Tag: David Marchese

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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A couple of months ago I went back to my alma mater in Colorado. They gave me a little temporary office, and as I went upstairs I thought, Oh, my God, I used to live here. The room next to the room they gave me was my bedroom from a fraught year in my college experience. It was the weirdest thing, because that guy that I was was so ambitious and stupid, so not in touch with how one went about having a writing life. But he was pretty earnest. There was something very wild about being almost 70 and standing there and going, OK, so what that kid wanted to do, you kind of did it. I can’t quite describe it. Also, I started late. The first book didn’t come out till I was 38, so I feel like I’m racing to do really good work in whatever time is left. But in that early time, one of the things that was so beautiful was that my stupid dreams of being a prodigy were obviously not going to happen. So for the first time it was like, All right, what if you don’t have any writing career? What if you’re just, hopefully, a good father and husband? And in that space I found that there was plenty to live for. I’d always secretly thought I was kind of shallow, that I was all ambition. And to find out that shorn of that, I still liked being alive and still felt a lot of happiness? That was very sweet.

— George Saunders, from “George Saunders is No Saint (Despite What You May Have Heard)” by David Marchese (NY Times, January 10, 2026)

We all have that feeling, and then we come back to reality.

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Andrew, can you end with a family-friendly joke? This was a Louis C.K. joke that Seinfeld told when they were doing a conversation — comedians on comedians. The joke is something like: You know, going on vacation with the family, I put the kids in the car seats. I put my wife in the car. Put the coffees in the coffee holder. I put the bags in the back. I close the trunk. I close my wife’s door. I close the kids’ door. And when I’m walking from my wife’s door to my door, that’s my vacation.

I know exactly the joke you’re talking about. I think about it constantly. It’s so good, and at its core you could say quite mean. That’s the beauty of a joke. It allows us to access these darker thoughts and emotions that we have: He loves his family, but in that moment, they’re safe, and I don’t have to deal with them. We all have that feeling, and then we come back to reality. And that’s what would be awesome: If people get that these things that we’re saying — it’s just what we feel in that little moment, and then we step back.

— Andrew Schulz, “‘Podcast Bro,’ Might Be America’s Foremost Political Journalist.” Interviewed by David Marchese. (NY Times, June 21, 2025)

What a beautiful balloon I’m carrying with me.

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So you were dealing with the feelings we talked about earlier, and you got to a point where you decided your life had to change. One of the things that then changed your life was birding. How did you find it? In the spring of 2023, just before I left The Atlantic, I moved to Oakland from D.C., and one thing that happened was I started paying attention to the birds around me. They were omnipresent in a way they weren’t before. On my first day in my new house, there was an Anna’s hummingbird in the garden. I would go for walks and hear birdsong: the melodious sound of a Pacific wren in a nearby redwood forest. I bought a pair of binoculars and would take it with me on neighborhood walks or hikes. I would have Merlin while I was working and look up occasionally and go: “Oh, that’s interesting. It’s an oak titmouse. I’ve never seen one before.” To me, the difference between being casually bird-curious and being an actual birder is making a specific effort to go and look at birds.

Going from passive to active. Exactly. So early September of 2023 was when I made my first trip to a local wetland to specifically look at birds and nothing else. That was, honestly, a life-changing moment.

Continue reading “What a beautiful balloon I’m carrying with me.” →

Hoo-ah!

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Al Pacino has been one of the world’s greatest, most influential actors for more than 50 years. He’s audacious. He’s outrageous. He’s Al Pacino, and I’m pretty sure you know what that entails…Though he can go small and internal, Pacino’s ability to really emote is one of his singular gifts… Has he always been perfect? No. He strives for something riskier and more alive than perfection. Is he always perceptive, free, unmissable? God, yes.

— David Marchese, from “Interview: Al Pacino Is Still Going Big.” (NY Times, October 5, 2024)

Notes:

  • Al Pacino’s Memoir “Sonny Boy” is released on October 15, 2024.
  • Don’t miss one my favorite collection of clips from “Scent of a Woman” here: “Hoo-ah!”
  • Photo Credit: Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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One of the things that I find haunting or difficult to accept is that I only get one life. I’m condemned to being myself, and I have to be me until the end. In a way, being a novelist allows me to get around that problem…

But what you’re talking about and what I’m talking about might be closer than you think. Because what you’re describing I also feel. Especially when I’m in the middle of a project and I close my laptop and return to my own life, I feel that sense of indescribable gratitude that I am alive on this earth, that my loved ones are a part my life and that I can experience the sensory reality of the earth that we share.⁠⁠

— Sally Rooney, in “Sally Rooney Thinks Growth is Overrated” (NY Times Interview by David Marchese, September, 21, 2024)

Sally Rooney’s new book Intermezzo is released tomorrow. Here’s the Irish Times book review. She is the best selling author of Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021).