Michael Chabon Chats with Zadie Smith and Ira Glass

At the 2014 Chairman's Evening, MacDowell Colony Chairman Michael Chabon speaks to author Zadie Smith and radio host and personality Ira Glass about their latest work on December 8, 2014. The chat took place at New York's New Museum and offers a peek into the conversations that often take place around the dinner table at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

[@ladylo-fi6979]

MacDowell, can we see these three again sometime? Please??? 🙏

[@ladyleesutter]

Altho I'd attended an Ira Glass reading in San Luis Obispo many moons ago, it's great to see him here. Been listening to This American life since 1995. Such a familiar voice. I forget he has a body.

[@juliette7151]

this entire conversation is so, so interesting. I've got several things due tomorrow so I was like, "hey I'm gonna watch like 4 minutes of this and work on my stuff" but I ended up watching a third of it before I could wrench myself away

[@JoBlogz]

what did you find so good about it?

[@vKarl71]

Phew!.... 5 minute in I thought Ira and Michael were going to ignore Zadie the whole time..

[@notcosteffective9920]

It’s an hour long, chill

[@thisricardopalma]

Not everything needs to be drama, drama all the time! You can be extremely creative without having all those conflicts.

[@ViktoriaEvans]

Michael: "The ones you had as a kid?" LOL that took me on a journey... Imagining someone carrying around their small, beat-up childhood tap shoes from apartment to apartment for twenty years. Someone who does not tap dance anymore. There is just a pair of child's tap shoes always in their house. All their friends comment on it behind their back.

[@williamkauffman5745]

nice conversation

[@thomasbje3843]

She^s a queen. I don`t why, but she is.

[@notcosteffective9920]

Insight

[@valeriatsygankova9643]

Glad she published the Bieber/Buber essay in the end

[@priscillakhapai3623]

I just read train dreams...it's spectacular!

[@GeoffreyLewis09]

44:35 "One of the ways that I know that something is worth writing about or I ought to write about it is that it makes me feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable to think about this...I would like to avoid this area"

[@ladyleesutter]

Ira gives excellent directions for extrapolating what is important from notes. What a delight to listen to these three wonderful people having a conversation about writing. Interesting how Zadie is frustrated with writing non-fiction.

[@HomeAtLast501]

Delight? You're easy to impress, truly.

[@notcosteffective9920]

@@HomeAtLast501 shut up u bitter khunt

[@Kobe29261]

The point about writers essentially living the lives of librarians is why we love Ginsberg, Bukowski and Dharma Bums - you don't think we do, but we know, often; when you are regurgitating like a wolf what you've scarcely digested. The immediacy of Tweak is what makes Shiff so captivating - you KNOW, on some level - that his eyes DID roll back into his head and he DID stuff cotton balls into a wound the size of a grapefruit. What was it Bellow echoed 'We know! We know! We know!'

[@HomeAtLast501]

The fact that she goes to "This American Life" for inspiration explains everything.

[@jankafka7330]

I wish this hadn't been edited/censored.

[@HomeAtLast501]

He's doing his Elmer Fudd voice, saying "wike" instead of "like". It's put-on --- he doesn't always speak that way.

[@jackieeffinbrownable]

Mike and Zadie got their skinny jeans two for one.

[@estebanmejia3473]

17:56 44:37

[@DrainKats]

Two guys looks like clones

[@smilingface4222]

Laughed my ass off

[@HomeAtLast501]

This conversation is like listening to the blind leading the partially-sighted.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@Gwen So you don't criticize anything? Do you feel that because you don't have a musical piece you wrote and recorded published by a music company that you can't criticize music? Or, that because you never worked as a chef you can't criticize the food at a restaurant you eat at? Or if you've never directed a film you can't criticize a movie you attend?

[@HomeAtLast501]

@Gwen I'm gender-blind, so I have no idea why you're bringing gender into it. And the reason you see my comments is that I was seeking out interviews with authors to see if I could glean some wisdom for my own writing. So I listened to a lot of her interviews, and a lot of interviews with numerous other authors, and I found the interviews to be totally worthless when it comes to learning something about the craft of writing. I have figured out far more on my own. So I then turned to reading their works, and found it hard to read past the first few pages. For all of contemporary authors I sampled. I've concluded that they really don't know what they are doing. I find the entire milieu of contemporary book authors is replete with pseudo-intellectuals who really don't know what they're doing. Who are not CONSCIOUS of what they are doing. By contrast, for most of the other arts --- music, architecture, painting, film --- people REALLY know what they're doing, and they are very straight-forward and direct about it. None of this pseudo-intellectualizing.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@Gwen I just re-read my original comment, and it's HILARIOUS. Blind leading the partially-sighted. Good stuff.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@Gwen Oh, god, this is the discussion with Chabon, right. He's another half-wit. In one of his books he does a really bad Fitzgerald imitation. He lifted some line from The Great Gatsby, and didn't even try to mask it. Utter garbage.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@Gwen Diagramming sentences. Yeah, I think we're operating at different levels of understanding, and that you probably shouldn't be giving me advice. I don't see any evidence that her approach is derived from a reading of the classics. My whole point is that there is nothing to learn from these phonies, and plenty to learn from the masters who wrote the classics. I get more from re-reading Gatsby or Steinbeck or Heller or Hemingway. And in her interviews she DOES reveal insights about her writing, and there's nothing there. Lastly, anyone who is pointing to the fact she attended Oxford as a PROOF that she can write well.....like I said, we're operating at different levels.

[@corinneshutack3453]

A full five minutes before the host poses a question to Zadie. Up until that point, she's on stage, but an observer as the two men go back and forth. I wish that was surprising.

[@andrewroberts8139]

The host, I guess, had to make a decision on who to speak to first?

[@io1380]

He extended the question to both of them and then Ira took 5 minutes to answer. She was asked the question at the same time as him, at the very beginning.

[@jankafka7330]

@@io1380 The whole conversation/Q&A was heavily edited. Yes, Mr Glass took a long time to answer the opening question. What else might have been cut out during that time or before and after? On the other hand, the whole business seems to reflect the personalities of the people involved. Ira Glass is the most open and talkative of the three involved. Itis part of his jib to be that person. Zadie Smith, as intelligent and interesting as she might be, comes across as more reticent, less of a public speaker and more the person you would want to engage in personal, one-on-one conversation. Walking in the park together or over dinner (one she didn't have to prepare), that sort of thing...

[@starsareangels]

Jesus. You're joking I hope?

[@Samuel-bu7xr]

Orrrrr.. Ira took an inordinately long time to answer the first question, and your assumptions of sexism are misplaced.

[@eeppaa]

Ira borderline mansplaining writing procedure to Zadie Smith at the beginning...

[@autofocus4556]

eric someone’s got to

[@HomeAtLast501]

You need to grow up, son. Zadie said she doesn't understand how Ira can so quickly distill information from interviews, and incorporate them into his work. She said it was going to take her 4 months to do this, and wondered at how he can do it so quickly. He said in response that there is a trick to it. And she then said, "Oh, what is it"? What the HELL did you expect him to say in response? Did you expect him to be a jerk and not explain the trick? Get a grip.

[@MaximTendu]

I know right? I mean, I totally hate men, especially, like, white? Like, who do they think they are, right?

[@notcosteffective9920]

You’re way off

[@notcosteffective9920]

❤