I THINK THERE ALREADY WAS ONE OF THOSE. . . HAVE YOU SEEN MIDNIGHT IN PARIS? THE WOODY ALLEN CHARACTER TALKS ABOUT SOMETHING CALLED “GOLDEN ERA SYNDROME,” WHERE PEOPLE ROMANTICIZE A TIME BEFORE THEY WERE BORN. I CLEARLY FEEL THAT WAY ABOUT THE ’70S. DO YOU FEEL THAT WAY ABOUT ANY ERA? I think any post-war period in New York would have been great. When you listen to anyone talk about the immediate postwar years, they sound phenomenal! Greenwich Village in the ’50s would have been great fun. Earlier than that, I don’t tend to be nostalgic and romantic about these time periods. I think any postwar period in New York City would have been great for anybody up until about the ’80s, when money began to completely dominate everything.
Before, you didn’t have to be rich and you didn’t have to be well-connected. The Beats just made it happen, just as a group. . . . Even a group of people getting together now would be harder because everything is so dispersed with the Internet.
One of the reasons I haven’t seen the Woody Allen movie is that whatever romance I had towards Paris in the ’20s is really long gone. I read all the Hemingway and Fitzgerald books, and we’ve been through that. There’s nothing interesting left.
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Topics:
Books
, Writers, 70s