LIVE from NYPL 2020-12-10 Simply New York: Writing The City Featuring Susan Choi, Marlon James, Robert Jones Jr, Min Jin Lee, and Isaac Fitzgerald *** Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** [ROUGH TRANSCRIPT] >>> Thank you for joining us. We have a pre-event slide show. Live from New York Public Library is Simply New York, Writing the City. December 10, 2020, 8:00, EST. Black text on a white background. Recommended reading, tonight's panelists share some of their favorite titles, Isaac Fitzgerald, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konisburg. Min Jin Lee, Beginning Again, Robert Jones, These Ghosts are Family. The complete recommendations can be found on our page. Check out is available at more than 50 grab and go locations. Black text on a white background, live from NYPL, upcoming events. December 14, 8:00 p.m., home grown heroes, -- the hosts and the show time late night series, -- look back on the year that was 2020 for New York and spread some love for their city. [reading slide] making friends is not easy, particularly now. Neither is holding onto friendships. The hosts of the hit podcast, call your girlfriend, explain why you need to fight for them. Thursday, December 17, 8:00, so long, 2020, join our comedians for a bit of relief. For more information and to register, visit NYPL.org/live. >> Hi, welcome to live from NYPL. I'm one of the many, many worker bees working behind the scenes. We have an incredible group of writers with us tonight. I'm excited to get introduced to them. The impact their work has had on me is huge. They have all agreed share some of their time and spirit of support of something the library is trying to do throughout the month to deliver a bit of love to the city we serve at the end of this terrible year. We deliver love, library-style, with books and writers, through story times, New York themed book lists and events like tonight, we are celebrating the endurance and resilience of New York, and the many people, arts and cultures that continue to give it life and will continue to give it life. I'd like to thank our guests and all of you who are watching. I'd like to give supervising thanks to our moderator, Isaac Fitzgerald, a delight to work with and open hearted, and inspired collaborator, a cheer leader. Real time captions are available for tonight's program through stream text. The link should be in the chat in Zoom and YouTube. If you want ask questions, you can do that now or any time during the conversation in YouTube, Zoom , or e-mail us at public programs at NYPL.org. Lastly, we will close out 2020 with a big week next week, life from NYPL, will discuss the plight of Jewish refugees, and get school in life lessons with the Bronx, and say a not fond farewell to 2020, with comedians. We would love to see you at all of them. You can register, to sign up. That's it. Let's welcome Susan Choi, Marlon James, Robert Jones, Min Jin Lee, and Isaac Fitzgerald. >> Give it up for everyone working at New York Public Library. If you can clap, go ahead, you will feel better. We got Marlon, Robert, look at all this, Susan. Seriously, thank you all. >> That was not a good memory, it's like church. >> I appreciate you're here. Thank you to everyone for joining, it's so wonderful to be here. I just miss talking about writers, in New York about, writing in New York City. I want to do that tonight. I will ask questions, the idea is to have a lovely, free flowing conversation. I want start with Robert. He's born and raised in New York City, and ask of all of you, when you first fell in love with New York City? >> I'd say when I was about 3 or 4 and realized that New York City had subway trains. None of the other cities we visited, in South Carolina, or Georgia, had those things. That was a wonderful technology and endeared the city to me in a way I still can't explain. There was something about seeing, in the 70s, when there was no air conditioning in subways, and every curve was covered with graffiti. That's my memory of the subways and what made me fall in love with the city. >> With other cities, where -- >> They had nice trees and green spaces but not trains. >> How about you, Min Jin? >> I have a visual. Can you see that? It's a train station. That's inside a train, with the graffiti Robert is talking about. I'm from here. (laughing) It was weird, Robert is talking it about it, I'm thinking my God, right next to my desk. I came to the United States when I was 6. You're a real North Carolinan if you're from the borough and grew up in Queens, went to the Bronx, took a train each way. Four hours. I bare footed in the snow, really hard. I fell in love with New York when I went to college, in New Haven, and realized there what an incredible place New York was. Yale was not my thing. I realized how normal the air was in New York for a person like me when I didn't feel very comfortable at Yale. >>> Basically, it was by leaving the city that it made you realize how much you love the the city. What was it like to move here at age 7? >> I was so surprised because in Korea, I thought that America would be like in the fairy tales, so I thought there would be stage coaches, people with big hair, and ball gowns, I get out of the JFK, it looks like Seoul, what the fuck. Pardon me. I was disappointed. Of course, I realized it was going to be okay. In Queens, my uncle bought us bananas, and in Korea, it was expensive to buy them then. We had an enormous vat of bananas, uncle said have as many as you like. >> I'm rich in bananas, no stage coaches. >> The idea of New York we watched a long time. I was four, five, watching Spiderman cartoons, wanted to live in that New York, thinking that New York actually exists. Falling in love with the New York, rap records, and -- all before you visit. >>> I was falling in love with an TV idea of New York not realizing they were shot in Vancouver. Technically I was falling in love with Vancouver, not New York. I really fell hard for New York because of Sex in the City. I really wanted Samantha's New York. But, it was always this sort of fictional idea. The New York of the fictional imagination is almost its own thing. I'm probably the person moved here the last or latest, two, years ago. But I've been coming and going from New York for decades. I was living here, once, know than, if you live here six months you're illegal and can be deported, but five months and 29 days, you're cool. So I lived here for five months and 2 days for years, because I fell in love, because I found a version of myself, to fall in love with here. This is where I should be. I've been working to get here for years. >> So after the fictionalized version, the time you actually spent here, you found yourself here. >> The real life version is not bad, either. >> Better transmit system. Susan? >> I'm, I have a specific memory. We went to college together. At exactly the same time. And unlike you, coming to college, we went to Yale, the first time I ever came to the northeast. I flew up from Texas, and landed at JFK and saw New York out the window, this very, dirty looking, grey kind of enormous sky line, like unbelievably, so much larger than I expected and immediate getting on Connecticut almost limo, like a filthy minivan. I went straight to New Haven and plunged into my first year college, very challenging. But the Mets won the world series that fall, which tells everyone worth their salt who's a New Yorker what year this was. By that time I'd made New Yorker friends who were, forget classes, we're going to the city. We got on the train, took the train to grand central and into New York and I went, and they were like, Susan! Don't do that! I'm sorry, we went to the Mets, their victory parade. That's the first day I was in the city, one of the most over the top joyous insane days in the entire history of the city. That was the moment where I couldn't believe a place like this was. >> You never experienced something that large and that, in the street center. >> It was like I was in Life magazine or something. It was a freaking parade for the Mets, hundreds of thousand of people screaming in the streets. I was from Houston, that was it. It, I wasn't a baseball person but it was a thing that I didn't know could happen. A huge, joyous coming together of so many people. >> Do you have a Mets, have you been to a game since? >> Yes, I have made a Mets fan. >> One of your sons is a Mets fan? Fantastic. All right, the next one, whoever feels like they have a quick thought? Isaac, when did you fall in love with New York >> I thought up the questions, I don't have to think of the answers. I'm the moderator. All right. Okay. For the record, I, too, had a lot of fictionalized picture of New York long before I visited city. I once worked on an island off the coast of New Hampshire, on that island, before the internet, we only had one TV, one DVD player and one full season full set of Sex in the City. Marlon, your shame is my shame. I like to, you can live, you're living your truth. I'm still working through it. I know far too much about Sex in the City, but basically, at a younger age, the first time the memory, my parents saved up a bit of money and took me to Broadway when I was 8. >> What did you see? >> The biggest trip I'd been on. We saw Phantom of the Opera. They bought the 40-dollar T shirt with the mask and rose and a photo of me standing in front of the flat iron building, grinning my face off. I'd argue that was the moment I fell in love with New York but it took years to get here. That's it. The only answer you're getting out of me. What was the first book about New York City or that took place in New York City that really inspired you or feel like informed your work? >> Me? >> Anyone. >> It was Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin. His Harlem is such a spiritual, glittering place, with a slice of grim doom, but it is so romantic, and, there's something so black about the way he describes New York City. Even though he was poor, raised in a big family and they were very poor, his life was home and the church, there's still this sense that New York is the place to be, the place of dreams, where a poor boy like him would grow up to become the James Baldwin and that could only be possible in a place like New York. That's the first time in literature I was like, this is the New York that I live in, that I imagine, and Baldwin gave me a way to talk about New York in a way that did it justice. Often, you see in some depictions of New York, they got the greediness but don't got the heart. Baldwin was able to get all that stuff. My first novel, not set in New York City but my second novel willing, I am drawing a lot from Baldwin in that sense. >> Do you remember the first time you read that book, how it got into your hands? What age you were at? >> A friend of mine had it in their personal library. He said, I had just come out, about 16, had never heard of Baldwin. When I was in high school, there were no black authors at all. I went to a friend's house, he asked if I knew Baldwin. I think you'd like this book and he gave it to me. The first time I read it, it was difficult because Baldwin writes in such an elegant way, I was not accustomed. There was a scene where the character and older boy, in the church, play fighting, and I sensed the sexual addition. I said, oh! Okay! This is what this book is about. So I read it over and very until I could understand it and it had such an enormous impact on me and my writing. >> Incredible. Thank you, that's the power of a book, it can change a whole trajectory of your life. That's a tough one to follow up but who else has a New York City book? >> Do we have to absolutely love it? >> Go nuts, be a wild card. >> My opinion of it changed as I get old but looking at, reading New York outside of New York, you're drawn to things you think it New York. I shall feeling almost like a New Yorker because I read Bonfire of the Vanities. It felt like such a New York moment, I don't think it's aged that well. I'm scared to read it now. I don't want to know how bad it has aged. But it was, I knew I was slated for this city, when all the negative stuff wouldn't turn me away from it. I remember the first time I came to New York I was so disappointed, I was here ten days and was not mugged. What is this all about? Where's the New York I was promised? >> Samantha never got mugged. [Laughter] >> Sex and the City was my only -- New York. But, I kind of wanted it. I wanted, New York grime is not like other, not like Florida grime. Even that novel still has something that sometimes New York still shows, the sense, regards of who you are that we're all in this together. New York was stronger at showing that before in the past. But that's it. This sort of, doesn't surprise me today an ther video where there'd be Fred and -- dancing in the same video. That's the thing. I want to be in -- New York. It was that sense that weirdly enough for a city considered heartless, the thing is the sense that we're all in it together. That novel did that. >> It's how you discovered the heart. Susan, Min Jin? >> My New York book is Stewart Little. That's my first New York. It's still, that New York is still so deeply embedded in me. Sometimes I have to remind myself, this is that city. Also, this is that city. The things I remember about the book when I was little, didn't really know about all the different ways that life could be arranged, I remember that REGATA, in central park on his little boat and sails with all those spoiled rich kids and he's like actually on the boat, being lashed away waves, hang onto the mask and apartment living, the first glimpse of apartment living in a city, how romantic that seemed. The proximity of people to each other. Also there's something powerful about the really low key acceptance of the premise, like that was early training for what New York ended up meaning to me now. A radical acceptance, where no one is going to be so uncool as to bat an eye if you seem different. That's the pressure, to accept is partly like the coolness of New Yorkers, I'm not going to look twice, nope. That idea, Stewart was a mouse, born to humans. They were like, his parents were like, you know, we have to get Stewart smaller clothes. Other than that, he was just a New Yorker. Never a moment where people were like, what! A mouse! That seemed so New York me. That there would be a well dressed, gentlemanly mouse. That's an New York I love, and much later, when I read his book, here's New York, I was really moved. He got all these ideas into Stewart Little even before I read the grown up version. >> I will share, I too loved that book. That boat scene very much spoke to me. I was probably 33, walking through central park and saw that's a real place where there really are little boats. Absolutely thrilled. Min Jin? >> It's funny, I have New York books at every stage of my life. So when I was middle school, it was a tree grows in Brooklyn. That book just about took me out. I identified with it so strongly. The little girl what wanted an education and her parents, mother, said we will focus on your brother because he needs to go to school. In college, I read, the bread givers. Or grown girl, books with immigrants writing about immigrant experience in New York. And learning John CHEEVER's stories, a energy I did not know. It would be cool to live in a co-op, works as a doorman, what's it like to have a doorman, or a Didion New York, or the fire next time, Baldwin, where did you live in Harlem so every time I pass certain areas, I wonder what was he was thinking at this moment. For every borough I have a book and those images became real to me. They helped me understand America. I'm surprised when I leave New York and it's not like the way I think people will be because New Yorkers are my first reference point. >> I love what you are describing, when you come across a phrase you read in a book. Or the reverse, you're reading a book and you know exactly the place they're talking about. That happened for me with the nickel boys, describing a restaurant at the top of Hamilton Hill. I had been there! I was lucky enough to be with Colson, so it's a beautiful feeling, you're in the place and remember from the book or in the book and able to visualize the place. Next question, how does New York inform your writing? What about the city inspires you? Go all over the place with this. If you want to go the nonfiction route and true route or a more meta route, how does living New York City, how does the city influence your writing? >> A lot of those New York scenes. Brief history were written in Minnesota. It's still added at New York and a lot of scenes are in the 80s, which was tough to live in, the Bronx. At the same time, when it gets to the 90's, it's the Bronx I found personally. The house is actually a house on -- avenue and the character has a name, a nurse and my sister-in-law thinks it's her. >> Write what you know. But, one thing that frightened me a while, I worried I wouldn't be able to write here. Mostly because I figured I was going to be so distracted. Coming as a visitor is so different from going to live here. When you're visiting New York, you're out all the time. People complain, I saw you a lot more when you were in New York four times a year than when you live here. I was worried I wouldn't be able to write here. But coming here, settling in a routine, all the things I need to write are here. I grew up in -- big Jamaican family, people wouldn't shut up so you can do your term paper. I find myself opening the window because I need traffic. I need noise. I need the sense that life is going on while I'm writing this bad draft of a book. It continually puts me in perspective. And when you're visitor, you notice things, like certainly, Bronx noise is not Manhattan noise. Williamsburg noise is not (indiscernible) noise. When you depend on -- to write, you tend to know the different eras, what they sound like. Silence feels like deafness to me, so I feed off the energy, can't think of any other place I'd rather feed off. >> Marlon, what neighborhood or borough or area is your favorite noise? >> I'm so not answering that. >> (laughing) , or time period? >> I keep thinking I'd really like -- New York. I'm still -- Edith WHARTON is a snob first, writer second. I think, like runs me of the days, people I know, have -- parties. I can't come because I'd be -- would you like a canope with that, sir. I have a very careful nostalgia about that because I know the role I play in that era. I'd give anything to see the birth of hip hop. >> Absolutely. Min Jin, what about you? >> I was thinking about how literature and the word are connected. There's an essay by Naipaul, when he was growing up as an immigrant, always had a flower he loved and learned the name of the flower is jasmine. He got the word when he was in a university in England. His influence me, he was a sexist ass hole but his work is so good. House of Mr. -- none of us were worthy. He taught me about the, what immigrants can have in a place like New York. I'm an introverted person and would much rather never talk. In my room I'm perfectly content here. I'd never leave. That said, there's a part of me that feels like, why not, why can't I do that? Even if people say no a thousand times, a part of me feels, New Yorkie, like, what I want me? Why couldn't I do that? That always carries into everything. My first book was set in New York and I wanted to talk about poor people, immigrants have a why not attitude and become creatives. That's the gift of New York to me. And a certain era. Sometimes I meet other Asian American immigrants kids. They grew up in wealthier neighborhoods, I grew up with tough people so I wasn't tough with them but they gave me a toughness I could take somewhere else where I'm else where. There's the gift from New York for me. >> Love it. Susan? >> I loved listen to what everybody said. Your thoughts are bringing so thoughts to me mind. Writing community, sometimes when I'm, I hear from people who contact me and ask me about being a writer, how to do it. Or I talk to students about how to have a writing life. Meeting people in various other places, who want to know that question. I remind myself, most places are not like this. When I came here, I was fortunate without realizing it to keep falling in with one brilliant writer after another. I know so many writers, it's amazing. It's something that's easy to forget if you live here, the first job landed me among amazing aspiring writers, many of whom I treasure to this day. All gone on to do interesting things. The first writing space I rented, I was surrounded by brilliant people. Some of them are on this screen. The sheer density in New York of people doing this and number of different ways they're doing it, you're swimming that all the time. In other parts of this world, you don't have that. I meet people or talk to students, how do I meet writers? How do I find a community? Sharing your work with someone else, who? I'm like, who, they're not surroundered by other people who do this. That's what New York has always been. Without an effort, you don't have to put out a want ad to meet a buyer, you don't vice-versa to walk outside any more. That's what this city is. >> What was that first job? >> I was a fact checker at the New Yorker magazine. >> Great first job. Everybody down to the people who brought your mail to your desk, everyone want write. And a lot of us did, and do. It was like a second college but better than college. >> And met better people. Robert, this is home, but how did this, inform your work? >> I remember, I grew up in the 70s and remember in its challenging times. -- I remember New York, when crime was skyrocketing, landlords were burning down their own buildings for insurance money, so everything was blight, poor services, no amenities. Yet, through all that, I remember myself and my cousins playing those burnt down buildings, and empty lots, and we turned it into a play ground. Then we moved, to Marlon's point, I got to witness the birth of hip hop. That also came out of that blight. Then you move into the 80s, have the crack epidemic, and even in that, though, what I found was, for example, I lived in a housing project in south Brooklyn, and there were a lot of drug users in the building. None of us were related, but when we knew someone's mom or dad was out using drugs, not taking care of home, someone else's mother would cook for the kids. Out of all these horrors, came a kind of care, that I have never seen elsewhere. In my writing, I'm always trying to capture that. How on one side there's a harsh, hard, grey, madness. On the other size there's this warming glass and together they make you realize the importance of the other. You needed masculine, the feminine, as horrible as one might be to, get the beautiful thing. My writing is a way of work than out and talking about Marlon said something about noise, need to hear noise, I'm the opposite. I need silence. But I also find that my best writing happens on the subway or bus. Or when I'm sitting on my stoop or in central park, where there are other bodies, I think, I don't need the noise but I needed other people to be populating the background so I can dig deeper. So New York gives me all those things. I'm forever indebted. >> Beautiful. For your writing, as you came into your own as a writer, was there a moment when you realized you were trying to find this balance, maybe walking down one line and wait, it's missing another side? >> Writing the prophets, is when I realized it. This had been in my writing for a long time. I just never realized it. Until writing The Prophets and my editor notice it. Oh, I know where that comes from the first thing I thought of was my cousins and me playing Brooklyn, it looks like a war zone and we were playing in the midst of all that. So joy, pain, lined up together. I thought, that's New York. That's New York's influence on me and my writing. >> I love, The Prophets comes out when? >> January 5. >> Correct, seriously, that's a tough time to be having a book come out but I've heard the early praise, congratulations. >> It's a phenomenal novel. >> There it is. One last question, then open up to audience questions. If you have a question put it in Q&A. We will keep this tight. When this is all over, and we know it might be more of a slow drip than a single moment, but when you're feeling comfortable and ready to get back out into the city in a real way, what is the first thing you will do in New York City? That you can't do right now? >> Have a party. At my house. Bring people in. Everyone I want to see. >> Are we all invited? >> Yes. >> What kind of party? >> Isaac, all of us in the same space. >> I'm wondering, like a dinner party? Do I bring a keg? >> Yeah, you're signed up for the keg now. >> Oh, God dam it. >> I want a party too. A book release party at the Brooklyn museum. I can't do that now. It's killing me that I won't be able to have a book release party and have everyone I love and friends around but that's the dream. When things open up I want a book release party. >> A paperback, if not just, in a delay. >> Thank you. >> I agree. Who makes these rules? A say, it's May or June, just have one. Just, we will be there. >> I want to see a live performance. I'm dyeing to go to the theater, then make out with a stranger. [Laughter] >> I'm 52. I'm past that. But I'm dying on to go to the theater, have the communal experience of seeing a live performance. I so miss that. >> I want to go to east village and order a huge plate of fried chicken from -- restaurant. I shouldn't be eating, but they're going to ask if you want this or this. I will just say, yes. >> Order the whole menu. >> Before we get to the questions, everyone at home, clap! Good job! We have wonderful questions. Just shout out your answers. New York magazine's latest issue is dedicated to all the New York spots now forever gone because of the pandemic. What's a by gone New York spot for you? >> I'm so -- Carrie DODD is closed. A Cuban Chinese restaurant. >> During the pandemic? >> I think it was around the pandemic. Definitely, 2020. I'm heart broken. >> Absolutely. Anybody else? A place that's closed that -- >> I'm scared. I'm going to -- maybe I should check they're still open. >> Hankie has closed. >> That's the Korean spot that's half a block from a place we know very well. >> Robert? >> No spots that have closed because of the pandemic. But I miss all the New York City night life places, like the limelight. Sound factory bar, the warehouse. Not something kids like to do these days. >> Robert, I have a great book, in the limelight, photos from the 90's club scene. I will email you about it. >> I was also drawn to, I've been dancing a lot more. Giuliani got rid of the clubs? >> Don't speak his name. >> Forget that guy. Next question, feels like every aspect of New York has been written, photographed, captured in art before. How does one make the city a setting without falling into cliche traps? >> Write about the people. Any book is only going to be good if the characters are good. If they're New Yorkers, that's what it's about. It doesn't matter if the city has been written about a lot. Don't write a New York book. It has to have good characters, then its New York will be good. >> I agree. Four characters in a room looking at the empire state building are looking at four different Empire State Buildings. When Susan talked about the -- of New York, study of sky line, grey, basic, ugly, my first New York sky line was at midnight. All I saw was, almost felt like light dancing on light. You see the river, I went, do humans live here? What's going on? It was a ridiculous world wonder. It comes back to the characters, the people, how character is seeing that place as opposed to another character. New York will always seem a world of wonder, to whoever is reading. >> New York can't be stereotyped. When I meet assholes in New York, they're usually not from here. They have an idea of what New York will be like and if you have an idea, what Staten Island is like, you know people from there would lend you money if you needed it, there's a closure of an idea, what New York is. You can have a Cheever New York and a Paula Marshall New York, they're all New York. If you're focused on the real people of New York, you're not going to fall into cliches. >> Beautiful. Shout out to the StIten island ferry. The beer on is, still very inexpensive. At the moment, not big crowds, wear a mask, it's mostly outside, you can do it right now. Robert, how is the pandemic changing how you see the city, and also, do you think you will be writing about a different New York City when you emerge from quarantine? >> At first, I had been spending so much time in the house I didn't realize how much the city changed during this time. But my husband and I went to SOHO to shop and everything was boarded up, so many stores were all of business and so very few stores were open and there were almost no one there, even Chinatown was practically empty. It feels post apocalyptic. I thought, can we recover from this? It was the first time I feared for New York. I was not there when 9/11 happened. I came back a year later. I left, all rude New Yorkers and when I returned, the kindest New Yorkers ever. 9/11 had something to do with that. The New York I will be writing about next is a particular time period in the past. I have that etched in my mind but if I write about this New York, I'd definitely take into account the desolation -- it was always fashionable and there was nothing, it was literally papers blowing in the wind. Just scary. And that, this event really shifted my thinking about cities, to begin with, because we're crowded and look how quickly this illness can spread in such spaces. >> Anybody else? Thinking about what it might be to write the next phase of New York? If everybody is quiet, I can do a quick story and we will ask one final question. I've been experiencing that, going on long walks, to stay sane. I just try to get, walk and been going into Manhattan, over the bridges. It's been more recently, reassuring. Seeing the city where coming back to life. Lots of masks, dining outside, et cetera. The moment for me where, cities are living things, always changing. There was a moment where I was like, New York will be fine. I was walking in the opposite direction and a man in a chair asked for help with his zipper. He said I'm not looking for your money. Help me with my zipper on my jacket. Could you push me to the end of the block? Of course, and one more block. Five blocks later, we get to a boedga, could you run in and grab grab me some beer? I'm sorry -- again, I don't need your money. Takes out the money, exact change. I went in, bought it, and I was like, I can fall victim to a con, a help me with my zipper, this turns into a 20 minute excursion, everything will be all right. That's my take away. It will be different. There's no denying, it was difficult and we're still in it. But I think it's going to be all right. I will end with this Isaac question from the audience. Where is your favorite reading writing place in New York? To read or write. Imagine the pandemic is not happening. Marlon? Right down the line. >> I'm thinking. >> Susan? >> My favorite place to read is in my back yard. And during the early weeks of lock down I was, there was a happiness because I just sat behind my house feeling I was on this island and would sit all day. There's one big tree in the east and I'd face that tree and read. As the sun moved I would rotate. Another big tree in the west. >> What about writing? >> I struggle with finding the right place to write all the time. This have been spots and they go bad. I loved my, shared work space with women writers, in a loft on flat bush avenue, journalists, poets, film, fiction writers. Bunch of broken garbage literature, I loved working with them around me. >> Robert? >> I love to read in my bed, under the covers. Reading glasses, book up close. That's my favorite place to read. To write, I have several places in the city. Front of my house on the stoop, BELVEDERE castle and on the subway. For a long ride. From one end to the other end. Just because there's something about the movement and rhythm and being surrounded by people -- my creativity. >> Min Jin? >> I love reading on the subway. In a way I've cut down my reading and my attention has been a a little damaged. The temple of -- at the metro museum of art. If I'm having a hard time with life, I used to work there, selling books. I can't write anywhere else except my home. It's impossible. >> Is it in this room we're looking at? >> This room or whenever I was living at any minute. This is where the magic happens! >> Marlon? >> I get almost all my reading done on the subway. I miss it so much. I still have that feeling about those books. Also, my friend Curt's house. He has a brown stone -- he has one of the few black interest book stores, and I used to pretty much live in that store and it was the first time someone coming to America to be surrounded by literary legacy. Reading it, sinking myself into it, writing, I've written a lot at his house. But Washington heights, I knew my neighborhood, could read anywhere. >> I love that. I will just say when this is over I'm going to go to the New York Public Library, sit in all the rooms, and climb the lions, I'm sure they don't want me to encourage that but I will kiss them on the lips. In the meantime -- >> And sit in the rose reading room. >> Right, look, be in that space. >> Stop trying to turn New York into Boston, Isaac. [laughter] >> Listen, I appreciate you all who came here. Thank you so much for this wonderful panel. Everybody give a deep round of applause. [Applause] >> Thank you all for making tonight happen, NYPL. Look for Robert's book in January. See you later. Thank you so much. New York forever.