Being yourself to save yourself with Darryl Pinckney

NYC in the 1970s and the spatiotemporal transmissions of writing with Darryl Pinckney

Why do books and poetry matter so much and what is the real avant garde? Does anyone else feel nostalgic for literary movements?

An enriching conversation with acclaimed writer Darryl Pinckney exploring the evolution of literature, poetry, and the arts in New York from the 1970s to the present day. Discover personal anecdotes and reflections on the legacies of influential figures like Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, delve into the impact of historical and political events on the literary scene, and celebrate the roles of diverse cultural backgrounds and influential women in shaping literary traditions. This episode offers profound insights into authenticity, artistic success, and the power of documenting and transmitting unique experiences through writing.

#nyc #literaryinsights #poetry #70slit #literarylineage #pinckney #hiott

00:00 Introduction to Literary Reflections

00:51 Nostalgia for New York's Literary Scene

01:43 Influential Figures and Inspirations

02:39 The Impact of Literature on Personal Growth

03:43 Darryl Pinckney's New York Experience

05:02 The Paradox of Literary Success

05:25 Changes in New York and Literary Culture

07:03 The Evolution of Literary Aspirations

08:45 The Role of Mentorship and Friendship

10:52 The Changing Landscape of New York

15:39 Reflections on Literary Success and Authenticity

44:07 Reflecting on the 1980s: Fear and Loneliness

45:09 The Impact of AIDS on Social Life

47:15 Moving to Berlin and Meeting James Fenton

50:06 A Love for Poets and Poetry

59:06 The Importance of Reading and Connection

01:02:36 Identity Politics and Victimhood

01:11:32 Family History and Education

01:13:03 Concluding Thoughts on Life and Relationships

Website for Darryl: http://www.darrylpinckney.com/

Come Back In September: https://us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

Black Deutschland: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/bo...

Elizabeth Hardwick and Sleepless Nights: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/bo...

History of New York Review of Books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New...

St Marks Place in NYC: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...

Frank O'Hara Poems, including Animal: https://www.frankohara.org/writing/

Beauty and the Bloodshed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the...

 Transcript:

Saving Yourself by Being Yourself

Darryl Pinckney: [00:00:00] they were different ways to evaluate what you did and you felt no less, affirmed or achieved because these worlds had a certain sort of confidence or they stood for something that you really wanted to be a part of. Now Because arts in general and literature is a profession. Everything is done to a certain level, but things stand out less I feel in this new generation, a great awareness of what is happening now and slight sort of impatience with the past.

 I sort of feel where I exist. Doesn't exist anymore,

Andrea Hiott: you really fell into quite a moment in time.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes, that's very true. Yeah, entangled a lot of lives. I think about that a lot,

 Hello, everyone. Welcome to love and philosophy. Today, my [00:01:00] guest is Darryl Pinckney. I've been thinking about my New York years a lot recently. And in. So doing, I went back and read a book I've been meaning to read the last couple of years, actually. Come Back in September, which is Daryl's book. I've read all his other books.

Darryl Pinckney: I've known him for a while. He's. An incredible writer. But the reason I went back to. This book was because I was thinking about New York and this time when I was a young student and trying to be a poet, I guess. And. Sort of idolized, a lot of people from the New York school of poets era or the beats era. Or what I think of as the New York review of books, era, which is Daryl's era. And he was part of it.

A lot of the women I was reading, for example, like Susan Sontag. And Elizabeth Hardwick. Darryl was. One might say best friends with. He met him when he was a young student at Columbia university. And became [00:02:00] close to them and the book is about that.

Come back in September. So I'll let you read it. But this, this group of people like Jim Jarmusch and Nan Goldin, and of course, Elizabeth Hardwick, Elizabeth, Bishop Barbara Epstein, Robert Lowel. Darryl's also worked with the playwright robert Wilson. You'll hear him talk about Lizzie here. He's talking about Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert is Robert Lowel. These are all sort of famous. Writers and poets that a lot of people almost. Mythologized, I guess, in the early two thousands and still do now. all really Somewhat tragic, but also just incredibly intelligent creative. Rather radical. Period of time. And literature and poetry. And I idolized it back then. We all sort of did. Thinking there was this group of people that we. Wanted to recreate or be like, so I've just been thinking of that, but, and that's why I read Darryl's book and I'm so glad I did and got to have this wonderful conversation with [00:03:00] him. I'd also just by chance, watched All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Maybe you've seen it about Nan Goldin and Daryl appears in there a few times.

But in any case, it sort of comes back to this theme. I think of a lot. And you probably hear me talk about a lot. About trying to hold the paradox. Because this time period in my life was glorious. Uh, really wonderful and also really painful and really hard. And in a way, these literary movements are that same feeling of holding that beauty and that pain. And this film about Nan golden really expresses it.

And Darryl expresses it well. In his writing though, almost in spite of himself. Um, But it was healing to talk to him and to revisit his work because I realized he's already holding the paradox so to speak, within him and within his writing, Are all these streams and rivers from so many places that have inspired me. That's kind of what we get to by the end is. Realizing, trying to. [00:04:00] Express to him. That I see all these threads in him and that somehow it's incredibly meaningful it's a reason for writing, which is why I'm bringing it up. Because even though there's all this pain, And challenge in it. And maybe it is mythologized in a way. There is a real transmission that takes place through literature. But when I think back to those years, Which were hard, but also beautiful literature and poetry really got me through them in a way, and I know I'm not alone.

And in that experience, a lot of people have felt that way. All of which to say, I'm just sending some gratitude to Darryl and to all of these people. Many of whom have now gone, who wrote and took risks and put themselves out there. And. Made themselves vulnerable. It's not easy to to write and take chances. And it's no wonder that. It can often cause some heartache, but in any case, I do think it's worth it as the point. And Darryl sometimes says, is it really worth it to write another book? Do we really need another book? And [00:05:00] I think the answer is, yes, we do. I'm so glad he wrote Come Back in September and I hope you'll look at it.

Also, black Deutschland is a really good book. Another one that was important to me. With all the time I spent in Berlin. I'm rambling on and it's fitting because Darryl and I. Talks a lot before I finally hit the record button. So this just sort of starts right in the middle of things, but we quickly get to a lot of these themes I've already brought up. So I'll put links in the show notes to all his books and okay, here we go.

​Okay, but why are you less inclined to just let everything go?

Think, um,

in some cases or on some issues it's, because I don't find

where I'm standing, um,

adds anything to what's going on. I don't feel it has much impact.[00:06:00]

That sounds sad. And I don't know if that's a function of age. For instance, I was away during the Columbia demonstrations, but I was really offended that the administration went to such lengths to arrest students. That's not what they're supposed to do.

 And it went with this climate of being intimidated by a House committee that has no business in how a university governs itself they're not answerable to Congress, congress doesn't fund even large research institutions. So I thought that was really not upholding the Columbia sort of traditions. I was really disappointed. At the same time, you can always find at any demonstration, someone who will confirm whatever the worst aspect of the story you want to give it. It sort of brought me back to the days of student [00:07:00] rhetoric, , and being overboard. But then,, Hamilton Hall was uh, my place. It, Breaking Glass didn't seem to me 1968, it seemed to me rather January 6th. So I felt very kind of alienated from that sort of tactic you know, um, which brought back the days when I was alienated from that sort of tactic.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it reminds me of your book and I actually what you're saying reminds me of I don't it's not in the book But I for some reason or somewhere I remember you saying or reading or mentioning That I don't know if I have this right but that the way James Baldwin wrote was to just Give it all or throw it all out the window. No, that's not right It was like to give everything you have there was some phrase sure. Yeah. Yeah, throw it all over the fence or something. All

Darryl Pinckney: right

Andrea Hiott: Yeah Because I associate that with some other conversation I [00:08:00] think we've had about what we were saying before I started recording about Giving it your all or

Darryl Pinckney: just,

Andrea Hiott: you know, saying what I also

Darryl Pinckney: feel it's slightly generational.

I don't want to be the guy always saying in my day or sort of correcting. I mean, people have to make their own mistakes really. And so just as you're willing to let the city belong to another generation, in a way, this particular issue. Where it stands now, has taken on a generational character., that I wasn't aware of until it happened and maybe the way we were brought up with it was also generational since, um, many, well, a couple of my closest friends had survivors in their family. And this was the first [00:09:00] generation that was going to summer camp in Israel, that sort of thing. So, uh, you just grew up.

Uh, especially where I lived and, you know, what was socially possible.

Andrea Hiott: It sounds like more, you were more careful though, because, yeah, I, I heard you saying at some time you used to be less careful, but actually having read The book, this book, uh, come back in September, where you're actually a little bit careful in there.

I mean, uh, okay. I mean, first we should say, hi, Daryl. It's great to see you. It's good to see you. Thank you for coming and talking to me today for Love and Philosophy. Thank you

Darryl Pinckney: for digging me up. Talking to me again. It's always fun to hear

Andrea Hiott: from you. I love talking to you. You know that.

Darryl Pinckney: Same here. Same here.

Andrea Hiott: Um, and there's actually too much I want to talk to you about, so that's the problem, but. Well, that's fine. It's good we just jumped in. So do you mean

Darryl Pinckney: careful in the way of careful from the point of view of now? Or that that guy was careful back then? [00:10:00]

Andrea Hiott: Well, there's like it's both ways, both and neither because I feel like there was a place maybe where you had to be careful.

Careful. But you were also, uh, resisting or getting away from that in going to New York, right? Like

Darryl Pinckney: Oh, yes.

Andrea Hiott: I mean, that was what the That was about to Yeah, that was the whole

Darryl Pinckney: story. But in

Andrea Hiott: certain parts of the country, most parts of the country, or certain, like, you had to sort of be Back then

Darryl Pinckney: I don't know.

You didn't

Andrea Hiott: have to be, but you were fighting it, but I don't know. That That tension is what I'm trying to bring up.

Darryl Pinckney: One of the things that made New York interesting, uh, it had a rather bad reputation in the rest of America. And it was a place where a lot of people came to save themselves, uh, by sort of being themselves.

The town was

full of weirdos. Uh, and it was affordable in that way. Uh, so, it was also much more of an adventure, um, for a young person who, you know, [00:11:00] nice thing about being socially stupid is that it gives you a fearlessness that you don't really have.

Andrea Hiott: Wow, that's the whole youth is wasted on the young thing, right?

Darryl Pinckney: No. No? No, I mean we did things that We can't, you know, we can't believe we did, but we did them, you know, and then a kind of innocence or belief that the world was sort of on your side.

Andrea Hiott: Mm hmm.

Darryl Pinckney: Um.

Andrea Hiott: So it's not wasted. It's a bad word to be in a phrase.

Darryl Pinckney: It's not wasted. Yeah. So. When did you come to

Andrea Hiott: New York, exactly? 1972. So it was 72, okay.

Darryl Pinckney: And so, you know, it was very much, uh, in the, uh, aftermath of 68. It was some sort of big, complex people had about, Not being as cool as the people from 68 some of you anyway and they were sort of figures from that time still very much around mm hmm and and the [00:12:00] thinking of that time was still sort of Very much in the air.

It's just that suddenly probably not so suddenly it wasn't And I think it had to do with the draft ending, the war ending, and certainly, um, this, odd period that the civil rights movement went into of, you know, being, um, trying what happens after this kind of mass movement, you know, what, what is, how are the politics of change made part of the system? And I guess that happened in the seventies. Which was why people disliked Carter so much because it was, in a way, a second reconstruction. But I think also importantly, that second wave of feminism, really sort of broke through.

And for me, in the [00:13:00] form of introducing all this writing I had no idea about. Yeah. So that was a big deal. Because, you know, we were very into the avant garde. Uh, historically, at that time, what was

Andrea Hiott: it exactly? What, cause you know, was

Darryl Pinckney: it, yeah, you know, good question. There were several and, and they were historical.

So it was a kind of model, for judging where you were or placing yourself or defining what your sort of work would be about.

Andrea Hiott: So when you were in Indiana, before you went to New York, who was it you were dreaming of? I know Sylvia Plath, right? Who, but when you thought of New York, was there a, were you thinking of the Beats?

Were you thinking of Frank O'Hara already then, or was it just No, I didn't know about Frank O'Hara until I got to New York. No, I,

Darryl Pinckney: I had never heard of the New York Post.

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Darryl Pinckney: Um, and, you know, Plath was just a kind of. You know, uh, probably a real gay thing since she was a [00:14:00] suicide.

Andrea Hiott: Is that a gay thing?

Suicide? Well, do I not know that

Darryl Pinckney: woman? It's like Judy Garland. Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: the tragic woman. Yeah, that's true. Right. Okay. You know,

Darryl Pinckney: that's sort of,

Andrea Hiott: not necessarily suicide, but it's also a girl thing. I mean, I had to

Darryl Pinckney: be part of things then.

Andrea Hiott: Okay. I didn't know

Darryl Pinckney: that this kind of early death. I thought of that reading your book

Andrea Hiott: that like that play of illness, death, life, like that razor edge border

Darryl Pinckney: but, you know, uh, earlier because of the war, it had a different meaning, that, uh, youth was,

I mean, here youth culture was aware of itself and not that aware of how transitory or transensitory fleeting.

Andrea Hiott: is as a category

Darryl Pinckney: because in America, you know, it goes on forever. And then one day it's, it's not there anymore. Yeah. Um, But, you know, there [00:15:00] was sort of the rock stars and people like that, romantic figures who, who died, who were sort of sacrifices.

And of course the politics of the time were full of these sacrifices. Right. That was kind of the

Andrea Hiott: sixties, right? With everyone.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. Six and a

Andrea Hiott: shoplin. I mean, you could just name so many people that were so young.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: James Dean. So that

Darryl Pinckney: was, that was a big part of it, but then also. In the seventies, you could meet, um, the founders.

Of various avant garde, you know, they were still alive and running around New York. Like

Andrea Hiott: who? I mean, did you have somebody in mind? Because you ended up being friends with who, for me, was the avant garde, or for my generation, right? Like, coming to New York, working in bookshops, whatever, 20 years later. That whole crowd was, so I'm trying to think.

I mean, we were still obsessed with the Beats and Frank O'Hara and that whole scene too, but. I'm just trying to [00:16:00] figure out who, if you had someone in mind or Well, Frank

Darryl Pinckney: O'Hara hadn't been dead that long when I came to New York.

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Darryl Pinckney: And I had David Shapiro and Kenneth Coke as professors. Oh, wow. And they were friends.

Andrea Hiott: Well, Kenneth

Darryl Pinckney: Coke was a friend of his and Ashbery was around.

So, and they were certainly thought of themselves as an avant garde and their connection to the painting. David Shapiro was a really wonderful teacher. Uh, one thing he was so close to our age. And, you know, he just, um, was full of things I didn't know, you know, and he would say, uh, let's go.

And, and next thing you know, you're at sort of Larry River's studio at a party and you're holding the ashtray for sort of walk, who of course you're not gonna speak to. Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: Just hold the ashtray form as, but he was kind of generous. Brandy world.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. He was very generous with the idea that New York was this intellectual, uh, [00:17:00] adventure, uh, and so that was a big deal.

And there was a lot happening in music and theater and dance. All the time. Yeah. Something was going on.

I always liked the city for grubby, urban, you know, sort of, uh

Fantasies that your kids sitting in Indianapolis, Indiana and New York seems a bit sort of dangerous and people stay up late and the

kind of people you don't know and you'd like to. So that was always a big part of it. For

Andrea Hiott: some reason I had this image, you kind of dipped into it at some point with your family when you were young or something and had gotten the, Still for it or wanted to go back. Maybe I just made that up in my

Darryl Pinckney: no, I went to To the New York World's Fair in [00:18:00] 1964.

Andrea Hiott: Okay,

Darryl Pinckney: and so, you know what had been on television was made real And yeah, it made an enormous impression on me There's actually not been other places. I've wanted to live I can understand Los Angeles but poor San Francisco has always seemed to me just a kind of not exactly a another version of New York.

I have never

Andrea Hiott: wanted to live in San Francisco either. I always go there thinking, okay, and this time I'm going to feel it. I'm going to understand why everyone talks. I've never felt it either. I'm almost ashamed to say that sometimes, but I, it's the same.

Darryl Pinckney: It's beautiful, but. Oh yeah. It's definitely new. I have no interest in.

Andrea Hiott: No, I don't vibe with it. I don't like crave it like New York.

Darryl Pinckney: No, no, no. But now, you know, New York is, uh, different once again, and it would be odd if a city hadn't changed in 50 years. I find the strange thing is that that avant garde got bought out [00:19:00] by, um, the bourgeois lifestyle, you know, so Lower East Side, East Village.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Everyone wanted to be avant garde, so then the avant garde became.

Darryl Pinckney: No, everyone wanted to be hip. It's kind of. It cost a fortune to be here. A plain wooden table is so expensive and a sort of, you know, very ornate sort of thing. That you can get at a country house, so it isn't, uh, and this is where taste is at the moment.

Minimalism, uh, because you can't make a mistake, and I think the city is full of people who don't want to make a mistake stylistically, which is too bad because a lot of the eccentricity of the city just visually is gone, not that I had much [00:20:00] visual sense. Street corners have changed and I can't remember what was there, you know, these sort of new buildings.

It depends. Places where I spent a lot of time. Uh, I haven't been to 48th and 8th. In a long time since before the pandemic and I was there recently and that was a big shock because the corners are all different and since there was a restaurant, there is still a restaurant there where I used to go along.

It's this corner I sort of, that is imprinted on my memory and it's completely changed.

Andrea Hiott: Is that where the bar is that I can't remember the name of right now? No.

Darryl Pinckney: No, this was actually a good restaurant called Orso.

Andrea Hiott: Oh, or so. Okay. Where people would go

Darryl Pinckney: into the theater. And so I went, was taken there along.

Oh, yeah. Um, but it had, you know, like a parking lot and a sort of fragile, strange old building that maybe had once been a movie theater and then this and that were there. Uh, [00:21:00] but that kind of ghostly New York has, is gone. You know, the ghost of an earlier era has been sort of developed. So, because you always walked around New York and you could sort of feel its past.

And I'm sure you can now also, uh, because the architecture, this and that, but at street level, it's very, it's very changed, I find. I was kind of shocked reading A lot of chains, you know.

Andrea Hiott: Chained or chains?

Darryl Pinckney: Chains. Chain stores. Chains,

Andrea Hiott: like chains, oh.

Darryl Pinckney: Chain stores, you know, Starbucks everywhere. Yeah, yeah, chain stores.

Okay. Instead of a diner. Yeah, that's what

Andrea Hiott: I was about to say, I was kind of surprised that you were talking about the lower, or like the East Village, below Union Square and Lower East Side and stuff, and you were saying that even like in the Lower East Side, it wasn't, there, there weren't cafes everywhere and stuff.

It was pretty dark and, you kind of walk, try to get from one light to the next or something. [00:22:00]

Darryl Pinckney: You could hear sort of people having sort of rooster fights in the sort of backyards and things like that.

Andrea Hiott: Oh my gosh.

Darryl Pinckney: I know.

Andrea Hiott: Where was the, you didn't work for Bob and Terry, did you, at the bookshop? You said two guys with ponytails in the book, but it wasn't the pre, pre St.

Mark's bookshop, was it?

Darryl Pinckney: No, no, no.

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Darryl Pinckney: The bookshop where I worked was 89th and Broadway.

Andrea Hiott: Oh, for some reason, I thought it was downtown. Okay.

Darryl Pinckney: Lucy worked at the Strand.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, right.

Darryl Pinckney: And, uh,

Andrea Hiott: it was Luke back then.

Darryl Pinckney: Right. And I never worked at St. Mark's though. That was the coolest place going. Completely.

Andrea Hiott: Well, that's where I worked when I was a kid or like coming to school.

That's where I worked. And that's how I discovered, for example, Elizabeth Hardwick or Daryl Pinkney. Yes. Because we had the New York review and that's where we always had those books. And like, that was that feeling that [00:23:00] you show in the book of being kind of obsessed with. It feels like such a small world now in a way because I've gone so far out of it.

But at the same time it feels like all the world still where you're just everything is about kind of what's being written about in those like the New York Review of Books or the New Yorker or what poetry is coming out or what little weird book that you didn't know that now you're gonna discover and it's gonna change your life.

Like for example, Sleepless Nights was for a lot of us back then or You made me feel that again. And oh, that's so rich.

Darryl Pinckney: You're very kind. I mean, uh, there were different forms of success back then, you know, and, um, I don't think people should be, um,

hypocritical about, you know, making money. I, I remember feeling that people were a little mean about The [00:24:00] Group because it had been a bestseller more than anything. It's not a terrible trashy novel by any means. Uh, and it really, I think probably hurt Mary McCarthy's feelings. At least that's what I remember Lizzie and sort of Bob saying because the review made fun of the group.

Um, but that was a kind of snobbery about. Um, the best seller,

Andrea Hiott: which bothers me, but I also, I mean, I felt that so much when I was young. I don't know if you did, but I think it messed me up a bit. I mean, not only with, with the writing in New York where you feel like you're supposed to be, you can't sell out or something.

I mean the whole thing around the beats and around even John, even like, you know, yeah, all of it. I think Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery were more. away from that, but it still felt like all that was about you have to be authentic and somehow that got related to don't make a lot of money and have a bestseller.

Same with music, right, at the time. And it's completely crazy. But it's,

Darryl Pinckney: it's a, it's a [00:25:00] con of Bohemia that goes back to Paris in the 1830s. Because I'm poor, I'm more real. Yeah. I'm pure, you know. But it, it hurts people. And Bohemia actually, I can't remember the history of it, but it's actually Bohemia is sort of an elevator up.

You know, it's not a socially static zone by any means. And a lot of these success stories. Of the period we're talking about, sort of illustrate this, but I think it's also got something in it that Mary was a woman. Nobody ever said that Norman Mailer had copped out because,

Andrea Hiott: oh really,

Darryl Pinckney: his novel was a bestseller, right?

No,

Andrea Hiott: I thought he got it too. He didn't get it too.

Darryl Pinckney: No No, you know You know the model that The literary world I think still follows is Hemingway and Fitzgerald, this kind of, , [00:26:00] early promise, early success, and, you know, this sort of financial independence that goes with it. I still think this is the literary, the model for literally the world of literary fiction.

It's just the world of literary fiction is probably when you go in a bookstore now and young adult fiction is a huge section and, and the, uh, graphic novels is a huge section and anime is a huge section and literary fiction is there it is, but, uh, it's not as I guess there have always been genre of fiction, you know, that sort of thing. But there were also, there was, um, not making any sense. Yes, you are. It's really hard to talk

Andrea Hiott: about because I'm thinking, because here's the thing, right? Okay. I'm going to just talk about my own experience because. And [00:27:00] you can tell me, but as like a 20s, early 20s, right, I'm in school, I'm kind of half living in Europe, but working at the bookshop when I can, trying to make money, and you have this idea, you want to be Like the author that everyone wants to read, right?

Like you're, you're driven by that. You're reading every night, you're taking, like spending all your money on books. And then at the same time, that's kind of the sellout in a way, because to do that, you have to do kind of what I think you're saying, which is write this formula book, which then gets processed in a certain way.

 It's kind of transitioned, right? Where you try to get some kind of huge contract to write a book and then you get a lot of press and that's really different from that feeling I'm trying to describe of this like arty thing that you describe in your book, where it's this life gritty, you're living the.

the art, you know, those things have somehow gotten, I don't know how to reconcile that.

Darryl Pinckney: There was a body of a world where that was success or that was the dedication.

Andrea Hiott: And it's still the [00:28:00] dream, right? You know, it's even why people want

Darryl Pinckney: New York. Nobody, I mean, it's hard enough to write was the idea, but that whole kind of thing, assumptions had a lot of confidence behind them.

And I don't know if the world of literary fiction has the same confidence that it did then, possibly because, um, one thing, literature isn't sacred anymore, it's a profession, so that's too bad.

Andrea Hiott: It's about people instead of, I don't know, this might be idealizing it, but even when I read your book, there's And of course some of this is just hindsight in telling a story, but I felt like I always looked at these groups, right, of people who would go and talk about ideas and try to create stuff together, and of course there's a lot of bad stuff in that, and illness, like, I could tell the story in a negative way, but the point is there was this spirit that kind of bled into everything that you wanted to be part of, you know, and um, Now it's more about you [00:29:00] become an individual bestseller or something.

I'm, that's like way too generalized, but in your book, it feels like there's a group.

Darryl Pinckney: I sort of know what you're saying. I, I guess I'm trying to say they were different ways to evaluate what you did. Uh, and you felt no less, you know, sort of affirmed or achieved, um, by the fact that it was only in this world or that world.

Yeah. because these worlds had a certain sort of confidence or they stood for something that you really wanted to be a part of. Now these things Because arts in general and literature is sort of a profession.

Everything is done to a certain level, but things stand out less and there's much more of it as the reading population declines. And so, um, I feel in this sort of new generation, a great awareness of what is happening now and, [00:30:00] and slight sort of impatience with the past. Thank you. Or certainly with the values of the past and especially the critical values of the past.

Um, and also, it affects this idea of sort of traditions and sort of, uh, where your work stands. In a line, uh, because that sense I think goes. And so people sort of think that success strikes by lightning, you know, and they're all waiting for their big chance

And that's the only thing that matters is that you hit it big,

Andrea Hiott: the

Darryl Pinckney: rest, you know, isn't there.

It's sort of like a children's drawing. There's Blue sky up here. Mm-Hmm. green down at the bottom and nothing in between. And this loss of the in-between, I think is sort of to the detriment of literary New York. Um, for one thing, it's not the, it may still be the capital print culture, but [00:31:00] print culture itself is, you know, not sure what it is anymore anyway, because.

It's business models don't seem to be working. I think that's a wonderful way to say it.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, especially the children's drawing. It does feel like that. Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: So, you know, I sort of feel where I exist. Doesn't exist anymore,

Andrea Hiott: but it I think people want it I I really think like you you were talking about the bookshop when you go in you see the youth Side and there's and you know all these things that that that's where they're getting that feeling.

I think that

Darryl Pinckney: yeah Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: people still want it. It's it's just that now we kind of get it in a slightly.

Darryl Pinckney: It's a different genre It's a different genre

Andrea Hiott: But I think people still crave what you had, even if it's kind of a dream and it still is the fuel for why, I don't know if we were on camera yet or not, we were talking about New York's or become sort of, um, bourgeois and [00:32:00] like, it's not the same anymore.

And actually that's because people wanted to experience exactly that, what you were kind of going through, but now it's become somehow rarefied or it's not even, I don't know, maybe it's there in different ways, but.

Everything's too expensive.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes, I think that, you know, um, young entrepreneurs didn't feel they had to become, um, square like their parents in that old beat world.

Beat word, uh, anymore, you know, that they could, they weren't also, a lot of many people think they're creative. That's another problem.

Andrea Hiott: But I was just thinking about like the New York Review, where you were working and you are the, ,you had all these mentors that were this thing that we're talking about, these poets and writers and critics and this kind of group of people who.

Yes, it was kind of small and insular, but it was New York [00:33:00] and it actually was kind of the, the scene in the world. I mean, it's, you know, you teach, it's taught in schools and stuff now, so, but you were at, in this scene and, and you talk about it and how it felt like you had a kind of, I don't think you used the word family, but you, you say you were part of something, you know, or I feel like that's kind of missing in the literary world, but people crave it still.

Darryl Pinckney: I don't know if, say, in magazine life, where a lot of stuff is by Zoom, um, if there is this office life anymore, because that's what that was, a kind of office life.

Andrea Hiott: And a kind of mentorship, too.

Darryl Pinckney: Well, more than that, it was the sort of contributors dropping in and it was the ease of dialogue between older and younger that has changed a lot, I think, um, uh, because, you know, I was, I wanted to talk to these [00:34:00] older figures and to hear what they had to say.

I mean, I suppose, You could sort of see them, uh, as, as mentors, uh, but firstly, they were friends and that's where the honor of knowing them came into things, you know, that they, I mean, friendships between different ages. Yeah, definitely it was friendship. I think mentor was the

Andrea Hiott: wrong word, but I was thinking more about after review than to it was Elizabeth.

Mentor,

Darryl Pinckney: certainly, they, they printed me. So what else is that?

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, but I think after, maybe it was kind of, I mean, this, this was like a lifetime once you met her for the rest of her life, talking about Elizabeth Hardwicke, for example, which is kind of the, the sun in which the planets revolve around in the book, um, in a way.

Yes.

Darryl Pinckney: Later on she would sort of say she was furious that I moved to England. I didn't stay. I'm sure she was I mean

Andrea Hiott: [00:35:00] Yeah, I I guess like I was gonna ask you do you think

Darryl Pinckney: she didn't like England? So

Andrea Hiott: she didn't like what

Darryl Pinckney: England so much.

Andrea Hiott: Did she come visit her?

Darryl Pinckney: Um, she visited Lowell when he lived there Yes,

Andrea Hiott: but yeah, but you didn't move there till

Darryl Pinckney: 88.

Oh no, she was 1990 So the book ends it in 1981 and it has this postscript that's just 1989 Yeah, I know But

Andrea Hiott: yeah, there's so much like I think death comes the word death comes like 20 times in the last 20 pages or something And then

Darryl Pinckney: die.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, but also makes me think of New York and that was kind of a huge change changing year Right, like with AIDS and

Darryl Pinckney: It's one of the reasons lots of people left.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: Is it, is

Andrea Hiott: it why you left or was it James or?

Darryl Pinckney: I didn't know James then. Okay. Um, [00:36:00] I mean I knew his poetry certainly, but um, yes, I mean it was a combination of things. For one thing, my father had to sell the apartment I was living in.

Andrea Hiott: That's such a cool scene when he comes with the, the deed, I was totally not expecting that either by the way.

He

Darryl Pinckney: was really crazy. It's really sad. Um, and it sounds much more glamorous than it was, but prices back then were a whole different thing. Um, but it, you know, it meant that I sort of could be very casual about employment. Um, there's always somebody backing you, uh, well, often there's somebody backing you.

Because there are people who have not had any, um, so that was a part of it. Um, I also, um, got sober. That was a big part of it.

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Darryl Pinckney: Uh, and then the

Andrea Hiott: black Deutschland kind of, I always [00:37:00] wondered if that was in any way

Darryl Pinckney: experientially true, but very different in the story.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, right.

Darryl Pinckney: You know, black Deutschland was completely made up.

The only thing that's real is Berlin.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, but just that, that pilgrimage of like getting kind of starting a new life while sober in a different way. That's what I wondered about.

Darryl Pinckney: That was true. Um, and, um, yes, uh, and then of course, yes, AIDS, because So many people sort of had died and, um, I remember nights when one sort of kept on doing drugs because the space that would have been taken up by the luck or bad luck of meeting someone.

didn't exist in it, you know, at least not for me. I wasn't sort of going home with [00:38:00] anyone. Um, and this was 1985. That's when it was really scary. Yeah. So you mean

Andrea Hiott: like, cause you talk in the book, I love that too, that you feel in New York, I mean, I think it's very special in New York where you don't know what's going to happen at night.

I mean, even like, um, Andy, we're all, Using the ashtray as you hold it or all these kind of weird things happen, right? I mean, it's happened to me too and during that time in the 70s when you're around all these people But so that and also that like who you're gonna meet and there was this kind of very erotic romantic mixed up with all the Everything that was going on spirit But you're saying that kind of everyone then had to just stop all like you can't that part of it was gone a

Darryl Pinckney: lot of it sort of was going on, but for me, it seemed a very darker, much darker scene.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: And, and I was afraid.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, of course.

Darryl Pinckney: So, you know, um, the bars were [00:39:00] less fun. Uh, if that's where most of your gay life had been taking place as blind. So, you know.

Andrea Hiott: So fill it with drinking or more drugs or something instead of the other high. Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: Instead of brotherhood. Yeah. Or a brotherhood became a former, sort of.

It

Andrea Hiott: must have been terrifying. It's hard, it's hard to think about that time, , there's so much spirit there, it's hard to imagine what was it like when it was happening as it was happening, it must have been terrifying.

Darryl Pinckney: Well, really terrifying, lonely, uh, stigmatizing, you know, everything. One could read in a book or see in the film is, is true, you know, and it went on for quite a long time. You know, I think it wasn't until the nineties that they had some cocktail that extended life. [00:40:00] But in the early mid eighties, you know, it was really, uh, cause you had sort of a culture that was so hostile to it.

And I had a roommate, a former roommate from college whose mother. was a noted sex therapist on TV. And her whole rap was that it was a punishment for abnormality. Oh, gosh. That was around a lot more than, you know,

Andrea Hiott: I

Darryl Pinckney: mean, living with that on top of everything anyway.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, especially because you kind of came to New York that in part, wasn't it, to have that freedom and privacy?

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. And now it was kind of being I don't know, a story being told about it. It wasn't true. It

Darryl Pinckney: was, yeah, it was really bad. [00:41:00]

Andrea Hiott: So that's when you went to England for that?

Darryl Pinckney: No, I went to Berlin.

Andrea Hiott: Okay, that's what I thought. I thought you said England. That's why I was confused. Well, we lived in

Darryl Pinckney: England when I met James in Berlin.

He'd come back from the Far East and he'd come back from the have this farm where he was starting this garden and the garden absorbed more of his attention and he didn't want to keep coming to Berlin. So I came to Oxford. Okay.

Andrea Hiott: I kept waiting in the book for you to tell the story. Of meeting him because you kind of mentioned like, oh, yeah the susan the susan I think that's when you're talking about susan sondag at first, you know, who would introduce me later to she

Darryl Pinckney: did

Andrea Hiott: to james But then I never I never I because I don't think i've ever really heard the story of how exactly

Darryl Pinckney: when susan was writing the Volcano lover.

She was in Berlin and the sort of D. A. A. D. and um, I saw her often and then [00:42:00] every day. She took me to dinner to the same place every day. And on like the 31st day, she said, I can't have dinner with you. With James Fenton and I thought, instead of thank you for being so sweet to me, night after night after penniless night, I just thought, well, who am I, you know, why can't I meet James Fenton?

I'd read him, you know, uh, Seamus Heaney wrote this sort of glowing review of Children in Exile in the New York Review. So I've read this, read the book, and then the next day she didn't say anything. And I knew Susan well enough to guess this, but it suddenly didn't go well. Um, I remember she was due to meet Arvo Part, and I think did, but she never talked about it.

You know, that's two people I can't really see [00:43:00] quite, I'm

not surprised she didn't say anything. Anyway, so after a while she said, you know what he did? He read the newspaper, and he would explain to me eventually that He was traveling with a young Filipino photographer who revered Susan, and he knew that if he didn't make her talk to him, she wouldn't. So at the beginning of the meal, he opened a newspaper and she had to talk to this guy.

Andrea Hiott: Wow. And then he

Darryl Pinckney: closed the newspaper and then they proceeded to talk. Very smart. But I'm sure she wasn't happy about that. There he is! And he was sitting in the Paris bar with this Filipino photographer a few tables away and she introduced him. It took a couple of days.

Andrea Hiott: Days, that's all?

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah, days. Was

Andrea Hiott: it like love at first sight or was it just fascination or?

Darryl Pinckney: No, I mean he has these sort of big eyes and sort of hairy hands and, you know, he was a real poet. [00:44:00] I never got over this thing I have, have, had for poets. This was my big campus thing, poets.

Andrea Hiott: I had this idea I was going to ask you if you think in poetry.

Darryl Pinckney: No, I don't. Because you kind of write like

Andrea Hiott: it and you kind of talk like it.

There's something very

Darryl Pinckney: like a failed poet. No,

Andrea Hiott: no, not a failed poet, but

Darryl Pinckney: no, but you know what I mean? I do. It was a big, I sort of, yes. And there's so much I haven't read that it's very hard for me to move on to the poetry of the present moment, because I'm still, you know, Thinking about what I never got around to reading, you think there'll be time and then one day you realize, Ooh, but that doesn't make you kind of get off.

Andrea Hiott: And I think for me, as you want to read it again, you know, I don't know if you do, but there's certain people, certain [00:45:00] poets, certain people that it changes. So when you're in a different place in life, And you read it. It's like reading. Frank O'Hara. Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: He doesn't change.

Andrea Hiott: Hmm.

Darryl Pinckney: He doesn't change, but it calls me back to that time and that freedom of verse, Frank O'Hara.

I don't reread Ashbery anymore.

Andrea Hiott: I haven't read him in a long time either. I just hadn't thought of

Darryl Pinckney: it and, when David Shapiro died, I looked at, started to read a book of his and I ended up reading Frank O'Hara, you know, because that's who I am. Told me about Frank O'Hara was David Shapiro.

Andrea Hiott: What did you read?

Which one do you go back to?

Darryl Pinckney: Frank O'Hara?

Andrea Hiott: Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: The last one was,

do you remember the days when we were still first rate and every day began with the big apple in its hog mouth, that one.

Andrea Hiott: Oh yeah. [00:46:00] I like the, yeah. It's called

Darryl Pinckney: Animals.

Andrea Hiott: You reference a few in the book too. The movie star one, I can't remember it right now, but, and the lunch stuff. And I love the one, I can't remember what it's called now, about the ship, here I am with my.

There's a whole shrudder in my hand and like,

Darryl Pinckney: I

Andrea Hiott: can't, something about always waiting for the ship to come back into the shore, or I don't know.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. No, there's, there are a lot of them. Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: But those change for me too, when I read them again, but they are very, very interesting. Of a time.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes. And then, you know, it's nice to have a sort of new experience.

I did another Robert Wilson piece about Pessoa, a Portuguese writer, about whom I knew nothing. I mean, really pretty much nothing, except that he weirdly had a hundred pseudonyms or something like that. [00:47:00] And by the end of the piece by the premier, I had sort of very high regard for his poetry. And I'm glad that I.

Had that time with it, whether or not I'll read it again soon, I doubt, you know, that kind of thing. Um, and there are also things I always mean to reconsider, um, cause I think in my youth I was at such a high horse about poetry, especially that's, I think that sort of New York review low thing, you know, I was very sort of free verse in my real life, but very influenced by certain critics.

in critical life. What am I saying?

Andrea Hiott: But there wasn't a snobbiness. I want to go back

Darryl Pinckney: and sort of give things a second chance that I used to be very snobbish about.

Andrea Hiott: Okay.

Darryl Pinckney: Right. Particularly someone like Gwendolyn Brooks.

Andrea Hiott: Oh.

Darryl Pinckney: [00:48:00] Um, because she means so much to Terrence Hayes, a poet I, I do have regard for and, you know, people like that.

Andrea Hiott: I always liked Gwendolyn Brooks. I, the Chicago sort of feeling. Yeah. But that didn't go. Yeah. Well, with what you were involved with, that's, that's a lot of

Darryl Pinckney: No, I made a distinction between the early Brooks and then the Brooks that changed her mind and went with Black Power, you know, um, and that's the Brooks that people respond to now.

Just as the Baldwin I always thought of as, you know, this angry ending, um, people start with him now. That's the Baldwin who rings for them, the one who's Run out of patience and isn't so pretty and

Andrea Hiott: yeah, [00:49:00] it all sort of goes together though, doesn't it? I mean, I'm

Darryl Pinckney: afraid some

Andrea Hiott: the transition and trying to live live it and yeah Do you think?

We are who we know and I mean that in a kind of deep way because like thinking about your book Yeah,

Darryl Pinckney: sure. Yes, and that includes Uh, family that you got along with or didn't get along with. There are people you know, uh, Lizzie used to used to advise people, write about your families because you don't know it, but they're already characters in your head, heads.

Uh, and if you're afraid to write about your family, then you can't be a fiction writer.

Andrea Hiott: You think that's true?

Darryl Pinckney: No, because I think there's different kinds of fiction, but I understood what she meant, which is, you know, don't be sentimental.

Andrea Hiott: And there's something [00:50:00] about. Being able to write about your family, which does free you in a way. I mean if you get to the point where you can Live with your family in your imagination in a way I think it's a different place to be in not an easy place to be in I would say

Darryl Pinckney: no I think a lot of things You know, I think my family would have been hurt by a lot of things had I said them then Yeah,

Andrea Hiott: I felt that in the book that you're kind of hiding.

I mean not I mean you couldn't you couldn't show them who you were You But at the same time, they were very proud of you for doing something different. I mean, there's some very sweet scenes, like when your parents come to New York and, or, um, I think you say in one part something that, like, , you wished you could keep talking to them because you don't know them.

You kind of, you see this door opening, like, Oh, these are actually interesting people who are probably as rich and layered as I am, but you just don't have the time to pursue it.

Darryl Pinckney: [00:51:00] It's not something you did back then, become friends with your parents. Um, they were very much these authority figures.

Andrea Hiott: It's sweet that your mom's like calling Elizabeth Hardwick and saying Merry Christmas and stuff.

I mean it's, it's really very, I don't know, it's very sweet and um, I want to say special, that's not the right word, but you really fell into quite a moment in time.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes, that's very true. Yeah, entangled a lot of lives. I think about that a lot, and uh, you know, I mean, I think that probably youth is always a very good time.

Um, but I think so much is hanging over people now, war, and this thing we identify as climate poverty. Uh, things we can't even see yet [00:52:00] that, um, it does affect the sense of the future and whatever we thought was going on then, uh, the future was always filled with possibility. And I don't know if the young feel that way now.

I don't want to talk in the generalities about youth that used to drive me crazy. Um, but, you know, just these days, the, you know, you get this kind of

last summer of something before the whatever. Uh, and this feeling of waiting for something. to happen has been with us for a while, this sort of insecurity.

And, uh,

Andrea Hiott: yeah. And the disconnection, I mean, for me, it's, again, I keep coming back to this relational thing of you actually being, because the book, you know, it's so social, [00:53:00] it's, you're with people, in all kind of complicated ways, trying to figure things out.

And there's a kind of earnestness to it of trying to live life, you know, and it gets messy. And there's actually quite a lot of illness that comes eventually and stuff. It's not them saying like, we should put this on a pedestal as a way to live again, but there is an earnestness and an authenticity of, of connection of human relation that I feel is harder now.

I mean, COVID has something to do it when you're talking, I'm thinking about the kids who had to sit behind their screens.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. And

Andrea Hiott: didn't go to school. And that really changes you, you know, I've seen it and, and kids have friends and stuff. It's not a,

Darryl Pinckney: I mean, the only good thing about it is that it's a widely shared experience.

So nobody, so you can connect through

Andrea Hiott: it that way.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. It happened to people. Um, the strange thing is, of course, Our historical memory is so brief these days, , that there's things get put away before [00:54:00] there's room for them, you know, so everyone's living with a lot of baggage that is heavier than it need be.

I'm so

Andrea Hiott: glad you said that because that, that makes me think that, that was actually the part of the thrill of wanting to be part of that scene of writers and stuff. It was this, and it's actually what I noticed so much in your book is that there's this kind of, um, um, this transmission that's going on over time just through knowing one another.

And I think it can happen. I was going to ask you when I said is life about who we know, is it also who we read? Because I think you can, it can also come through who you read. Like if you really read certain poets or authors and you really kind of know them in a way and then you kind of transmit that in whatever you do.

Um, that lineage, that connection, that feeling of time, which is really different from what you were just describing. That was, that still is what. Motivates me and yeah, you know,

Darryl Pinckney: there's a kind of reading that makes you feel close to [00:55:00] this book or this work and and then maybe to a degree to the author at that moment.

Not that you're going to go off and stalk anybody or no, it's just a recognition that you kind of closeness because it's human contact. The reason we still read is to have this kind of enrichment by contact and learning something that you didn't know you didn't know. So I think that's always very important.

People who read are not as lonely as people who maybe don't.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, and it, it keeps you, well, I've always, there's a difference like when, when, when I know someone reads is

Darryl Pinckney: also what you read.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it's also what you read, but I think there's something about reading stories, narratives, and poetry. I mean, many things that, what you're doing is sharing [00:56:00] perspective with, so you're kind of, there's at least, you're learning, you're learning a kind of pattern or a habit of how to open yourself to new perspective.

Do you know what I mean? So there's, it's getting

Darryl Pinckney: outside yourself.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: And that, that's,

Andrea Hiott: Is a different kind of the world. More people need to do these

Darryl Pinckney: days.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, well, many people don't, right? We, instead there's a closing down of pathways. I'm so finished with identity

Darryl Pinckney: politics. And I don't want to sound like some right wing person, but I think we need to embrace the universal, the concept of the universal.

Again, you know, our commonality. And stop with all these sort of competitive identities. I sometimes get the feeling that in the United States, the only authority you can speak from is that of the victim and it's an imitation of, the black civil rights movement, but it's also a misunderstanding of it, you know, but, a lot of people who are coming off as victims aren't at all.[00:57:00]

This is crazy. It's sort of debasing. Who's really a victim, you know, it's just a kind of, part of power relations, you know, to who's more convincingly a victim. And this is a disgrace to people who really are, you know, but it's a sort of manipulation that is everywhere. Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: And I think also for the people who engage in it, because just to try to, because I think when you're in it, it seems like what you're supposed to be doing sort of in the same way that if you look at certain people and they've made a lot of money or they have a lot of attention, you think that must be the way to do it.

But if you're living in that phenomenology, It isn't actually what you would choose if you could, if you could know what it is. And I think it's similar with these kinds of what you're talking about. It's, it almost feels like to be part of the group, to be accepted, [00:58:00] you have to have a story like that. And it can almost feel like the farther you go with it, the more accepted you're going to be, or the more intentionate you get until at some point you've actually lost yourself and you've become.

This story that you might have convinced yourself, connected you to all these people, but somehow you're alienating yourself, you know, it's, it's actually the opposite of what I was trying to describe with that connecting, but I don't think people know they're getting into that. It's just, you get like in that inertia where you feel like you have to do that if you're going to be cool or part of things or make some real change in the world or whatever, you know.

Darryl Pinckney: It's like people, if you have friends who feel the only way they can ask for your attention is to be always in crisis. Uh, and this is a bit like that. The only way that I can justify wanting to talk to the world is about a crisis. Mine or yours or the world's. [00:59:00] Um, there's no other sort of register in which I can, um, ask for your time, which is why we do like storytellers because they're talking to us in another way.

And

Andrea Hiott: with the story you get what's I think missing in that. What you just described, which is your, your, these, these things are like portals, right? These experiences we have when we share them with one another, we can, of course, like my experience isn't your experience, but when I'm reading your book, there's so many moments where I feel so connected to you, whether it's when you talk about your sister and her suffering from that, I didn't know that about your sister and I've had that in my own family.

So there's a line there where we. Our patterns connected, which I wouldn't have had if I didn't spend the time with your book. And that's just one, there's many, but it doesn't mean you and I, it doesn't mean you and I like share the same, it doesn't mean you and I share the same history or are [01:00:00] ever going to completely coincide.

We have very different things, but it opens up a way for us to share paths and then new paths open. And when you become a, when you're just like a, in the victim mindset, that opening is not there at all, right? It's either.

Darryl Pinckney: It's a competitive mindset. That's the problem with it. You're competing for attention as if it's a resource, you know.

Um, and as I said, there are stories that really are about people becoming victims that we should pay attention to.

Andrea Hiott: Yes, it's an important story.

Darryl Pinckney: You know.

Andrea Hiott: Important experience.

Darryl Pinckney: You're, you know, and I don't want to trivialize anyone else's trauma. So, um. I don't mean that, uh, everyone is free to tell his or her story.

That's the point. Um, but I'm not interested in everyone's stories. I think I'm too much of a narcissist myself to [01:01:00] really make room for someone else's trauma or something like that. I think that's why I'm not really on social media. I can't, um, you know, you have to make choices about what read.

This is one of the most painful things about running out of time.

Andrea Hiott: Do you feel that now? You've said it a couple times. Are you feeling like you're running out of time to do all the reading and all the

Darryl Pinckney: Well, I feel like I'm running out of time and it doesn't make my character any better than it did.

Doesn't make me any lazier or less spoiled than I have been. You know, I, I order books and I live with hundreds of books I've not read yet. Uh, and I don't sort of get them in the evening instead of whatever it is one does, uh on YouTube before. [01:02:00] sleep kind of knocks you out. I watch sort of ridiculous things like people falling into water.

Andrea Hiott: What? People falling into water?

Darryl Pinckney: Stuff like that. Pranks and fails.

Andrea Hiott: I guess you need something light.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes. Yes. Um, you know, I, I really have a terror of going to sleep with the last thing

or scene or something. And also YouTube has become my music delivery system.

Andrea Hiott: YouTube is great. I do think that a lot of these conversations are opening up through things like YouTube and podcasts and the music and stuff. There's a lot of new ways that people do find connection. And share their stories anyways. Doesn't

Darryl Pinckney: burn as much energy as it used to.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. We have to figure that one out.

But did you say you have a terror of going to sleep? Like you need to have the right thing to go to sleep or [01:03:00] something? Is that what you mean? Like the right,

Darryl Pinckney: I don't like to go to sleep with the last thing I've read being about like a negative Ukrainian soldier. Yeah, yeah. Going to hiding in order not to serve.

But I think it's so important to defeat Russia and at the same time, I don't think Russian artists should be punished.

And St. Petersburg to me was one of the most beguiling cities, and I'm not a well traveled person, but St. Petersburg, one of these places where the books jump out and start walking around. So I miss being able to go there anyway.

Andrea Hiott: I can't even get into that because it's just too, it's too, it's too much. But I'm glad we at least acknowledge it. I, it's another one of those things I just, it's hard to get my head around right now. Also,

Darryl Pinckney: it's a lot of places, Darfur, you

Andrea Hiott: know,

Darryl Pinckney: um, [01:04:00] Gaza,

Andrea Hiott: you

Darryl Pinckney: name it.

Um, and I was thinking the other day, well, I never hear about Myanmar. Uh, it's not that those people have stopped. It's just that I don't read about it,

Andrea Hiott: but I

Darryl Pinckney: look up less and less in that way. You know, I, I have the slight kind of falling behind with current events. I don't really know who the new politicians in the UK are.

Andrea Hiott: That's different for you. Gosh. I remember when you just knew every little thing.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah, but You know, I don't really have a sense of Keir Starmer or anything like that.

Andrea Hiott: Well, I think as we, you know, when you start to realize you have a certain amount of time, and also it's just like, what do you want to be thinking about and what sort of energy do you want to be living in?

And yeah, how much can you do something that's going to be productive? And then is it going to be [01:05:00] productive to think about it all day and live in it and feel terrible and like, you know, probably not. So you have to find some, I

Darryl Pinckney: find myself turning more about the past, reading literature from the past, uh, trying to look for clues in the past.

And if I'm able to do, um, another book, uh, one of them would be trying to trace my family and slavery is the one thing about the white Pinckney family is that they were such big deals and such good business people. So they kept very careful journals. And so I can find these names That would be good. And the records,

Andrea Hiott: I always wondered about that from

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah, like the cotton and they make much more available.

Andrea Hiott: Mm-Hmm.

Darryl Pinckney: than there used to be.

Andrea Hiott: Do you think of New York as home? I always, I wonder what, what, what feels like home? Is it Indiana? Is it

Darryl Pinckney: James?

Andrea Hiott: Oh [01:06:00] yeah. You, you've been together so long. Wherever James

Darryl Pinckney: land is.

Andrea Hiott: That's so sweet. It makes me think Sontag said where your books are, right? I think you say that in the book is your home.

Yeah. Well, where are your James? Is is your home? He's your book. You, you're in one of the most successful relationships I've, I've seen over these, I've known you a long time. It's not like we talk every day or something, but I've seen that you and James were in love 15 years ago or whatever it was, and you still are.

And you, yeah, it's kind of, I think it's because we were

Darryl Pinckney: kind of old when we met. You think that

Andrea Hiott: was the key?

Darryl Pinckney: I was 38. So,

Andrea Hiott: a

Darryl Pinckney: lot had happened. And again, as I said, I just like, got stuck.

Andrea Hiott: Well, you're lucky. We were both lucky.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes.

Andrea Hiott: There's something I have to ask you about before we go, because it's the end of your book, and it's got the word love in it, it's the Marianne Moore quote. At the end. Yeah. [01:07:00] So after everything, after everything we have loved is lost, then we revive, isn't that the Marianne Moore?

Yeah. Can you, I mean, after everything we have loved is lost, then we revive. It almost makes me want to think, after everything we have, yeah. desired or something or I mean, isn't the revival the love or? How do you see that quote?

Darryl Pinckney: I think the way Lizzie read it, which is that she means wisdom, you know? Uh, and I guess for Lizzie, that always went with the kind of stoicism, you know, as the burden for seeing clearly, you know, that you can't act on it.

It's just this deeper understanding you're stuck with from your life.

Andrea Hiott: So that's kind of like what you were saying, when, how you were feeling when you met James, this, and that's philosophy. Oh, I was feeling

Darryl Pinckney: a little different. [01:08:00] I was feeling a little different.

Andrea Hiott: Well, that's different, but it's also this, you said you were older and so you, you had a certain kind of, yeah, there's a kind of wisdom that allows you to be in a different place with someone,

Darryl Pinckney: okay. Uh, no, I mean, I, yeah, you sometimes don't know what you want until you see it and then it's available.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, love of wisdom though, I think goes into this, why poets do what they do to you too. There's some, and it also probably ties into your family and all these things you know, you come from a family that's loves wisdom and.

Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: They were into education. It was sort of one thing, real inheritance from slavery was education, the importance of it.

 I

think that was a big deal.

Andrea Hiott: That talented 10th kind of idea [01:09:00] or more just appreciation of,

Darryl Pinckney: I don't, I mean, they certainly, I think a lot of, yeah, maybe, maybe, but they never came off quite that way.

Uh, I had a great, well, a great. Great grandfather who I've seen an affidavit that he couldn't write. So it's just as Mark from 1898. And yet at the same time, 24 years earlier, he had the South Carolina legislature pass an act. That changed his name from Limus to Limus Pinkney. In other words, he went out of his way to acquire the master's sort of name.

All of his children, I think they were 13 from two marriages. I get the feeling went to school [01:10:00] and his son, Limus. I have his copy of Milton's work because when you graduated back then, the custom was to give you either the Bible or Milton. So I have this, this book and he went to the Atlanta Baptist Seminary that eventually became Morehouse and he was a minister in the South around Augusta, in Augusta, Georgia.

And at a time when, uh, it was just like, Before World War One, um, young black men were being lynched all over the South, um, by the dozens. He got his sons out of the South into colleges in the North, and I don't know how he did it. But they went to Brown, they went to the University of Chicago, they went to Boston University.

He went to the New England Conservatory for Music. [01:11:00] Not his daughters, just his sons. And then he died, um, early and unexpectedly. But I don't know how he did it. But I'm sure it comes from this kind of reconstruction drive about education. And there must have been something like a Peabody Fund or Rosenwald Fund or something like that.

I've been trying to find the

Andrea Hiott: trace

Darryl Pinckney: of how he did it.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: But that wasn't for reasons of talent attempt or anything like that. Um, well, maybe it was because he sort of clearly thought they would do well. But it was to save their lives

and get them north.

Andrea Hiott: It's a very different set of priorities and

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah, but to go that way north was a very different deal. It was amazing and he [01:12:00] wasn't a rich guy.

Andrea Hiott: Incredible, that's quite a story. Yeah. I think it's just, there's, we we have to go because we've been talking, but there's just so, it feels so rich with the, um, your family history, right?

Coming in and there's

Darryl Pinckney: But it's true for every black person. Every black person has lived black history through this, or her family, you know, in every era or epoch, we all have someone who went through that.

Andrea Hiott: All those decisions that, and then it's a different kind of knowledge. Um. Yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: Well. It's a different kind of life.

Consciousness. Yeah. I mean, what about that

Andrea Hiott: idea of double consciousness? I wonder what you think about that. Like that. I mean, I don't.

Darryl Pinckney: I've always accepted it, but, um, I've never found the gay, you know, what we would call the, the gays are being looked [01:13:00] at. I've never found that very comfortable and not just for racial reasons either.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. I even wanted, wondered about the other, like the queer, the coming into the, like almost like a. quadruple or triple or there's many ways of this doubling or is there I don't know.

Darryl Pinckney: No, there's only one way it's just comes down to cruising or being in New York and who's camera ready and who's not, you know.

Andrea Hiott: Okay, but I mean more, you know, you have this amazing family history. Yeah. And you have this Lowell kind of heritage. Very detached from my bad character,

Darryl Pinckney: which only makes me care about, you know.

Andrea Hiott: Say it again?

Darryl Pinckney: Which, and very detached from my own bad character, which only just makes me care about, you know, being noticed by so and so.

Andrea Hiott: And he never did. No, but Darryll, really, I, I'm serious, like, um.

Darryl Pinckney: I know.

Andrea Hiott: Coming, coming from where you did, it's, I, I mean, maybe I'm making it too dramatic, but I just think of you coming out of this family, which is [01:14:00] Kind of a, I mean a very, I don't know if it's upper class or, I mean, my family wasn't that like well read and well, like you had some kind of, but again, pressure on you to be a man of knowledge.

It's

Darryl Pinckney: education more than, uh, class aspiration. I think education was part of the religion of citizenship, you know, and it was something no one could take from you. 'cause as I said, they weren't nobody, nobody was rich.

Andrea Hiott: Mm-Hmm.

Darryl Pinckney: or particularly. Black bourgeoisie, but,

Andrea Hiott: but like the story you just told, you know,

Darryl Pinckney: they believed in books.

They really do.

Andrea Hiott: So I see you having that richness and then you come into the Lowell richness, which wasn't he like the, from Samuel Johnson. I mean, there's this whole other kind of literary, I can't remember it all, but I mean, it's like the most kind of literary background you can have.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. So

Andrea Hiott: then you're with, in that tradition.

So you [01:15:00] have these like two really rich. And, and don't really exist, like, at least that Lao kind of classics trained Brahman ish, I don't know what you really call it. That whole, that, that was kind of really, I imagine that was like really full and still alive at that moment, but almost at the end. But you, you kind of smushed those together.

And that's the kind of what I was thinking about with this doubling, but then also just being

Darryl Pinckney: Very true.

Andrea Hiott: The queerness too. And so there's that doubling. So I'm kind of saying there's like many different ways in which you were getting different perspectives that were And that's

Darryl Pinckney: the book.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, that's the book.

And that's why you can only write the book.

Darryl Pinckney: No, you understood. I'm very pleased you got it. Okay. There were these, these scenes were also influences and represented different literary traditions.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Definitely. Not always reconcileable. I think in writing the book, you've, you've presented in a way that it can continue living.

[01:16:00] That's what I was trying to say about, you

Darryl Pinckney: know,

Andrea Hiott: I think so though, it's, it's because if you don't, if you don't talk about it and write it, then it doesn't get transmitted and passed on. But if you do, it does. And you did. So yeah.

Darryl Pinckney: Okay.

Andrea Hiott: No one else could have, right? Who, uh, who else could have those two strands coming together that, I don't know.

Darryl Pinckney: No, everybody has, you know, writers get to where they are

by different means, but, but, but by very similar that are very similar at the same time, you know what I mean?

Andrea Hiott: There's patterns that connect.

Darryl Pinckney: Things you need that different worlds can provide, I would say. And

Andrea Hiott: that's why that question of, are you who you know? Are you the people that you are with is actually a really deep, rich question, you know?

Darryl Pinckney: Your [01:17:00] chances often come from opportunities and that's what New York was, you know, that kind of mobility

Andrea Hiott: and also what you gift to generations to come because if you hadn't, you, you connected, I'm not trying to put you on a pedestal cause we all do it in different ways and it matters for all of us, but in your, in your case, it is quite unusual, right?

That you, you did leave a particular environment and bring it with you and enter another one and kind of, you entangled some threads that probably normally wouldn't have. been entangled in the same way. And it, it's like opening another path, you know, that wouldn't have been there. I don't know really how to say that, but I think that's, I think I understood.

Darryl Pinckney: That's

Andrea Hiott: connected to all those other themes I've been talking about, about relations and history and community and. It's a very

Darryl Pinckney: generous way to read it. So thank you. But I think it's, you know, you never know what results from your, sometimes it's very different from your intentions. But, [01:18:00] um, for one thing, I wanted to show these women as being to remember how smart they were.

They really were. And so, um, um,

and not to sort of see them, I don't know. Uh, I wanted to say in a gossipy way, but of course it's full of gossip. So,

Andrea Hiott: no, you love gossip, don't you? No, no. Um,

Darryl Pinckney: and yes, these sort of, different worlds that sort of didn't meet, but that, you know, Um, had a claim on me,

Andrea Hiott: definitely.

Darryl Pinckney: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Hiott: And you them too, I think.

It's, I think you gave them a lot too, probably. But yeah, of course, these are three of the most amazing women in, kind of, in New York, so it's, yeah. All right, well, again, my

Darryl Pinckney: deep thanks. Yeah. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Daryl. Thank you. [01:19:00] It is nice to talk to you again. Okay. Nice Anytime, anytime you ring, just let me know.

Andrea Hiott: All right. Yeah. Well, don't say that. And when you're coming to

Darryl Pinckney: New York, say hi. Okay,

Andrea Hiott: I will. Same if you come to Netherlands you always have a place. Okay. Have a great day there or good afternoon. You too. All right. And have a good evening. And thank

Darryl Pinckney: you again from, from my heart.

Really very kind and generous reading of it. I really mean it. I'm very touched. Yeah. Really very touched. Well, good.

Andrea Hiott: I'm glad. Thank you for letting me talk about it and say all that. All right. You're too much. I give you a big hug. See you soon. Same here. I hope. All right. Ciao. Bye. ​