André Leon Talley, THE CHIFFON TRENCHES
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[1:49]Andrei Lantelli, and I had a really good conversation, and at the end I gave him myself on. It was like,
[1:55]if you need me, just call me, but of course he doesn't need me. Anyway, it was emotional and really
[1:59]great, and I really enjoyed talking to him. Andrei Lantelli, if you don't know, was the
[2:03]indomitable creative director at Vogue during the magazine's rising dominance as the world's
[2:09]fashion Bible. He's also the author of memoir The Shafan Trenches, which is what we're talking about
[2:14]in this interview. Over the past five decades, he's also appeared in Vanity Fair,
[2:19]interview, and women's word daily, and has published several illustrated works, including
[2:23]Little Black Dress, A.L.T. 365 Plus, and Oscar de la Renta, his legendary world of style.
[2:30]He is also the subject of the documentary The Gospel, According to Andrei. He received his
[2:34]M.A. in French Studies from Brown and served on the Board of Trustees for the Savannah College
[2:38]of Art and Design for 20 years. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
[2:42]Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed your memoir The Shafan Trenches.
[2:47]It's super interesting and fascinating as I'm sure everybody else did.
[2:52]Can you tell me what exactly inspired you to write your memoir? I know you've had a lifetime
[2:57]of experience and you had so many great stories and everything, but why go through all the
[3:02]heartache and the time and everything of writing a memoir and why now?
[3:06]I decided to write the book because I wanted to write a pistol of love and a chronicling of my
[3:11]life. I'm 71 years old. I'm proud to be 71. And I thought there was an important for me as,
[3:17]my story was unique. My narrative had taken a trajectory as many different tributaries.
[3:23]So if you need this in my life that I had to write this book, I was compelled to write the book
[3:27]because I had this documentary called The Gospel, According to Andrei, which was came out in 2018,
[3:33]and it was so warmly received by the people who saw this documentary and so many different walks
[3:39]of life, people in the street, my colleagues, just, I just, it can tell me to write the book.
[3:44]And I didn't have a set plan to write a certain kind of book. I just sat down and started writing
[3:49]once I got the book deal with Valentine Penguin Random House. I had no notes, I had no diaries,
[3:55]it all came from my head. Wow. When you started writing, it did all of the
[4:00]experiences from when you were younger, some of the more painful ones, did they just start coming out?
[4:05]Or did you have any sense that you were going to want to include them?
[4:09]The painful experiences have been with all my life. And all of the experiences have been with me,
[4:13]they just came out because those things I've kept bottled up in my brain, in my mind,
[4:19]for decades and decades. And so this book was in a way, a cleansing, although it was,
[4:24]it was so much a cleansing. I realized now that I've completed the book, that it was a cleansing
[4:29]of the spirit and soul. And I feel very proud of it. It cleansed my soul. I had never spoken of
[4:36]serial sexual abuse to anyone, no one in my family, no therapists, nothing when I was growing up in
[4:42]the south. African-American people of just modest means, they might have therapists to go to.
[4:48]You couldn't go to your church because that was shaming. And I just thought that I could not
[4:52]say that to anyone, I was the only child, and it was my grandmother. And I thought that whatever
[4:57]this was that it happened to me, if I told my grandmother they would probably hurt her,
[5:02]as she'd be very devastated, or I would be sent away to her form school. So I never talked about
[5:07]talked about those things. So as I sit down to write, it was so very much, I have, as I said, I don't
[5:12]write with notes, I don't have diaries. I don't go through to refer to books or things or articles.
[5:19]It just comes out. It's, I write as I feel. And the given day, I write, I get up and I write,
[5:23]and I write what it's going through my head at that time. And I know you just said it was a cleansing.
[5:28]Did you feel like you had sort of made sense of it after writing it? And when you were actually
[5:33]sitting there, like with your, did you write it with a computer or by hand?
[5:36]Yes, computer by hand. By hand, most of the days, sometimes I'd be traveling, and I would write by
[5:41]hand. I remember I was in a local hotel for a week in New York City in 2018 in October. And I did,
[5:49]I don't travel with my computer, so laptops or things like that. So I was writing on the
[5:55]blotter on the desk, you know, the bladders. And it's a pad. It's got many, many pages. So I was,
[6:01]wake up in the morning and write on the blotter. I wrote one chapter on my hand.
[6:05]And did I was scribbling notes that I've had on little pieces of paper as I went about,
[6:09]you know, car, if I had a thought or something like that. And so I forgot your question.
[6:15]I was starting to ask you a question, but I was clarifying how you wrote what I wanted to know is
[6:19]as you were scribbling down notes or as you were typing, when you were reliving some of that
[6:24]painful stuff. And I'm sorry to jump in with like all of your personal trauma here. But I
[6:29]just like was blown away by the way, wrote about it. And no, no, no, I just, it came out. It just
[6:34]came out. It just flowed out of me. It flowed. It flowed. It flowed. I did write a book before that in
[6:40]2003. I wrote this book, a ALT, a memoir. And that also happened. It just flowed. It was just,
[6:46]I woke up one morning. I was in my grandmother's house in North Carolina. She had passed away in 1989.
[6:51]And I woke up and I went downstairs. I remember it's 730 in the morning. My computer was in the
[6:55]kitchen. And I sat down on the computer and it eight o'clock. And by three o'clock, I had the first
[7:02]25 pages of that book, the first book. And I read the thing. And I just started writing and I
[7:07]read this piece. And I thought, this is, this is something important to me. And I think this is
[7:13]something I need to show to somebody. And I took those 25 pages that I printed out on my computer
[7:18]to John Fairchild, the late John Fairchild, my former boss, who was a great man of genius.
[7:24]He was very fearful, very intimidating. And I wasn't even that women's wear daily. I was out
[7:28]of women's wear daily almost 30 years. And I asked Mr. Fairchild, could I see him for lunch?
[7:34]He took it to the fastest place in New York, but Bernadette. And I said, Mr. Fairchild, I have
[7:38]something to give you. And I would like for you to read this, because I trusted him, because we
[7:42]had that kind of respect for each other. He called me up. He read, he said, this is brilliant. I want
[7:47]to print this. It was printed in W as the first chapter. It was, I compared Mrs. Reeland to my
[7:54]grandmother. It's all about my grandmother, Mrs. Reeland. And that was the beginning of my first book.
[7:58]And I just sat down one morning and started writing. You know, so I could basically write,
[8:03]I have another book. Let me just tell you, your moms who don't have time to read books.
[8:07]I have a book three in me. As I read this book, as I go over this book, as people respond to it,
[8:13]as so many things come up that I have not put in this book, that I could have put in the book,
[8:17]but I did not put in the book. Well, I will save more time for that third book of years. I will carve
[8:22]it out now. When should I put it in for what? Like, 2022 or so? I know that there are so many wonderful
[8:34]things that have happened. There are not in the book that people respond to. And I didn't leave
[8:38]them out on purpose. But as I was writing it, those things have come to me. And now it makes the
[8:44]come to me that I forgot. And I could have put them into it. And I thought, oh, I thought, well,
[8:48]this could have put in the book. And that's that out. And why did I do this? Why did that?
[8:52]Nevertheless, the book is there. And I'm proud of it. What are you most excited? What did you
[8:56]leave out that the comments have elicited? And you like have to write another book to put in?
[9:00]Well, just recently Rosemary Fatherberg at WWD has a piece out right today on Fire Island
[9:07]in the 70s. And she called me and she interviewed me and Stephen Barrows,
[9:10]and Beth and Harison. Stephen Barrows was then one of the kings of Fire Island. He was one of
[9:15]the social lions of Fire Island. He and Calvin Klein were the fashion kings of Fire Island, the
[9:19]70s. And she found his photographs. I had done it for Alan. And she said to him, she says,
[9:24]can you talk about these pictures? And I said, well, do these pictures? She said, you also took them.
[9:30]I said, what? And she said, you took them. And there was an airplane that went daily.
[9:34]And she started quoting the article and the people. And I thought, oh my god.
[9:37]And then she wrote this beautiful piece yesterday on Fire Island. And I realized
[9:41]that could have been a whole chapter. And it would be so relevant today.
[9:44]Life in Fire Island, the liberating Fire Island, the liberating cheese dance, the motel,
[9:48]the blue whale, the blue drapes, the liberation, the naked bodies, the sexy outdoors,
[9:54]Al Fresco sex. On which I was an observer, I was not a participant. I was an observer.
[10:00]I went to Ireland, and I...
[10:02]Manolo Blanco became very good friends at Ireland.
[10:04]And I could have written about that.
[10:06]So many things I could have written about Manolo Blanco.
[10:08]There are pieces that I left out about.
[10:10]Palomper Castle's wedding.
[10:11]I could have described it how brilliant that was.
[10:13]It was a bit of a moment of book.
[10:15]But so many trips with Palomper to Venice.
[10:17]It went to Venice for her one summer.
[10:19]How I had clothes made to go trips to Venice.
[10:23]And I would have wardrobe made just to go to certain destinations.
[10:26]All that's very much a part.
[10:27]And I love the details.
[10:29]I'd like to describe details.
[10:31]I don't know where I got that training from,
[10:32]but I'm a man of nuance and detail.
[10:35]And I'm very proud that people say to me,
[10:37]I love the way the book is written.
[10:39]I'm so wonderful to read.
[10:41]And it's just, I think, because I read so much when I was a child.
[10:44]I was an only child, and I had to make my own world.
[10:46]And I was reading Vogue magazine at the age of 10.
[10:50]I discovered it in the public library in Durham.
[10:53]And I was reading, and I remember I went to New York once on a bus with my grandma.
[10:58]And we were coming to New York to visit her sister.
[11:01]She had three sisters and lived in New York.
[11:03]So there was a big luxurious trip for us to go on the bus.
[11:05]We were going on a train before that,
[11:07]but it became very fast when we'll take to trailways bus
[11:09]because her train was old and slow.
[11:11]And I was sitting next to her reading,
[11:13]a goo-star flow bears were down Bogue,
[11:15]read at the age of 10 in English, of course, in English.
[11:18]And I did not speak English,
[11:19]French at the age of 10.
[11:20]No.
[11:21]And I love to read.
[11:22]I just would read.
[11:23]I'd love to read everything.
[11:24]And one of the great things I left out of the book
[11:26]was how I read to Deanna Reland.
[11:28]But Mrs. Reland went too bad and decided not to receive anyone.
[11:32]And this is true.
[11:33]She only seemed to her grand sons,
[11:35]Nicholas, Monk, and Alexander Reland,
[11:38]and her sons at her immediate family.
[11:40]And I was the only person she would see.
[11:42]And I would go in and read to her.
[11:44]I'll love.
[11:45]I, she loved my voice.
[11:47]I used to read and try a book to her.
[11:49]I left that part out.
[11:50]That's so beautiful.
[11:51]That is so beautiful.
[11:53]I mean, you obviously have a zillion stories.
[11:55]You could fill probably 50 books with your story.
[11:58]No, not 50.
[11:59]I'd say three.
[12:00]OK, fine.
[12:00]OK, fine, three.
[12:03]But I have to say as much as the anecdotes
[12:05]of who you were with are interesting because you've had this unique life
[12:09]and your exposure to people,
[12:11]the parts that interested me the most were more about you
[12:14]and your interior life and your emotions.
[12:17]As particularly as it related as we were just discussing the sexual abuse,
[12:20]but also how you used eating to sort of deal with your emotions
[12:24]and how you didn't talk about that very much either.
[12:28]No, no, that could have been dealt with.
[12:29]I could have dealt with racism and as I see in hindsight,
[12:33]I could have dealt with racism in a more detailed plane.
[12:37]Being cheating, I didn't realize there was a binge either until after my grandmother died in 1989.
[12:42]And that's the year I started gaining weight.
[12:43]I started putting one weight because I was binge eating.
[12:46]And I just kind of talked about my trips to the Duke died in fitness center.
[12:50]I did not choose to do that, but I realized education about binge eating helps you to control
[12:56]your weight and I was eating, you know,
[12:59]I was eating a sleeve of fitness almost every night at 1130.
[13:03]When I got to Duke died in fitness center,
[13:04]I realized there was a thousand calories in one sleeve of fitness.
[13:08]I did not write that.
[13:09]So many things I could have written about my trip to Oprah when
[13:12]for his television show in my early years.
[13:14]I could have written about how I went to Oprah's legendary ball
[13:18]and how would a beautiful Sunday morning that was
[13:19]she had an open experiential church that was so beautiful
[13:22]her legendary collections ball.
[13:25]And I wish she would give another one.
[13:26]It was such a great, great, great, great moment of spirituality.
[13:30]And she had a book beautifully printed after that and sent it to all the guests at the
[13:34]legendary ball.
[13:35]I went to the legendary ball with Mariah Carey.
[13:37]I'm Mariah Carey's left out of the book.
[13:38]That was a great friend at one point.
[13:40]I don't see how much anymore because she's got her two twins.
[13:43]I also think that you probably responded to my early upbringing in the church,
[13:47]how important the church was, how important that the church impacted my
[13:52]appreciation of East Summer Rome when I saw this first show,
[13:55]which was inspired by Poigie and Bess.
[13:58]And Poigie and Bess is this folk opera taking place in the South.
[14:03]And East Summer Rome had never been to the South.
[14:05]He just visited the music.
[14:07]And he created the most extraordinary,
[14:09]a beautiful, elegant show in 1978.
[14:13]And that was my first important couture show in Paris.
[14:17]And I wrote about it and it became the rocket that took my career to the top.
[14:22]And there's a snippet of that in the book in the beginning.
[14:25]You see a letter from Deanna Reeland that she wrote about that.
[14:27]How I described the clothes.
[14:29]I don't know.
[14:30]I don't know.
[14:30]I have certain gifts.
[14:31]And I would write another book.
[14:33]And I would be happy to write another book because I write very fast.
[14:37]And I owe a great deal to my editor Thomas Flannery Jr.
[14:40]And also to my editor at Penguin House, random Penguin House, Pamela Cannon.
[14:48]And it's a team to print a book like this.
[14:51]So it's a team.
[14:53]It takes a village.
[14:55]I feel like I've done a bad job because all we've done is talk about what's not in the book.
[14:59]And what?
[15:00]You've done a great job.
[15:01]You've done everything.
[15:02]But there's so much that actually was in the book that was so amazing.
[15:05]So I hope people don't think that you left everything out.
[15:09]I get a thinly veiled preview of what's to come.
[15:14]Oh, you're probably so neat.
[15:15]Look at that.
[15:16]I did this yesterday.
[15:18]I yesterday.
[15:19]So neat.
[15:21]And I made, I even have your book up there.
[15:23]But I was going to try to move my book.
[15:24]Oh, no, it's beautiful.
[15:25]I see the entire day.
[15:26]It's very neat.
[15:27]Very beautiful.
[15:28]That was my work.
[15:29]And last night with my book.
[15:31]I'm so impressed.
[15:33]Not usually like this.
[15:35]But it looks great.
[15:35]It looks great.
[15:36]Thank you.
[15:36]I appreciate it.
[15:38]So do you enjoy the actual writing?
[15:40]I know you said you're fast.
[15:42]And you have so many things in your head.
[15:43]You're just like, it's a funnel.
[15:44]You can barely get them out.
[15:45]Do you enjoy it?
[15:46]What does it do for you to write?
[15:47]You're not a very lazy person.
[15:49]Essentially, I can stay in bed all day and look at TCM, black and white movies,
[15:54]and just run downstairs and get a chicken salad sandwich
[15:57]or something.
[15:57]I have to process in my mind that I'm going to get up and work
[16:00]in that day, and I'm going to get up and write.
[16:03]And then I jump up and I start writing on a computer.
[16:06]My computer is on a desk next to my bed in my bedroom.
[16:09]I have one downstairs still.
[16:10]But I normally wrote this whole book in this computer up here.
[16:13]And it's a joy to write because I write fast and I type fast.
[16:17]One of the skills I have is that I was in high school
[16:20]and I took a typing.
[16:22]And they said, what do you want to take typing?
[16:24]I said, you never know.
[16:25]It will come in handy.
[16:26]It's like when you pay the piano,
[16:27]you don't know why you're playing the piano.
[16:28]And I type very fast, and it just comes out.
[16:31]It flows.
[16:32]It just flows.
[16:33]I have kept so many painful memories
[16:36]with some of the in the book, the ages and the shaming.
[16:39]I feel that you haven't addressed the whole issue
[16:42]in Anna Winter, but if you want to.
[16:44]I feel that I call it a Tistle of Love
[16:46]because in the book, I express my deeper
[16:49]and her not explained it to me
[16:51]while I suddenly I wasn't doing the Vogue Park Test
[16:53]and why it was not doing the red carpet interviews
[16:57]at the Met Ball.
[16:58]There was no explanation of that.
[16:59]And that was the final straw.
[17:01]That was the final straw that Brooks account was back.
[17:04]And I decided when last year,
[17:06]they had to count notes on camp.
[17:08]I never went to notes on camp.
[17:09]That was the year I said,
[17:10]I'll never go to another Met Ball again as long as I live.
[17:13]And I was writing the book.
[17:14]The book helped me to come to that realization.
[17:16]So I felt that I owed Bozo some explanation.
[17:19]She can go another direction.
[17:20]She thought that the years lo and so this young African-American
[17:23]girl of 22 years of age or something
[17:25]was two million followers was the way to go.
[17:27]That's fine.
[17:28]But just tell me and tell me, you've done a great job.
[17:31]I appreciate it.
[17:32]We're moving on.
[17:33]No one ever explained that to me.
[17:35]And it's never been explained to me.
[17:36]You wrote really openly about your hurt.
[17:39]I mean, to have a relationship.
[17:41]It's a betrayal and a faith.
[17:43]It's a sense of betrayal, it's a sense.
[17:45]And she's since apologized in a public statement
[17:48]to all the people in Canada that's now
[17:50]because she has show intolerant behavior
[17:53]to people of color.
[17:55]And there's in her lack of diversity
[17:57]in the magazine over the years.
[18:00]And I just say to her, business is usual.
[18:03]That was probably a statement that was co-authored
[18:07]by one of her editors, business is usual.
[18:10]And I know her very well.
[18:12]And I see her talking about it in the person's drafting it
[18:16]out and they write it in its approved.
[18:18]Then she clicks on her nose and goes down the carpet
[18:21]and then he'll follow on to the next.
[18:22]Because she is a person of great power,
[18:25]of great influence, she has achieved a greatness in her life.
[18:29]And you can't check it away from her.
[18:31]And she will not let anything get
[18:33]in the way of a white privilege.
[18:35]That statement was a statement of survival.
[18:38]In this particular time, when people are addressing
[18:42]systemic racism in the world,
[18:44]you see more of Dr. Cornell West on TV
[18:46]than you ever seen before.
[18:49]He's on Anderson Cooper.
[18:50]He's on Joe Scarborough in S-N-B-C.
[18:53]You see more of Cornell West speaking about racism.
[18:57]You see Dr. Edigalau, Jr., at Princeton,
[19:00]with his new book, Begin Again About James Baldwin.
[19:03]And so, you know, this was a statement she made.
[19:06]But whatever happens at Condoneness,
[19:08]I wish her well, she wishes to be well.
[19:10]Nothing's going to win a white privilege, nothing.
[19:12]I think it's the personal relationship.
[19:15]I mean, people can put statements
[19:17]and address bigger societal issues.
[19:18]But when someone's hurt you, nothing's going to make it better
[19:21]that's addressed to a large group.
[19:22]No.
[19:23]And I think that she owes me a personal apology.
[19:27]You know, a personal apology.
[19:28]And all would be forgiven.
[19:29]I've grown up in a Christian church in a Christian faith.
[19:33]We are forgiving people.
[19:34]You're a Christian.
[19:35]You're forgiven.
[19:36]You don't forgive the worst things that have been done to you.
[19:38]I have forgiven all the people in this serial area
[19:40]of use to me and violated me and robbed me
[19:44]of the ability to be intimate because this happened
[19:47]to me when I was very young.
[19:48]And it was seriously when I'm for years,
[19:49]years I never told anyone.
[19:51]So I'm a survivor.
[19:52]I'm not a victim.
[19:53]I am a survivor.
[19:55]That's amazing.
[19:55]Well, it's amazing that you are willing to come forward
[19:58]and talk about it because it's so helpful to other people.
[20:00]And, you know, one of the things I was just so struck by in your book, it's like, you're surrounded by people, you're literally like in, it's like, you're in a snow globe of people constantly like surrounding you.
[20:12]And yet there's this feeling almost of loneliness.
[20:15]Absolutely. Oh, you hit on it. You're remarkable. That is a beautiful description. I'm in a snow globe surrounded by the most glamorous.
[20:22]The most powerful, the most influential, along with the class of Betty Cutru, E. Zomorro, Deon von Firstly, Breckman of LaBlanc, and I went to Jordan, Galiano, and in a vortex of glamour.
[20:34]And yet, there, I am alone. I didn't have the confidence to tell anyone in this snow globe, but it happened to me. No, I had never articulated to anyone.
[20:45]some of my best friends when I read the book, this is my God, I didn't know all this stuff. I never knew all this. And, you know, they're very surprised that they didn't know it, but I just kept it to myself.
[20:54]So that's why I said the book was very cleansing. It was almost like a baptism in a way for me.
[20:59]And I came up out of a water renew, you know, when you baptized in a missionary Baptist church, you dumped by the minister, you come up, you're a new spirit.
[21:07]So this is what this book did for me, and I hope to become a better person. I think there's still room for improvement. I'm very flawed. And I'm not the easiest person to get out of it in a snow globe, you know.
[21:17]Don't think that my personality wasn't of one of intimidation in a snow globe, because I was a warrior dealing with other people whose egos were, oh, my goodness, Kyle Lago fell. Oh, he was one of my closest friends.
[21:29]He also betrayed me. He dumped me. He dumped me. As he had dumped so many people in his life.
[21:35]Do you feel at this stage in your life and perhaps having written the book that you have a few people close to you that you can really count on and trust?
[21:42]Oh, my God, yes, thank God. I come on. My dear friend, Alexis Thomas, she is the chair of Trustee at my church to have a sitting in Baptist church. I come on her.
[21:51]There's an artist on a long lifelong friend who was in the fashion world when I came into the fashion world. She was always a top, she was already a top model.
[21:59]My friend, Janice Mays, I went to Brown with, and my friend, so under Bernard calls me every day the comedian. We speak sometimes two and three times a day.
[22:08]I have five great friends that I can depend on. I also feel that I can come on the young one, Justin Burke, who's been a dear friend of mine through thick and thin.
[22:17]She's been there through thick and thin. She's always a calming, but I do feel that Alexis Bethan, son of a nod, and Janice Mays. These are the top four.
[22:27]Well, I'm glad. Oh, women. Oh, women, by the way. Oh, women.
[22:30]I was getting a little bit worried about you. I have to be honest.
[22:33]No, no, no. Alexis has been with me through thick and thin. Alexis has gone with me to the hospital and prayed with the anesthesiologist before she went to work at seven in the morning.
[22:44]This Russian anesthesiologist, she took his hand in my hand and prayed before I went into the operating room for my lab band surgery, which did not work.
[22:52]And New York land gone medical center. Alexis has been with me. We've traveled. We've traveled. We've had great trips.
[22:59]We've gone on road trips together. And just she and I, we've had great fun.
[23:03]And she's a mother of two.
[23:06]And she's a wonderful woman. She's a very smart woman.
[23:08]Bethan has always been there and Janice as well.
[23:11]But well, I know I'm not a bold face name, like all your friends and you don't know what I'm going to report.
[23:17]If you ever need another like sympathetic ear or you're feeling like you're having a terrible day.
[23:23]I'm always around if you want to give me a call.
[23:26]And you're one of the chat with your one of the talk to.
[23:30]Thank you. That's very nice of you.
[23:32]So do you have any advice? I know our time's almost up, even though I would love to keep talking to you.
[23:37]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[23:40]Is this not necessary to keep a journal?
[23:43]Everyone says you must journal.
[23:45]It's not necessary.
[23:47]But in my case, you must depend on the ancestral recall of experience.
[23:54]You must treasure the experience in your mind and in your mind's eye.
[23:59]You must always be able to go back in order to go forward.
[24:03]I got to this book because I relish and I treasure going back and going back.
[24:11]And one of the greatest advice is I can get to getting one or right or anybody.
[24:15]It's just sit down and listen to the birds and sit down on a porch or sit down in a yard or sit down on a park bench.
[24:23]And just sit there calmly and look up at the sky and the trees and listen to the sounds of nature.
[24:29]The chirping of the birds going through the skies.
[24:33]Just find some way to become and just cut off all the noise and the TV kind of all the psychedelic noises of computers and tapping into, you know, looking at your Instagram and all of this stuff.
[24:47]Just become fine, strength and nature.
[24:51]And that's really the greatest advice I can get and just have ancestral recall.
[24:55]And you know, ancestral recall if there come not only from you, but from reading authors from reading reading James Baldwin of Virginia Wolf.
[25:02]You know, I've been reading James Baldwin for the last two weeks.
[25:05]And I think it's important. I've been reading Virginia Wolf Orlando.
[25:09]Mrs. Dalloway.
[25:10]Just go to the great writers Henry James, Tennessee Williams, a great great southern writer.
[25:16]I just love the Tennessee Williams, the thought, the lines in place that he can give, just extraordinary.
[25:22]You must be inspired by something other than yourself as well.
[25:26]You know, inspiration is a very important practice for young writers, wherever it comes from.
[25:30]It could be music, it could be jazz.
[25:32]If you like jazz, it could be classical music, it could be hip hop, whatever you want it to be.
[25:37]Just become and depend on ancestral experience and ancestral recall.
[25:43]Amazing.
[25:44]And I think you have to do that to go.
[25:46]No, no, it's just my, I don't have to go.
[25:49]Well, I mean, I'm happy to keep chatting. My podcast is half an hour, but we can, we can keep chatting.
[25:53]I don't know if you want to keep talking. I don't like asking more questions.
[25:56]Oh, my God. You're so sweet.
[25:58]You know, one of the things that I think the book did well.
[26:02]And I think probably participated in your cleansing is that you finally could release all these secrets.
[26:07]And I feel like I've been talking to a number of authors.
[26:09]And the number one thing that creates problems emotionally in any way is when you hold onto a secret to tightly.
[26:16]And it makes you, it's just like the corrosive power of secrets.
[26:21]And I feel like you finally decided you didn't want to deal with that anymore in this book.
[26:27]Yeah, I did. I did. I came. I was honest.
[26:30]I had bottled up so much and I had bottled up so many things.
[26:34]I chose the amazing small in the book, but they were very important to me.
[26:37]The moments when I did have some sort of intimacy with two men.
[26:40]One with an artist from Italy and I sent him the text and I said,
[26:44]listen, I want to write this in the book. Do you think you'll feel comfortable with this being printed book?
[26:47]He said, yes, I'd be honored.
[26:49]And then there was this incident with Paul Matias in the seventies in Paris.
[26:53]So it's amazing that writing can be a cathartic.
[26:57]It was just, and I would write it.
[26:59]And then I would go back and I would say too, I said to my editor one day, I said,
[27:04]Pam, do you think this is enough about this serial sexual abuse?
[27:08]I don't think I've written enough.
[27:09]And she says, no, you're in enough. It's perfect.
[27:11]You do not want to write anymore about it.
[27:14]And I didn't want to have a dumpster.
[27:16]I didn't want to go into the nasty, sort, ugly black details of the abuses.
[27:21]It's enough to know that it happened.
[27:23]And it strengthens me to have talked about that.
[27:26]I feel cleansed.
[27:27]I feel relieved.
[27:28]I do feel relieved.
[27:29]No, even if it's not right for the book, you can still write it.
[27:32]It sounds like maybe you want to write it and you don't want to sell it, which is fun.
[27:36]You know what I mean?
[27:37]Like, personal details.
[27:38]Exactly. Exactly.
[27:39]Maybe you just keep it in a drawer or something.
[27:41]Yes.
[27:42]I don't know.
[27:43]Yes.
[27:44]It's all I'm dying.
[27:45]They'll find it.
[27:46]Yes.
[27:47]Yes.
[27:48]Well, okay, fine.
[27:49]You don't have to.
[27:50]Since the book has come out, have any reactions disappointed you excited you surprised you?
[27:55]I mean, it's a lot to lay on the world.
[27:57]Since the book has come out, I've been very pleasantly surprised with wonderful reviews
[28:01]from the New York Times and the New York Times book review.
[28:05]The New York Times podcast, The Washington Post.
[28:08]I was only surprised by one person who interviewed me from Parry Match.
[28:13]And he was French and I speak French.
[28:15]You came up here to my house.
[28:17]I allowed him to come up to my house, which is not possible in the pandemic.
[28:21]I do everything on Zoom.
[28:22]But I had so like Parry Match in the idea, Parry Match.
[28:25]I let him in.
[28:26]And he came with four pages of handwritten notes, typewritten, typewritten.
[28:31]And I thought he was going to do a great piece, but the piece turned out to be very disappointing
[28:35]disappointing because he obviously had the notion of what he was going to write with those notes.
[28:41]And you just feel like he had some agenda.
[28:43]So he didn't say anything that was personally wrong about the book.
[28:47]But it was just his narrative was not the narrative I thought that he was going to write about.
[28:53]And it was sort of the only focus on the Anna Winter part and nothing else.
[28:58]And that he forgot about the other parts of the book, which are very beautiful.
[29:02]And the time for it says to me, he's a different time for it says, I love the first part of your book.
[29:06]The most because it's about your emotions, about your bring your childhood.
[29:10]That's what strikes me the most.
[29:12]And I remember saying that I think that was wonderful.
[29:14]I did have a very contentious BBC hard talk with a BBC host, but he didn't win.
[29:21]I don't think I won because I didn't let him take over.
[29:24]He was very tough.
[29:27]He was very smart.
[29:29]He was very arrogant.
[29:30]And I didn't realize that I hadn't done my homework.
[29:33]Although my publicist in England said BBC hard talk is they asked very tough questions.
[29:38]And then I got off the thing and I thought, oh, it was so early in the morning.
[29:42]I said, okay, this was interesting.
[29:44]This was hard ball.
[29:45]I got through it.
[29:46]I got through it all.
[29:47]And since then it's been on BBC hard talk.
[29:49]People have watched it.
[29:50]And they call up and they say, you did an excellent job.
[29:53]People say the man is awful.
[29:55]He always tries to bring up something.
[29:57]he tries to trip up the name of Campbell.
[29:59]Well, he didn't trip.
[30:00]Let me up. He would ask me questions like, why did you stay so long as there was no diversity
[30:04]at vote? Why would you stay there? If there was such, such greater lack of diversity.
[30:10]And I said, you know what? For the paycheck, for the picture, that shut him up, you know,
[30:16]for the good picture, they paid me well. That's where he shut up. So it was very good for me,
[30:21]but I learned a lesson was learned. We're talking to him. I love that it was the composition I
[30:26]had with our local last Friday, which aired on the third hour. And people are just, they love
[30:31]that. People just email me and they say, oh, that was wonderful. And of course, you know, I love
[30:36]talking to people about the book. And it's like almost my new socialize to have to do these
[30:42]podcast resumes. And it's great. It's just great. I have had no disappointment in the book. I
[30:48]sat, well, I was on the best level list the first week of the New York Times. And then the second
[30:53]we can went down to 14. I don't even look at it anymore because, you know, you can't judge the
[30:58]New York Times bestseller. And now this book is going to come out about the Trump's next week on Tuesday.
[31:03]And it's just going to just get the bestseller list. John Bolton's book, Eddie Cloud,
[31:08]Jr's book on James Bond was going to get the bestseller list for short. And that's just it.
[31:13]But I know the book is a success because people love the book. It's the most important thing
[31:17]that people read the book and they say they love it. I agree. It is a great book. It's
[31:22]of course. My here's my last question though. Let's say there's a boy who is going through what
[31:28]you're going through and feels that he can't tell anybody. And he's living with his grandmother
[31:34]and he's in the same situation. What would you if he per, I mean, he won't be listening to this podcast?
[31:38]But let's just pretend if you could talk to this child knowing as, you know, almost 71,
[31:45]here you are having not talked about it. And the way your life is progressed, although obviously
[31:50]achieved like the heights of success and everything else professionally, what would you say?
[31:53]What would you say to that boy? Well, just be a boy living today's world of 2020.
[31:58]Yeah. I don't know. You could do it either way. You could go back to what would you tell yourself
[32:02]looking back? Maybe we should do that. What would you tell yourself looking back if you could have
[32:06]told him any advice? I know my knowing me and knowing how I grew up and know where I came from,
[32:11]kind of household and the culture of society. I would have never said it to anyone. I would have
[32:16]it. I was so afraid. I was there was fear. It was just fear and loathing. So I would say to a boy
[32:22]today who was going to know, though he's not listening to this podcast. But that imaginary young boy,
[32:28]I would say you could maybe if you can articulate it, just pull someone's co-tell. Just pull
[32:34]someone's co-tell. And just if you can't find the words to I could have never found the word
[32:40]what happened to me when I was young, just pull and look and your eyes and someone who loves you
[32:47]will know that something's wrong. And someone just says, someone will say, what's wrong? What's wrong?
[32:52]And you just say what's wrong? And it will eventually they will lead you down the path to find out
[32:58]to discover this, this, this hurt. And that's what I would advise. The young boy would be afraid to
[33:03]tell anyone. But when I was going up, you just, I couldn't, there was no way I was going to tell my
[33:08]grandmother. There was no way I was going to tell an uncle. There was no way I was going to tell
[33:12]anyone. The church goes, I was, it's just the culture. I just could not have said it to anyone.
[33:17]I think we would have killed my grandmothers. She would have had a car to check and die.
[33:21]And she noticed this happened under her watch, you know, and I just couldn't. I know I was afraid
[33:25]because I thought once I realized how helpless was I thought, well, they'll send me a way to
[33:30]juvenile school. And I'll never be with the person I wanted to come.
[33:33]Wow. Well, I hope that wasn't too deep a chat early morning out of her Friday.
[33:41]I really appreciate all your time and talking. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank
[33:47]you very much. It's been a great joy. My greatest privilege is to talk to you on Friday morning
[33:51]before the fourth of July. Oh, thank you. And I will, I will contact you and touch that with you.
[33:57]I would love it. I'm here. All right. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.
[34:02]You too. You've been listening to Momstone have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
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[34:38]moms don't have time to read books. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the
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[34:48]now trim music. Thanks for listening. You can always email me at zibi at zibiowens.com.