[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to the Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host Gil Roth, and you are listening to a weekly podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, and you can find past episodes, get on our email list, and make a donation to the show at our website, chimeraobscura.com/vm. You can also find us on Twitter at vmspod@facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow and at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumblr.com. If you're a regular listener to the show, then you know that I've been in the slow motion process of quitting my job for the past six weeks or so. You know, my big piece of advice, no matter how long you've been at a company, six weeks notice is way too much. In my case, I was at my company for 17 years, and still, the last three or four weeks were filled with, "So why are you leaving anyway, and you know, why are you still here?" I also left myself with a ton of work to do in that span, out of some misguided sense of loyalty or more likely guilt. The upside of having that much work was that I really didn't find myself being all that sentimental in those last couple of days. I didn't have time, you know, to step back and think about what I'm doing and all the things that are going to change. Well, in the last couple of days, maybe I did, but in those last few weeks, it was more of a mad rush than a going-away party, like the Mariana Rivera tour at the end of the Yankee. Did I just compare myself to Mariana Rivera? Anyway, today is the first Monday since 1995 that I don't have an office to go to, vacation, notwithstanding. So I'm sure there's going to be some adjusting that I have to do, but the upside is, I've got this show to keep me grounded. Books and conversation are pretty much what I'm relying on now to give me some balance while I work to get this new venture of mine off the ground. Right now, I'm just reveling in Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday. That's this amazing piece of work about Zweig's youth and the glories of Vienna at the turn of the century and how his career progressed and all the lives of other artists that he knew, like Rilke and Rodin and Joyce and a lot of guys who were just lost to history, but meant everything back then. Sort of like the way Zweig himself did. He was one of the most famous writers of his time, but was almost forgotten until a decade or so ago when a couple of publishers like New York Review of Books and Pushkin Press started bringing him back. And that sort of touches on the center of Zweig's book, which is all about everything that would be lost over the course of the Two World Wars. I'm actually planning to interview George Prochnick in May and he's got a new biography of Zweig called The Impossible Exile that's coming out around that time. Really, one of my dream podcasts is a series of interviews about Zweig with his biographers and translators and the guys up in New York State who organized a library of this work. Even a journalist, he tutored when he was living in Brazil around 1941 or so. The guy's still alive. But really, the idea that this is a dream project should help explain why this podcast isn't exactly, you know, the Nerdist or WTF when it comes to download numbers. But you know, when it comes to series of episodes, they've only done one previously and this is actually the culmination of it. I've done something called "capturing the other Freedmen's" since September of last year. I interviewed first the cartoonist Drew Freedman and then his younger brother Kip and then the older brother Josh Allen Freedman just a few weeks ago. Each one of them was a little more receptive to the idea of setting me up to record with their father the legendary writer Bruce J. Freedman. I found all three sons fascinating and wondered about the influence their dad had on their creative endeavors. Honestly, I'd love to go back and re-interview each one of them. But that's a series for another day. In preparation for this one, I read Bruce J's memoir Lucky Bruce last fall and then started working my way through his fiction. And that process, to put it mildly, has just been transformational for me. Reading Bruce J. Freedman's stories and novels has just totally opened me up in terms of what I want to achieve with my own stories. It's been more of a revelation than Pinchin or Philip Roth or Zweig or any of the other writers I've adored over the years. I'm embarrassed that it took me this long to discover Bruce's work, but I'm making up for lost time. And by the way, I call him Bruce because that's how he signs his emails. I'm not saying we're on first name basis in any other context. I figured it was going to be a long shot to get to record with him. Bruce is in his early 80s and he's had some health issues in the last few years. But as it turns out, he listened to the episodes I recorded with his three sons and told me he'd be up for recording sometime, just about plots. And then I plowed through three more of his books in about two weeks. Now, Bruce J. Freedman's been a professional writer since the 1950s and his novels include Stern, A Mother's Kisses, About Harry Towns and The Current Climate along with a bunch of others. He also wrote The Lonely Guy's Book of Life as well as The Screenplays for Stir Crazy and Splash. Several of his short stories were made into movies and he's got plenty of tales about the times he spent in Hollywood, a bunch of which come up in that memoir I mentioned, Lucky Bruce. He's also had a few turns on screen and in fact my first experience with Bruce J. Freedman wasn't on the printed page, but in a movie. He has a small scene of my favorite Woody Allen drama, Another Woman. He plays Blithe Danner's husband and he tells this story about how they were caught having sex in their apartment by the building superintendent. And Lucky Bruce, he reveals that once he saw the movie, he realized that Woody Allen had had him read for the movie's male lead. That role went to Ian Home, which worked out for the best. Anyway, it was a dream come true for me to record a conversation with this man. I was a little bummed that he was missing his hearing aid, which kind of affected the way I asked questions, but it all worked out for the best. And anyway, that doesn't matter because after we finished recording, something amazing happened. A few days before we met, I sent Bruce the short story I wrote last spring, the first one with my fictional alter ego Abe Lesser. And off Mike, Bruce told me he enjoyed it, and he appreciated my eye for detail. And then he gave me a really good note about what to fix. This no lie was one of the best experiences of my life. So while I'm overturning everything I've done and I've taken on a new gig and working my way through this whole new environment and all these new responsibilities where I'm my own boss for the first time, I also have this one thing to hold on to. Bruce J. Friedman thinks I wrote a good short story. Do you have any idea how great that feels? And now, the virtual memories conversation with literary legend, Bruce J. Friedman. I'm also incredibly nervous right now, I apologize. I joined the crowd, you know. It's the neurotic thing. I figured the coffee would, you know. I thought Jimmy Fallon was nervous last night. Did you watch it? No, I didn't watch it. Was he worth watching? Yeah. First I thought it was really seriously bombing, just introducing his mother and whatever. I said, "Oh my God." But then he began the show again as the host, he re-entered. And there's one dance number he does with Will Smith, which is really worth the prize. Oh, yeah, friends of mine were posting that on Facebook. I mean, it's classic, I thought. And you too. Is that their name? You too. They were wonderful. In other words, the music was great. It's the performing thing. Seeing and dancing was fine. And then I thought, "What?" He was sitting with Will Smith and having one of those showbiz things, saying, " Will Smith said, "Oh man, this is great." And Fallon said, "It is, it is, isn't it?" "It's really great." "Oh, this is great. You know what else it is? What's that?" "Well, it's huge man." Just like, "It's huge man." "It's huge man." And he's going on like this, and I'm listening to this, saying, "I'm a serious man. Why am I, why am I watching this?" Entertainment is, you know, an industry. It's all, you know, about the talking about talking. I always feel guilty about being entertained, you know. I should be reading Sweet Toni's, you know. In Lucky Bruce, there's a line, I forget who it is, who mentions that he only reads the classics. I think it was Isaac Bachevis. Oh yeah. Yeah, he, when I asked him about, about Saul Bello, he said, "No, I, I don't read the moderns." That's the way he would have, Bello was 70, I think, at the time. Right, trust me. I, I went to a, a great books college that was all history of western civilization sort of thing. And I knew I was in the right place the summer before I started. I was taking a class in ancient Greek there. And one of the students mentioned on the road by Jack Kerouac to the woman who was teaching the class, A, she had never heard of it, B, she'd never heard of Kerouac, C, she was in her 40s. It's not like she was, you know, 85 years old and had no, oh, this is after my time. She should have been a contemporary, had no grasp of this whatsoever. And I thought, you know, I'm probably going to the right place where, you know, we can just kind of blow off the last 50 years and, and, you know, focus on the old stuff. Yeah. So, what do you, what do you read, what do you, what do you do now? What do I do? Well, what do you read? What do you enjoy? I had, what do I do? It's sort of funny. You woman said to me, I don't know what to rest on. I just finished reading your memoir, Lucky Bruce, and I really enjoyed it. And she said, are you still writing? I said, well, you just finished a little bit too ago. What was that, you know? What am I, a bit more specific, what are you, what are you writing? Oh, I started thinking, I haven't really brought my A game to any writing in the last couple of years since I had this setback. But I wrote, and had some luck with the lonely guy, and then I wrote the slightly older guy, and I did pretty well with those books. So I began to write the considerably older guy, is, I don't know, it doesn't rise to the level of trilogy, but I've written six or eight pieces that I keep going back to. For some reason, people all over the country have been asking me if I read Roger and Jell's face on aging. I've heard about it, but I haven't read it. Well, it's older than you, he's writing about being in his 90s, you're a- Molly called and said, you read it, dad, I said, why are you asking? You know, I'm supposed to be the expert. I've got time. On aging? Yeah, I'm a young pup. So his piece was not a laugh-a-minute, you know. It's been hard to stay light-hearted about, you know, about aging, about being considerably older guy. But I've been doing it all the same, and worried that I'm not quite, as I say, bringing my A game, I have a, well, I think I have a new collection, new-ish, called The Peace Process, which is a novella, the peace process, and nine or ten short stories that have been published but never collected. So I'm just told today that we're probably going to do that as an ebook, which pushes me into another world. I haven't been in on the submission process, I don't know where it's been, but I'd like to have this book published, so I'll find out more about it. And then there's another collection, which has been writing itself. I hadn't been aware of it. It's called, it's, without realizing it, over the years I've written, it turns out 13 stories and published 13 stories that have to do with the therapist and patient, which is the, you know, I guess, I don't know if you'd so call it, which each one takes a turn. And they were all, you know, published most of them in Esquire, Playboy, commentary. And I realized something, maybe that's a book when I thought of the title, which is We Have To Stop Now. I thought that would be a good title. So that's in the works. So there are three book projects, and, you know, that is about it, and then they're sort of managing the backlist. And it's always, I'm in the middle of a struggle with a short story. You'd think I'd have the hang of it by now. That's something I was wondering. Within Lucky Bruce, you write about sort of writing in a fury, you know, writing four stories over a weekend, and, you know, how does that, what changes over time? And I know it's simplistic to say it's age, but what's-- Well, I asked Pat, who we've been together for more than 30 years, I said, have I always struggled this way? You know, I'm really, really tied up in knots over the story under. She said, yes, you have, always like that. It's always a-- it's a slippery animal. I feel I'm fairly secure ground in the short story form. And even that can get away from you somehow. I just read Laurie Moore's interview, which she says short stories should be done in one burst, and that's ideal, you know. But I've had every experience. The most successful story in every way was the one that became the heartbreak kid, the first heartbreak, which I-- Change of plan. But, yeah, it was change of plan, and I don't know, did I tell this story? Stop me if I'm repeating myself. I've read it somewhere that you went upstairs and wrote. Yeah, and I did it to prove a point to my ex-wife who presented me with a story in the reader's digest that she loved, and I said, that's impossible. They don't publish fiction, or they wouldn't be publishing a good story. I said, let me read that. I said, no, you didn't love this, because the writer was cheating, you know, and invoked something that the reader doesn't really have any way of knowing. Well, I loved it anyway. I said, well, let me stay here, try to stay awake, and I'll go upstairs. I was able to do things like that, and I went up in two hours or less. I wrote the change of plan. Down she was sleeping, and sent it to the agent, and back then it seemed to be very simple. Within 36 hours, you know, I was onto another story, and the story is being published, and I thought that's the way it's always going to be, but that's not quite it. Back then, half the stories I did, if this is of any interest, were sort of concept stories, there was, I didn't feel there was any need to have any depth of characterization, it was the concept, the idea of it, that was important, and the rest could be brush-strokeed in, and they were published, you know, pretty regularly. What's the example I always use when people ask where the stories come from, when I was driving along the highway and listening to the radio, and they gave the death toll, which was at 700 or 800, and it needed to go to 900 to break the record, and I started rooting for them to break the record, so that was a story, didn't need any deep characterization, and that, you know, got published. I don't know who publishes stories like that any more, you know. Do you even look at placements with, do you look at placing things with magazines? Well, I just leave it to the, you know, the agent, and I know a few of the editors of the literary quarterlies, so I've had some luck with them, but the kind of story I'm talking about, I don't know who publishes them, maybe somebody, the New Yorker has a very high level, I think, of fiction, but they're, you know, they do have that depth of characterization, and they come from East Asia, or Southern Asia, for the most part. I don't know if I've answered your question, I've just been me Andrew. Oh, that's okay, that's what I do in conversation all the time, that's why I record everything. So, one of the questions about your stories, they revolve out of that, or they spin out of the what if that comes up in like yours, and the best example of it, and the one that changed my mindset about writing, was Detroit Abe, where I got it, yeah, and I realized, I realized myself that all the time I'd spent idolizing like Pinchin, and Gaddis, and those guys, I, in fact, should have been modeling my attempts at writing after your work instead, because this was the voice in which I could sort of, you know, get by, as opposed to some great cosmic Pinchin-esque thing. How easy is it for you to ask what if nowadays, is that part of the gestation process for stories? Well, that didn't change at all. You still look at, I'm still capable of writing, well, I have those thoughts all the time. I can't give an example right now, can I? Well, there's a way in the new collection, one pops into mind about a man who's been seeing a therapist for 20 years, and he's in Chelsea somewhere, and the therapist is knocking on the door just visiting him, and he's very troubled, and he said, "What could you, you know, I need you to give me an hour," and I said, "Well, I'm not skilled at this. No, no, you know a lot more than you think," you know, and so that reverses. And I think it's a pretty good story, I haven't told it at all. But lots of those that I've written recently in that category. Has there been any thought of, well, of another Harry Townes? Well, here's another example. The peace process, I don't know if I wrote it well, but I know it's a really good story, when it comes from a visit, the one time I had been in Jerusalem, and the room service guy was an Israeli Arab, and somehow he zeroed in on me. This actually happened, and felt, he said he wanted to visit his brother who's getting married in Q Gardens. And the Israelis won't let him out of the country, and he's gone crazy because he really has to see his brother. And somehow he felt that I could bring this about, all your connections. Yeah. Well, that's where it ended, you know, except he was really following me around, convinced that I was the one person at the King David Hotel who could get him to Q Gardens to his brother's wedding. So that stopped there, but that's a what-if. In other words, in this story, he rescues my character, who faints at one of these sacred places in Jerusalem where Christ supposedly rose. I forget the name of that church, and he faints. And this Arab rescues him, carries him to a hospital. I sort of end his debt, and slowly becomes rid of that, and then gets to the point where he says, "I will take you to Q Gardens." Well there's your what-if, you know, what-if. And it turns out his brother hates him, he says, "What the fuck are you doing here?" They hate each other after all of this. The peace process. I'd still have to read it, of course, but you know. Yeah, so I still- most stories, I guess, come about that way. And it begins with, "Well, you can't do that." And slowly is, "Well, wait a minute. What if I did that?" Maybe, you know, I'm not going to get arrested, let me try it. Do you consider yourself particularly, well, not particularly Jewish as a writer, but how do you place yourself in that sort of, I want to say, pantheon of Jewish American writers, the whole post-war thing? I mean, you write about Philip Roth and Philip Roth and Philip Roth. Not really my pantheon, but not my kind of- Getting dragged into the conversation. But I'm getting more Jewish as I get older. Why do you think that is? Not really, sure. But I brought this up with Mario Puzo when he was a close friend when he was alive. He said, "You know, it's funny. I'm getting more Italian as I get older." But suddenly, there came about a release of a torrent of Yiddish phrases that I didn't and language that I hadn't used or thought about in excess of 60 or 70 years. I'll trigger that. I don't know. But I love that language and there are certain expressions Tokusoph and Tisch put up a shout up is what it really means. I mean, a certain phrase is that don't quite have an equal in English. What brought that about? What triggered it? I don't know. The source would have been my maternal grandmother who came to live with us in the Bronx. And didn't know a word of English. And this is during World War II. And she knew about the threat to the Jews. So I would translate for her the newspaper in the morning. Despite not knowing her language? I would communicate. But she only wanted really to know when Rommel was crossing the desert or whatever. Was it good for the Jews? That's all she had to know. But I heard her and my parents would break into Yiddish. They spoke flawless English. I mean, they spoke Noel Coward English because of the influence of the stage. They were real. My mother in particular was a theater person. But she also could break into fluent Yiddish. She would speak to her mother and to her sisters, whatever. So I was around. I was ten or whatever and would hear this. And then it went away and came back, a flood of it. Just being around Zebars, did that sort of somehow trigger it? There isn't much...you know, a great story, Mel Brooks, when he and Anne Brankroft, when their sex life was sort of flattening out a bit, they would check into a motel and speak Yiddish. I still like having them do Sweet Georgia Brown and Polish to be or not to be as one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I wrote an introduction to his collected DVDs, all the stuff that's not in the movies, his Johnny Carson thing, and I wrote a real vicious roast, you know, to introduce the thing. I mean, I really pulled out all the stops and I was a little fearful about the reaction. He loved it, you know, he absolutely loved it. You know, they did an Ernie Kovacs one and they've done a few of them. Which I think your son Drew has done the covers for many of these collections. I don't know if he did this one. I think it's a photograph. Maybe he did. I don't even know. I talked about how unfair it was. What he did in the producers, not only did he write the book, but he did the music and the book. He did everything but the costumes. And I talked about all the people he threw out of work, you know. I think you mentioned in Lucky Bruce him kind of working on some melodies and the time he dropped in on you in Southampton and you're writing for a group of writers that he realized afterwards he was working on it. I miss those guys, Puzo and Heller, but I do have some pretty good friends, you know, younger ones I guess. That's one of them. One of my pleasures is just going out to have dinner with friends. I don't know why I'm so popular, but you're a hell of a writer. I thought, well, my group is thinning out. You mentioned, I forgot about Jules Fry for, he would be somebody I'd see once in a while. But they're replacements, you know. Not really. Well, that's a question because from your memoir, you sort of place yourself as being a little younger than Puzo and Heller and that. I was the next class. Yeah. And yet, you know, you now see guys younger than yourself or is that part of your social set? Not specially writers, I don't think. I don't. Yeah, some. Yeah. A few. Comedy people, I guess. No, but people who do different things, some writers, journalists, people are, you know, accomplished people who are fun to be with. Was there ever a group that you felt, yeah, this is where I belong? Yeah, I think so. And my friend, late friend, Jack Richardson, when my first marriage was breaking up like an ice flow, took me to, took me to Elaine's. And that was in the early 60s. And almost the minute I walked in, I felt comfortable. She made me feel comfortable. I love the lighting. There were other starving writers, you know, at that point, other, you know, I still see Arthur Copit, who was there. And compatible people and some pretty girls. And the music, if you had a good jukebox, and she was so convivial and so welcoming. I just felt very comfortable and felt, this is where I belong. I didn't think of it that way. The Golden Ages always withdraw that. I felt very, just felt very comfortable in that group. I've had a number of them. I enjoyed being at Bobby Vans in Southampton when we lived out there for almost 20 years. I had a nice group there. I felt comfortable. I always needed a nightlife scene, and I miss that now because I can't get around too well. So that could be hanging out in bars now. I do miss that. Did you regret the time in Long Island that you weren't in Manhattan necessarily when you were younger, not having that social? No, because I would cheat in a way. I mean, I would jump in the car and drive into Manhattan for a fix, you know, for a couple of days, and then go back to the healthy life. Such as it was. Well, it's pretty healthy in Southampton, I must say, you know, it was really walks along the beach or running and all of that, wood fires. Yeah, it was like a 20 year rehab, actually, you know, that I think of it. You felt cured enough that you could come back into Manhattan? Yeah, it took 20 years to get me to come back. I had to come back. I had to be brought back in stages, actually. We would come watermelon to Southampton slowly, then a rental, and then I was sort of a nervous about coming back to the city where I said it's ridiculous. I remember anxiety knows no rationale, you know, we think, you know. When we moved back to the West Village, I think it was, on Charles Street, and there we were, I was very nervous about it, and I didn't need a cane, but I bought a cane as a weapon. I went out in the streets, and then I said, this is ridiculous, I was born here. This is my town, it's no way to cane. Now I'm back with a cane. But you're on the Upper West Side, so, you know. Yeah, now I actually need it. Yeah. Who do you consider your literary influences? Who was the, and I know Hemingway comes up in your... Not that much of the influence, except certain mannerisms. He was more of an influence in life. You know, you wanted to have a fiasco of Volpo Echoa. You had to have that, you know, and you had to have a broken romance, a failed romance. It was very important. The lineup of failed romance. That comes from that sensibility, there's more of an influence in my life. Actual literary influence. I think it all began with Catcher in the Rye, the way it began for so many people. And then Isaac, sorry, Bernard Malamud was a big, he was the kind of writer that you just had to be frightened for me. Because I would be worried about picking up his intonations. They're almost Talmudic intonations in his work. Big influence. And I actually met him. Do I have that? No, no, I don't think that's in there. Stop me if I'm repeating. No, no, no, I don't remember a Malamud story. Well, in my play, Scuba Duba, I have a, well, party, girl hooker, whatever. And she says, it talks about how she loves Bernie Malamud. And it's like eating potato chips, you can't get enough. So cut ahead to me at a line waiting for some hors d'oeuvres at a little cocktail party at Sardi's. And this gentleman behind me, I didn't recognize, he said, so it's Bernie Malamud. I have no awareness that people are actually reading things that are right or watching plays that I've had performed. I used to have that with my pharmaceutical trade magazine, which is my day job for another couple of weeks. For the first year or two, I didn't know that anybody really read it until I made a joke in one of my editorials. And then I was at a conference and people came up to me to cite this joke again and again. And I thought, wow, are you people actually read this? Oh my God. Yeah, I'm always stunned when that happens. Bernie Malamud, that's another favorite story when my first wife had acting ambitions and went up to an agent and somehow it came out that she was married to me. And the agent said, oh, Bruce Friedman, he's the guy who writes like Philly Roth, right? Yeah, I like that. You stay in touch with, do you know Roth at all? I don't know. No, I'm glancingly. I can't say it's a friendship, but I just run into him once in a while. One of my past guests mentioned bumping into him in the late '80s or early '90s and him denying that it was him. No, people make this mistake all the time and he just walked away and the guy's like, no, they make the mistake because you're Philip Roth and just wouldn't have mentioned it. Well, he does do a lot of that. Yeah, that was his thing. It was around the time of Operation Shylock, so he was convinced he was just getting him character, my guest thought. What other writers besides Malamud, who else? Oh, you mean influencer? Yeah. What's the influence on you? The actual influence. It was a very distinct voice, but I'm not sure how to put you in any place, you know, in a continuum. No, those two writers were the only ones I can think of who, now in the theater when I, in the early '60s, there came about this phenomenon in Off-Broadway and there were a number of people, Gilbert Copit, for example, was his play, Oh Dead. I thought, just really, I was dazzled by it, and Massanel was another one. What I called, sort of, Upside Down Theater, the theater I knew was all very well-mannered. It was, you know, Noel Coward and fine. But they just, you know, just started out, it seemed to me, a whole other kind of theater. I didn't know much about. That was influential, and I said, you know, it would be fun to write a play and try to sort of get involved in this phenomenon, all the, had his first play, also. That was influential. Otherwise, you were you. Yeah, pretty much, I'm trying to think. There was a, I forget his name, there was one, not quite sci-fi guy. I forget it, one of those early people, what I got from him, and I'll think, I guess I'll think of his name, this is awful, was a, sort of, a way to compress language, to do a lot with very, you know, very little, to do a whole life, and not Ray Bradbury, there was one guy who was earlier, who was terrific, you don't hear much about him, but he was widely published at the time, I guess I'll think of his name. Yeah, I thought he was a little, a bit of an influence. I guess, Raald Dahl, his short stories, before he became an anti-Semite, before we knew about it. Yeah, I would go with the before it came out. Yeah, he was, he was influential, I liked his short stories a lot. Do you find yourself, do you consider yourself mainly short story, novel, playwright, do you sort of characterize yourself, or have a favorite form of a three? I feel more comfortable with the short story, if I, if I, I might write a story that really isn't good enough, but I can always prove that it is a short story. Sure. I mean, I can, I can show you on a blackboard, that it's just a short story. So I feel comfortable with it, and also, it's, you know, I, I'm not the most patient man in the world. So it's just a comfortable form where you get in and get out, you know, and who knows God knows what you're going to get into when you write a novel, how long it's going to take. So, yeah, but I'll have a notion and it will seem to be a play, or a short story, or a book, or a movie. When I was younger, I'm sure it goes on now, there'll always be someone, or a group, or a voice that says, "You can't do that." In other words, you're, you're a short story writer, I went through this. But that doesn't mean you can write a novel, it's a whole different thing. You write a novel, it works out, okay? You start to get interested in theatre, well, no, no, forget it, because you can't go from a novel to writing a play, you know, it's absurd, can't be done, you just write a play, and it works out. And then I guess, oh, then this actually happened to me. And then I was sitting in a steam bath at Dracula Lane's on Lexington Avenue in the steam bath, and one guy knew who I was for some reason and said, "This is after I've done a collection of stories, novel, play, it all worked out fine." He says, he looks at me, he says, "You know, I've never seen you a name on the big screen, so I'm a failure, you know, because I haven't done a movie." Which you went on to have a successful screenwriting. But I think, yeah, if you, I don't think it's impossible, if you study the form, put in the time, it's storytelling, you know, it's not as simple as that, but you can make a case for that, that it's Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 in each form. But anyway, I don't see why you have to close off some. You mentioned early in the book, or at least in early in your career, the sense that working in Hollywood was a strike against you, that, you know, at the same time, you note that a lot of those writers were killing themselves, trying to get something done in Hollywood also, but were holding you in derision because you were actually succeeding and making somewhat of a living doing that. What do you think made you successful in that, in that scene, versus? Just luck. I assumed, but, you know, I was going to ask anyway. Some luck, no, I'm just thinking of the films that worked out. I'm not being in touch with a, how should I put this, the agents were important, you know, having a good agent who knew of a situation where you might fit in. Why did they, I don't know. I love movies when I was very young, did not care for them while I was working on them. Now I love them again, because I don't have much to do with them. Really do love them. Why did they work out? Did you ever have any moment of what separated your career from other writers who tried making it over in Hollywood? No, I never paid too much attention to it. Hollywood to me was fun, you know, mostly just fun, a boy being turned loose in a candy store. I mean, I just, I was up in your Harry Town stories particularly. I probably wrote this someplace where I actually be deeply offended when somebody called me off the tennis court, you know, to write a few scenes. I didn't know that was part of the deal. One thing I know is, I don't know how you measured success, there was no one who had more fun than I had in Hollywood. And I got, you know, got some movies made. Yeah. Didn't your kids? I was embarrassed, you know, because I always thought that, well, I don't have enough credits. But someone took me aside, Hollis Alpert, who wrote film criticism, good writer, former New Yorker guy, and he said, well, you know, those people who were brought out the Lillian Hellman's and the Dorothy Parker's who were brought out to Hollywood. Very rare. It was very rare that one of them had more than one or two credits. Faulkner was an exception. Dashal Hammett was not super serious, you know. I don't think of him in that group. But you know, the New Yorker people and the Benchlies and whatever, who were brought out of it, it was rare for them to, I don't think does Dorothy Parker have one credit? I don't even know. And the story I really, I think about was Fitzgerald's story when, and that fan, do you know that great? Not so great. But that letter that he sent to Joe Mankowitz, you know, he had only a third of a credit on one film and he wrote a letter to Joe Mankowitz, terribly moving in which he says, he's just been transferred from Sisters 3 to, you know, to GI7 or whatever the title was, and moved over to another film, and he says, how can you do that to me, Joe? You're Joe. Honest, I'm a good writer, F Scott Fitzgerald. And then you have one of my favorite writers, I don't know, was he influential? I just love him. Oh, Evil and War. You can put him on the list of influences, or just someone who gave me just sheer pleasure. But Anthony Pole. I'd be to ask you about him once you're done with, yeah. Sure. Yes, he either brought out or went out to Hollywood in search of work, and the only thing that happened to him in six months was that he saw Scott Fitzgerald at a party. That's all that. This is a man who wrote this magisterial 12 volume work. He saw Fitzgerald. No work, nothing. No other contact, wouldn't they? I really love that story. Well, the narrator from his big book, From a Dance to the Music of Time, I remember works in films in England before the war, something he sees as part of some documentary company. I don't even remember that, actually. That's only because I read it about two or three years ago. I was so gratified to discover that you are a fan of Anthony Pole when I read Lucky Bruce, because living in the suburbs of New Jersey, it's a little difficult for me to find people who've spent the time to read a 12 volume set about 50 years of English society life. One of the questions I had, though, was, did that sort of thing ever tempt you, that sort of massive project? You mentioned, again, wanting to stick with a short story, not when we're not going to. I'm more of a sprinter, you know, actually. No, never even, not even club. Although, come to think of it, there's always an although. I have two books in which the central characters, Harry Townes, and there are maybe six other stories which pick him up at other points in his life. That's as close as I would have. Had you thought about continuing the current climate pretty much covers the 1980s for your alter ego, Harry Townes, had you thought of extending it into it? I thought of it, but no, I just... Your version of rabbit or something like that? You know, I just sort of always liked to sort of push on, it didn't seem... When I wrote A Mother's Kisses, which was a big, best-selling book at the time, the logical thing would have been if I was career-minded, would be to simply continue that book, the next chapter or whatever, and bring back the mother and the boy and take him through college and through a first marriage. I would know how to do that, but I thought, no, I'd just get restless and want to push on and try something else. I think there would have been an audience for it. I never thought that way about who's going to read it or what the other artists are like that. No, it was always for me, you know, what interested me. How was A Mother's Kisses received by your mother and father when it came out? I never shared a word about it except, you know, swelling up with pride. My son, the best-seller. That's cool. I wasn't quite like that. Actually, now that I think of it, I think my father, who didn't verbalize it, I think he was, I mean, sort of proud of my mother. This could account for a lot of my behavior even now. When I wrote Scuba Duba, it was unexpected for what it was. It was a big hit, and it ran endlessly. So what do you do when you have that happen as you call your mother to get patted on the head? So I said, "So what'd you think, Mom?" And she said, "I couldn't take my eyes off that boy." The boy being Jerry Orbeck. I said, "Well, he wasn't reciting the phone book, Mom. Somebody had it, you know, give him that boy." In a funny way, there was part of her, there was part of her, sort of right, because I'm not sure there were too many actors who could have done what he did, you know. You mentioned, in the book, I think you mentioned casting him and then having, was a young Dustin Huffman. Yeah. But trailing me down the street, yeah, that's true. At the time, I could imitate, "Oh, Mr. Friedman, you've got to try, you know. But we've already cast, you know, I don't care what's the freedom, you've got to get him a shot." Dustin Huffman, your understudy, that's not going to work. I said, "I know how good he was, you know, because I'd seen him in another play. I know how brilliant he was." I think, you know, it's possible to miscast somebody, and the deal was done, you know. It was no way to shoehorn him in. Now, we talk about parenting and... He's never forgiven me, isn't he? Really? Because he'd just point the finger at you in the lanes back in the days. No, I just know that there's a frost between us, whatever, a few times I've run into him. We talk about parenting like that. All of your children have turned out to be storytellers of one kind or another. From your work, it seems that you don't take much credit for how they turned out. But do you see something, either the example that you led in terms of your work or something even genetic in terms of, you know, all of these kids having some impetus to it? The only connection I make is that I never told them what to do. I always, just I would encourage them, whatever they felt like doing, I would encourage them. The only thing they might have gotten from me is they would say they worked very hard, you know, always have the time I had, I was editor of four magazines and commuting for three, four hours on the Long Island Railroad. And staying up all night to do those early novels, and they'd get up in the morning, see me slumped over the kitchen table having been up all night. But I had that energy, you know, and that need, actually. They may have taken something from that, the genetic point, I don't know, I'm just really delighted with what each of them are doing. Josh reminded me that we have Chloe May coming up on the outside rail. This is what I wonder, I've got three freedmen sons so far, and now you, and I'm starting to think the grandchildren are also going to be part of this show at some point. Well, one grandchild has gone off in another direction as an architect, but Chloe May, we don't know, she's starting to get cast in place, and that's what she wants to do for now. I'm particularly happy to see Kip write a collection of essays, your youngest son. Well, yeah, he's kind of a late bloomer, and he's... He seems to be making up for it though, he's... Oh yeah, really, it's like all this bottled up energy, and he sent me his book chapter by chapter, and I encourage them, once in a while I have a comment about just, you know, about usage or something. Nick gives me too much credit, and I noticed it got better and better, and now his work is even better than that. The things I see on the Huffington Post, yeah, he's in a proof of the book. Coming close to perfecting that essay form, which is unique, I mean, which is well different from other kinds of writing, but he has that nailed, so that's something to see. Now, besides your kid's work, what else are you reading? Right now I'm reading a terrific book if he can sustain it, called The Something Bird, James McBride won the National Book Award, it's in dialect, terrific book, and it has an odd title, There's Something Bird, The God Bird, or something like that, absolutely terrific book, but my reading is all over the map, one book kicks me into another, what I, how do I select books, I've been reading more than I've ever, probably too much because I'm not writing, you know, whatever enough means. But I know whenever I read an interview with some writer I have some respect for, and they ask the question, what are your favorite books, I usually take a few notes, and it will happen that way. But there are a few friends I have who will recommend that I trust will recommend a book, or you know, just read the reviews like everyone else. Andrew, a block away from that Barnes and Noble and another block from a, that could use bookstore on Broadway, I'm blanking on, there's a nice used one there. But most of my reading, I was stunned the other day to look at, I've been reading on the Kindle, I don't remember the last time I opened the book, and I've been in the book business all these years. But I looked at that cloud and what you have stored, I was stunned by how much reading I've done in almost to make up for all those wasteful years. I've been keeping a list since 1989 of every book that I finished, and there's a couple of years where, how did I finish four books in one, what was I doing in those years? Yeah, but this is absurd, I mean, but it's all over them, it makes no sense, I mean reading the McBride book, which is a novel, and I just finished reading this wonderful historian who lives in Canada named McMillan, about the prelude or the events that brought about World War I, which is something I keep going back to, great cast of characters. It's quite a list I have. And you thought of working on a historical novel at all, or are you pretty much? I thought about it once, because there's a war that I really like, the Franco-Prussian War. It has a nice unity to it. It was one year, has a surprise ending, which the Germans won, great cast of characters. And I thought of, I never had the courage to go ahead with a, I thought of setting a romance against the Franco-Prussian War, and having a French hero who falls in love with a German serving girl or something like that. And I never got for, it's a great book about that war. By Michael Howard, it's probably my favorite book of history. I think it's the only one he wrote, and it's just absolutely wonderful. It's a great, one of my, it's a great quote. When the French were really in bad shape, and the battle in which they were trapped, it was in Sedan, and they brought this General Ducro up to examine the situation, they rushed them up from Paris. And he looked at the map and said, "Nous sommes dans lous, so dans lous, troislette, et et cetera," and what ever it is. We're in the toilet, and they're going to shit on us, what the hell did they do. But it sounds better in France. "Nous sommes." I forget, oh God, I should remember that, it's a great quote from that war. But I never got around it so much, you know, I use that word courage. You don't think of writing in terms of courage, it's what happens on the battlefield. But I believe it's a necessary ingredient to do really good work. You mentioned working on the big emotions for your stories, or focusing on the big emotions. Do you see that as also what the author himself needs to be part of it? Not really applied to one of the magazines. It wasn't more the early south. You know, I inherited that from a pretty bright guy. And I'll see magazine pieces now, when they're trying to sell the New York Times magazine. They'll have a headline like Wither Somalia, or something like that, and I'm saying, "Who's going to want to really dig into this?" Right. I mean, weasels rip at my flesh, you know, some sort of great headline that's... Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So someone's collecting those old pieces and publishing them successfully, too. Yeah, Josh had mentioned that he'd helped edit a collection of the old man's magazines. Yeah, I've got a couple of volumes here. I haven't. I would never go back and reread them. I was fun being the editor. But that was then. Yeah. I don't reread much that I've had anything to do with, like my own work. You read any of the things by Puzo and other guys whom you brought in to those magazines? I don't reread them, but I've read their work. Yeah. I don't reread. I keep promising to reread something. This is good enough for me to reread, I'm going to reread. And I never do. There's enough books up here on the shelves that sort of, you know, you can see nothing. Yeah. Each time we've moved, we got rid of, you know, whole truckloads of books. Now, during one point in Lucky Bruce, you make a literary pilgrimage to Isaac Bishéva Singers. Oh, yeah. Kondo. You made any other of those sorts of trips? That was my only pilgrim. That was my only pilgrim. The only one you've ever done? Okay. I wasn't sure, because some people live for that sort of thing. No. Other people just find it completely bizarre. No, I was fascinated by him, because first of all, I knew him, and I wish I'd spent more time with him. But I was fascinated by the fact that he's the only nobelist who'd ever used the money, the quarter of a million dollars, to buy a condo in Miami Beach. You have the nobel to an old Jewish man? This is what happened. Yeah. I wanted to see that condo. And it wasn't much I was spending a month or two in Miami anyway. And I remember I did get to see it, it was a little disappointing. And I talked to Alma Singer, his widow, who, I said, "Is this it? Is this..." You know, I was speaking on the other commas downstairs. She couldn't see me because her feet were killing her shoe shopping all day. Maybe I wrote that. And she said, "Yeah, this is another one. But the thing is, I couldn't do a thing with him here, meaning he missed Broadway so much." And I have a bench that I sit on when the weather is better. And I imagine that it could be an Isaac Singer bench, because he would sit out there. Did you write chat with people? I kept waiting for fascinating people to sit next to me on the bench. And there was only one guy who, I was eating some pistachio nuts that I got from Zebars. He said, "That's the wrong kind. You should be eating Turkish pistachio." And you know, he was right. It was day and night. Really? Turkish wasn't that much better. I knew I was going to learn something. Well, it was the only conversation I had on that bench. How has the city changed? How has the city changed? I mean, you mentioned feeling threatened almost in the West Village when you moved back. But how different is New York now? Oh my god, you know, I'm the only one who was born here. That's true. That's true. Everyone's from somewhere else. I mean, you talk about, forget about multi-ethnic, but I don't think there's one in fifty people that passed me on that bench there. Well, here on the Upper West Side, I'm not so sure if we, when we lived in Chelsea, went out on 23rd Street, whatever that big jump. And I, you know, see the crowds going by. And I was really, you know, again, I was in a line arc, I mean, I'd look around, see if there was another person who was born here or, you know, who hadn't just come over from Croatia, because that's the major change, you know. It's an exciting one. And the last question I have sort of ties into the Anthony poll one and a few of the others. James Jones once criticized you for not having written the big one. Yeah. Do you agree with that? I think it matters. Well, my response that I couldn't make was that, you know, what about Candide? You know, it was 90 pages, Jim, he was at the door by then, 90 pages, and it's a little one, but it's his only big one, really, because it's the only thing that remains, you know. Those guys put a lot of focus on volume, you know. What I find is with some exceptions, most huge books would profit by being cut by a third. It seems to me books that are published now that go on. But yeah, I think he was probably right. I think any writer who's any good feels that he hasn't written the big one. Norman Miller went to his grave, thinking he hadn't really written the big one. And after Harlot's ghost, we can only be so thankful for that. Yeah, he worried about that. Do you worry about literary reputation like that at all? Do I? Yeah. I was thinking about that. Someone asked me that question. I don't know why it came up. It seems to me there are two kinds of writers. There is one kind who worry about their legacy. I can tell you who they are. Feel free. And others who don't, you know. I think Norman would be somebody who would worry about his legacy. Erwin Shaw, I was friendly with him, I liked his work a lot. We had the same publisher in his last days at Donald Fine. And Donald told me that Erwin, as he was dying, was searching around for honors. He wanted honors. Why does he want honors? He does, he's trying to organize honors for himself. It seems absurd. That kind of thing is, and I think there is a certain writer who worry about that. Mario Puzo, Joe Heller, they certainly would never verbalize that. Maybe I felt secure in their own work, and if it lasted it will last. But no, I don't think much about that. What I think about it is trying to finish a fucking story that I'm working on now. I will let you get back to it. Bruce J. Friedman, thank you so much for your time. Oh, pleasure. I forgot we were being recorded. And that was Bruce J. Friedman. He does not have a website, but you can find his books in any good bookstore. You can also look up his movie credits on IMDB. Honestly, if you care about good writing, you really should pick up the collected short fiction of Bruce J. Friedman. It comes from Grove Press. Friedman is F-R-I-E-D-M-A-N. You can also check out his memoir, Lucky Bruce, for some great short stories and a lot of literary name-dropping, which he cops to. I also recommend the two Harry Townes books, some of which overlap with the collected short fiction, as well as Stern and a mother's kisses. He's really one of our national treasures, and I can't say enough about how much his writing means to me. And that's it for this week's virtual memories show. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with a conversation with Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox about their recent nonfiction comics work, Dogs of War. Until then, do me a favor and go to our iTunes page and post a review of the show. Also, since I'm now unemployed, I could really use donations to the show. This is an ad-free podcast, and it would be great if you guys chipped in a little money to cover the hosting, fees, equipment, travel costs, pay for parking when I go into the city to do these things. You can do that at our website, chimeraabscura.com/vm. There's a donations page there, and if you go to the podcast archive page, you can also add yourself to our email list. And if you've got ideas for guests, drop me a line at groff@chimaeraabscura.com or at VMSPod on Twitter or at our Facebook page, facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. Until next time. I am Gil Roth, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO] You
