David Bezmozgis’ new novel, The Betrayers, follows the late-life travails of Baruch Kotler, a celebrated Soviet-Jewish-dissident-turned-Israeli-politician, who bears some resemblance to the real-life refusenik Natan Sharanksy. Like Sharansky, the fictional Kotler spent many years in jail before emigrating to Israel—where he was received as a hero—but unlike Sharansky, he finds himself embroiled in scandal when his extra-marital affair with a much younger woman is revealed.

Kotler flees the furore in the Holy Land for Crimea (because irony), where he encounters Vladimir Tankilevich, the man who once betrayed him. What follows is a delicious, compelling, literary psychodrama—and a fascinating exploration of Zionism, the right-wing trajectory of Israeli politics, and the legacy of Soviet Jewry. Writing in The New York Times, Boris Fishman (also interviewed by Jewcy) raved thusly about The Betrayers: “A novel of ideas and an engrossing story? It’s the umami experience: salty and sweet, yin and yang, the rocket scientist who is also a looker.” Tablet’s Adam Kirsch described it as “the rare book that makes being Jewish feel not just like a fate or a burden, but a great opportunity.” Michael Orbach talked with Bezmozgis about these big ideas—and more—earlier this month.

What was the genesis of the book?

I’d written an obituary in 2004 for The New York Times Magazine about a Jewish dissident in Moscow, Alexander Lerner. In researching it, I came across this detail that Lerner stood accused, along with Natan Sharansky, by a fellow Jew, a guy named Sanya Lipavsky, which I’d never heard before. I became fascinated by this idea that this one Jew had denounced his ostensibly Zionist brothers for a regime that then ceased to exist. I wondered what happened to this man when the Soviet Union fell apart; what his life would have been like. That was the beginning of it, but it led to a larger question that fascinated me about morality: why are some people—like Sharansky—incredibly principled and willing to sacrifice anything for their principles and what is it that separates them from most other people? The moral question is the heart of the book. I wondered what would happen if these two men ever encountered each other and if they did so in the present day, with the background of what was happening to the former Soviet Union and the background of what Israel had become and was changing into. That was what inspired the book.

It is a rather lovely book and it does ask that question. Do you think that question has a sort of predestinated answer?

This is part of the project of the book: one is to ask the question and then to dramatize it and the other is to pose an answer, which the book does. I don’t think we should reveal the answer during an interview; I feel it takes some of the excitement out of the reading away. But it does pose the question of what separates the highly virtuous people and most other people and how would we ever know? That was what was interesting about these two characters, Kotler and Tankilevich, because of the Soviet system a lot of the people were actually forced to declare and expose themselves morally and constitutionally: what kind of person are you and will you denounce your brother? Will you resist and, of course, what price would you pay for your resistance?

Was there a good deal of research involved in writing this book?

Yes. The Betrayers derived almost nothing from my own experience so there was a research on a number of levels. First of all, to understand people like Kotler, the refuseniks and Zionist dissidents. I read memoirs they published; I visited Israel, in part, to meet some of these people, see what their lives were like in Israel and how they felt all these years later about the country. This was in 2012, before the Gaza War that proceeded this most recent war. In 2011, I was in Crimea and traveled around to find where to set the story. I hadn’t thought it would be Yalta, but Yalta was the only place I could do it.

Why?

For the very simple reason that I needed large, fancy hotels and outside of Yalta, no place on the Crimean coast had these things.

What was the difference in your writing process between writing something loosely based around your own life (like Natasha) and something like this?

I think by the time I start writing it doesn’t make much of a difference. By the time you start writing it’s just the complication, the challenge, of writing good sentences. Whether I’m writing about myself or I’m writing about someone like Kotler, it really didn’t make much of a difference. It was leading up to the process of starting—trying to understand the subject—that was the big change.

The obvious parallel to Kotler is Natan Sharansky, but I noticed there’s a section where Kotler reminisces about being put on trial in Israel by another refusenik. For some reason, this reminded me a bit of Rudolph Kastner and his experiences post-WW2. Was this based on him?

No, in fact it was this other little detail that I discovered when I was in Israel talking to refuseniks. There was an actual trial against Sharansky that I was fascinated by and it finds its way into the book. In Israel Sharansky stood accused of being a fraud, the opposite of what everyone believed him to be, not a victim but one of the villains. That was a fascinating detail. Not much directly from Sharansky’s life enters into the novel. It is significantly fictionalized, but that detail was striking.

What was it like meeting the refuseniks in Israel? I remember speaking to Gal Beckerman, the author of When They Come For Us We’ll Be Gone, and he made this joke in passing that a lot of refusniks complain jokingly, but also not, that Israel is just like the Soviet Union.

That wasn’t my experience at all. In fact, that was one of the things I was curious about: how did these people, who sacrificed so much to come to Israel, feel about Israel? When they came to Israel a lot of them struggled. The people I spoke to, across the board, remained very committed Zionists and loved Israel. They were on the political right and not on the political left which is true of most former Soviet Jews.

Sharansky is on the right of the Israel political spectrum and that comes across in Kotler’s character as well.

There are people far more on the right. There are moments when [Sharansky] articulates democratic positions that other people don’t. At the time of the Arab Spring he was one of the few Israeli officials that believed this sort of thing should be supported and not immediately suspected. As the case turned out we now know what happened to the Arab Spring. But he wasn’t one of the cynics.

Tangential question: Is there a more right-wing trajectory in all Israeli politics right now?

I think Israeli politics have swung to the right. The Likud has been in power for a decade or some version of the Likud, that’s a fact. Part of what prompted me to include Israel as a part of the book has to do with how that country has changed. How it’s changed has been a function of absorbing more than a million Soviet Jews. I’ve written these three books and this last one was intended to be completely contemporary and to ask the question: what is going to be the legacy of the Soviet Jews? Their real legacy isn’t in North America; their real legacy is in Israel. They’ve changed that country. And if people are interested in why that country has swung to the right, part of the answer has to do with these Russian Jews. You have to understand the mentality and the context of what formed them politically and ideologically: what the Soviet Union was like and what it did to Jews and what it means to all these Jews, speaking broadly, to no longer be the oppressed, but to actually wield power.

They’ve also contributed a lot to the culture and economy in Israel in the best possible way, but politically they’re part of the reason why that country swung to the right. The book continues on with Kotler’s son and the difference between Kotler—who most people on the left would consider a politically conservative guy—and his son. That’s the other part of the family story, which is the rise of the Zionist Orthodox and how that has changed the country.

I’ve noticed that in your story collection Natasha and this book, bad people seem to go to minyan [services]. I think any fictional character who attends minyan in your book is bound to be unpleasant or bound to meet someone quite unpleasant.

Go to any minyan in your own world and I’m sure that one of those people aren’t as pure as driven snow either. That uncle who has some real estate holdings and maybe a scrapyard. He’s the one who sponsored the Kiddush, standing there by the herring.

You’ve spoken many times about the great Jewish writer Leonard Michaels. How were you influenced by him?

Part of the experience in encountering a writer you connect with is also recognizing something of yourself, that feeling of identification: this person has written the book that you were meant to write. There was an instant of admiration and envy when I encountered Lenny’s stories. His approach to his childhood and upbringing seemed in line with mine. The way he looked at urban Jewish life wasn’t purely intellectual, he had these athletes and hustlers. It wasn’t bookish nebbish-ey representation of Jews, and growing up in a community surrounded by Soviet Jews. All the men of my grandfather’s generation served at the front; my father was in sports and many of his friends were athletes. That was the world that made sense to me: where Jews could be both physical and cerebral.

And the beauty of his prose: how economical it was and yet not at the expense of just being evocative and poetic. I still haven’t encountered very many writers that move me the way that Leonard Michaels moved me. I go back and re-read him all the time.

I don’t think anything can match his story ‘Murderers’. That’s a perfect story.

It’s a perfect story. And you can read it, and re-read it and find something new. There’s not a wasted image and everything comes together. There’s humor in it; there’s a real understanding of the darkness that attends being mortal and there’s just great artistic beauty. “We sat on the roof like angels, shot through with light, derealized in brilliance.” My God, somebody else write a better line than that.

Read also: Anya Ulinich on Autobiography in Fiction, Drawing, and the Perverse Pleasures of OkCupid
Gary Shteyngart On Surviving Solomon Schechter, Soviet Pain, And Botched Circumcisions

(Image: author’s website)

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Yelena Akhtiorskaya, 28, is the author of Panic in a Suitcase, a novel spanning 15 years in the life of a family of Ukrainian emigres struggling to adjust to life in the United States. The Nasmertovs live in the Soviet immigrant community of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where the tension between the past and future is acutely felt by all—and exemplified by a visit from Pasha, the famous poet uncle who remained in Ukraine. In 2008, 15 years after Pasha’s visit, his niece Frida—now a medical student—travels from New York to Odessa for her cousin’s wedding, a journey rich in wry observations about displacement, homesickness, and culture shock.

Panic in a Suitcase has received rave reviews from The New York Times (“crisp and gorgeous”), the Washington Post (“genius”), Vogue (“a virtuosic debut”), and many others. (And this morning Akhtiorskaya was named by the National Book Foundation as one of their “5 under 35” for 2014.) Earlier this summer, Michael Orbach talked with her about writing, misery, Brighton Beach, and Russian literature in translation.

What’s the story behind Panic in a Suitcase?

A lot is based on my life. It’s kind of a composite of a few things: one is being totally fascinated by Brighton Beach—loving it and at the same time realizing that it’s a very absurd and sad place. The second is the dynamics of a claustrophobic, suffocating, chaotic family, which functions as a unified monstrous being. And the third idea was about a character who chooses not to emigrate. I love Russian-Jewish immigrant novels and that whole tradition, but they don’t entirely speak to the way it is now, or not the way it was with my experience. I wanted to explore the way we romanticize the old country and the authenticity of it.

When did you move to America?

I came in 1992. I feel like I can’t say I grew up in America; I meet Russians who moved to California or Ohio and they’re so Americanized. I grew up in Brighton Beach where I spoke Russian wherever I went.

I think that’s why everyone says they hear an accent. I shouldn’t have one, but I do, because I stayed in Russia. Growing up in Brighton Beach was kind of like growing up in the 1950s. It’s like Brighton Beach Memoirs mixed with Requiem for a Dream. Wholesome and Jewish, but at the same time lots of wandering the streets and drugs and all this desperation. The parents are working really hard to rebuild their lives and the grandparents are watching over you, but it’s easy to fool the grandparents.

Did you disappoint your parents by not becoming a doctor?

My mom used to say every day, “Please just reconsider, it’s not too late to go to medical school.” I think the fact that she no longer says that, or not as regularly, means she must be proud. It is hard to tell. Ideally, you become part of the tradition of Russian writer-doctors—Chekhov, Bulgakov, Tsypkin. I’m considering becoming a clinical psychologist. This summer I took an intensive statistics course… I can’t tell how much of it is for me and how much for my parents.

I know you went to Columbia for your MFA, what happened afterwards?

I really needed to make money, but I didn’t want to work. There were some dark times. First, I worked at The Strand.

Like every other novelist.

It was the only place I could get a job, but it didn’t last long, then I moved to New Orleans. My friends from high school were there and I thought it would be a good break from New York, but it was too joyful. Then I moved back here and I got a job at Columbia University Medical Center on 168th Street.

Uh, shouldn’t you be happier?

Do you know how to do that?

No, but I haven’t written a novel that’s gotten great reviews.

If you know how to be pleased with yourself, you will be, but if you don’t, you won’t.

You are so Russian.

My friend says that my capacity for misery is greater than anyone he’s ever met.

You should drink more. I think you need a hug.

Maybe that’s true. People usually say that on the phone but people are scared of giving me a hug.

Do you prefer to read in Russian?

It’s much harder for me to read in Russian. I read poetry in the original but for the fat novels there’s [translators] Pevear and Volokhonsky. It’s necessary to take Babel in Russian, but luckily he spawned two of my favorite American short story writers: Grace Paley and Leonard Michaels.

What do you like about the Russians?

Russian writers are like Russian people: there’s not a lot of bullshit. I can relate to the inherent darkness, the pessimism, and all that misery. They get to the essential stuff pretty much right away.

What is the essential stuff?

Life, death, love, time. Russian poetry in particular cuts through to the heart of you in a way that is very not-American. I have to make a distinction: it’s a Russian quality, not a Jewish quality, and I don’t have it. I can’t help but make the joke. I don’t have the Russian thing where it’s really pure, dark tragedy. I can’t help but write in a funny or crooked way, even though at core there’s the darkness.

It’s very dark for you?

Being a writer you spend most of your time holed up in a room by yourself trying to get to the bottom of stuff. It’s not a very positive occupation. It doesn’t correlate to optimistic fun-in-the-sun-Frisbee time.

I noticed that you have some lovely passages about the sea.

I go back to Brighton Beach every weekend to swim in the ocean. That’s when I’m not in the miserable mode. I have a very good relationship with the sea. It’s like my home.

Read an excerpt from Panic in a Suitcase over at N+1.

 (Image: Riverhead Books)

Related: Anya Ulinich on Autobiography in Fiction, Drawing, and the Perverse Pleasures of OkCupid
Boris Fishman on Grandfathers, Russian Hirsuteness, and the Immigrant Experience

The post Debut Novelist Yelena Akhtiorskaya on Misery, Writing, and Brighton Beach appeared first on Jewcy.

When I was twelve I got in trouble for credit card fraud, among other things and was faced with the choice of facing serious trouble, or having to go to a boot camp like program for delinquent kids.  Music was contraband but I managed to sneak a tape of Energy by Operation Ivy.  Every couple of nights I’d fine the one kid that snuck in a walkman and we’d sit in our tents, our heads pressed together sharing the pair of headphones listening to songs like, “Soundsystem” and “Unity.”  To this day I’ve found no sweeter escape than how I felt with one headphone pressed to my ear listening to those songs.  The words felt like the most honest and profound ever written.  I’d never fully realized how powerful music could be, that it could change my brain chemistry, take me away from I was.

A few months later, I returned home, all cleaned up and well-behaved.  I began to study for and then celebrated my Bar Mitzvah.  I agreed to wear the suit my parents picked out and even left my hair un-spiked for the day.  While most of the guests gave me checks, the amounts in multiples of $18, one couple oddly gave me a small bar of platinum, which I immediately put in the pocket of my suit pants.  A few days later I had a friend drive me to a jewelry store that bought the piece of platinum from me for $200.  From there we drove to a tattoo parlor that we knew wouldn’t ask for ID.  I brought along a record and asked the guy to give me the image on cover.  It was the Plea for Peace 7 inch by Operation Ivy and although the image itself didn’t mean that much to me, everything behind it did, and still does.

Operation Ivy started in 1987 and broke up in 1989.  It’s punk rock legend that the band broke up to avoid selling out.  Two of the band members went on to form Rancid, but little was heard from the Op Ivy singer Jesse Michaels.  People speculated to his wareabouts in the years after Operation Ivy and rumors abounded about his journeys across the world and his time in a monastery.  Eventually he re-emerged to form the band Common Rider, followed by a brief solo stint.  Most recently he’s teamed up with the band Hard Girls to form Classic’s of Love.  Jesse is also the son of Leonard Michaels who is considered by many to be one of the great modern Jewish writers.  For a lot of people, Op Ivy is the band that ushered them into the world of punk rock.  For others they are the band that made it all click.   For me, it’s the band that got me through puberty and taught me how powerful music can be, and there is nothing anyone could say that would change that, not even Jesse.  Still, I wanted to talk the guy who was closely involved in this thing that meant so much to so many, even if just to learn a single tiny detail more that I didn’t already know.  If not, at least I’d get to talk to the guy who drew my only tattoo.

Somehow, what you did in Operation Ivy meant a great deal to a lot of people.  For so many people who I’ve talked to about punk rock, Operation Ivy was the entrance into it.  I know people who’ve moved on past punk and listen mostly to music on the opposite side of spectrum, but when the record comes on, they know all the words.  I guess my question is this, why do you think that this thing that you were a part of means so much to so many people.

Well, I can’t really take responsibility for it, I mean the whole was greater than the sum of it’s parts and I was just one of those parts.  I don’t want to sound like I’m being heroic like, “oh I’m glad I could do my little part.”  But, It’s true, I just did my bit and then the whole, which is something I couldn’t control or predict, took on a life of its own.  Which is wonderful, but I’m as much of an observer of the phenomenon as a fan would be.  I was never in a big band, you know, I was in a garage band!  I was never writing anything profound, I was just listening to The Clash and the Bad Brains and trying to do something like that.  Then it took on this bigger life, which is great, it’s cool.  It’s something that I never expected but of course I enjoyed it.  As to why?  I dunno, I guess we were a good band.

I find it interesting to hear you say that you never expected Op Ivy to become what it was.  To me there always seed to be this intrinsic factor… I don’t know, it’s just this one perfect album called, “Energy,” with that striking image on the cover.  Looking at it from the outside, it almost seemed fated.  So I guess I’m surprised to hear that you never expected the reaction.

When I grew up you had these classic punk records, many of which no one has ever heard of anymore.  There was the Bad Brains first album, Jerry’s kids “Is this my world.”  76% uncertain, that was a Connecticut band, there album, “Estimated Monkey Time” was a classic to me.  Then there were some bigger ones like The Dead Kennedy’s and stuff.  So, here are these records that in my world are these huge things.  I expected our record would be much smaller and less important than any of those.  I thought we’d sell maybe 2,000 copies.  But the great thing about punk is that it’s a real medium, it’s not a commercial medium it’s not a marketing medium.  So I didn’t know that because it was punk, it would extend into the future, but I didn’t expect it to expand.  These old bands had sort of a linear extension into the future.  The same amount of people always liked them.  But there was always someone new because it’s real fuckin’ rebel music and it’s always going to have a life.  I had no expectations that our record would expand or become more popular.  That was completely surprising to me.

At this point, I’m sure you’ve had a lot of people express their feelings to you about the band.  I imagine you’ve gotten used to people coming up to you and expressing these deep feelings for this thing that you did.  Do you feel jaded to it?

Okay, for instance, Jaded.  I learned what the word, “Jaded” meant after listening to the song “Jaded” and then looking it up in the dictionary so I could better understand what the song meant.  I think there’s a lot of kids who’ve had similar experiences.  So, do people approach you a lot?  What’s your general reaction?

Well, sort of, I’m not very recognizable and the people who are into the music that I was involved with are generally very classy.  They know that it’s not supposed to be a rock star thing so they’re on their best behavior, which is something I appreciate and it’s the same way I would act toward a band I was into. You never want to appear to be too much of a fan, because it’s sort of against the rules.

Right.

You know, as soon as I start thinking of myself as some kind of rock star, I’m a prick.  So, I guard against that because I don’t want to be a prick.  It’s not because I’m heroic or super modest or spiritual, it’s just because I don’t want to to be a fuckin’ douche bag.  So if someone comes up to me and is all, “ooh ahh,” I’m sort of like, “wow you have a interesting fixation on me, and that’s okay, but it has absolutely nothing to do with who I am.”  I’m just a guy with problems.

On the other hand, great art is great art.  If that’s great art to someone, fantastic.  The music and art that I love, I love it.  Of course there’s a natural attraction to someone who’s made something that’s meaningful. I’m as subject to this as anyone else.  When I met Joe Strummer, I almost shit my pants.  At the same time, I know that it’s just kind of this imaginary thing that I’m doing in my head, that he’s just another guy with problems.

I would imagine that being put on a pedestal for so long would do strange things to a person’s sense of self.  I mean, did you go through a period where it was hard to find fulfillment artistically?  I’d think you’d sort of…

Want to recapture it?

Right.  Or that whatever you might try to do next would be held up to this standard.  Or, if you were to decide that art or music wasn’t for you, what makes for achievement after that, after inspiring people?

You know, I’m human, and of course I’ve thought about those things and been troubled by them.  My side of the street is to do what I can, every day, to do my job as a person.  So, with Common Rider, which was the first serious band I did after Op Ivy, of course those expectations were there.  I also wanted to exploit them.  I wanted to see if I could use the success of Op Ivy to generate more success, I’m not a fucking saint.  But I found that it’s impossible.  People only give a shit about what you’re doing right now.  If you were in a great band and then you come out with a crap band, not saying that Common Rider was a crap band, you’re going to get some legs, you’ll get some gigs and articles and shit.  But ultimately, if you’re not bringing the rock…it’s only going to go so far.  Ultimately it’s just a matter of trying to create the best art that you can, always.

If anything, for me the biggest surprise was…

Okay, so I was in Op Ivy and we didn’t always get along so well, but every time we played music this magical thing happened where the songs came out and they were always really good.  I just thought that was the way it was because I’d never experienced anything else.   It was a big surprise to me when I realized that it’s not always quite that easy, when I found out how lucky we were.  If anything, I developed not so much a fame ego, but an artistic ego, like, “I can just make this musical art and it’s always going to be that good.” And that’s just not true.   That was the hardest pill to swallow.  But I mean, it was a good lesson.  It taught me humility, it taught me to appreciate what I have.  Now I’m in a band and I think we’re pretty good, we’re very part time and I don’t have any expectations, but I appreciate the fact that I’m playing with people and we get each other and are able to do cool stuff.

I think a lot of other artists have this experience.  Take Brett Easton Ellis for instance, he wrote his first novel very young and people really responded.  Then he goes on to and writes other books.  Some are received well and some that aren’t but no matter what he does, people will always be comparing him to this thing that he did as a kid, this thing that was like his first attempt at really creating. Common Rider was great, but it was always prefaced with, “this is the guy from Op Ivy’s new band.”  You’re new band has been pretty well received as well.  So, it seems like you have some kind of perspective on this.

Yeah, I do.  You know, Op Ivy was a white-hot magic.  Now I’m working with slower magic, but that’s fine.  You know, it happens all the time.  It happens basically with every band.  We played a show a week ago and it was really successful, it was a real punk show you know.  The energy was there.   I’m happy with the way things are largely because I don’t have many expectations.  It’s funny that people get so hung up on this stuff and a lot of it has to do with economic factors.  A person hits thirty and they start to worry about their place in the world, but really if you look at it honestly and with a little bit of humility, any success is on the plus side.

Look at it this way, if someone gave me a cake yesterday and I’m sitting here going, “My life sucks because I don’t have a cake today,” It’s not just a bad attitude, it’s also crazy attitude.  Any success you have is incredibly fortunate and the proper attitude should be gratefulness.  If it’s followed by more, even better.  If it’s not, then you’ll still had a great thing.  It’s a privilege to have anyone care about your music at all.  I mean how many bands are out there that nobody gives a shit about.  If you make one song that affects people, that’s a privilege.

I want to ask about what you did after Operation Ivy, when you sort of disappeared.

There was no disappearance, not to sound like I’m bickering with you but just speaking to that idea.  I just made a choice not to be a public figure.  People look at that and say, “Oh he disappeared, how mysterious.”  Really I just never thought of the public life as being all that important.

Were you aware at that point that it was a choice?  Were you aware at that point that people were curious what you were doing?

Yes I was and I basically just ignored it.  Because I was doing other shit, you know?

I know that you went to Nicaragua during that period.  Can you tell me about the time you spent in Nicaragua specifically?  What was your life like when you were there and do you consider to have been a worthwhile experience in the end?

I went to Nicaragua for a couple of months to help with a construction project that was sponsored by a lefty Berkeley organization.  I was depressed and contributed less than I should have.  Although, I remember laying a foundation and moving some giant bricks around.  The main thing I learned from that trip is that most people in the world don’t live the way that we do.  The average Nicaraguan has a dirt floor in their house.  The other thing I learned is that people in other countries have a level of personal kindness that you just don’t experience here.  It’s just a fact in much of the world.  The daily alienation and estrangement we experience in urban America is just not there.  On the other hand, I don’t mean to idealize it.  Obviously, they have their own problems, but warmth is not one of them.

I’ve also read that you were a monk.  Can you tell me about that?

I was never actually a monk.  I studied Zen in connection with the San Francisco Zen Center for about a year.  I like and Zen and I still practice mediation, but it was too much for me.  They meditated for an hour at 4 in the morning and then one hour at noon and then one hour at 8 PM.  If you want to know why it was too much, try it for a couple of weeks.  I was so enchanted by the beauty of the teaching that I wanted to try and get it.  Being young, I went to extremes and it didn’t last.  I made it for about ten months with that kind of practice.  That being said, I learned a lot from my studies and I still carry many of them with me to this day.

I read an interview in which you talk about your early twenties as having been a really difficult time for you.  Since reading that I’ve experienced it myself and met a lot of people who have as well.  I also know that suicide prevention is a focus of the Plea for Peace organization, of which you support.

I was wondering if you knew of Nick Traina, the singer of Link 80 and son of the writer Daniel Steele who lived in the East Bay and died of a heroin overdose.  I ask because it was clear from his music that he was a huge Op Ivy fan.  You’ve mentioned addiction as an issue that you feel strongly about.  Were you aware of what happened with Nick?  Did you know him?

I knew Nick.  Well, I didn’t know him, I met him a couple of times.  As far as the problem of addiction goes, it’s a serious problem.  Without disclosing too much about my personal life, I’ve had some issues with that.  But after many years I was successful in eradicating that problem.  It’s really sad that some people don’t make it.  You know, Nick was a good guy.  It’s just that he had a illness and the illness got the best of him.  I don’t think of addiction as important as a general issue but just as something that I’ve dealt with and overcome and so now I see it as a duty of mine that if other people have a problem with it, to extend myself to them in my life, in my practice of life.

Having been through the unique set of circumstances that you’ve been through, is there a piece of wisdom you feel compelled to share?

When you get angry don’t talk or email or text or whatever.  Wait all the way until you aren’t angry any more and only then say something.  It took me twenty years to learn this.

I want to ask you about your growing up.  Your father Leonard, was an accomplished writer.  Did this have any affect on how you turned out as an artist?

Yes definitely, he taught me the value, the importance of art.  It was never a consideration whether art was important, it was just a given.  I mean art in the largest sense of the word, movies, music, anything.  His psyche influenced mine and I definitely picked up this legacy of creative activity.  More importantly I always just loved him dearly, and I still do.  That was always more important than anything.  All the writer stuff my brother and I just made fun of, but that was definitely there and I’m sure that had some self-conscious implications.

What do you mean “writer stuff?”

He would get some award and we would think it was funny and make fun of him.  He would have writers over and they would have writer talk, and we were always sort of awe-struck.  At the same time he was just out dad and it was all just this drama he did in the world that had nothing to do with our relationship with him.

Did he know about your music?

Yeah he did.

Do you think he was proud of you?

Yes, he was proud.  He didn’t understand it.  He was an academic.  He related to education and scholarship.  But he was stoked about it.  He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it, but he certainly was proud of it.

Often, when I’ve read about your dad, he’s mentioned as a “modern Jewish writer.”  Were you raised Jewish?  Was that a big part of your life?

Well, he came from a generation of Jewish academics in the 50’s and 60’s that were very Jewish culturally but very secular.  Other examples would be like Philip Roth or Woody Allen.  They’re intensely Jewish but not very religious.  If anything they make fun of religion.  That’s how he was.  We would do the holidays and stuff sometimes, but it was always slightly ironic.  I think he had spiritual values but he didn’t really buy the whole religion thing.

Have you considered writing a book?

I have written one book.  It’s a novella and I’m sort of shopping it around and it might get published this year.  Then I’m sort of figuring out what I’m going to do next.

Do you think being a part of the DIY punk scene affected the way you do things now?

Yeah, definitely.  I’ve learned a lot from punk and I’m just kind of a lifer.  Even though I don’t dress punk, or act punk, or identify as punk, it’s in my blood.  It’s the first thing I really loved.  I was twelve years old when I got into it and I loved it.  So, I love it, but it’s also completely stupid, and it’s completely fun and great and hopelessly dysfunctional.  On the one hand I learned sort of independent thinking on the other hand I’ve learned to avoid mental ghettos.  Because punk can be a mental ghetto.  People get into it and make all these rules and pretty soon they’re worse than born again Christians and have stupid three hour conversation about things like, which band is a sellout and is straight edge cool or un-cool and it’s just completely idiotic.  So punk has taught me the aesthetic of the outsider, which is great, but it’s also taught me not to get involved in petty little cults.

Are there any punk bands playing currently that you really like?

I like the Red Dawns.  I like anything that Doug from the Red Dons does.  I think he’s one of the great ones.  I like all the Virginia Neo Hardcore bands like Wasted Time.  I think Government Warning might be the best band in America, but that might be just because I’m an old man and they sound like the shit I listened to as a kid.  Good luck is pretty good, the Tubers, Bomb the Music Industry.

I have to ask you this, I don’t want to, but I have to.  People are always wondering about the possibility of an Op Ivy reunion.  I’m sure you’ve thought of the potential.  I mean a big show or tour could make lots of money for a great cause…. Is there any possibility of a reunion and if not, why not?

I don’t know.  All I can tell you, and I wish I could be more definite, is that my life hasn’t taken that direction and those guys lives haven’t taken that direction.  I don’t think any of those guys are planning on it, and I don’t really talk to them about it.  I think all of us are pretty happy with out lives the way they are.  I don’t think it would be a service to the legacy of the band to have a reunion, I think it would be more of a service not to have a reunion.  People always want more, and I understand that, but sometimes less is more.  Take Minor Threat, could you imagine a Minor Threat reunion?  It would be such a fuckin’ disaster.  I mean it would probably be a lot of fun, but it would be like, “Is this really necessary or helpful?”  So the short answer is life is unpredictable, but there’s no plan for it to happen.

What was the most thrilling moment of your life?

Probably skating.  You know, just shredding. I wasn’t very good but that’s probably most fun I’ve ever had.  Actually shows would be the most thrilling moments of my life and I’m lucky, I’ve had that moment over and over again.

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