115. Kurt Andersen

[Music] hey welcome to scratching the surface I'm Jared Fuller and this is my podcast about design criticism and practice on this week's episode I am talking to the incomparable Kurt Anderson Kurt is someone that I've admired from afar and whose work I've enjoyed for many many years you might know him as the co-founder spy Magazine with Gren Carter or as the host of the truly delightful public radio show Studio 360 or as the author of novels like True Believers in turn of the century or his new non-fiction book Fantasy Land what you might not know though is that in the middle of publishing the magazine that famously called Donald Trump a short-fingered vulgarian in 1988 and Publishing novels and hosting a radio show he was also the design and architecture critic for time mag aine for almost 8 years and that's where this conversation started I was very curious how someone who had been writing about crime and politics suddenly found himself writing about design for a major magazine and what's been interesting to me about Kurt's career since then is that even though he's not really writing about design explicitly anymore it's still a theme that seems to run through much of his work in 2017 he published Fantasy Land how America went hayw that looks at America's uh seemingly predisposition to believe in myth and magic and fantasy he goes back 500 years and brings us all the way up to the present in the era of trump and fake news and really puts this current moment into a historical perspective it was one of my favorite books that year and I think has a lot to do with design as well so in addition to Fantasy Land we talk about his interest in moving between mediums we talk about how his relationship to design has changed over the years and how he thought about writing design for a general audience in the late 80s this was one of the most fun I've had in a conversation in a long time I've been a fan of kurts for years and his varied career is the kind that I aspire to so it was a real honor to have him on the podcast if you're a fan of the podcast and want to help support it you can become a member for $5 a month or $50 a year members get an exclusive monthly newsletter that has additional content and episode previews I think of this as kind of the director's commentary for the podcast these memberships really help keep the podcast going and I just appreciate all of your support and hope that you enjoy this fun conversation with Kurt Anderson [Music] [Applause] so you were at time you worked at time and you were kind of writing about politics and criminal justice and things like that and then what seems like as someone who came to your work later all of a sudden you became the design and architecture critic and basically my question is how did that happen and why did that happen that's a good question and that is that is that's a good beginning for this conversation um I had been interested in design as a college undergraduate took art history courses took design history courses but did not major in it um and to the degree I was a I was any of any career path that I didn't take was one that I thought I might have taken it was architecture anyway so I get out and and I get jobs writing and I'm a writer and I'm writing a Time Magazine and uh uh I'm you know in my mid 20s and writing about politics as you say and getting to do lots of writing but I had I had gone there in the first place saying oh I'm I'm 25 make me your movie critic or make me your culture writer or make me your something because there was no such thing as a design writer at the time right so then however around uh so I I would they said no you we'll hire you to do this and I said great and uh and I did that writing about politics and crime and cultural sociocultural subjects for a while and then uh they hired uh they announced they were going to hire a design and architecture critic and and create that as a new section and and and uh I said how about me and said no we've got a guy and uh we've already found a guy and he's actually unlike you credentialed and and is an architecture critic at the Washington Post and nice try we love you but no uh uh they that didn't work out and they and he did that for a year and left and they said okay fine Kurt you can do it um and and so that's how that began and I and I went from being this uh you know uh writer in the nation section um National affir section to being the design critic that and it happened like that and again it it's a measure of how of cushy in certain ways the magaz the the media magazine world was in New York at that time that they gave me some months off I don't remember how many but months off to just steep in and read and like I would go to the Cooper uh Union library and read and and just to sort of get up to speed yeah yeah which was extraordinary and so that's that's how I started doing that I mean so you started answering my next question because I was kind of curious about that what that transition was likeing so you'd mentioned you'd studied some art and design history classes you maybe had an interest in in being an architect what was that like when suddenly you had to write about did you have a sense of what a design critic should be writing about or how you should approach these things no because there may have been design critics at the time but all I knew about were architecture critics you know uh uh you know l hxo the great design critic of that era Paul goldberger uh was writing and and and and then I started reading you know kind of academic uh writing about architecture and some design but there was the idea of a of a kind of math audience design critic I don't know who that was would have been I mean you know uh the enas wrote things but they they weren't design critics right and so I didn't so no I had no model uh I I I I I felt at that point like you know I I knew how to write and I knew how to look and so I figured give it a try now did I feel like a fraud yes absolutely uh I still OCC feel like a fraud but certainly then I did and and and was very you know uh uh careful I I'm careful in general but I was very careful that that my cover as a as a as a non-credentialed idiot wouldn't be alone and uh and and it wasn't and and you know it kept doing it and people took me seriously and so then people took me seriously and it became a self-fulfilling thing suddenly I was a design cre can you talk a little bit about a what your subject matters were at that time and I think sometimes it's hard in you know 2018 where design is kind of this buzzword that people want to talk about it wasn't so much then so how did you what were you kind of writing about and then how were you writing about that for people that probably had no idea what design was right well in terms of the mass audience it was it was a kind of golden age at Time Magazine as it happens that I just lucked into and part of that golden age for my in my particular way was that Robert Hughes was the art critic yeah um serious big deal influential art critic for Time magazine that the the editors at the time one of the once told me n not many people read Bob and it's a tiny you know it's a tiny fraction of our audience but even those who don't uh the fact that he's in the magazine makes them feel intelligent right so so I felt oh good so you're saying I can write you know I I not that I was GNA be so high futin and abstruse that the readers won't understand but nor was Bob Hughes right and so I that was a good model really it's like oh okay he he's he's he's super smart and knowledgeable and Vivid writer and all the things that he was that that can be my model so that that was I I didn't feel as though I had to talk down you know or anything uh so there was that uh and and but but what to what what did I write about I mean uh I would say I haven't done a count but I would say um it was architecture and design so right some Frac large fraction of the time maybe half I wrote about Architects and buildings and this guy Frank Gary out in California you know uh doing these interesting houses apartments right uh I remember one of my earliest pieces maybe my first maybe not but early was this idea I had about how black things were suddenly popular in in in in in consumer goods in cars in in in in this Mass Market way and I thought that's weird black having been the color of you know in whisman or in in in the Goths and anarchism what why is everybody buying black what's that about so trying to sort of figure that out uh was one of uh my early pieces and and I think and I was very happy with it because it was this kind of curious not an obvious trend piece or but it was but it was a trend piece and a Zeitgeist piece and about the visual material culture and and my editor said sure and they ran it and I was kind of off and running did you do you find it's interesting that you talk about that that black piece and you know I'll admit I was not able to get a lot of your timeing piece a lot of them aren't online or else I would have they're online you just have to subscribe right and I'm not a Time subscriber so I I couldn't read many of they're really really good I'm sure they are I I but I I'm joking I as I read a lot of your pieces in a short amount of time I was struck by how often you kind of take a uh aerial view of of something um and you kind of zoom out a little bit and look at this larger thing that's happening instead of talking about a specific event or object or or building even um you know whether that's fantasy land or whether it's the I think it was in Vanity Fair about um kind of like how culture and style has stopped right evolving um is that something that you picked up from kind of writing about other things or how did that um how did you start to come to see that as a way to write about these things yeah I I did I mean uh I did probably most of the pieces I wrote uh as the critic at time were about specific buildings or at least a specific designers or Architects work but yes um one of my habits knack's interests has always been connecting various dots into a larger understanding of a piece of the universe or why this is happening now so yeah that's always been something i' I've I've when I have an actual idea that I like to do like with fantasy land or or or that essay in uh in benity Fair uh in 2012 um so uh that's just I don't know pattern recognition I mean uh and and uh really I mean connecting some dots that I hadn't seen connected in the way that was emerging in my mind and and and and doing that it's just what can I say it's it's it's it's it's a thing it's one of the things that has I've I've enjoyed doing and can occasionally do now the trick with the problem with that is is and why for instance I never wanted to be like a like a weekly columnist or something is you can't or I can't uh force that out on demand in a way that I'm satisfied with very often uh they they come and like oh that's a real idea weth saying rather than what am I which what what am I gonna drum up as an idea a big idea this week that's that's I I I never wanted to do that so so it was just you know uh just as know a satirical look at things was one of my habits of mind or you know there's probably a half a dozen of them and and and that kind of thing uh that you're talking about is is one of the ways my my my mind my writerly mind works and you know I don't want to I don't want to spend this whole conversation talking about your your eight-year stent as a design critic in the 80s and 90s um but I am curious about how your relationship with that word design or even writing of about design has evolved since then to now when you might not necessarily call yourself a design critic but I think design and architecture still filters very heavily into the way you look at the world and and the subjects that you're interested in how has that changeed for you it it does I mean back back then it was it it was it was a little it was just when I was doing it in the 80s and early 90s it was just getting groovy and it was a little bit like like you know it was just the the kind of apartment life early Gap why you know and and and that actually kind of put me off even though it made me feel like oh this one one of these things I do one of these hats I wear uh you know can can can be a gig uh because it was cool suddenly um uh so along with everyone else in my own uh intellectual Evolution you know I've come to understand the uh that everything can almost literally everything can be regarded as a design problem and and the and the buzzword of design thinking and all that which is all of which is true um uh and it it as you say did I keep heing in other work I did my in my in my first novel especially uh in all my novels actually there there are there are things that after the fact I point to and go oh there's this description of San Francisco being built in 1848 or all but and and in my first novel I I had just a whole Fantastical non-existent uh buildings in in in Las Vegas that I create that I created that I that I imagined and put in there so so the ability to think about uh design and spaces as a as a Critic I think gave me the the kind of knack and taste for for putting it into other things so so uh and then uh the the other thing I did or the thing I did after my stint and and somewhat overlapping for a few years with my stint as a design critic was start spy magazine which which was uh which of course we had to design we had sort of peculiar uh uh design Ambitions and Brilliant collaborators to do that with and so I that that in a in a in a practical practitioner e way made me uh think about design and graphic design and in in a in in a new and intense and and I'm part of this team doing this way and and so that was it was a you know it wasn't an intentional evolution of my design life but it but it but it was right an evolutionary step in my design life do you have any thoughts less about maybe your own your own kind of thing about design but as somebody who's kind of been in that world or related to that world for now you know 30 years how that term design critic or architecture critic or even just design in general how that's evolved and kind of do you have thoughts on kind of where we are kind of In This Moment of design criticism or design writing uh I don't I I mean I I I I don't have a big thought about it because uh a because I don't do that much of it anymore but also uh I I mean I think I think it is uh it can mean so many different things design criticism design writing architecture criticism means people know what that means yet they thought they did like let's look at the the people who've written architectural criticism for the New York Times basically there are people uh who write about this new building and that new building and this new building and that new building until Michael kumman comes along which isn't to say people before him hadn't done some of what he does but he redefined that job unilaterally uh to be about uh not so much about buildings by famous dud right um and and and and to me that that's a really interesting uh uh you know kind of lagging indicator of of where design criticism H has has gone and and can go and maybe should go which is to say about bigger things than oh look at the iPad or oh look at this uh you know helmet ywn building or this has a new logo yeah exactly or or or exactly or this latest new hot uh graphic designer um all all of which if if people are doing exceptional work or or or work that seems groundbreaking or different great they should that that stuff should get to focus but when there are bigger issues at hand of how cities work or don't or or um you know that to me is it's it's interesting when when a a kind of design sensibility and vocabulary can be brought to bear fluently about that I mean that's thing about another secret dirty uh truth about when I decided when I started doing this in 198 six or five whatever it was four or five I guess uh was wow so much of the writing uh about this stuff there's there's so little good writing right so like I figured like I'm a pretty good writer if if I can be one of the relatively rare good writers in this field I'll do okay yeah so that was part of it I I think so so so that that's one of the differences and one of the improvements is now there are many good writers who sometimes are all the time write about design in a way there simply wasn't 30 years ago right um uh you know not that any of them are earning uh enough money to buy lunch doing it probably or few of them but but but but but I think and not to you know fall into the jargon uh uh hellhole but the discourse has has this is exactly what this podcast is for by the way so you can fall into that improved because people are thinking bigger uh and and than than uh just uh about you know how this microphone got designed or how this 19th century silver was you know whatever it is right I'm gonna kind of change the subject a little bit because you mentioned something in there about writing and how you know you're like I'm a I'm a good writer I could just kind of maybe what you you lack in design knowledge or something make up in just good writing um I'm I'm not saying that's exactly what I understand what you're saying what I found what I discovered is that you know I had plenty of knowledge and could pretty quickly develop enough knowledge to either fool people and get by or frankly know as much as as the others so I my my my feeling like a fraud period which is lifelong but but but in that case was I didn't feel much after like I don't know a year or so yeah anyway um what I'm curious about though is is this kind of jumping around in your career whether it's subject matter whether it's even type going from more journalistic writing to writing novels to plays and television to essenti essentially a history book of the United States to even a radio show is that a does that come from a desire to play with form does that come from a getting bored in one thing wanting to do another thing where does that kind of uh moving between mediums and disciplines come from um I guess both of those I mean I don't you know until until I have walked this path which I now have it's not like I didn't begin thinking oh I'd like to play with fors and I know I get bored easily and there my my my professional life will be this now and and I don't it's not as though I ever got bored I I I because what I what I ended up I would say it was more uh oh this opportunity presents itself this is interesting maybe I can do this it's adjacent to what I've done before I've never done it before but maybe let's try it so that I mean in in some some unconscious way it may have been preemptively trying the next thing so that I don't get bored in the last thing but it wasn't about getting bored uh it was it was really just opportun like you know curios opportunistic curiosity if you will and and and again not a self-conscious thing about playing with forms but oh this isn't you know uh uh you know once one you know I I had messed around a little bit with fiction when I was very young but I had not published fiction you know until I started writing a novel and what I'd been a professional writer at that point for uh you know a Dozen Years uh no 20 years and and uh so it it was okay I think I now have in in the case of turning to fiction like enough you know I'm not going to I mean yes I can improve as a writer but if I'm ever going to be able to write a book I've got the skills and craft to do so and I've always wanted to write a novel and I think I now have enough life experience that it might be interesting enough to transmute into a work of a long work of fiction so that's how that came about you know radio it just out of the blue the people in charge of Public Radio International and WNYC came to me and said hey we got this show in mind you want to host it and I said are you crazy and sure uh uh so uh uh it was it was it was you know I I I had a set of skills and and I was lucky and uh and the two led me to you know yeah do a bunch of different things well but I me let me let me ask a a kind of related question because what I also think is interesting is that regardless of the form or regardless of of the medium or the place where you're doing you are still using these kind of different Avenues to play with your same interests just kind of in different ways and it's like we're talking about you know even your novels have Design Elements and I think there's some fantasy land in those also are does changing that approach or changing that process somehow give you new insight or at these no I I feel like my professional life has this internal healthy hybridization uh uh Dynamic that goes on absolutely uh that that you know it all it all feeds each other I remember not early on but relatively early on in spy we did this whole uh um section package of stories about postmodernism at the height of postmodernism and this and and one of its long sidebars was what we called yepy porn before everything was called x porn or Y porn B porn we you know and it was the it was the meel graves you know teapot it was all this stuff and I I loved that then I've looked back at it since I still love it so so yes I was bringing my uh you know my what what I was doing then still currently writing about this stuff in a Time Magazine somewhat more uh you know sober un way without ridicule and and bringing it into the Spy magazine context were uh so so that's an example of of of of that cross breeding uh as it happens and you know it still happens um you know I I wrote a story a short story fiction uh a few years ago for an anthology and uh my radio producer said hey right we we could we could turn this into a radio drama for Christmas and so they did and we did and and run every couple years right so so yeah it's it's um it it's it's a delight when that can happen can we talk about fantasy land a little bit sure um [Music] I that was one of those books for me when I read it that kind of completely explained everything that I was trying to figure out in in the moment it was like a perfectly time book I guess what I'm trying to say but you've been thinking about this for for much longer than the era of fake news much longer than than the Donald Trump era um and I have a couple questions about it and I want to connect it to design a little bit if we can because I think it's a book about design in a way too but but before we get to that when did you start thinking about this or when did you start kind of noticing this this trend or this this thing this explanation for all that has gone wrong in America you mean yeah um it's hard to say I mean I remember as I talked about as I mentioned in the book I remember uh the first episode of the colar report and and in which colar did his truthiness right thing right and being you know uh just stunned at the Brilliance of that little thing and and and how that you know for me was was not unlike what you say fantasy was for you like wow this yes this is what's gone wrong and we were still early right relatively speaking then 2005 right so that I I I know that that was a moment I mean I you know I I I my first novel was a lot about the the merging of news and entertainment and reality and fiction there's a a one of the main characters is a a a journalist and TV producer who creates this police drama in which real crimes happen and this is it came out 1999 really before reality TV yeah so so so that you know and that you know those thoughts about that right you know uh 18 years later appear in fantasy one as well so so was I thinking hm someday I'll write a non-fiction book that that is my unified theory of America no but but so I was thinking about pieces of it along the way and then uh in the tens in the 2010s I began like oh there's a probably a book here that I should do and uh uh and and and 2013 at the you know I I I I I had started writing another novel and said after I finished this to my publisher like here's here's the basic idea for this non-fiction book that I want to write for you I said wow uh maybe you could do that first and and and that's how it came to be so it was you know it was uh in my head as a possible Book for a few years before I started researching and writing and in its in it in in all these ways that I didn't know were leading to it for you know 20 years right can you tell I don't want to get like too much into the process of how you how you wrote and organized the book but I am curious I mean because this is essentially it's your first non-fiction first big nonfiction book yes how was that different for you I mean it's it's very journalistic it has all of Kurt Anderson interests in it I think but it's also a very different thing for you how what was that like it organizing that I mean it was it was again was never my plan but thinking I can write a novel I think I can maybe write a novel and then it's terrifying once you start doing you have no idea what you're doing I've never done this before what am I what was a crazy it's like you know I I I was a hiker a weekend hiker thinking I can climb kjaro what and then you do it and whoa and then so and then my next novel was an historical novel which was a whole other thing I didn't know how to do and and similarly this big non-fiction book yeah I'd written you know thousand word pieces 4,000 word pieces but like not 174,000 history of America that lots of historians and Scholars of various kinds uh could you know think what what does he think he can do this yeah so it was terrifying uh uh in a new way I was ill equipped in a new way so how did I do it I I uh um what I basically do I mean this is non-fiction very very different than the stuff I amassed before I start writing a novel but um in this case it was just reading and taking notes and having thoughts for I don't know just a year and a half before I started writing and then mushing mushing that into what feels like a a a pro more or less proper order kind of chronological but within each chronological moment uh broken into thematic you know subjects and then just start plowing through and and of course you know the the the you know it's it's not even an outline exactly it's it's the stuff I have and the thoughts I've had and the ideas I've had maybe in the order that they will appear in this book and you know some of them go elsewhere and some of them go out the window and and so that's you know that's the basic process and and at a certain point I have had with that uh you know essentially one document that is all my stuff and then you know I start at the beginning uh turning this amorphous goop into uh Pros okay like I mentioned to you before we started recording I was in grad school during the um during the 2016 election and I was just starting to think about this podcast and my thesis project about design criticism and then the election happened I had this moment where where I was like design criticism seems like not a really important thing to be thinking about and talking about right now like there are a lot of really big problems in the world and the more I started thinking about it and the more people I was talking to for the podcast I started realizing that things like fake news and filter Bubbles and all of these things that were kind of in the air could be framed as design problems well they're all they were all create yes indeed most of them are the result of choices about how things should be built how news should be presented how the internet should be uh organized or regulated or not regulated yes indeed and and and that to me kind of changed how I then thought about what design criticism could and should be and how this kind of project is and then that's why why fantasy land was such a a kind of Revelation to me that this wasn't necessarily a new problem um but goes back 500 years and um our our mutual friend Jessica hran has this quote that I'm going to mess up a little bit but something about how design uh uh kind of connotes authority and that when something is welld designed or seen as design that it somehow is is given uh an authority or or a truth to it and I think I don't know if if you use if you kind of talk about design specifically in fantasy land there is a line that I really liked early on where you say that this is the first century that was designed I really liked you're using that word there but could you talk a little bit about how design how the physical world the kind of built world media um kind of plays a role in well I think immediately of a couple of places um and they're connected uh one is is Disneyland and and its importance in my history you know it it it and I go read the book if you want to find out how how I make this argument but but it was one of those things when it opened in 1955 and then 197 when Disney World came along but but but but Disneyland and especially Main Street USA was was a game changer in uh introducing number one the idea to regular Americans whose old towns were being destroyed and denuded and tossed away like whoa these old buildings these fake old buildings are great yeah we used to live this Grandpa used to live this way this was great and and and was part of the reason part of the softening up the ground for Americans to embrace the Redevelopment of downtowns and Rouse you know Quincy Market uh you know Festival marketplaces and all that stuff and and and theming and all so much of of the history of of Urban Design and architecture in America but elsewhere as well but let's just say America of the last 64 years really begin at Main Street USA Disneyland so that's one one example uh and and I have I have you know I I am it's one of the I mean there there are things that I think are terrible about fantasy land and it is and you know Donald Trump being the embodiment of almost all of them but but but I am of two minds about much of it including including the the the effects of of uh of Disneyland fakery and simulakra um uh then I also talk a bit uh later uh in in my chronology in in the 1970s as as as a kind of backward looking romantic Nostalgia about the America that used to be or and or never was and and and in that context talk about the rise of of what was called postmodern architecture and Michael Graves and Bob Stern and all the rest and and oh look uh first it's a joke it's not really classical architecture but then it is a class and then it is just rev classical revivalism or whatever but but so so uh it's it's a piece of it there as well designed very specifically as is uh again Las Vegas has been a recurrent hobby horse of mine and I as I said as I said before I talk about it have set big important scenes in my first novel there but then also talk about it in in the in the context of of of fantasy line and to your point earlier about all my interest appearing part things I do I I I did a cover story after I'd left my design critic job at at time but occasionally wrote for them about Las Vegas in 1993 and and and how it was uh kind of emblematic of a new America and vice versa and so forth so so uh yeah uh you know uh I I uh and you know the joke I would tell to myself is yes I try to use all my ideas 10 times and everything but it's really it's not that it's it's not it's not that consciously cynical it's just that oh this I think I think Las Vegas is important I think Disneyland is important yeah and oh it's useful in this context to explain this or to have this uh you know episode in fiction happened yeah this is a little bit of a a side tangent but the Disneyland sections were some of my favorite in the book a couple years ago I got really interested in Disney's original plans for Epcot and and kind of what he for that I just found so strange um and and uh just kind of weird and utopian but also with like a bit of a a weirdness to it well like all utopian right right exactly but at at the time I was working in San Francisco um at Facebook and and Facebook's campus is designed to have a a kind of Main Street in the Middle with these fake shops in the Middle where you can like get food and things like that and visitors would come and I would overhear people when I'm walking to meetings talk about like oh this is just like Disneyland and I'd have this like weird feeling and just want to be like Disneyland is fake like that's not I understand it as a compliment but it's also not a compliment right well and and and it's it's to the point though of the blur the expanding blurry Zone that's between fake obviously fake and real and and again part of the the problematic parts of fantasy land are are the way that blurring uh happens in all kinds of ways that we cease being aware of yeah um and another again I keep thinking because of the the the track you set this conversation on is is the hyp the using how things I do here pop up there I mean there was in in my discussion of Disney World and Disney in fantasy land there was a whole section actually that came from this this set of interviews I spent a day or two doing in in Celebration Florida for the my radio program right right I remember this and uh so that's yeah uh it's it's uh uh so even though my which one way of saying even though my my professional life seems disperate to me it seems uh of of a piece and because oh you know i' I've been writing about you know I initially wrote about celebration as a design critic at at Time Magazine then i' write about celebration in the context of doing a whole documentary about Disney parks for my radio show then I'm writing this history of America about the blurring of fiction and reality and and I use you know so it's it's it's you know even though the media change it's it's uh I only have a certain number of things I'm interested in as we all as we all do um but I am curious about how let me think how to ask this question and not a boring way how did Donald Trump change the end of fantasy because you were you were kind of finishing it while that was happening did that change how you thought about the book did it change the trajectory of the book at all it the only way it really changed it was uh saying to my Publishers like hey dudes this is not just some eccentric history book anymore I think we may have it may be you know it's relevant um um so uh once so he started running for president in June of 2015 when I had been writing the book for n months okay so but he was still a joke and so uh uh and then I was I was in the final stretches of the book in early 2016 when he hadn't even gotten the nomination yet turned in the finished manuscript before he got the nomination so he he loomed larger in the end but it was it was you know he wouldn't have probably been in the mentioned in the book had he not run for president right if he hadn't won the presidency I I think the difference between the whatever 10 or 12 pages I spent on him in out of the 400 in the book uh as a result in the end wouldn't have been much less had he lost the presidency so it wasn't it's not as though I or the book pivoted around to be the story of trump 500 years runup uh uh it was just he walked into it kind of I hesitate to say providentially but he became this extraordinary poster boy for all almost every one of my themes embodying it as so wait wait what uh so uh that that's I you know it's I hate to say it I was lucky to have him you know yeah and I don't mean I don't mean to suggest that the book is about Trump no it isn't but but it is but certainly the the reason lots of people read it and bought it and you know all that is is because of Donald Trump no question I mean my my argument for what has happened to America in this fiction reality blurring and this love of and and the the kind of American indifference to the difference between fiction and reality um would have been true had he not been elected exactly and uh but um you know the fact that he was elected just uh made people pay attention and and and take more seriously this this strange uh strange theory of American history that I sketched out right what are you thinking about right now what are what are subjects or or things that uh well I I I have been I persuade I've convinced myself to write another not a sequel to Fantasy Land but but another nonfiction book that I will do faster and uh will be smaller and uh so it's about the future mostly it's about instead of the last 500 years it's about to last 40 years in the next oh let's say and uh so it is it is it is much more in in the largest sense about design and designing the future rather than letting it just happen to us which is I think we've done a lot in the last several decades and you know as though technology and the way it's being deployed and designed is simply just the way it happens well of course it isn't it's a series of choices made by various people um uh so that's that's what I'm thinking about is is is uh you know uh and and it's less Fant is about uh the way we think and and and and what we believe this is more about the politics and economics and kind of the design of our society and and and and again in terms of it goes back to this internal hybrid process it it really came out of even though it doesn't sound like it would have it came out of the essay you mentioned that I did in Vanity Fair uh six years ago seven years ago now uh about how the this so much of the physical material culture in my you stopped changing uh 25 years ago to a degree that hadn't happened for more than a century and why why why was that I been groping for explanations and so um that in terms of of uh what what what happened 25 30 35 years ago in terms of the the the uh the culture no longer being interested in the new except for you know technology being this transformatively new thing that's that's a strange you know uh uh kind of bipolar situation what's that about so uh and and so it's it is about the what I'm working on is is is how to think about the new and how to choose how to choose uh from the the various options rather than and and and and it's not all about resisting Nostalgia or resisting the past they're still fine things about the past and but but I think a lot of our problem not all of our problem but a lot of our problem has been uh resisting resisting uh Imagining the new or accepting the new whether they are immigrants whether it's like no we really have to reorganize the way Society Works in this way or that way and instead just uh being mesmerized and Paralyzed by the technological and and and like well that's what Facebook wants or that's what Google's doing or that a and and and and trying to figure out even though much of the writing about the the potential Utopia of the 2038 or Singularity and otherwise of when AI when robots do give us everything as as as naive as or as unthought through as many of those visions of the future are there's something there to to look toward and and and so yeah trying to figure out again how how to you know the future can never be designed and is not inevitable uh but it can be it can be nudged it can be it can be it can be designed toward yeah and and uh so that's you know uh I I'm not I mean you know whether it's Carl Marx or whomever any utopian who thinks no this is the future and that's what we need to do that's ridiculous but that doesn't mean you just sit back and let it happen to you as a society as a people and and so figuring out to what degree uh the future can be designed and and it can be designed more than we've more than we as a as a whole society have have have have allowed ourselves to think a can the the the not to sound like a communist but the forces of of you know the the force of capital for the last 40 years have have have have in large measure and in a very deliberate successful way designed where we are today you know I I am not a conspiracy theorist I am not like they got together in 1973 and said okay what do we want to be in 2018 this okay good no but there were things done along the way policy wise changing the way people thought uh demonizing government mhm on and on and on that got us where we are today so you know uh it it is it is it seems to me there's an opportunity for people who aren't you know uh gazillionaires to to figure out the society that we the rest of us uh want and and say Here's a rendering of that of that what that could be here's a different rendering and here's a different rendering let's let's let's move toward one of those right I love that that I mean those are all of the things that I I love talking about okay um my last question this is a question I used to end all of these conversations and I I hope it's not too big of a question but I'm curious who are the the writers or who are the book what are the books that have kind of influenced how you think about all of this stuff that we've talked about today oh gosh uh if you're giving me advanced warning um let's see all this stuff uh or even if someone's listening to this and is interested in the things you're talking about after they read fantasy land or novels where would you point well uh I have we can go up and look at the 180 books sitting around my floor upstairs um the the problem with that is always you know since I'm always working on some book or another it's that uh the problem is that that book doesn't exist which is why I'm attempting and will no doubt fail to successfully write it you know so so there is uh well I'll tell you one no here here's one uh it's by Walter Litman the the the journalist intellectual essayist of the early 20th century Who as a Young Man uh published a book in 1914 uh in which I'm G to get the title wrong but the word drift appears maybe it's the big drift the drift something it's about life it's it's about this what he was seeing as this we we're on this momentous change that had just happened from from the old to the new and and and we're we're fitfully trying to understand how that works and this is the you know here's socialism but it's wrong in this way and here it's it's it was it was and it's not a famous book I just stumbled across it as I was doing research for this next non-existent book um and it was it was it was it was just mindboggling of of how wow this you know here we are again 100 years later and and and it reminded me of this of this line um that uh Mark Twain did not say is often attributed to him and I repeated it endlessly and of course Fantasy Land which is that history doesn't repeat itself but it Rhymes and and and it was just amazing so find find the Walter Litman book uh with the word drift in the title and uh if you want just a sense of uh of of America being confused and terrified and you know intermittently hopeful uh 105 years ago I love that Kurt thank you so much this was such a fun conversation I'm a this was great thanks for being on the podcast my total pleasure this episode was recorded on December 17th 2018 in Brooklyn New York our theme music is by Andy borasi we're on Twitter and Instagram at surface podcast you can find this wherever you get your podcast and it's scratching the surface. FM thanks for listening