[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We went to middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:29] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the 80's. I do ripped from the headlines

[00:34] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:36] Meg: I have a question for you, Jessica.

[00:37] Jessica: Okay.

[00:38] Meg: Do you know where the word podcast came from?

[00:41] Jessica: I feel so dumb.

[00:43] Meg: I didn't know either. Someone told me today.

[00:47] Jessica: Well, cast, I'm assuming. Broadcast. Sure, same thing. Pod. I'm going to take a stab at this. Okay. Maybe it was like the recording studio of the first people who did it was some kind of pod type thing, like in Spinal Tap. He couldn't get out of the pod.

[01:06] Meg: The first podcast was downloaded on an iPod.

[01:11] Jessica: Shut it.

[01:11] Meg: Yeah. Apparently that's what it's from.

[01:14] Jessica: Apple is everywhere. You can't escape them. Wow. That's amazing. That is totally amazing.

[01:35] Meg: Your engagement question, and I have a feeling I know the answer to this, but who was your first gay guy friend?

[01:47] Jessica: You know what? I'm such a sick person. I thought you were going to say who was your first nemesis?

[01:57] Meg: Oh, that could work for this story, too.

[02:00] Jessica: Okay. The first out gay friend. Definitely. Beloved Nicholas. Although I did go to theater camp, so I'm quite sure that I had a bevy of junior homosexuals who I was friends with, but I don't know.

[02:18] Meg: And it's a special friendship, isn't it? I mean, between women and gay men, it's everything. It's interesting.

[02:25] Jessica: It is.

[02:26] Meg: There are lots of things to think about. I've been thinking about a lot because of this story, and we can talk about it. It's nuanced.

[02:33] Jessica: It is very nuanced. And it really does either mess with ideas of gender norms or confirms ideas of gender norms. Like, there are it's really it's very interesting. And funny enough, this is just absurdly anecdotal, but I was watching something on YouTube and a clip came up from an early episode of Will and Grace, and Sean Hayes is coming into a room and he's all jacked up on caffeine. And he I was like, that show was actually brilliant. Like, do the kids know? Do they know? I mean, you have teenagers. Do they have any awareness?

[03:23] Meg: I don't know if they've even heard of Will and Grace. I'll ask.

[03:26] Jessica: That is so interesting to me. And one of the reasons I bring it up is not only that little clip, but there is an episode that reveals how Will and Grace met, and it is probably the origin story of 90% of gay men and straight women in the 80's and the..80's. Anyway, if you can catch that, do, because it speaks volumes. But yes. So it was Nick.

[03:58] Meg: Okay, I'm going to tell a very quick story. I wasn't even planning to tell this, but it's very quick and it actually doesn't take place in the 80's, I think it probably happened, like, five years ago or something, but I was at a gay bar, and one of my very close friends who is gay, we were there together, and it was early. It was like 5:00 or something. There wasn't a crowd there. We're just having a beer. And this other gay man at the bar came over and was just paying me so much attention. He was drunk, but he was just, you're so beautiful. On and on and on and on. And another one of our friends said, what, does he have a crush on you? That's so weird. We're in a gay bar. And my gay, very good friend said, no, he just wants to be her.

[04:51] Jessica: I've bumped up against a lot of those.

[04:53] Meg: Interesting, right?

[04:54] Jessica: Yes.

[04:57] Meg: Which I took as a great compliment.

[04:59] Jessica: But also, it also has, like, a Buffalo Bill quality to it that's like, I want to wear your skinses.

[05:08] Meg: All right, so my sources for today yes. Esquire, Vanity Fair, Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Lawrence Leamer, which you gave me for Christmas last year, I think. I did. The Capote Tapes, which is a documentary and the New York Post.

[05:26] Jessica: Oh, Truman. Truman made some mistakes, which we will discuss today. Okay.

[05:33] Meg: On August 25, 1984, Truman Capote, the renowned raconteur and author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood died at Joanne Carson's home in Bel Air.

[05:48] Jessica: Johnny Carson.

[05:49] Meg: Johnny Carson, ex wife of Johnny Carson. At this point, he was 59. The cause of death was liver disease, complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication. He had been in rapid decline for years, pickling himself with alcohol and cocaine and carousing with Andy Warhol and other Studio 54 denizens. In brief, he was a mess. When Gore Vidal heard Truman had died.

[06:17] Jessica: Talk about nemesis, right?

[06:19] Meg: He called it, quote, "a wise career move."

[06:22] Jessica: Yeah, that bitch.

[06:24] Meg: Harsh words, but not untrue. Back in 1966, Random House had paid Truman an advance of $25,000 to write Answered Prayers, which was to be his magnum opus. When the delivery date came and went, they renegotiated a three book contract for an additional $750,000. By the time of his death, Random House had advanced him over a million dollars. No manuscript was ever delivered. It's possible that writer's block and the overwhelming pressure to produce a masterpiece had something to do with what he did in 1975. It's definite that what he did ruined his life. But let's back up a bit. In the 60's and early 70's Truman wasn't into the New York club life. He was spending his time with the Cafe Society. He'd hosted the iconic Black and White Ball at The Plaza in 1966, which was considered the social event of the decade and secured his position, or so he thought, among the wealthiest and most exclusive set in New York.

[07:37] Jessica: Not bad for a kid from Mobile, Alabama.

[07:41] Meg: His best friends were women married to powerful men. And these women dressed impeccably and traveled internationally and bought the most coveted art. The swans. Dined in the most exclusive restaurants. And yes, these women Truman called his swans. And they included Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness, C.Z. Guest, Gloria Vanderbilt and Lee Radziwell. But his extra special best friend was Babe Paley. Babe was excruciatingly put together, rail thin, impossibly elegant. She was the epitome of class and beauty. Truman said of her in one of his journals, quote, "Mrs. P has only one fault, she's perfect. Otherwise she's perfect."

[08:35] Jessica: Oh, pithy.

[08:37] Meg: Interesting though, right? It's hard to be perfect.

[08:40] Jessica: Yes.

[08:41] Meg: Yeah. And I think the pressure showed.

[08:43] Jessica: Well, isn't the thing about swans that they are so elegant, but underneath the surface they're working like mad. There's little flipper feet.

[08:52] Meg: Flipper feet. Babe was married to Bill Paley, the charismatic head of CBS, who was known for breaking women's hearts. His first marriage to Dorothy Hearst, who had left her husband, John Hearst for Paley, blew up when one of Bill's girlfriend's suicide notes was published in a local paper. Ugly.

[09:12] Jessica: That's very awkward.

[09:14] Meg: He was married to Babe a year after his divorce from Dorothy. Babe was recently divorced from her first husband and already a fixture in New York society. She offered Bill social connections. He'd been given the cold shoulder by the WASPy clubs, he was Jewish, and he offered Babe wealth and security. It was an arrangement that had its benefits. But it wasn't always easy. Truman knew everything that happened behind the curtain of the Paley's picturesque life. Babe was perfect because she had to be. If anything was amiss, from the flowers to the place settings to their vacation plans, Babe was blamed. And Bill continued to carouse with women pathologically so. From what I've read, he sounds like he was a sex addict. And he was definitely a narcissist.

[10:12] Jessica: Yes.

[10:13] Meg: Babe was savvy enough to not air her dirty laundry with her girlfriends. God forbid they gossip about her behind her back. But for some reason, she trusted Truman with everything. And Truman idolized her through his eyes she was the beautiful, witty, stylish, sophisticated woman she had worked so hard to become. He valued the things about her that she valued about herself. And she invited him everywhere, her villas in Jamaica and the Bahamas, a camp in New Hampshire, her 85 acre estate on Long Island, and of course, he was a frequent guest at her impeccably furnished apartment at the St. Regis. He was her pug, and she brought him to all the fundraisers and the elite soirees. Babe was lonely, and Truman was her most trusted, if not only, true, confidant. Of Babe, Truman said, quote, "she was the only person in my whole life that I liked everything about. I was her one real friend, the one relationship she ever had." Slim Keith, one of Truman's other swans, said of Truman, quote, "he was one of the three or four brightest people I've ever known in my life. His head excited me immensely. Going to lunch with him in a good restaurant was the most fun there was." So what went wrong? This brings us back to the horrible thing that Truman did in 1975. Now, he hadn't published anything since In Cold Blood in 1966, and while its publication solidified his standing as one of the most celebrated writers of his time, it was coming on ten years during which all he'd produced was witty party conversation and snarky talk show interviews.

[12:01] Jessica: Which he was really, really good at.

[12:05] Meg: Yeah, no doubt.

[12:06] Jessica: He was the perfect talk show guest.

[12:09] Meg: He kept telling everyone he was working on a masterpiece in the vein of Marcel Proust and Edith Wharton. And many, especially the people over at Random House, I imagine, were eager to see it.

[12:21] Jessica: Way to dig your own grave, Truman.

[12:25] Meg: And then, in the November 1975 issue of Esquire magazine, he published an excerpt from Answered Prayers, his masterpiece in progress. The excerpt was called.

[12:36] Jessica: I already know. I've known this for decades. I've known this story. It's so bad that I'm actually having anxiety just waiting for you to say it out loud. That's how bad it is. Okay.

[12:53] Meg: The excerpt was called La Cote Basque 1965. La Cote Basque was an exclusive restaurant at 60 west 55th street, where all the ladies lunched. And in the story, P. B. Jones, or Jonesy, who is clearly Truman himself, is dining with Lady Ina Coolbirth, who is obviously Slim Keith. And the two characters start gossiping about everyone they know, nasty gossip about actual people. And Truman didn't bother to disguise anyone's identity very well. Many swans were burned, but Babe was deeply betrayed. In the story, Lady Coolbirth tells of how Sidney Dillon, a Jewish powerbroker just like her husband Bill, bedded a governor's wife who sounded a lot like Mary Rockefeller. Quote, "a cretinous Protestant, size 40 who wears low heeled shoes and lavender water, Dillon raged against Wasp society. Quote, that's why he wanted to fuck the governor's wife, revenge himself on that smug hog bottom, make her sweat and squeal and call him Daddy." It's just so awful.

[14:16] Jessica: He was a very, very mean guy. That's what attracted the swans to him. That's what makes for great cocktail party chatter, being a little wry, sarcastic, biting. Oh, Truman.

[14:35] Meg: And then after the sex, which is described in the story in detail, Dillon, the character Dillon discovers, quote, "the sheets bloodied with stains the size of Brazil." And the character Dillon has to scrub them clean in the tub before his wife comes home, because the governor's wife had been having her period.

[15:02] Jessica: Oh.

[15:03] Meg: I mean, what the ****, it's so unnecessarily misogynistic.

[15:09] Jessica: Well, that's the other thing, isn't it, with worship, that if you worship a person or a group that you also have to hate them?

[15:19] Meg: There's some resentment there clearly. If Truman thought Babe would forgive him the way she forgave her husband, for all his misdeeds, he was wrong. She never spoke to him again. Truman called Bill Paley and asked what he thought of the story. I mean, this is sounding a little self destructive, isn't it?

[15:42] Jessica: Well, you know, he was known for that.

[15:45] Meg: Quote "I started." This is what Bill Paley said to him. "I started Truman, but I fell asleep. Then a terrible thing happened, the magazine was thrown away." Truman offered to mail a copy. Paley told him not to bother, quote, "I'm preoccupied right now. My wife is very ill." And she was, Babe was dying of lung cancer. She left very specific instructions for her funeral in 1978 including a guest list which did not include Truman. And Truman's downhill decline was precipitous. He bitterly defended himself to anyone who asked. "They knew I was a journalist." But his greatest fear, that of abandonment, which was born from his own mother's neglect, had been realized and he never recovered.

[16:38] Jessica: There are so many takeaways from this story. What do you think is the overwhelming life lesson?

[16:48] Meg: What it seemed like to me was that he was testing her. I mean, sure, he was in this situation where he might have lost he might have been like, oh, sure, she'll forgive me because or she might not even notice it's her or whatever. But ultimately I think what he was doing was testing, testing their relationship, testing their friendship. And you know what? She was not going to side with him over her husband. So he misjudged. He misjudged.

[17:19] Jessica: Well, it's also a profound lack of understanding about money.

[17:23] Meg: Yes. Also, I read somewhere that, it might just be conjecture, I don't know if it's based on anything he ever said to anyone, but that he assumed because he was saying something bad about her husband that they.

[17:41] Jessica: Had no bearing on her. On her.

[17:43] Meg: And it's like, oh, no, she was humiliated. Much more so than her husband. And that's also a fundamental misunderstanding about really, women and their identity and what they value about themselves. The fact that he told a story about her husband

[18:03] Jessica: Her husband fucking around.

[18:05] Meg: But a particularly ugly woman who was described as disgusting and disgusting in this very female way in his mind. Everything is just so coarse.

[18:17] Jessica: You know what? That's a very good point. The pig bottom round, low heeled lavender water.

[18:31] Meg: It makes Babe look bad.

[18:33] Jessica: Rockefeller look bad, but yes.

[18:36] Meg: No, but it makes Babe look bad.

[18:37] Jessica: No, I'm saying first Rockefeller secondly, yes, Babe 1000% because she's aligned with a horrible, horrible person who effectively deceived her in the story. He gets one over on her. He acts out.

[18:58] Meg: In the story, it says the wife never found out.

[19:02] Jessica: Right. And so she's made into a fool which is probably the worst part of all of it, is that if it's an open secret that Bill was screwing around, that's one thing. But to know that everyone knew but you to be the fool is so crushing. It is the most dehumanizing experience that I think anyone can endure particularly from a spouse or a partner or whatever.

[19:41] Meg: And to have your friend who you trust, she didn't tell her girlfriend stuff. She told him. And for him to do that and that poor woman. I mean, can you imagine? And she's dying.

[19:54] Jessica: Well, that is the other really grotesque part of this. That that's how her life had to end. Really appalling.

[20:06] Meg: Right? And he I mean, she wasn't the only one. He there were many swans. None of the swans spoke to him. Again, I think C.Z. Guest was like, eh well, it's fine. I forgive him, whatever. But I think she was the only one. All the others. I mean, he was basically kicked out of New York because no one was going to have lunch with him anymore, and he had to go to Bel Air.

[20:28] Jessica: God, the embarrassment. Yeah. And if you see any of his Dick Cavett interviews, those are always great. His self destruction was so visible. Those appearances were his bread and butter. You can just watch him disintegrate by looking at these clips. And he got fatter. And he was notoriously, incredibly short. So he just was a cube or a sphere as wide as he was tall, and again, became notoriously toad like and horrible. He was so beautiful when he was a young man, he was known for this sort of ethereal beauty, which also comes up in To Kill a Mockingbird, because he's, as many people know, the model for Dill. But he was an exquisite thing, and that he hated himself so much that he destroyed himself inside and out.

[21:41] Meg: And as perceptive, obviously, as he was, he couldn't have been the writer he was without being perceptive. He didn't have a lot of self knowledge, because I think that he thought, this is what they like about me, that I'm this snarky guy, when in fact, that's not what Babe loved about him.

[22:02] Jessica: Well, that's self esteem. That's like, right, I'm good if I'm performing.

[22:06] Meg: Exactly.

[22:07] Jessica: But I'm no good if I'm just me. And that's why I also imagine, although I don't disagree with you, that he was testing Babe Paley, but his need to hang on to his status as the writer of his generation was so incredibly intense. And the pressure of having a million I mean, I know what it is to be late on your writing deadlines for far less than a million dollars, and it's soul crushing. It's really terrible because it's like, oh, I have to manufacture this thing. It's like, am I going to make the widget? But the widget has to come entirely from your brain and your heart, and they don't go together. So the pressure that this guy who's already a little nuts, was under, from my perspective, he just flailed and took a shot at trying to ward off what he probably knew was an inevitable creative collapse.

[23:25] Meg: Absolutely. But think about how he probably wouldn't have had any problem with it if he had just masked the characters. But he clearly made a very strong decision to not do that, to reveal all these people. That was part of it. It was like he wanted to be a gossip column.

[23:47] Jessica: I wonder if the success of In Cold Blood and coming up with this has new kind of journalism where it reads like a novel, but it's based on well researched reality.

[24:03] Meg: He called In Cold Blood fictionalized truth or something like that.

[24:08] Jessica: Maybe he felt that that was his calling card and he was going to have to use that to get out of whatever he's got going on.

[24:14] Meg: Right. That's my superpower. That's what I have to offer.

[24:17] Jessica: This is how I can repeat In Cold Blood, is by giving you a snapshot of absolute reality told in my way.

[24:26] Meg: What happened to to the guys in In Cold Blood? They were executed, so they weren't there to get angry at him, like the swans were.

[24:35] Jessica: Correct. Which is why it seemed like to me, the flailings of someone who's in some way aware that he's on the way out. It is a desperate act to do that.

[24:48] Meg: One quick little anecdote that I thought was interesting and put a different color on it all. Apparently all the swans shared a manicurist.

[24:58] Jessica: Like in The Women.

[24:59] Meg: Yeah, exactly. There was one woman who was just extremely good at her job. So this manicurist went from house to house to apartment to apartment to apartment to making house calls to do these women's nails. And Truman was often there chatting with whatever woman's nails she was doing. So she heard him gossiping about the others, and she hated him. The manicurist thought he was a bad guy.

[25:31] Jessica: How and when did that come out?

[25:33] Meg: I read it in the book that you gave me.

[25:39] Jessica: That is fascinating. Yeah, I love that. So he thinks that he is the ultimate observer, and he's not. He's just a link in the chain. Oh, that's juicy.

[25:52] Meg: Yeah, that's what I mean by, like, not having enough self knowledge. Clearly the fact that he could gossip wasn't what they loved about him.

[25:59] Jessica: Is it self knowledge or self awareness? What is your place in the world? Do you know where you fit?

[26:06] Meg: You're talking about his place in the world, I'm talking about what these women actually valued about him. I think he thought they valued that he was a gossip. That's not what they valued. That's not what. That's not what Slim Keith said about him.

[26:20] Jessica: No, his whit. His whit and his brilliance.

[26:23] Meg: Right.

[26:24] Jessica: Which I would imagine, and this is a common thing with truly, truly gifted people, that it's not a surprise to me that he undervalued that astounding gift because he had always had it.

[26:39] Meg: Right. And he did talk about himself as like, I got to perform like a monkey. And to some degree, I guess that's right. But in his close or true, that he was invited to parties so that he could entertain, but to the people who really loved him, that wasn't what it was about. And he ultimately undervalued those relationships.

[27:03] Jessica: I think you and I are actually saying the same thing. Because you undervalue the relationship. If you undervalue what you're bringing to the table, like, you're not worthy.

[27:12] Meg: Right?

[27:13] Jessica: Yeah. It's very pathetic. It's very sad. And what's even, like, not to go back to how terrible he looked, but let's go back there. I didn't realize I didn't remember until you told the story that he was only 59. He looked like he was in his seventy's or more.

[27:37] Meg: And so bloated and there are all these stories that I didn't include about people running into him on the street where he was I mean, pickled out of his brain at 10:00 A.M.. And yeah, people were like, I don't know if this is sustainable. And it was not.

[27:55] Jessica: No.

[27:56] Meg: Oh, Truman.

[27:58] Jessica: So much promise. Yeah. Don't fuck over your friends.

[28:03] Meg: Don't fuck over your friends.

[28:07] Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[28:20] Meg: K okay.

[28:21] Jessica: I have an engagement question.

[28:23] Meg: All right.

[28:24] Jessica: Where did you get married?

[28:25] Meg: At 24 5th Avenue.

[28:28] Jessica: And what kind of establishment was that?

[28:31] Meg: A ballroom. It's called The Fifth Avenue Ballroom.

[28:35] Jessica: And you got married in the 90's? I did. 1998. What kind of places did you check out as possible venues?

[28:46] Meg: We definitely wanted to get married in the city. We checked out The Boathouse and we checked out the Puck Building.

[28:53] Jessica: Oh, the Puck Building was fabulous.

[28:54] Meg: Oh, my God, that was so expensive. We checked out The Players, and it felt a little dusty.

[29:02] Jessica: Dowdy honestly.

[29:03] Meg: Yeah. I mean, now it's it's much nicer now. But then it needed a new coat of paint for sure. I can't remember where else we looked.

[29:12] Jessica: Did you look at any hotels?

[29:14] Meg: I don't think we did. I do not recall looking at any hotels.

[29:19] Jessica: Well, hotels in New York do a brisk business in weddings. And Joan Rivers daughter Melissa very famously had this insanely lavish wedding at The Plaza and they made it into, like, the set of Anna Karenina. It was completely over the I might be hyperbolic on that one, but anyway, it was over the top. It was completely notable for the time. And so all of these places really catered to the wedding market. And when I was getting married, at around the same time that you did, we looked at wedding venues the same way that you did and looked at the Otto Kahn mansion. And I stayed there. It's it's lovely.

[30:11] Meg: It is lovely.

[30:12] Jessica: And as you may or may not remember, I wound up getting married at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in the Greenhouse. But for a long time, my mom was pushing for Manhattan, okay. And she was just really pushing for hotels in Manhattan. And I looked at a bunch of them and I didn't dig it. You started the other section of this podcast today with who is your first gay best friend and same person who still is, though he's not just my gay best friend. What I'm about to say I know that Nick is listening and I know that it will make him laugh. My mother must have said to me 50 times if she said it once, you know, Jessica, The Stanhope does a lovely wedding. So it became like a battle cry. She really wanted The Stanhope. You didn't like The Stanhope? All of the hotel situations. Maybe I didn't have enough vision. I was studying for the bar exam at the same time. I was really a mental case. So I'm sure it was absolutely they do a lovely wedding. But I was looking for something with a little more glamour. I was thinking about the episode that we did about the New York writers. And I read from Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis and I thought but you know, they were not the only really big deal writers of the time. I started to think about, like, what other writers in the 80's and my loose connection here to New York to begin with is books, publishing, publishing houses in New York City. So that's my first tenuous connection. But I was thinking, like, what were the other books that everyone read and just loved? Loved. And I realized that the author who falls into that category, also his books were adapted into major, major films.

[32:24] Meg: I think I know who this is.

[32:26] Jessica: And they were really coming of age stories that were no less important and probably more so than the John Hughes UFA, which was John Irving.

[32:41] Meg: Oh, that's not who I thought.

[32:43] Jessica: Who were you thinking?

[32:44] Meg: I was thinking Tom Wolfe. Oh, no, The Bonfire of the Vanities. That would have been a really good choice. I love John Irving.

[32:53] Jessica: And so I think The World According to Garp came out at the end of the 70s and in the 80s, his big books were in 1980 or '81, The Hotel New Hampshire and then I think it was '85 or '86, The Cider House Rules. A Prayer for Owen Meany, do you know that I still laugh hysterically just thinking about the scene where the grandmother snatches her wig off to frighten the kids. Anyway, so I was just thinking about it and how those books and those movies were an intersection of 80s pop culture in a really, really major way. But particularly The Hotel New Hampshire because.

[33:37] Meg: Of Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster and Jennie Dundas, who I went to college with.

[33:42] Jessica: Okay. And so I'm going to bring this for 1 second. I'm going to go to the end of the story and why this all comes together okay. And justify that this is a New York story. Because Jennie Dundas plays the younger sister who doesn't grow yes. And becomes a very famous writer and is a bit suicidal. Yes. And because of her, one of the great lines in that book was basically, if you're depressed, just keep passing the open windows.

[34:14] Meg: Right.

[34:15] Jessica: But of course, her character does not heed that advice and jumps, heartbreaking. And where they were all living was The Stanhope. What? Yes.

[34:27] Meg: Oh, my God. Where is The Stanhope?

[34:29] Jessica: 81 Street and Fifth. It is now apartments. Oh, it was a hotel that changed hands many times from the 1920s through the 90's , I think.

[34:42] Meg: I have to say, I had no idea there was a hotel on Fifth Avenue that far uptown, because most of the yeah, that's museums or churches or apartment buildings.

[34:53] Jessica: 995 Fifth Avenue. It's directly across from the museum.

[34:58] Meg: What museum?

[34:59] Jessica: The Met. Oh.

[35:00] Meg: On 81st.

[35:01] Jessica: 995 Fifth. Okay.

[35:03] Meg: And it's apartment buildings now?

[35:05] Jessica: Now, yes.

[35:05] Meg: Okay.

[35:06] Jessica: So The Stanhope. Okay. Do you remember looking at it? Oh yes, I remember looking at it.

[35:13] Meg: That must have been, you know, your mother wanted to hold a swanky wedding.

[35:17] Jessica: I just remembered why I didn't like it. The ballroom. I don't think we were going to have more than 150 people, and the ballroom had to be divided for a smaller space, and I didn't like the divider.

[35:32] Meg: That's fair.

[35:33] Jessica: Yes.

[35:34] Meg: Did they look like the ones at Nightingale?

[35:35] Jessica: Yeah.

[35:36] Meg: It was vinyl. Plastic, right.

[35:38] Jessica: And you'd have to tart it up in some way. But I was just like, not for me. I don't like it. This is not a good feeling. So I suppose they don't do a lovely wedding

[35:49] Meg: No, just not an intimate wedding.

[35:55] Jessica: Indeed. So I was thinking about The Hotel New Hampshire, and I was thinking about the movies that we loved and how The Hotel New Hampshire published by a New York publishing company that admittedly was also a Boston publishing company, then it was acquired by a company that's in New York. So yes, tenuous. But go with me. How weird it was that that became such a hit that it cast a favorable light on Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster and that their relationship in the film was even portrayed as being quite sexy.

[36:31] Meg: Right. Which it is in the book.

[36:33] Jessica: Right.

[36:33] Meg: They're brother and sister.

[36:34] Jessica: They're brother and sister, exactly. And you couldn't have picked two more gorgeous people at the time.

[36:39] Meg: There were lots of very disturbing things in that book and movie.

[36:42] Jessica: Right. And that book, I mean, there's incest. There's rape, rape, suicide, violence, suicide, depression, plane crash.

[36:51] Meg: Rob Lowe was so stunningly beautiful in that movie. But you know how he's such a great actor now. I mean, like, really incredibly funny. He was not a very good actor when he was younger. That is my hot take.

[37:07] Jessica: He was just always the same in my memory. He was just sort of like this charming.

[37:12] Meg: I remember specifically in that movie thinking, this guy can't really act, but he's very pretty.

[37:19] Jessica: He was so beautiful that it was insane.

[37:21] Meg: And I'm such a huge fan of his now. I mean, I've come 180 as far as my estimation of his talents.

[37:27] Jessica: I wonder if it's because also his youngest son is constantly roasting him on Instagram that you love. Have you not even seen that?

[37:36] Meg: No.

[37:36] Jessica: Oh, my God. It's hilarious. One of his sons I think his name is John, Johnny, and this kid has dedicated his life he's like a teenager. Maybe he's in his 20s, like, early roasting his father and just being like, you're not that food looking or, oh, look at the old man during so I do love him now. It's like a newfound love.

[37:58] Meg: But he's in on Parks and Recreation. He's just perfection. He's so fucking funny.

[38:04] Jessica: I never watched that show.

[38:05] Meg: See, you're missing out.

[38:07] Jessica: New and binge worthy. But back to the 80's and back to this book and back to John Irving, I think, about all of the cancel culture that is going on and how things that are unsavory are not to be spoken of unless it's in the most funereal tones. John Irving's books celebrated everything that was profoundly messed up and in doing so

[38:33] Meg: Lots of messed up stuff.

[38:36] Jessica: Yeah. And in doing so, asked you to examine yourself and asked you to examine social mores, shocked you out of whatever you thought about something normally so that you would have to do that kind of reevaluation. But also, there was a gleefulness in how demented what he came up with. These are funny books. They're hilarious. The fact that during that period of time, forget his entire body of work. That book was adored. There was not a single bad thing said about it. It was made into a movie quickly, and it was like there wasn't a soul who didn't watch it and love it. And so much so that I think a lot of people have forgotten some of the really darkest bits that are.

[39:27] Meg: The World According to Garp, too. Oh, my God. So dark.

[39:30] Jessica: Garp is even darker. The Hotel New Hampshire is perverted. It's perverse and twisted. Garp is just messed up profoundly. But Garp is another good example of how John Irving would tackle really, really sensitive subjects from a weird angle. So, like, Garp is conceived because his nurse mother sexually abuses a soldier, who is in a vegetative state. I mean, what?

[40:08] Meg: That's just the beginning, right?

[40:11] Jessica: Yes, exactly. It's just the beginning. She doesn't have any regret, and the book sort of refuses to punish her. And so I think about these books and how much they shaped us. The Hotel New Hampshire was also I don't know if you remember this, but there was a lot of set design and costume design that people got really into. Do you remember the white terry cloth robes? Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster. Thank you. I was like and Kelly like, who the fuck is Kelly? What am I doing? I need to go to bed.

[40:50] Meg: I know what you're talking about.

[40:51] Jessica: Yeah. And they had, like, the most glowing, youthful, beautiful skin. And the fact that I still remember it is about how all of that was fetishized by the filmmakers, by the writers.

[41:05] Meg: That probably wouldn't happen anymore.

[41:08] Jessica: Right? I don't have any answer to this. But I just feel like how much great, perverted, twisted, gleeful fun isn't happening because it's unseemly. And I feel like so much of art and literature right now has to adhere to certain strictures, or else it's just not okay. And how very much John Irving would be canceled right now. And what a pity that would be, because so much of his books shaped me as a reader and as a writer. I loved that he was talking about really difficult things with great humor and his attention to detail. To this day, I can remember from The Cider House Rules that when Homer is there, when Candy is having the abortion, that he focuses on a little tuft of hair that floats down. I was like, only John Irving would do that. It said everything in one sentence. He was masterful. My New York in the 80s is a fictitious event at The Stanhope. I wonder if and the mastery of this genius writer who I don't even know if he's popularly read anymore.

[42:33] Meg: That's what I'd be curious to find out. Let's look into that over the next week.

[42:38] Jessica: What his book sales are?

[42:41] Meg: Or if there's any backlash or if there's any kind of

[42:45] Jessica: Yes, that's actually a really good, that is a really good idea.

[42:47] Meg: Because yeah, he was my absolute favorite writer for most of my adolescence.

[42:53] Jessica: Me, too.

[42:54] Meg: And I read those books that we've talked about just now, multiple times.

[43:00] Jessica: I read Setting Free The Bears. I read what was it? The 158-Pound Marriage.

[43:07] Meg: I have not read that one, but my mother gave it to me for Christmas.

[43:10] Jessica: Oh, really?

[43:10] Meg: Yeah.

[43:11] Jessica: Oh, read it.

[43:16] Meg: They're also very long that you just have to get settled in.

[43:19] Jessica: But, yeah, if he has been canceled, this is a call to retract that and establish him again.

[43:26] Meg: John Irving.

[43:27] Jessica: Yay, John Irving.

[43:28] Meg: You've got two fans.

[43:29] Jessica: Yay The Stanhope and yay New York publishing.

[43:44] Meg: So what's our tie in? We've got John Irving.

[43:46] Jessica: Oh. Should I do it brilliant like last week when I was like, it's New York.

[43:50] Meg: Yeah.

[43:51] Jessica: That was a special, special moment that's called yeah, it's time to go on vacation. The unifying theme is the podcast theme. Great.

[44:08] Meg: Now I've forgotten why. Oh, I talked about Truman Capote and the ladies who lunch.

[44:13] Jessica: Well, all of those, they were Fifth Avenue ladies.

[44:17] Meg: They sure were.

[44:18] Jessica: And The Stanhope. 995 Fifth Avenue. So maybe Fifth Avenue or swanky addresses. Swanky addresses and swanky venues.

[44:30] Meg: Nice. I like it. And please, BFFs of the podcast, if you have a friend who you think might enjoy Jessica and my storytelling, let them know about us. It makes a big difference to see our numbers pop up.

[44:47] Jessica: We demand that you subscribe.

[44:51] Meg: Oh yeah, definitely that and write a review. But, yeah, I want more. We have the highest number, we keep going up, but I'm just greedy for more. Give me more.

[45:01] Jessica: From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Was that Veruca Salt? Daddy, I want it now. Yes, I want it now Daddy.

[45:11] Meg: I can't remember.

[45:12] Jessica: I know. Daddy, I want it now. Yes, she was a bad egg, but you're a good egg. Thank you. I love you, Meg. Oh, Meg egg. Get it? I have to go to bed now. Okay.

[45:25] Meg: Good night, Jessica.

[45:26] Jessica: Good night.