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To be perfectly frank, Im mixed on this podcast.
Also troublesome is the fractured nature of its perspectives.
And yet I cant deny thatOnce Upon a Time … at Bennington Collegecasts a strong spell.
One moment in the seasons 12th episode, out tomorrow, captures this duality of the show.
Lets start here: What was the motivation behind this season?
As I got to know Bret socially, I was constantly asking him about that book.
Im kind of an obsessive person: Im a Bret obsessive.
Ive read a ton of Jonathan Lethems books.
And I wanted to know more, you know?
Its a group portrait of these artists as young undergraduates.
This weeks episode comes at the end of Ellis, Tartt, and Lethems undergraduate period.
What was happening around this time?
Brets already so famous at this point that Andy Warhol is crashing his graduation party.
Brets hostingTop of the Popsin England.
Hes getting invited to the MTV Awards.
Theyre hanging out with Duran Duran and [Jean-Michel] Basquiat.
Writers were fetish objects!
That was amazing to me.
And you feel thats not true today?
My God, no!
Whats so interesting to you about the 80s and that moment in literary celebrity?
They were doing so many drugs.
They were having so much sex.
There was, I think, a kind of freedom and a flare back then.
At some level, this podcast feels a little likeMad Menfor a younger generation.
The past is now where we see license, you know?
Lets say you were gay in the 1950s.
Nowadays, it feels like the past is the place where thats more likely to happen.
But it did feel like you used to be able to have a kind of privacy.
It feels, now, like social media has turned the world back into a small town.
In the early 80s, before Twitter or Instagram or camera phones, you had more freedom.
For me, its appealing to look back at that.
Id be remiss if I didnt say that probably felt true more for certain kinds of people.
Im not so sure, for example, most Asian or Black people would share this feeling.
For those reasons racially, sexually 2021 is a better place to be in almost every way.
And theres a reason for that.
The times wouldnt let him be who he wanted to be.
So yes, 2021 is better.
Walk me through that.
They were all over each other for a decade, personally and professionally.
Didion was enormously important to Bret.
He had borrowed so much from her that he was embarrassed.
And when Joandidread the book, she liked that about it.
She quoted passages to him that were close to her own writing, and she was delighted.
They were both celebrity writers, and I think she was a model for him in many ways.
Im a Didion watcher.
Ive read all her books.
These were things Id never heard about before.
In Brets mind, he thought Dunne was gay.
This is interesting for a bunch of reasons.
Bret was coming up during a certain time.
That was something that Bret was very attuned to.
Who knows if hes right about John Dunne?
So that was Brets perception.
But its still Ellis maybe outing someone whos no longer around.
What was your bar for inclusion with this?
Thats a good question.
So, Ive been on this project since 2013, right?
With the Dunne stuff, that was Brets impression, right?
But hes a first-hand witness.
He was on intimate terms with these people.
So it seemed okay to me.
You wonder if Bret, perceiving John Dunne as gay, felt that maybe he couldve married Joan Didion.
He had admired her to that point.
Also, look, Im a thorough and experienced journalist at this point…
Okay, so, for example: In this weeks episode theres this blowjob story with Brets dad.
That was also included in theEsquirepiece.
But he was also a formidable person: a college football star and a real estate tycoon.
In some ways, the father is the making of Bret.
You have to understand the father to understand the son.
So the story I felt best illustrated this was the blowjob story.
That was an insane thing to do, right?
And it was insane trying to fact check that.
He trusted Amys memory.
That was the only way I can fact-check this story.
Obviously,Esquirewas nervous about this story, but it appears in theEsquirepiece.
And Im like, I called you.
We had an on the record conversation about this.
And he said, Yeah, but it didnt happen.
How do you handle a situation like this?
Amy stands by her story, and I had checked with Bret on this.
He generally seems to be a very unreliable narrator.
Yeah, but who isnt?
Sure, but hes an almostperformativelyunreliable narrator, you know?
Im just curious about the choice here.
Its a remarkable amount of faith to place in a source who, uh, rarely feels solid.
Does that make sense?
This is what I deal with all my life.
Jay McInerney said something interesting to me a few years ago.
But he was using his journal as a standard of truth.
In October,Page Six reportedthat Donna Tartt was taking legal action against the podcast.
Whats the current situation with that?
The lawyers on our side disputed them, and the publisher withdrew them.
There has been no contact from her lawyers since.
Were you surprised to see those notices?
I was and I wasnt.
Where does she come from?
How does she come to be?
Im wondering about your thoughts on that.
In a perfect world, she absolutely would be participating.
She made the choice not to, and I cant control that.
I understand why this would be a touchy subject for her.
Its a celebration of these three people who are some of the most important writers of their generation.
Donna wrote the AmericanBrideshead Revisited.
I know this is probably not a delightful thing for her.
But to me, its celebratory.
I dont know what else to say.
People just dont seem to read anymore, and yet the need for story is stronger than ever.
She was living it, and she figured out a way to build a story around it.
