Benjamin Dreyer joins the show to talk about the joy of good writing. We talk about his career as managing editor and copy chief of the Random House, his post-retirement perspective on that role, the authors he enjoyed working with, the success of his first book, DREYER'S ENGLISH: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (Random House), and his plans for the followup, DREYER'S FICTION (!). We get into why he's leaving NYC and looking forward to Santa Monica (and talk about the books that he can leave behind and those he can't), the way that writing a Substack newsletter has made him a better writer, how the copy-editor's role is to enhance the writer's work, not to reshape it, whether his online persona changed after retirement, his love of digressive footnotes, how he feels about "weird" catching on this election season, whether the success of Dreyer's English surprised him, the moment he KNEW it was a hit, and what his authors had to teach him about the process of writing his first book. We also discuss the tension within the pronoun section of DE (c.2019), how he hopes to revise it, and why the mind needs to catch up with the soul sometimes. All this & a lot more, so go listen! Follow Benjamin on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram, and subscribe to his Substack • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter
The Virtual Memories Show
Episode 604 - Benjamin Dreyer
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and we're here to preserve and promote culture one weekly conversation at a time. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show through iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Google Play, and a whole bunch of other venues. Just visit our sites, chimeraobskira.com/vm or vmspod.com to find more information, along with our RSS feed. And follow the show on Twitter and Instagram @VMSPod. Well, something funny happened today. It's sort of a piece with something I talked about a few weeks ago in the Jess Rulipson episode. That time, I was on a conference call with the Department of Commerce, and one of the participants emailed afterwards to tell me he was a longtime listener of the podcast and didn't realize who I was until he heard my voice on the call, at which point he plot, and wasn't sure if he should say anything while we were on, but was googling my name to make sure I was the same Gil Roth. So that was something, but this time around, what happened was I got a call over the weekend from someone who identified himself as a reporter. And I immediately replied, if this is about biosecure or the Novocadolent merger, I cannot give you any comment, because those are two things that are fast-moving and happening in my industry of blah, blah, blah. And he paused and said, actually I'm a listener of your podcast and I wanted to ask you some questions for an article I'm working on about a certain late past guest of mine. I apologized just because I was so brusque and so quick with my response, but he laughed and said he had to heard me talk about work on the show so often it was funny for him to hear me go into business mode immediately on the phone. Anyway, we had the call this afternoon and I shared some reminiscences about my session with that guest and some stuff that spun out of that. And we talked about some other guests, also primarily deceased ones. And I told him some stories about sitting down with these people and I kinda meandered around in my winding literary way and he asked me, have you ever thought about writing your memoirs? And I was just dumbstruck. I mean, Milton Glaser right before the pandemic, a few months before he told me about how I should structure a book about the podcast and build it around themes that recur in the show and use different quotes from people and all this. But, and I do plan on making a book at the end of this year, early next year from all those instax photos I've taken during the in-person sessions in 24. But that sort of writing I think is going to be different than what this reporter was talking about. But he went on about the nature of the show and tutoring my horn, the importance of the archives and what I've built and the weird, my word, not his. As he put it monastic dedication, I put into writing those newsletters and communicating with the world. And, and I told him about this other listener who wrote me a couple of weeks ago as a potential guest too, who told me he is working on an essay after listening to like 80 or so episodes of the show about some of the recurrent themes and me and my interactions with guests and all this. And I don't know, I guess I built something that, you know, well, I'll just say I laughed off the memoir idea. I mean, in the moment I was just, oh, that's insane. And of course, I am now thinking about what I would write if I were to make a book, not about the entirety of my life, but, you know, who I am through the show and what some of those interactions were like and what came of some of these conversations. And I don't know, I'm not thinking too hard about it, but it's just funny what someone else sees from the outside, you know. Anyway, let's get to this week's show. My guest this time is, he's a hoot. It is Benjamin Dryer, who recently retired after a long career as managing editor and copy chief at Random House. Benjamin is, well, I'll say he's best known for the book Dryer's English, an utterly correct guide to clarity and style, which came out from random back in 2019, I think. It is an absolutely wonderful book about, well, how to write well. And, well, Dryer's English, which we're gonna call DE from now on, is a, it's a style manual with style. Benjamin tells us his rules for punctuation, grammar and the like, and does it all without being schoolmarmish, but really gets across sort of the style book that he built at Random House. And he does it with enough authority and examples that you get why something should be done the way he recommends. Well, he still gives room for some leeway and some things he is very much a stickler, rightfully so. But it's a joyous book, DE. The joy at good writing just permeates the entire work and is caddiness over some bad examples. It's funny as I'll get out. We talk about the tone, but he strikes throughout the writing of this book. It is, well, it is a wonder and a fun book to read. You could say, you know, why would anybody want to read a style manual of English? But this one is worth it. It is, well, it'll educate you. It'll get you writing better. It'll get you thinking about things on a sentence level and a word level in ways that'll just make you a better writer, which in my world makes you a better human being. Anyway, I love diving into DE periodically and, well, I was glad Benjamin gave me a hard cover of it when we recorded so that way I can now keep one upstairs and another one at my desk. So if you haven't read Dryer's English yet, trust me. Go get it. No matter how good you think your writing is, it'll be improved by diving into this book. Now, I have dug Benjamin's online presence for years, first on Twitter and now on Blue Sky. And recently we connected when he posted a link to Pope Francis's letter on why the clergy and other church figures should read literary fiction. I reposted that, I wrote about that in the newsletter. I thanked Benjamin for posting it. And we ended up striking up a little correspondence via DM. And I said, you know, we ought to record a conversation sometime, maybe this fall, this winter. And he said he was moving away from New York in a couple of weeks. So we only had a little while to prepare. So we took the plunge and here we are. There's not much more to say. The only caveat is we recorded in Benjamin's apartment. There were some police sirens, motorcycles, general New York noise. Oh, and his air conditioning was on next to us the whole time. It was necessary. So I sampled that out and that leaves some audio artifacts, but you'll deal with it 'cause it's a fun conversation. Now, here's Benjamin's bio. Benjamin Dryer, author of the New York Times bestseller, Dryer's English, is the retired managing editor and copy chief of the Random House division of Penguin Random House. Benjamin began his publishing career as a freelance proofreader and copy editor. In 1993, he became a production editor at Random House, overseeing books by writers including Michael Shabon, Edmund Morris, Susan Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub, and Calvin Trillan. He has copy edited books by authors including E.L. Doctorow, David Eberschoth, Frank Rich, and Elizabeth Stroud. As well as, let me tell you, a volume of previously uncollected work by Shirley Jackson. A graduate of Northwestern University, he lives in New York City for another week or two. And now, the virtual memories conversation with Benjamin Dryer. (upbeat music) Tell me about retirement. Retirement is actually fun. My last day at Random House was December 14th or December 15th of this past year. And it's only really been a few months since then. I like it. I have been interested to sort of re-investigate and reinvent my schedule to figure out how to be happy. Part of it I knew was that after 30 years, I very much wanted to be able to, you know, to chill out a little bit. - I don't know what you mean by that. - I mean, I had certainly earned it. - Yeah. - But the one thing that I also knew very well is that indolence doesn't suit me at all and it never has. And one of the things that Robert, my husband had said to me was, you know, he said, "You and Stacations are a disaster." (laughs) He said, "You must find something to do." Not that I needed to find something to do. And that's the wonderful thing. I have plenty to do. I have a second book to finish, which is, you know, a work in progress and we continue to be a work in progress until it is a work in finish. But one of the things that's actually been particularly good and I have enjoyed my days off of being lazy or doing nothing more productive than going for an extremely walk up or down the Hudson. I like that. I like that. I am happier when I am doing something and working on the book has been great. And to this point, working on the book is essentially, I read a lot of things and I take notes, which is really pleasant. - That is life, man. That's what I do for this. If I only didn't have to do all the pharmaceutical lobbying, I'd be ecstatic. - But one of the things that's also been great is that I started on a, I guess maybe this was March or so, I started doing the sub-stacking thing. And that I aim to and usually do hit, you know, one column every five to eight days and I feel sort of responsible to, you know, to do that, to keep up and appropriate. Hey, so readers don't feel like, oh, where is he? But they also don't think I was a him again. You know, so you have sort of pleasure. - I had this with Flaming Hydra. At the time, I thought, yes, as good, I should invest in independent journalism. I'm like, every goddamn day, okay. I'll move those emails over to promotion and let them. - But one of the things, one of the things that's been great and has been, for me, a different thing than the occasional columns that I have been contributing to the Washington Post, where it's like, well, I need a news hook and I have to write in a certain reasonably respectable fashion. And my editor there, who's, you know, who's absolutely marvelous, you know, shapes what I write into the appropriate form for the Washington Post. I mean, it's great, it's fine. It's being a writer out of the world. The sub-stacking simply allows me to do whatever it is that I feel like in whatever fashion I feel like doing it. And I'm not saying that it's zero stakes. I mean, anytime I'm putting something out for people to read, I want it to be really good. But I'm also just sort of doing it the way I feel like doing it. And I really do believe that it's making a better writer out of me. Because there are fewer sort of guardrails and dams and obstacles between my brain and my fingertips and what goes out. And I'm really liking the way it's going. I have very good time. People seem to be responding to it. Do you feel a sort of, I want to say, responsibility when you talk about that matrix of, you know, head, hand, keyboard and out the door? I ask because in the '90s into the aughts when blogging started to take off, we discovered that print columnists needed editorial restrictions. There were guys who within 10 to 15 of these things would make some stick in their foot in their mouths or, you know, I'm not saying Hitler was right, but there would always be this sort of moment of, yeah, maybe you need to go back into the magazines now and just produce there. And we've gotten more accustomed over 20 years to what this audience interaction is like and how we're being perceived. But I wonder, yeah, whether that affects you in contrast with the Washington Post type stuff. I mean, you know, I mean, the thing is my intention as a, as a, as a writer, both with, with Dryers English, with the columns that I've done for the Washington Post, with the substacking I'm doing is I'm not here to pick fights and I'm also not here to point fingers. One of the things that I really tried to do in writing Dryers English, which by the way, I almost always refer to online as D.E., A, because it's shorter, but B, because I still find it odd to keep repeating my own name over and over. But I realized that if the book was going to be any good, it had to be kind and it had to be inviting and it had to be something that people were going to want to spend time with. If it was going to be 300 pages of somebody sticking their finger in your face and telling you that you're doing it wrong, well, then who's going to want to read that? And I think I pulled it off and I very much want to do that in a substacking. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be comical. It's supposed to be kibbitzing. It's supposed to be about copy editing when I want to talk about copy editing. It's supposed to be about famous movie stars and theater stars when I feel like talking about that. It tends to be both. You, of all people. Of all people, but it's what I feel like doing. And people can read it or they can choose not to read it. But I want it to be nice. I always refer to these. It was my idea for the podcast and the newsletter in the Gilroth Empire, a general interest magazine, if everybody shared my interests. But unfortunately, we don't live in that world. So I joked that it would basically be a square planet, where we're all in Superman costumes, flying backwards. But that's just the, we make our, I don't want to say brand, but we try and bring what we care about into the world. And if you can do that in a way that's not being mean or not trying to score points. Yeah, I mean, and what are the odd things? I mean, going back into the prehistory of my position at my position at Random House is that I think, as happens with a lot of people, I got promoted into a supervisory position because I was very good at the thing that I did every day, which was I was a very good production editor, which has nothing to do with running a department and managing people. And I was, to be perfectly honest, not really all that good at it because I could be short tempered and intolerant and generally took the stance of, yes, the way I wanted is the way it should be done. I wasn't great. Eventually, I was offered this marvelous opportunity to have sort of leadership training and it changed my life. And I was so suspicious of it. Initially, it's like, I'm going to get, I'm going to get trained to be a leader. But it was like, it was hugely valuable. It really changed me. And I found that what was initially kind of an affectation of being a good leader and a good manager because I was taught that this is how you do things to get results. Very quickly turned into, oh, you want to know what? If I act this way, I'm happier and, more important, the people that I work with are sincerely happier because I am better respecting them, better to use a word I don't like to use, but it's a good word anyway, better empowering them to run their own little fiefdoms. And, I mean, I never achieved perfection. I'm still working on that. But by the time I left, I really do think that I left behind a department full of people who all felt that they were making their own contributions, not simply doing what they were doing because it was supposed to please me. I had wondered about that, starting with the copy editing itself, that sense of, to get into Plato's Mino, what can be learned versus what's inherent and what you can actually teach other people. And I wasn't even thinking of the organizational side of it where, yes, you need to, I work on my own and my board of trustees has been on my ass for about seven or eight years now to hire someone, and I keep telling them, I'll do more work if I have somebody else than if I'm just doing it all myself because then I know I'll get it right or at least it'll all be on my head. So, you know, but yeah, what did you have to be on the leadership training? What did you have to learn? I mean, as far as, like, my, as far as like my incredibly broad question, as far as my editorial career, short, which started back in the early '90s when I was sort of at a loss as to what it was that I wanted to do next. I had sort of done the restaurant business as far as I thought I could stand to do the restaurant business. I mean, I've been waiting on tables for, you know, well over a decade. It was fun. Yeah, it was great. I loved waiting on tables. Very good at it, like the cash. But at a certain point, it was like, you really need to grow up. And I had a writer friend who commended me to the person at his publishing house, his production editor, the person who did what I eventually started to do at Random House, which was supervising copy editors and proofreaders. And she, she took a chance on me. And what happened was that I had a knack for proofreading. I had a knack for finding errors. I had a knack for prose. I had a good ear, but I didn't know anything. You know, I had been rather rudimentary educated in the English language. I didn't know the names of anything. So I had to learn all that stuff, which I proceeded to do. And then, of course, ultimately proceeded to let it all go up. I was going to ask whether what you already had in your head was enough. The learning was just to justify it to somebody else. Well, also because it's like, oh, these things have names. Yeah. And I don't need to use the jargon when I'm copy editing. But it is good to know what it is that you're doing. But one of the things that it did take me some time to learn, particularly as a copy editor, which is a very, you know, sort of intimate thing where you are really like rolling up your sleeves and getting into somebody else's manuscript and their words and deciding how and whether and in what fashion you are going to try to assist them and to shape it is perhaps because I started out so uneducated, slash, self-taught, that kind of insecurity read in me a great sort of stiffness. Over respect of the text itself. Yeah. Things are right. Yes. And things are wrong. Okay. I thought you meant, you know, they know what they're doing. And you went into a very fixed idea of, you know, what I'm doing. And it took me a while, happily not too much of a while, but it took me a while to really learn that what good copy editing is about is to a great extent listening, you know, and trying to pay attention to what it is that the writer is doing, trying to figure out what they infer the writer's intentions so that you can then, as a copy editor, enhance what they're doing, not reshape it. It is one of the pieces of advice that I always give, you know, to anybody who's taking up the, and who's taking up the copy editing in life, which is whenever you get your hands on a new manuscript, read the first 30 or 40 pages with your hands very much behind your back, except when you're turning the pages. Don't start first paragraph. Oh, this is what I have to fix. It's like, why don't you figure out what the writer is doing first before you decide what it is that you're doing? And it works out better that way. When did you notice what you were learning impacting the rest of your life? I hate the fact that I just used impacting affecting because again, my day job, I'm trapped in business. I'll say because this turned out to be incredibly beneficial when I started, you know, having to do public speaking and FDA events and things like that. And I realized, Gilda, as a matter of how nervous you are, it's just a microphone in front of you. You do this with a podcast every week. So were there moments where that learning to listen affected your, your, your non? I mean, the thing is somehow the, somehow the learning, the learning to listen that I was getting very good at as a copy editor was not actually translating. That's what I wondered. Into my business life. That was a separate realization. For personal life, even, you know, whether that's a. Well, I mean, it is one of the things. I mean, Robert has reported to me, particularly in the aftermath of that leadership training, that it made a much nicer personality. How long have you guys been together? Uh, how long we've been together? Uh, but don't tell me 17 years. Good gosh. Good gosh. It's nice. Yeah, it's nice. But the one thing, and I, I do like to, I do like to tell this story every now and then, because it is my favorite thing that Robert has ever said about me to me. He did once say, you're nice. Not as nice as you think you are, but nice. And that is a sign of someone who knows you inside and now. Exactly. So yeah, that sense of, of the skills through work, you know, impacting the rest of life. My, my joke about you retiring was that all of a sudden you were just going to start slinging, you know, poor grammar and bad copy choices everywhere. You know, I figured it's like when I asked Stephen Heller years ago, like, do you ever turn off the eye when you're out in the world? He's like, you can't once, because it's so ingrained into who we are. Yeah. Not just as an occupation, but in terms of how humans work. Yeah. I mean, one of the things is, and I don't necessarily know that I was apprehensive about it, but I was certainly mindful of it is how I was going to act online once I didn't have a job. Because when you have a job and you're online, even if you are an independent entity, you are still responsible for what comes out of your mouth. And so I was, I tended to be rather careful about the sorts of things that I would say and how I would say them. I still prefer to do it that way just because I don't like brawling. Sure. You know, I really don't like brawling. And every now and then, you know, when I'm online, you know, more, you know, at Blue's Guy now, not at Twitter at all. It's like, somebody's trying to pick a fight with me, and I do have to count to ten, maybe a couple of times, and it's like, don't take the date. Just dispose of them. That's a nice thing with Blue's Guy is the ability to just nuclear block people, so you just never have to deal with them. And nobody in your world has to see whatever the hell it was they were trying to trigger. Yeah. I mean, it is amazing. It's like when either you block somebody or somebody else's block, somebody's like, you good luck trying to peek around and to figure out what happened. And that's why it's great. It teaches us we don't need to know all this stuff all the goddamn time. It's just, you know, the ferment and drama. It just keeps going on and on. Let it go. Step back. Enjoy. Now, are there opinions you wouldn't have expressed pre-retirement? Um, not, I mean, not especially that I can think of. I mean, I think that I did express and do continue to express the sorts of things that I think of as standard issue, East Coast liberalism. Yeah. Because to me, that's, that equates with decency. It's like, well, I could say anything decent that I feel like saying. I mean, as far as the things that I choose not to talk about, it really sort of goes to my persistent belief and occasional declaration that one of my virtues in life is that I do not fancy that I'm a particularly intelligent human being. It's like I'm clever. I'm fast. I'm passively funny. But I do not think that I am a big thinker, capital B, capital T. Therefore, the public intellectual. And so, I mean, I will joke about it. I will say something like, I know that I'm coming very close to expressing an idea. And you know how reluctant I am to do that. None of that, none of that. Yeah, none of that. But it's like, I mean, I do think of, you know, the dreaded murderers row of op-ed columnists who are expected to produce something once or twice a week and become so enamored of their own thought processes that they don't have any concept that many of the things that they are saying are sort of fatuous. Once again, I'm not saying Hitler was right, but will eventually happen to every columnist in one way, shape or form. If you have to put out, again, I have to make 50 shows a year because I'm driven by insanity. But, you know, if you're paid to do those columns, eventually you are going to be stuck trying to figure out what to write. And this is where it all ends up. Yeah. I mean, if the most controversial thing that I ever put out into the world is my belief that both the singular, they and the non-binary, they are important parts of our progress as being, and I know that, like, when I have published that, some people do tend to respond extremely badly, that's their problem. I was struck reading the book, knowing the book came out in 2019, that pronoun section, I was thinking, you almost progress through the process of that entry in terms of much like me, you want the singular to be singular and the plural to be plural to make everything work and agreement in your head, but that's not how things are. And we have to accommodate and adjust, and the way you kind of, again, you make the progress through that in the course of a page or two is pretty remarkable. That was a really big deal for me. Yeah. That was a really big deal to me. Like, in the writing, it feels like this is a tension that this guy is experiencing. Yeah. And it was one of the very last things that I wrote that I wrote in the book. I knew I was going to have to deal with the issue. I didn't know how I was going to deal with the issue. And then it really turned out in this sort of wonderful serendipitous fashion at the arrival in my little group of a non-binary person whom I absolutely just fell in love with. And it was like, okay, the mind needs to catch up with the soul. Yes, the mind needs to catch up with the soul. And it did. And it didn't take very long. When the time comes after book two is done, after dryer's fiction is done, when I do get the opportunity to do a second edition of dryer's English, which will be a hoot and a half. There are a lot of things that will have changed from when the book came out in 2019. And there are a lot of things that are much more natural to me that will take me in different directions. And maybe things won't be so difficult. And when I get around to revisiting the section on pronouns, you know. We all know. I will probably retain in some fashion that story because I think it's a key story. But once I get beyond that, I'd like to think it will be a lot easier. I think maybe more of an inset section on this is what it was like generationally just a few years ago for us to catch up. But yeah, I always have the, I don't want to be an asshole. This is just the way my brain is structured from decades and decades of usage. But I'm going to try not to be that guy. I'm going to try and do this as deliberately as I can. If it slips out the wrong way, you know that I don't meet it as an insult or a way of dead pronouncing somebody. Yeah. And it is one of the things that I have said repeatedly on the subject, both of the plain vanilla singular they, a student should be able to study whatever they want because that's easier than saying he or she, he or she, you know that. But some people do and that's, that's the, we're not those people and it's a way of. Yeah. But I also do very much oppose what one occasionally sees, which is a kind of hectoring get with the program attitude. It's like, you're not helping. I went to Hampshire College. Yeah. See, 1989 to 93. So this whole world is just my undergraduate years. So there's a degree that I, I recognize it. I was not great with it when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, but I recognize, you know, oh, we all grow up. Yeah. If we try and, you know, learn to accommodate other people and the way they live. One thing I am wondering if it's going to be in the next book in your section on brand names. What do you mention using FedEx, even if you use UPS. Overnighted. Oh. Is, is that a trade? Is that a trade? No, no, but I'm wondering as a usage goes. Oh, it's fine. Okay. I wondered about overnighted though. I, I will embrace almost any compound, new compound, newfangled compound that is useful. That does something that some extent word doesn't quite do as well. And then just sort of simply on the, on the, on the level of how you render it when you type it. It's like, I mean, compounds want to be one word. That's why they're compounds. And hyphenating compounds is sort of peculiarly dainty. So the only time I will ever sort of hesitate on the subject of just sort of smushing something together, as for instance, would be the case with overnighting, which is one word, o-v-r-n-i-g-h-e overnight, is if you can't read it. Right. But in this case, yeah, it's, it's perfectly usable. It's one of those, again, being in the business world. There are learnings. Yes. There are supposed lessons. There is sharing best practices, which I realize I'm speaking at Pfizer on, on Tuesday. If you block from here, so it's a degree of, okay, I have to speak in terms that are, you know, they like the fact that I'm loose and, and, you know, there are also degrees to which I have to speak in a corporate setting, which again, creates its own, its own linguistic restrictions and parameters that become a little, little tiresome at times. And that's me coming as close as I can to expressing an opinion. But how did you feel about weird? Oh, I love watching stuff like that happen. It's been incredible, right? Yeah. It's honestly spelled correctly. I mean, it's, it's, it's just these things just sort of well up and they happen and they continue. And then they, at a certain point, they just sort of begin to like die down and something else comes up and it's like, yeah, you know, it was like, okay, this week, it's weird. And it's like next week, it's going to be creepy. And I, I, I like to get the joke. I tend to think particularly, well, I mean, this, this one was just sort of broadly. The whole weird thing was sort of broadly aimed. One of the things about, about slang rising up usually from the young people, usually via TikTok is by the time I've heard about it, generations old. It's old. Yeah. And when whichever dictionary it was decided that Riz was the word of the year. And I, I got, I got pulled on to a radio segment with this woman on the west coast named Madeline Brand, whom I just adore. And it's like usually like twice a year for some reason or other. She'll have me on. And so the word of the year was Riz and, and, and I did say, you know, it's like, oh, well, if I've heard about it and, pardon me, if you've heard about it, it's over. And for dictionary to decide to enshrine it, struck me as, I think the word is silly. It's, it's always been like the people are acting as though the, the, the, the TikTok vernacular are somehow a new phenomenon. Right. You know, and it's one of those. No. People have always said those goddamn kids. I don't know what they're talking about nowadays. It's, it's been. Yeah. I mean, I go back to 1970s to go a little farther, but it goes generations and generations. Yeah. I mean, when I was growing up, everybody was complaining because the young people wouldn't stop saying, you know, you know, you know, that then evolved into complaining because of the way that young people up speak. Yeah. It's like, there's always going to be something that somebody younger than you does that you hate. And this is why I only interview people older than me. I mean, what was the definition that somebody gave to, to the word hipster? Anybody under the age of 30 that you don't like. So speaking of hipsters, you're leaving New York. Yes. Tell me about, tell me about your New York and tell me about the, the choice to leave. Yeah. The decision to leave. So the apartment that. And we're nowhere near hipsterville, by the way. I should point out, I won't give the undisclosed location, but this is not a hip. Although we can safely say, particularly because I'll be gone soon, that for years I was living in a neighborhood that was like, no neighborhood at all. And now it's like, well, now I'm Hudson Yards adjacent. Yes. I'm here in the island. And I have a trade show twice a year at the Javits, and I've been going for decades. And it was seeing what it's become versus the absolute goddamn wasteland when it was lunchtime and we're trying to figure out what the fuck we were going to do to each. Yeah. It's one of those, wow, he really did build this. Yeah. And now I live somewhere. Yeah. And you're getting away. And now I'm getting away. Because we decided that it was just time. You know, it's just, it was just time for something else. And looking around this area, even saying, oh, we're out, we're out of Manhattan. No question. Don't want to live in Manhattan. And I was like, oh, because of the red hook, or we should, I could move back to Jackson Heights, where I spent the first few years of my life. And the thing is, none of it was presenting itself as particularly attractive, and none of it was presenting itself as particularly affordable. And so Robert took on the responsibility of commencing the search. Perhaps not surprisingly given that he's from Orange County. He, he, he got his eyes on California. I had no particular objection to California. I mean, I've been to, you know, I've been to Los Angeles any number of times. I like Los Angeles. I run around and interview people. And these last two times, I've done the Getty and Lacma and thought, yeah, I'm perfectly, I mean, I guess, yeah, hollow culture, whatever, but you know, I get to sit down with interesting people and go see good art. And so I mean, all I said is he was doing the heavy lifting and searching. All I said was, I need to live in a neighborhood. I do not wish to be card dependent. I know that we're going to have one, but I don't want to have to get into it to do everything that I need to do. So to make a not terribly long story short, in about four weeks from now, we will have relocated to Santa Monica, California. And we've got this really nice apartment up on a 17th floor with use of the ocean on one side, use the city proper on the other side and we're right on top of the ocean. And it's going to be really nice. And what I really want is a, I mean, part of the thing about being exiled from the office in the wake of the pandemic and never really going back was that it may be very sort of neighborhood dependent. My life revolved around, well, I do my work and I work from home. That's great. I walk around my neighborhood. That's my life. I like it just fine like that. So we will go out Santa Monica. I will spend my days writing and going for walks and eating in restaurants and eating in cafes and going to museums. And it'll be really nice and it'll be gentle. And I think it's going to be a lot. I think it's going to be great for me physically, psychologically, all of that. So I'm really looking forward to it. I'm extremely anxious about it. Yeah. I mean, I tend to run anxious anyway. As my sister said to me, you'd be anxious if you were moving around the block. I have to move my stuff. Everything has to go somewhere. I've got to trust somebody to be there. I will be really happy once we're there. Do you accessioning books? I have no idea what space you're moving into. Yeah. Whether there's a. I will go through this entire collection very carefully. I will not make the mistake that I made when I moved from Chicago back to New York in the 80s of jettisoning far too much of my book collection. And we're dreading, deeply regretting for years that I had a whole chunk of library that was gone that I didn't value enough to bring with me. So there's plenty of room for my books. As you know, as Robert has said, you know, prioritizing your books, they're you. Yeah. You know, I mean, it was the thing that my mother used to say about her books. They're my friends, you know, and I will go through everything here. And there are certain books that I have already. I mean, things that I have had since I was in college. To which I said, thank you. I thank you for being in my life. And I took them downstairs to the table where I knew that people would pick them up. And of course they all they all go away very quickly. But at any point when I am going through something and thinking, if you let this one go, you will be sorry. So then it goes with me. It's just we don't know. No, we've all had those ones that we thought we didn't need. And then years later, it's. Yeah. I'm currently a shot about 50 books, just with my phone, just books that arrived in my life at the right time. And it's not necessarily my favorite books, but ones that mattered. And I've been posting those secretly. They're Instagram stories with no commentary whatsoever. And there's a website where I've been hiding them. And there were books that I know I'm never going to read again, but they're still on my shelf because I know they matter to me in 1992. And I've got to give up this copy of X, Y, or Z. Well, that's exactly it. I mean, there are any number of books right here that I have not touched in decades. I read them. I put them on the shelf. I wanted to keep them for whatever reason then. Why am I going to take them to California? Because the experience of reading them when I read them meant something to me. And it was about that time. And so they mean something and I like them. So they will come with me. There are books that, of course, on the other hand, they're books which I realize I have no particular sentimental attachment. And they can go. It's like they serve their purpose and they can go. Semi-adjacent to that. We all have the "don't meet your idols" moments in our lives. Have you had a "don't copy edit your idols" experience? No. I've been really lucky in that... I mean, I have served as the production editor, the supervisory person, not the actual hands-on copy editor for many more writers than I ever copy edited. I mean, the number of writers that I've copied edited is a few of the number of writers that I've copied. 1993, when I started at Random Act, is maybe two hands-forth tops. But in all those categories, the ones that I have been most excited to work with have all turned out to be just lovely people. And that goes back to being able to work with Robert Massey, whose book, Nicholson, Alexandra, my mother had read when I was maybe 10. And then I'm working with him on his follow-up volume, the Romanovs, and just a champ, just a gentleman. One of the most exciting things really was being able to work with Peter Stroud because I remember when Ghost Story was first published, I was still living in Chicago. And I remember reading, I think, a review in the New York Times. And if I'm remembering this correctly, as Peter reminded me, it wasn't even a particularly favorable review. But I read it, and I was like, "I have to have this book," and I literally jogged the book's door to get it. So the idea that a number of years later, I actually worked with Peter on a half dozen books. I mean, I was beside myself with joy. So Robert Massey and Peter Stroud and my best bug group in homes. I mean, I've been really fortunate. I've been really fortunate. And I was bummed. I met Stroud at -- there's a literary science fiction and fantasy festival up in Massachusetts every year. By the time I had enough connection to sit down with him and shoot the breeze, he was just -- it's a little too late for me to do interviews now, Gil. I'm a little too far gone. I'm like, "I appreciate you telling me that because I'd love to sit down with you." But he just felt like this was too late in his life where things were starting to decline. I do not want to be on mic, but there's that sense of, yeah, those figures that meant so much to you. Where did literature start for you? Oh. I know we have reading parents. Yeah. I mean, my mother was the reader. My father was not. I know where you're coming from. I do recall at one point asking my mother about the process by which I learned to read because the one thing that I could be sure of was that by the time I got to kindergarten, I knew how to read already, and I said, "How did you teach me to read?" And she said, "I didn't teach you to read. I sat with you, and I read to you, and at a certain point, you started reading." I mean, that doesn't make me a prodigy, and I know that it's not unique. I know that that happens with a lot of people. I do find the entire process. That sort of thing is so weirdly magical. How does that happen? How do the symbols on the page turn into something that actually has meaning? I don't really understand it. I don't have to understand it. There are a lot of things that I'm really very happy. I don't have to. Again, that's the idea, Guy. Yeah. Some things can just retain their magic. But I was always reading, and I've always been fascinated by books. I have always been a great re-reader of things. I can remember. Well, it was funny, because I remember in my teens, I started to go back and read some of the kids' stuff that I hadn't read, because I was in such a hurry to read adult books. So I'm in my teens, and I'm reading The Borrowers. And I'm reading Doctor Do Little Books. And I'm reading Carl Sandburg's Buddha-Bagit Tales, because I didn't read those things when they were age-appropriate for me. Because I was too busy reading Marion Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts, because I was really interested in the sale of witch trials. Which come out repeatedly in Dreyer's English. Yes. I will ask you, you have the Legion of Superheroes collection over there. We're comics part of that. Oh, my gosh, yes. Okay. Me too. So recently I asked my brother, because my wife asked me where we developed any sort of moral code, given that my brother and I were largely raised by wolves. And he said, Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, and Roy Thomas were pretty much our moral guides. We were growing up, Gil. Well, now the thing is, I was exclusively a DC kid. Yeah. Superman, Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane. These in the '60s are good. In the '60s. In the '60s. Before there were like 50 universes containing 50 suburbs. But I would dip my eyes occasionally into Marvel comics, and they did not appeal to me. Yeah. Because they were psychologically complex. Characters were neurotic. And I didn't like that. I liked good and bad. And the only interesting psychology that ever goes on in a DC comic is that somebody is jealous in an extremely petty way of somebody else. Yeah. And I was like, I could deal with that. But they're very shiny, you know, and it's like everybody's really easy to figure out. And the thing is, of course, I had all those comics and speaking of things that I will not be throwing out when we move, I remember in my 20s going on a mission of rebying the comic books that I had when I was a kid that had vanished over time. Either because they'd fallen apart or because, you know, it's like, my parents weren't going to keep moving my comics. That was always the parents who, you know, he doesn't want these anymore. But the great thing was buying certain comics and realizing that I must have read them so many times when I was a kid because I had them memorized. You know, it was like rereading. Even though the ad breaks are going to be at the bottom of the page. And rereading the super sacrifice of the Legionnaires. The one with Lightning Lab, you know, dies. It was like, I know every panel of this novel. I think an adventure comics number 362 or something like that. I've got that embedded in my goddamn brain, too. We had all those. My father would come back from ham radio festivals with the stripped comics where they didn't have the covers. So that's where we got our 60s stuff from. And then my brother and I, 1968-71, you know, we're buying the Fantastic Four, X-Men, et cetera. As we were little kids, at a time that those were not exactly appropriate, they kind of veered into mature territory when I was about eight or nine years old in a way that probably warped my development. But, you know, I came out all right. Or so I like to believe. But, you know, the role of those in terms of, you know, reading and becoming a becoming who you are. Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot of strange influences, which is a lot of fun to have as opposed to. In fact, that's my -- my entree to Dante was an X-Men annual from when I was about 10 or 11 where they recreated the inferno for this one character's thing. I'm like, "Oh, I should go look up this book." My school librarian when I was a fifth grader was not having it. No, no, no. I don't think this is for you, Gil. You need to wait a few years on this. I mean, I was always reading far over my head. I remember -- I remember in my 30s or so picking up THY, it's the once and future king. I see right behind the card catalog over there. Which is very near to me, which I had first endeavored when I was 11 or 12 because I listened to the Camelot cast recording because I saw the sword and the stone, the Disney cartoon. So, obviously, I need to read the once and future king. It was like reading in my 30s, I was like, "What would you understand?" Do you understand any of it? But it's better to get that stuff too young than to have these giant gaps. But everything leads to something else sooner or later. And that's part of that collection that I'm doing. I post one of those each day and it's just some of them, they're threads from one to the next. But others, it's just I know how each of those entered my life in certain ways. And I know what Alan Moore mentioned in a comic book came back to me when I was 18, 19 years old. But the flip side of never meet your idols. Blurb that completely rocked your world for your book. Was there somebody who praised your book that you just hold it? Shit, I didn't realize. I mean, the thing is when it came time to secure the blurbs, I had the conversation with my editor and he was like, "Do you want me to do it or do you want to do it?" And I was like, "No, I'll do it." I know the people that I want to ask and I'll do it because they're people that I know. And I also, because I know what a book jacket looks like, it's like don't ask 20 people when you can only use six blurbs on the back jacket of your book. So I asked the people that I asked. And they each and every single one of them said yes and provided lovely words of praise. And I reached out rather peculiarly, I mean to a very mixed bunch of people that ran a gamut from my best beloved Elizabeth Stroud to Mike Schaeven and Iell at Waldman, because I'd worked with Michael on three books including Cavalier in Clay. One of the greater experiences of my life. Lyle Lovett, who I'd become friends with. And everybody provided these really lovely blurbs. The two that were surprising because they were not solicited was that George Saunders, who I'd met in the office once or twice when we were doing Lincoln and the Bardo, just this lovely fellow. Just really nice. And we had a couple of really nice sort of pleasantly superficial chats. And he said something really wonderful about the book to his readership. And we asked him if it was okay to use it on the book. Because when writers say things, they are not tacitly saying I'm giving you a blur. A published review is one thing. But somebody's comment on a podcast or a tweet should not be taken as they're giving you cardboard to put what they said on your book. But we asked him and he said yes and that was really, really nice. And then the other big surprise was the day that 12 people said to me within minutes like, did you see what Sting said about your book? And I said, did I see what what? And Sting was running his Facebook Sting Book of the Month Club. And he liked the book. And so he said something nice about it. I was like, how incredibly cool. Did the success of it surprise you? The far-reachingness or is it really what you tell me? Without sending you, it's just a little bit without sending you. To try to walk back through it in reality, not what I'm retrofitting. Did I want the book to be a huge success? Of course. Did I want it to do business like eat shoots and leaves? You bet I did. Did I by the time the book was bound and getting ready to go on sale truly believe deep in my heart? I wrote it. I like it. It's good. Whatever happens, I'm satisfied. Did I really believe that? Yes. Did I continue to have the fantasy that it was going to do numbers? I sure did. I mean, also I work in publishing. I was going to say you have that perspective, you've seen books that are surefire hit that somehow don't or vice versa. So we went out the door and I still remember it was like Benjamin, you can talk about some numbers, don't talk about other numbers. It's like, yes, I know. We went out the door with a perfectly pleasant, modest number of books in the first printing. The second printing had been ordered before the book even went on sale because it was starting to take off. And I was very lucky to get a profiling time to get on NPR, to go on morning Joe, to have a brilliant publicist. I don't think I've said any names, but I'm going to say the name Melanie de Nardo because Melanie de Nardo was my publicist at Random House. And as I do like to say and I mean it, I wrote a perfectly nice book. Melanie was the one who got it out into the world and she made it. She made it happen and I do remember because it was very exciting. So a book goes on sale on a Tuesday. All books go on sale on Tuesdays. The first, the performance of the first week's sale in so far as the New York Times best seller list is concerned is the following Wednesday. So, which means the book had been on sale for eight days. I knew that it was doing, I knew that it was doing very well. I seem to recall my publisher at one point just saying, in the most lovely sort of sweet loving way, it was like, just chill. I don't want you to be hurt. I don't want you to be disappointed, which is a very parental thing to say. But okay, it was a good thing. And yet, and yet I was like, yeah, that's nice that you're saying that I want to be on that list. And Wednesday afternoon in Random House, everybody gets the email of the list at the same time. I'm sitting there, I'm waiting. It's usually something to be 430 and 530. And I'm waiting and I'm refreshing and I'm refreshing and I'm refreshing. And the list arrives and I open the email and I'm on it. Number nine on the how to list the noise that went up, not out of need, the noise that went up on the floor. Everybody yell at the phone ringing. It was really nice. Anyway, it made me really happy. The book's done really good business. I can spend nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, which is like, pretty super. It has sold very well. It has reprinted many times. It continues to sell in very nice numbers. The hardcover remains in print. Five years after the book went on sale, which is extremely unusual. The life of a hardcover tends to be no more than 12 months. But the reference side of this and the book said people want in their mind. I think you want to keep. The amazing adventures of Cavalier and Clay is still in print in hardcover. 24 years after they went on sale. We're getting old, man. Because people want it in their library. So that makes me really happy. It's done really well. I am hugely gratified. I am hugely grateful. And I always will be. But it does get us to the next book. The next book. What can you tell me without chinksing yourself? I can do this. So when we did the first book, it was like one book contract. That was it. We're going to publish this book. You're going to write this book. And I have no intention of ever writing another book. But as soon as the book came out, the number of things started to happen. One, I was kind of like being an author. It's as fun. People are paying attention to me. This is fun. But also, it was the immediately expressed expectation. It's like, "Now what are we going to do?" I didn't want to put it in those terms. I was like, "Did you think that we're going to publish this one book and then let you walk away?" I was like, "Huh, okay. Can I tell this story?" Yes, I can tell this story. I was having a conversation with my agent. And I said, "Oh, well maybe now I'll write that novel that I've always wanted to write. Wouldn't that be fun?" And she said to me, "Look, whatever you want to do, I'm obviously going to represent you because I treasure you. Or just swell." She's like, "But we've established something here and we should maybe consider building on it. And if you want to write a novel, you should write a novel. But what can we do with what you have done?" To which my response was, "Well, what do we do that builds on it?" To which our hugely helpful response was, "You'll figure it out." Which, again, you get to the business-speak world that I'm part of and they would talk about leveraging your unique synergies. So I'm glad you can go in that direction. So somebody said to me, "Well, how about dryers English for business writers?" And I was like, "I'm bad to just kill myself." And then the wonderful moment was, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's an editor, not in my little group, but in one of the, you know, one of the cousin groups. And he said, "You know that thing you did once where you took the opening paragraph of the haunting available house and you broke it down into semicolons and adverbs and did that?" He said, "I would read a whole book of that." And that's what the next book is going to be. The next book is going to be dryer's fiction. And it is going to be a whole book of excerpts from works of fiction. Because I just sort of find fiction more manageable to talk about. Exurps of lots of fiction that I either love or for the purposes of this book read with all best intentions and maybe found out that I didn't love what I was reading or more often rereading as much as I wanted to. But that still makes it appropriate for me to write about it. Which is to say, "I didn't pick up anything with the notion of, "Oh, I'm gunning for this and I'm going to take it away." It's like, "I'm not that guy." I was just going to say those exact words. "I'm just not that guy." But it will be Shirley Jackson and Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark and Colson Whitehead and Yean Lee and all this stuff that I love and that I want to write about. And the whole purpose is to look at these things as works of prose. The sort of things that I either, that I might have worked on or in a few cases did work on. And what can we learn from these works as readers and as writers? And the reason that, it's taking a while because A, I used to have a day job. Now I don't. B, because I have to do a lot of reading. And I am reading the entirety of the things that I am reading. However tempting it is to just be like, "Yeah, I can probably get away with the first ten pages of this." It's like, no, read it. Because maybe there's something that doesn't show up until much later that you didn't even realize. And it's not going to be, because it's not going to be, "Oh, here's a wolf chapter. Here's a Wharton chapter." It's going to be first sentences, last sentences, scene setting, dialogue, exposition. Everything in the book is going to talk to everything else. So until the day comes where I have decided that I've read enough, I can't write it. I've got a lot of notes, and they're really good notes. And the other thing is, I'm particularly pleased, and again, this sort of goes back to what I was talking about with the substacking. The habit of being a writer makes me a better writer. It's like, I'm also becoming a better reader. And I'm finding things where it's like, "Oh, Benjamin, good insight. Break that down." I think it's going to be fun. And I want it to be fun. And a different type of reading than you were doing professionally. But when you're really reading it for that entirety of what it is, it'll be interesting to see how it comes out when I started, when I start writing it. Because, though, it will not be as freewheeling and five paragraphs with 20 footnotes, which has become my substack habit. But I have also said, one of the constructs of Dreyer's English is the C of footnotes on which it rests. And I have to say, at a certain point, I'm thinking, "Well, maybe a writer, maybe we don't need any footnotes." And I was like, "I know, we'll see." It's where the voice, the counter voice comes out. I mean, for me at this point, trying to write without my digressive footnotes would be like trying to write without the letter T. It's like, "Why are you doing this to yourself?" It's like, "Right the way you write." Before we started, we talked about that need for parameters and restrictions on what you're working on. So yeah, that to me is something that you'd be crippling yourself in the process. But the idea of writing your own novel, you've picked up on it for the moment. Something that occurred to me, I've interviewed or had conversations with a bunch of translators over the years. Do you recall working with books in translation and what the process is, whether the original author is dead or alive? Did you have any insights? I mean, I'll start by saying that one of the things I will not be writing about in dryer fiction is whoops and whoops. I assume that, because you were not going to touch something that had already gone through a translate process. I mean, if I were truly fluent in French, it might be interesting to write about Francis Stiegler's translation of Madame Bovry as opposed to what Flow Bear wrote in the first place. My French is passable, but it's not that good. We, by which I mean Random House, in my last few years were doing more works in translation than we had done before. And that was something that the people in my department were dealing with, and I wasn't really especially intimate with like, well, who's the power, who's talking to whom? I am presuming that for the most part, the people in my department were talking to the translator only. If anybody needed to talk to the author, that's the translator job. I had a grand total of one experience early on in my production editorial career working on the translation of a Scandinavian, I think, maybe it was Swedish novel called April Witch. My soul contact was with the translator. So it's like, yeah, this book used to be in Swedish. Now it's not. I found just the process of working with her, a person with great responsibility for how the book was going to come out, but not being its author, but her design. I'm wondering about that. To get it to work. But I think that that's, I'm sure it's fascinating, but I don't really know very much. I had wondered because it doesn't come up at any point in what I've read of yours, and it's just one of those things. To me, the act of translation is, in a sense, copy-editing what was there. You're already trying to figure out what the intentions were, what the language is, how it. It comes into another language. So yeah, that's sort of stuff I spend my time cogitating on in the shower, because I have a boring life. One thing I do want to thank you for in Dryer's English is something I actually brought up a month or two ago on a podcast about George Orwell. Grow the economy. Ever since 1992 with Clinton, that phrasing has irked the hell out of me, so it's so thankful to see that it's, you know, there are things you can grow, the economy is not one of them. Yeah, you know, and the thing is, and I do try to remember that whenever I wrinkle my nose at a certain word or a certain term, it's like, it's my nose that I'm wrinkling. I'm not wrinkling the nation's nose. No, but in this case, it's nice to have that. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I don't like it. It's like, why don't you like it? Because I don't like it. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. Because it sounds bad. I will also say I was reading another book last week for the show, and there was a Savile Row with two L's, and my eye just twitched. I mean, this is a career I could have gone into, and it's part of what I was doing in the trade magazine side before I started ascending in that world. But I really do think some of that is inherent to people. There's just that proofreading mind that just we catch things that normal people just let slip by. And speaking of also in Dryer's English, you mentioned how you want to let genealogy through incorrectly. Are there other mistakes that have burned your ass that it's just... Oh, I wish I'd cut, you know. No, the one, I can't remember whether I tell the story in the book or not, but I have told the story on a number of occasions, but I'm happy to tell it again. Feel free. Rather early on, a book of essays. Maybe it was Roger Rosenblatt, who was a Time magazine journalist. Okay. Maybe it was... Maybe a column and I see him in the Times magazine. Yeah, so let's say it was him. Let's say it was him. And let's say that I'm working on this book, and I'm still pretty junior, and I'm still getting my feet wet, and I'm still doing the best I can. And let's say that, as I have said, the later that writers hand in anything that's going into a book, the more you are increasing the possibility that something is going to go wrong because the fewer people are going to look at it. Everything that's in the manuscript, when it is handed over to be copy edited, is going to be looked at by the copy editor, is going to be looked at by the author again, reviewing the copy editing, is going to be looked at if not maybe every single word of it, but a lot of the words in it by the production editor supervising the book, and then at least two proofreaders on the first round, and one proofreader on the next round, and sometimes two. So lots and lots of eyes. If you leave something to the very end, it is quite possible that the only person who's going to look at it is going to be the production editor who is supervising the book. And is very angry at that point. No, I thought just getting it dumped on you last minute as one of those. Maybe in a little bit of our hurry. We'll put it that way. And so I received from Roger Rosenblatt. I believe the dedication at the very last minute. And it was handwritten on a piece of paper. So what was my job? My job was to copy what he had written onto the appropriate page-proof page, to send it off to the type set, and then to look at it, and to make sure that it was fine, which I did. Except he had described his wife as what I read. You're just not thinking. And once you make a decision, why would you rethink it? She's my most exciting editor. Fine. She's your most exciting editor. I write it down. It goes out. It comes back. It goes depressed. That's not what he wrote. What he wrote was my most exacting editor. Happily, he thought it was funny. So I thought it was pretty funny, too. Yeah. If that's as bad as it gets. You came out ahead. All things considered. Yeah. I mean, you know, the thing is it's like typos are going to happen. Everybody's human. I take great pleasure when I read some old book and there's a typo in it. Say, "Oh, look, that's a sweet. Look, that's a mistake." Well, I didn't want to ask. You mentioned early on about getting the tone right for the book. When did that occur? When did you feel you had it? It took a while. It took a while. As I started to work on the book, what I was doing, I realized, was like trying to replicate everything that I'd ever read and somebody else's style manual into my own voice. It was like, "Oh, I know that I need to talk about all these things in Chicago manual and style." You know, it's like, "But I have to put in my own voice." It's like, "Well, A, no, you don't. And B, what is your voice anyway?" And I was writing lots and lots and lots of stuff, and it was really stodgy, and it was boring, but hands-off to me. And I was despairing about this. I thought you've made a terrible mistake. You have signed a contract to write a book, and now you can't do it. And I did have a conversation with my editor, and I was like, "Maybe I need to be let out of this contract." And of course, he laughed in my face, and he was like, "Yeah." You're the first writer ever to bring that up? Yeah. He's like, "You're going to get this." And something that he said was so encouraging, and of course, you know, editors are, they're your parents, and they're your boss, and they're your psychiatrist, and they're your friend. And they're everything that it takes to get the freaking book out of you. Something about the way he and I talked that day just sort of made me relax. And I came back to him maybe a week or so later with a chunk of text. And the thing that I realized was that the voice that I had been cultivated on Twitter, because I was on Twitter. This is 2018. Before the Nazi bar. Yes. But it was like, that tone. Yeah. Geneel. Josh. Quick. Get in. Get out. Because of course, that's the mandate of Twitter. It's like, that's your voice. Figure out how to get that voice onto the page in chunks that are not just 240 characters. And it was like, and it worked. And once I cracked that problem, I mean, I wish I could say, oh, yes. And then I just sort of went to a trance. Two weeks later, I could find out if the book was done. It didn't happen. But it was not an existential nightmare every single day I sat down to write. It was like, sit down, start typing. It will be done when it's done. And then it was. You know, and I mean, I remember when I first started to work on the book, all of my writer friends in the most, again, in the most sort of loving possible way. So you are going to go through every existential crisis on earth, including all the ones that you think you already went through, and the ones you don't even know about. Including the, I have no talent. Why would anybody be even vaguely interested in anything? I have to say, you're going to go through all that. And I did. I am. It is such a nice thing for me now. And maybe even up until the day the first book went on sale, I thought you are about to be exposed as the fraud that you are. I will tell you a story off the mic about that. Go on. And happily that didn't happen. I am very grateful that the book was as well received as it was, because it instilled in me a kind of confidence that maybe I might have developed on my own. But every now and then you really just sort of do need to be told by somebody else that what you do is good. And that has really relaxed me as a writer. So now it used to be that when I was trying to write the first book, there would be nights where I would open up a word file and leave it open on the computer so that at least the next morning I didn't have to torture myself about opening a word. That's how bad. And now it's like, oh, is today's sub-stack day? Boom. Do it. Yeah. And I do it. And an hour and a half, two hours later, I don't know how long I'm planning on droning on. It's done. You know, yeah, I go back, I look at it once or twice, make sure it's the way I want it. And then I publish it. But there's no torture anymore. Oh, I mean, just less not to be tortured by your own creative process. Someday I hope to discover that. We'll see. I do want to ask about the, about the online-iness, you know, the, the, well, my joke way of introducing this is, should parasocial have a hyphen or not. But that sense that people, people you have never met have a sense of, we'll say a relationship with you. What's it like? It's, it is, it is most often hugely pleasant. Yeah. I like people that I have never met. They like me. They've never met me. Sometimes I do meet them. And some people that I initially had relationships with online have become my actual, you know, IRL friends. Is it weird? Beyond the ones that are wrong. What, what tends, what tends to go awry on occasion? Is certain people's extremely well-meaning belief that they have a level of intimacy with me that they do not in fact have? And they either simply say the wrong things or ask the wrong questions or just get a little too up in my face and I pull back. The one thing that I will always take exception to, whether it's somebody who's a stranger or somebody who thinks they're my best bud, is, oh, we're now at that stage where I can jostingly insult you. Yeah. It's like, no you can't. It's like nobody talks to me like that. And if the people that I know in my own life don't talk to me like that, then you certainly don't either. They don't find it funny. That said, you know, it's really important to me not to use up lots and lots of energy on the 1% of the people who are either aggressive in insulting or inadvertently insulting. It's like, there are so many other people who are so nice, you know, and they're nice and they ask questions respectfully. And they say thank you when you answer the question. It's like, I can't get all my energy burned up. The toxicity thing is a big chunk of both. So it's like, that's why I'm really fast with the block button. It's like if my first impression of you, the first time I've ever seen you communicate with me, is to say something rude. It's like, then I will make sure that that's the last thing that comes out of your mouth or out of your fingers that I ever encounter. Goodbye. You had your shot, sorry. To that end, do you keep a giant folder of theater photos or you're finding those on the fly when you're posting those on the fly? Oh, that's a really simple thing. There are two online archives. Because you post so quickly and so, such amazing stuff. I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like my random theater photo of the day. It's like, there's the New York Public Library and there's the Museum of the City of New York. And they both have massive archives of all kinds of photographs, but they have their theater photographs. And sometimes the randomness is I will just think, oh, can I go find a photograph of Basil Rathbone in something? But sometimes, now more often, it's just, oh, go look up a word and see what the titles of what plays come up that have the word sunset or flower. So, yeah, so I just do that. And it amuses me. And the thing is, as I have said, I mean, it's a reason why I look up birthdays because I like to celebrate people. Sometimes living ones, but sometimes dead ones. And posting these random theater photos of the day, it's like, it's a little tiny bit of stimulation to think about something that you might not have otherwise thought of that might lead to a pleasant thought or pleasant memory or somebody might say, oh, I saw that person in blah, blah, blah. And it's fun. And it's always great seeing BB Newworth chime in. And I love that. I have not yet met her. I have bought much coffee from her husband. So that's something I, you know. But I do like talking to her. I do like talking to her online because she's interested in the things that I'm interested in and I'm interested in the things that she's interested in. And the best version of that thing that ever happened to me was back over on Twitter, I have somehow become pals with Mitzi Gaynor, who, if your audience doesn't necessarily recognize the name immediately. So I've heard many television specials in which she was always beautifully gowned by Bob Mackie. She's an early forebush in the film of South Pacific. And I just love her. I've always loved her. And so I duly followed her. And at some point she followed me back. So it was like, I'd say something and she'd say something back. And it was super fun. And one day, I don't remember what it was that it brought it up in my head. I posted a picture of a comedian from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s by the name of Bobby Clark. Bobby Clark was mostly forgot, which comes from not having a film career. But he had his persona and he had his costume and he had his thing where he had eyeglasses drawn on his face. So he had his collective shtick. And he was a really big deal in his era. And I just said out loud with a picture of Bobby Clark. And I was like, does anybody even know who Bobby Clark is anymore? And two seconds later, Mitzi pops up to say, well, I do. And she posts the program of a musical that she did with him on the West Coast when she was like maybe 18 years old. Well, I do. Yeah. There's a whole story I'll fill you in on after this of the what it meant to be the second most best known comedian in the world 100 years ago and how little that matters, which puts all of what we do in perspective in its own way. I guess I'll leave you with the big question, which I know you haven't listened to the show before. So I worry about this one. But what are you reading? Oh, what am I reading? What am I reading? What am I reading? Right now I'm reading Edgar Allan Hose, the narrative of Arthur Gordon Kim. Did you spell that middle name correctly? Yes. Got to spell Allan correctly. I'm making my way through that. My attention is beginning to flag. So I really actually, because I do want to write about it. It takes work that one. It does. But also I want to use it to be able to write about Matt Johnson's novel, PIM, which I love very much. But they're twins. So I really need to read the poem first. So I just need to sort of like do it. So I'll get through that. Everything that I am reading right now is father for the book. I assume it's for the book. I think it is a work of fiction, which means that I do need to reserve for myself the ability to read something that I am not eager to take a note on. Extra-curricular reading is how I do my non-pod stuff. It's been cancelled for the last few months. So what I have been doing. And I've always done this. He's always been some of my regular morning coffee reading. But it's particularly good for me right now. There was, again, a theater critic, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s up until that 1950 named George Jean Nathan. He was best buds with HL Menken. They ran a magazine called The Smart Set. Nathan is the model for Addison DeWitt. The George Sanders. No, George Sanders. Yes, sorry. George Sanders. George Sanders. Two different people. Nathan is the model for Addison DeWitt and all about Eve. I read him every morning while I'm having my coffee because he amuses me. And he's sharp and acidic and observant and a lot of things that I do like to be in a number of things that I don't need to be. But I find him very stimulating. So he's what I read every morning. And before this project, were you reading more contemporary work or what was your reading habit like before you discovered this? Reading habit was, and again, there was work minding, so. Except that was the thing, 95% of what I was reading was I would wait until one of our books got as far as bound galleys because I didn't need to interfere with the copy editing process. There was certainly no reason for me to read raw manuscript. It's like, that's why we have copy editors. I'm not copy editing this manuscript. But I would then wait until the book was in bound galleys, which is to say that first bound up version of the first typeset pages, and try to read at least 25 or 35 pages of almost everything we published as my own just sort of little personal quality control to the credit of everybody that I worked with. It was just sort of like, yeah, this is fine. This is fine. Because the people I worked with were just superb. But that became all my reading for years. I would assume it would be tough to even doing the business magazine stuff. It was tough to just, I'll read something else. And every now and then something would just sort of sneak through that I had nothing professionally to do with. And it was like preferably fiction, preferably not very long, preferably funny. And I would read a whole book that I had no vested interest in other than I would I wanted to read it. I guess maybe one of these days I'll get that live. I figure at that point, dryer's fictional be out. I will make the trek to Santa Monica, who we will sit down again. And in the meantime, I've got to tell you, get back to work and you've got to start packing. And I've got to start packing. I've got to start packing. There's been wonderful having you on, Benjamin. I'm glad we got to sit down. Thank you. You'll need to. It was great. And that was Benjamin dryer. His dryer's English is an indispensable book when it comes to writing and communicating clearly. Go get it. It'll make you a better writer. It'll make you a better person. You'll communicate better. You'll open up in ways that make you conscious of how you use language. In fact, get two copies. One for home, one for office, one for upstairs, one for downstairs, bathroom, whatever it is, so you can refer to it as necessary. You should also check out Benjamin's site, Benjamindryer.com for more about his work, his other writing and columns, his dog Sally, who we have a picture of in the show notes for this one, and appearances like this podcast. And you should definitely subscribe to his sub stack, which is Benjamin dryer, all one word. And as social media goes, he's most active on blue sky as bcdryer.bsky.social. But he's also on Instagram as bc dryer and on Facebook as Benj dryer. I'll have links to all those in the show and episode notes for this one. But the basic website is B E N J A M I N D R E Y E R. All the other things are variations thereof. Now you can support the virtual memories show by telling other people about it. Let them know there is this podcast comes out every week with really interesting conversations with fascinating people. You can also help out the show by telling me what you like and don't like about it or who you'd like to hear me record with or what movie or TV show or book or piece of music, theater, art exhibition, whatever you think I should turn listeners on to. And you can do that by email, by postcard or letter. I do my mailing address at the bottom of the newsletters that I send out twice a week, which you should sign up for. And also by Google voice number. That's nine, seven, three, eight, six, nine, nine, six, five, nine. That goes directly to voicemails. You don't have to worry about getting stuck in an awkward conversation with me. And messages can be up to three minutes long. So go longer than that. It'll cut you off. Just call back and leave another message. And let me know if it'd be okay to include your message in an upcoming episode of the show. You might have something really neat to share with listeners, but I'd never run something like that without the speaker's permission. So let me know. And if you got money to spare, don't give it to me. I mean, I'm going to ask you for money at the end of the year when I do a Kickstarter for this book that I'm making, but it won't be a memoir. But give money to other people. Give money to institutions in need. With people, you can go through like GoFundMe, Patreon, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, CrowdFunder, all those crowdfunding platforms. And you'll find people who need help making rent or paying medical bills, utilities, veterinary bills, car payments, getting an artistic project going. Whatever it is, you know, a couple of dollars from you make a real difference in their lives. With institutions, I give to my local food bank and World Central Kitchen every month and make occasional election contributions because, well, you know, partly because I believe partly because my job is a lobbyist. There are freedom funds, Planned Parenthood women's choice. There are all sorts of funds you can give to to try to help make a better world. So, you know, I hope you will. Now, music for this episode is "Fella" by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. You should visit my archives to check out my episode with Hal from the summer of 2018 and learn more about his art and painting. And you can listen to his music at SoundCloud.com/Mayforth. And that's M-A-Y, the number four, T-H. And that's it for this week's episode of "The Virtual Memories Show." Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another great conversation. You can subscribe to "The Virtual Memories Show" and download past episodes at the iTunes Store. You can also find all our episodes and get on our email list at either of our websites, V-M-S-Pah.com, or chimeraupsgira.com/vm. You can also follow "The Virtual Memories Show" on Twitter and Instagram at V-M-S-Pah. At virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com and on YouTube, Spotify and TuneIn.com by searching for "Virtual Memories Show." And if you like this podcast, please tell your pals, talk it up on social media, and go to iTunes, look up "The Virtual Memories Show" and leave a rating and maybe a review for us. It all goes to helping us build a bigger audience. You've been listening to "The Virtual Memories Show." I'm your host, Gil Roth. Keep reading, keep making art, and keep the conversation going. (upbeat music) You