was E.B. White, who was E.B. White and writing for the magazine every week. and my mother and stepfather's house was full of galleys and pencils and racer rubbings and conversation about the magazine and about Harold Ross and about the writers of the day.

And sure, I paid close attention, but I wasn't planning to be a New Yorker editor or to be a New Yorker writer. What were you planning on? I was hoping to be maybe a boy naturalist, a herpetologist with my first day. But I did pay attention and they were doing the same thing. mother was editing Vladimir Nabokov and people like that. How did Nabokov take editing? I was with his usual haughty way. And the famous Nabokov editing was by the great New Yorker founding editor Harold

Russ, who loved clarity above all and was not classically or much educated, but loved clearness. And in the middle of some terrific Nabokov member, I think part of his speak, memory pieces, his wonderful memorial memories about his family. There's a line at the dinner table and somebody says, past the nutcracker. And one of Harold Ross's endless queries, he always had about 20 or 30 queries, about every piece of copy.

He said, from the evidence we've been given so far, I would have assumed that the book host were a more than one nutcracker family. So Roel I was looking through some letters that came to Harold Ross and Roald Dahl who wrote all those great children's books

but also a number of things for the New Yorker and memoir pieces for the New Yorker wrote a scathing letter to Ross complaining about the editing and the number of commas that had been injected into things and he says it's as if you would take

a great comma shaker and sprinkled commas throughout my copy Well that was our style yeah it's a lightened up a little Roger, what does age do for your writing? How does it affect things? How does it either deepen your work or make it more difficult? What's the effect of time on a writer's life? I'm not sure. I mean, I'm aware of my waning powers. I really am, but I can't, I'm not writing long pieces. I'm not going out there and write another 10 or 12,000 word baseball piece. I'm not sure. And that's a matter of what, getting up and down stadium steps? I'm doing the interviewing and doing the traveling and taking the time. A lot of hard work. And it's hard for me to get around.

It's hard for me to see. It's hard for me to hear a little bit. And I'm doing much. I'm very happy to fall back and do posts and blogs. Well, this is the amazing thing. You are in your mid-90s. I hope you don't mind me saying. I think you're perfectly aware of it.

And yet, sentence by sentence, you're as funny and as touching and as good a writer as you ever were. And you've taken to the Internet in a way a lot of people resisted. You took right to it. Well, I like the brevity of the blog. You can make it quite short. You can just go on as long as you want to go and then just stop. It's sort of like making a paper airplane. No, it's about – I used to love to make paper airplanes.

I made great paper airplanes. And you throw it out the window and it goes a little ways. It turns and occurs beautifully and then goes out of sight and it's forgotten forever. and that's like a blog. You like the immediacy of the Internet? Yeah. You're putting up a post and at 6 o'clock it's there and bang, you're getting a... Well, it's taking me until the middle of the afternoon sometimes.

Fair enough. But, no, I can sort of see the end when I'm starting, which is not bad. Tell me about this new book. You've put together an enormous range of things. You've got in here some obituaries that were published in the New Yorker online. you've got a couple of long sustained essays that we'll talk about, some baseball writing. Letters. The book is called This Old Man by Roger Angel, All in Pieces.

This Old Man, Roger Angel, all in pieces. Well, I'm a little tired of the joke on the title already. But tell me about the book itself. Well, I wrote the piece, This Old Man. I started the piece in 2013, I think, late in the year, and I think it handed it to you long about February, something like that. It came as a complete surprise to me. You just plopped it on my desk, done.

I wrote it in different pieces, because I didn't quite know what I was doing, and it was about physical debility, and it starts up with the description of my arthritic hands. Which you say the tips of your fingers look like they've been the subject of torture by the KGB. Point my forefinger at you like a pistol and fire at an end for your nose. I hit you in the knee. But I described some of the everyday debilities of age. And I didn't quite know what I was doing, but I knew that loss was at the middle of this.

I'd lost my wife. We've been married for 48 years. And I'd lost a daughter and a beloved dog of Carol's in mine. went out the fifth floor window in the middle of a room in panic, jumped out the window on the fifth floor and was killed. Loss is for people my age are common. Ed Hirsch, the wonderful poet, lost his son, and wrote a great book about it last year.

And he says that anybody over the age of 65 has a 100-pound bag of cement of loss on his shoulders. And he writes about writing about the loss of his son and says, he says, you can't make a story out of it. You can't do that with a life. So I didn't know how to touch on these subjects. I didn't know if I wanted to even.

And I did so actually through the loss of the dog. I'd written a piece about losing my wife, losing Carol called Over the Wall, which sort of began this process. And I waited six months. And just after the first Obama election, she died in April. And I said she didn't know this news.

And she didn't know about the hurricane that fall and nothing she didn't know and I said the dead don't know what's happening and the dead leave quickly and I quoted to Kenneth Koch poem say Les Maud

vaude that go quickly and there's a line in that which says no more scenes in the bedroom no more waiting in the hall waiting to stay hello with mixed feelings perfect line I described the

death of Harry, this dog, and then threw in that Carol and I we couldn't get over weeping for him, and he lay in our bathroom between us on the floor, and we threw Kleenex back and forth, and I said we were also weeping for my daughter Callie, who'd committed a suicide a couple years earlier, and events that knew we couldn't just get our minds around in any way, but it was for both. But I don't want to dwell on this, I don't want to make much of this because everybody's experienced loss. And there are many changes of moods through this piece. I patched the thing together.

And some of the sadder are little paragraphs that are hard to take are often followed by a joke or a lighter moment. There's some actual jokes in there. And it's okay because I like to take jokes. I count on jokes myself. I'm known to tell jokes. And there's also the opposite of loss. There's new love.

Yes. And this was happening. I was finding someone new in my life, my present wife, Peggy, and this was going on. And desire. I wanted to say that. And time was going by, and I was still engaged in life. And I said that old people are like everyone else. We need connection.

We need love. We need intimate love. And a hand on the shoulder. I mean, there's sex. I mean, the peace ends with, in a sense, life against all other things. Against all odds. Against all odds. Yes.

But I wanted to say what was happening with me, which happens with other old people. Old people fall in love. All people have love life, have intimate connections, have sex lives, and people don't like to admit this. Mostly their children. Because they're somehow revolted by it. But I think people are getting over this because it's now known. I mean, it's not something to be repelled by. It's something to be grateful for.

This brings up something else, which I've noticed with writers that I've dealt with. now and then if a writer lives long enough this didn't just happen much with American writers with the famous thing about American writers there are no second acts

in American lives for writers but writers that go on and on often go back as update it go back to the same

subjects again and again and again he went back to his mother to the sandstone field of farmhouse to his father to his teenage

courting gears and did the same story really again and again, but much better each time with increased feeling. Some of the very best stories he wrote for us were at the very end. And the same thing happened with another writer of mine that I edited over a period of 40 years, V.S. Pritchett, the great British writer. In his middle 80s, suddenly got this amazing hot street

writing some of the greatest stories of his life, full of life, full of sex, full of amor, and adventures and comedy and childhood things all rushing out of them. And I think that all of us do this at any age because we basically go over the same material in our minds again and again, the stories that really mean a lot to us. And it's not we're trying to get them right, but we're not trying to change the outcome,

but we're trying to keep them or to say, was this the way it was? And psychologists and experts on the suburb, to say that this is what the memory is. It isn't just a defensive thing to protect us from falling out of a tree when the tiger's passing by, but it is a trying out of a scenario again and again because it may be of use. That's what memory is. And this is why the same scenes recur.

After I wrote scenes, a lot of this personal stuff, I used to have dreams about or think about over. And once I put them down and got them published, I don't think about it. about them anymore. It's very strange. It goes away. When you go back and read your earlier stuff, do you recognize it? Does it feel like you? Not the very early stuff. No, it feels like Hemingway.

And can you relate it all to a decision like Philip Roth's to stop writing? Well, I haven't got there yet. I'm thinking of not blogging anymore because I don't think my blogs are quite up to what they were. I'll be the judge of that. I keep going.

Please keep going. I don't want to stop. I like to have it still going on a little bit. And in this way, once again, I think I'm extremely lucky. I'm 95 and still writing my goodness. I mean, I'm startled and very happy. I'm happy to be here with you, always, Roger. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you, David.

The great Roger Angel, L. Supremo. He's the author of many books on baseball and most recently, the collection of essays This Old Man. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. I'm David Remnick, and welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week on the show, we're going to bring you the story of a remarkable man named Dick Conant. In the town where he lived, he was homeless. But on the river, he was a modern-day adventurer, something out of a Mark Twain story.

And he took amazing journeys all over the country by canoe. August 20th, 1999. Some guy and his wife woke me up from a nap at Lewis and Clark State Park. He asked me if that was my rig in the river. I said the red canoe was mine. He asked me where I was going. I said the Gulf of Mexico. He asked me, eventually, why?

I told him I got tired of TV and automobiles, so I just took off and jumped in the river. He and his wife stared at me, blankly. Like Pat Schroeder used to say, some of you people just don't get it. That's next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour. It's not necessarily front-page news anymore when a gay man or woman, of course,

is elected to public office. Houston as a gay mayor in Seattle, Santa Fe, Chapel Hill. But Salt Lake City electing a gay woman for mayor caught a lot of people's attention, especially because just days after the election, the Mormon church announced a new policy that basically bars children of same-sex couples. until those children are grown.

The New Yorkers David Haglin has been following the story and just spoke with the mayor-elect Jackie Baskubsky. David, you were born in Salt Lake City and grew up in the Mormon Church. Did it surprise you to see a gay woman elected there? Not especially. Salt Lake City is far more liberal than people outside the region probably realize. It's basically to Utah, what Austin is to Texas. It's the state capital.

It's where the largest public university is. And if you live in the state or even in the region and you're a progressive person. Salt Lake City is probably where you want to be. And where's the church been on gay rights? Well, people probably remember Proposition 8, which the church was a huge force behind passing in California, which barred same-sex marriage there for a time.

And it is not welcoming, particularly, to gay people. It considers same-sex attraction not a sin, but it considers acting on same-sex attraction a sin. So I asked Vaskowski, who's not from Utah originally and didn't grow up Mormon, why she moved to the state in the first place and why she decided to stay? You know, I came here on a ski trip after I graduated from college, and I just never left. I fell in love with the mountains here, and then I started a small business that I had for several years. That led me to a job that enabled me to run for the legislature.

So I just kept staying and made it my home. And did you feel welcome from the start? So this was the 1990s, is that right, when you moved there? Or was it earlier? Yes. It was a really different time. I can remember when I first moved here that if we went to a club and it was a gay club, they made you sign this paper when you came in and put your driver's license number on it and cops would come in and look at the list. and it was really awkward time and uncomfortable and it was not popular to be out as a gay person, at least not here in Utah. And it pretty much wasn't across the country. If I'm not mistaken at the time,

and this is my experience in Utah, bars were technically not allowed in the city, is that right? So any place that served alcohol was actually a club, which is why you would put your name down when you got there. Right. So you had membership. club memberships, and it is why you put your name on these lists. But when the cops would come in and look at the list, that was a whole other story. It wasn't like we were embraced by law enforcement back then like we are today. And we've come a long way. We really have since I got elected. And then eventually, so you worked in business for a while before running for office. Now, when you were elected to your first

public office in 1998. As I understand it, you were Utah's first openly gay state legislator, is that right? Yes, that's correct. From what I've read, during that election, you did face a fair amount of opposition specifically because you're gay. Was that surprising for you, or at that point, were you ready for what you were expecting that kind of opposition? You know, it wasn't a surprise because in 97 I had run for the Salt Lake City Council, and during that race, the Eagle Forum, and, during that race, the Eagle Forum, and another organization called the Alliance for Stronger Families surfaced. And we're working very hard against me then, and then came out in force in my 98 race. That race led to a two-thirds majority victory.

And I can remember the speaker calling me, there were people from the Eagle Forum asking the speaker to not seat me that I must be breaking the law, you know, since I was a gay person. And he called me and was very kind and said, you know, Jackie, you will be sworn in like everyone else. You will be treated with respect and dignity and don't fear what's going on around you and don't listen to what's going on around you. We'll work through this together. And he was great. Since Proposition 8, which the church worked very hard to pass in California, there had been steps taken toward greater. inclusiveness. There was a piece of legislation that people referred to as the Utah compromise, which brought people together to bar discrimination against gay people in Utah. This new policy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as it's known, was announced. I wonder it's maybe somewhat complicated for people who don't know the church well. I wonder if you could describe what that

policy is. So essentially, the policy prohibits children of gay couples from being baptized into the church. Right. And those children can then join the church at 18 if they so desire, but only if they've moved out of their parents' house and disavowed the practice of same-sex marriage. Yes. And the policy, I think, has been as hard for the members of the LDS Church as it has been for the LGBTQ families that live here. There is, without question, a feel to it that sends a message to the children in our community that we're not all equal. Yeah, there's a lot of people who have said that it seems unchristian.

You have a son yourself, and you've said in a statement that if he wanted to become Mormon, you would support that. And this policy would seem to make him unwelcome. Yes. And, you know, my son is also African American. And so there are life challenges anyway. And equality will never truly exist for any of us if it doesn't exist for all of us. And so we have a lot of work to do in the broader community here. And I am committed to doing that work.

There was some speculation that the timing of this policy, it actually was announced after the election. Do you think that was a coincidence? Did it have anything to do with the fact that you had apparently won? There's a lot of speculation, obviously, but I did receive a text message from the public affairs leader with the LDS Church denying that the two were related at all. So you feel like you can trust him and this is not a PR move that, in fact, it's a total coincidence. I have to go with what I'm being told and trust that. The church, of course, espoused polygamy in the 19th century and then disavowed the practice toward the end of that century. And having this policy with polygamous families is a way of drawing a line and saying, this is no longer okay. This is not a practice we endorse. And I wonder, one, what you make of that, but two, whether, you know, polygamy obviously still goes on in some extent in the shadows, some extent openly in Utah and elsewhere in the West. Do you have a responsibility to deal with that as mayor, or is that not an issue you expect to confront?

I don't see polygamy as an issue that I'll be confronting. And again, this is a religious organization. And there have been many people, along the way who I've met, who are in polygamy, and I don't judge them for that. I do want to make sure that children are safe and that we aren't doing anything in polygamy that puts children at risk. But beyond that, I don't take issue there. So when it comes to plural marriages, the church has often called in the past, your feeling is that, you know, you want to make sure that the children and those families are all right, but in terms of people living that way, kind of in the abstract, you don't see that as a problem or as a law enforcement issue? You know, I don't personally.

Obviously, there are laws around this and that people need to abide by the laws, but I am not somebody who feels like we need to disband polygamy. I just am not one of those people. Do you think the church has a responsibility to foster an atmosphere of tolerance, whatever their own policies may be? Well, you know, and they have worked, I think, pretty hard since I was first elected in 98 to message very differently around the LGBT community. And initial messaging when I first was elected was very hard to embrace or hear. And where we are today and the dialogue that the LDS Church has about the LGBT community is.

come a long way. It really has, and there is a great deal more respect in the language and what is being said, and hopefully we will continue to move in that direction. Well, Jackie, thanks again so much. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I'm so excited to serve. That's David Haglund talking with Jackie Baskupski. She'll be sworn in as mayor of Salt Lake City on January 4th. Before we wrap up today, I want to check in with my fourth. friend and colleague Amelia Lester, who always seems to know what's happening, what restaurant to go to, what shows to watch, she's the executive editor of New Yorker.com, and somehow she manages to watch at least as much television as I do. So I asked her what she's been watching lately.

So I was thinking that I had to introduce you to please like me, which is I was trying to figure out how to describe it to you. Imagine Larry David meets Lena Dunham in the body of a 21-year-old Australian gay man. I'm there with you. Interest Pete? Why don't we watch clip? Okay. Did you swallow it?

Yeah, I swallowed him. Josh. It's in you. It might tell me. Sick of you just swallowing things all the time. Yeah, now it's in you just like pressuring us like a time bomb. No, don't put this on me, okay? You do what you like.

I like maths. It's all making our own individual choices about recreational drugs. Of course we have to do it now. What else would we do? Yeah, just sit around watching you be high. You'll embarrass yourself. I will not embarrass myself. You will?

You will. You'll be there writhing around in ecstasy, making out with the sofa cushions. That looks good. I do watch that. I think that's going to be. Anyway, so then I was thinking about a book I've read, and the problem is, like, every other woman in Brooklyn, I've just been reading Elena Ferranti. I just finished the last book, the fourth book, The Lost Child. Have you read Alina Ferranti? Just the days of abandonment. I read that after a breakup, and I really don't recommend anyone do that. That's a really bad idea.

That along with Blow is the Warmest Column, meant that I couldn't move with grief for a few days. So I haven't read the series. I've only read Days of Abandonment, which is just astonishing. Yes. This is very different in fields of Days of Abandonment. So Days of Abandonment's a novella, and of course this is a four-part sort of epic book series. And it's all about how female friendships can be just as complicated as romantic relationships. And it's about these two women who grew up in Naples together and you follow them through their life.

and by the end of the books you feel like you really know them. And it was sort of a nice contrast to what I read just before that, which was, again, like everyone else in Brooklyn, my reading list is wholly unoriginal. I read Purity by Jonathan Franzen. I generally have a rule where I don't like to read books written by men because I hear enough from them every day at work. So I only like to read books by women.

And Ferranti is sort of the, like... I read a point of... I read around, and I've read Farrant. Yes, but you read the novella. It wasn't a novella. It was long enough, for God's sake. Can we go back to the part where you only read books by women because you hear too much room? I'm being a little flip, but I do try and make sure that my reading list skews more women heavy

because I just think that's my responsibility. It's always good to see her. See you soon. Bye. Amelia Lester is executive editor of New Yorker.com, and it's about time I joined her book club. Next week, pianist Robert Glasper joins us for a live performance and a conversation from the studios of WNYC.

Miles doesn't have a problem with selling records. It's my contemporaries that are having a problem. So my thing is, hey, you know, all jazz doesn't sound alike. There's a young, fresh sound out there that has influence of our music. So that's why I chose to do jazz trio. but do songs that people of my time today know, Kendrick Lamar, Janayne Iko, Bilau, John Legend, Radiohead, you know, because those are people that are relevant now.

I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us 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 Gervis of Tune Yards. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Rian and Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Paul Schneider, and Stephen Valentino with help from Becky Cooper.