MARC ARONSON ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney, and today is May 23rd, 2016. I'm here in Nyack, New York, with Marc Aronson. We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

MARC ARONSON:Absolutely.

CW:Great. Well, today, we're mostly going to be talking about your father. Could you just introduce his name and where and when he was born?

MA:Sure. Boris Aronson. His middle name was Solomonovich, because his father was Solomon. He was born in Kiev, which was then tsarist Russia -- so now Ukraine, but then, Russia.

CW:And what do you know about his grandparents' generation, if anything?

MA:I know nothing. In fact, I've often wondered -- I know absolutely nothing about his mother. His father was an important rabbi in Kiev, and supposedly, thirteen generations before that were rabbis there. And supposedly, in the thirteenth century or so, they came from Lithuania, Galicia, something like that -- at that point, this is just things I've been told. I do think it was a rabbinical family. But I know very, very little about his mother. His father was a devout Orthodox rabbi, but was very interested in the modern world. He made 2:00sure his children learned Russian. He had five sons and five daughters, and sent, I believe, one of the daughters to a school in Switzerland to be educated. He really wanted his children to be entering the modern world -- of course, in a Jewish context. And he was a very active Zionist there. And one of the things he was involved with prominently was the Beilis case. He had an important role in it, and actually had advised Beilis -- Menahem Beilis -- to go to Palestine -- to leave after the case. And so, if you think of the Beilis case, while we all think of it in terms of the blood libel, it was also a court case. It was kind of working -- challenging the system, sort of making a case for modernity in law 3:00as a way to deal with prejudice and oppression. And so, again, he learned Russian. He communicated, I believe, with the authorities, educated his children. And my father growing up was very interested in art from early on. And there's a famous story of him doodling in Hebrew school and drawing, when he should have been studying, a drawing of a fly. And when the teacher took it away angrily, he thought it was real, and started to swat the fly. But whether it was my grandfather, or I think there was an aunt within the family who felt that he had talent in art, and that that was something to be encouraged. So, I think it 4:00is this family that was observant and traditional, but also, in some ways, moving into a modern world and accommodating and having an interest in doing that. There were two famous collectors in Moscow who collected impressionist art, and my father, at one point -- when Jews were forbidden to be in Moscow -- had actually snuck into the city to show his art to the -- and famously slept in a stable or something like that. And they actually were -- he did gain an audience with these -- I forget their names, but they're well-known -- collectors. And they said, Are you Jewish? And he said, "Yes." And they said, It 5:00must be very risky for you to be here. And he said, "Yes." And they said, Well, it's not worth your trouble. You're not good enough to -- but he persisted. He wasn't discouraged by that. And linked to this, actually -- and this is something I knew nothing about during the entire time that my father was alive or that my mother was alive -- he, as a teenager, got involved in this group called the Culture League. And the Culture League was this set of artists who wanted to create a Jewish national identity at the meeting place of folk art and children's art -- which, of course, overlapped with abstraction and Cubism. And just as Picasso and Braque were turning to African, sort of two-dimensional 6:00geometric sculpture, these Jewish artists were seeking a similar kind of connection to Jewish tradition. They famously went on this expedition to old synagogues to do grave rubbings and look at old, sort of pre-perspective kind of arts. But the other side of the Culture League -- it was this abstraction, and it was Yiddish. So, the idea is that the language of this Jewish identity was going to be Yiddish and modern -- and modernity in art. And if you think of that combination, the name that comes to mind is Chagall, and Chagall was linked to this. So, it was of this moment -- of sort of trying to find this vitality. My father then focused more on the theater, which was quite lively in Kiev. In 7:00theater, in cabarets, there was a lot of experimental work going on. And then he went to Moscow.

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CW:Just going back a little -- do you have a sense of the home that he grew up in?

MA:Yeah, I mean, a little bit. He was very aware of being one of ten kids. And his father, being a prominent rabbi -- or that is to say, chief rabbi -- he had kind of a court around him of students and things like that. And I think my father always -- the story he would always tell was of seeing his mother red-faced and exhausted with all of the laundry and cooking and cleaning and everything she had to do, and I think my father felt angry at that world and, I think, at his mother's being so worn down and busy and his father sort of 8:00surrounded. I know he always felt extremely alienated from the endless praising of God and that whole universe. He was sort of a middle child in the ten, and I think he had a strong sense of feeling neglected or not seen. And so, I think his memory of that world was primarily of that sting or alienation of that -- of being somewhat lost in the shuffle. There were also stories -- I knew some of his brothers and sisters, and they would tell -- he was something of a prankster. They would tell stories of the Purim-shpils that he would organize. And obviously, that was his early theatrical bent, but there was also a very mischievous side. I think he famously, at one point, had one of his brothers 9:00stand on top of a ladder and have to screw something in or touch something, but basically left him there, so that the point of this was to kind of leave somebody in an impossible position. So, I think there was a degree of aggression and competition with his kind of mischievous artistic side within the family. So, my grandfather was -- so they were there during the revolution, and my father told some stories about that. I mean, he was very -- did not take to the Bolsheviks. He felt they were brutal. He also -- the signage of all the Marxist ideology he found very -- he always used to say that they swallowed the truth, 10:00like there was this kind of way you had to speak this party line that he completely disliked and was in opposition to his artistic temperament. In Moscow, he had worked with Alexandra Exter in this very experimental constructivist theater, and I think he was very drawn to that playful, experimental, angular modernism, and not to the ideological whatever-it-is -- certainties of the Soviets. And so, almost all of the family left via Berlin in the '20s. And my grandfather, as I've heard, was given the choice of being an important rabbi in Dublin or in Tel Aviv, and he chose Tel Aviv. And so most of 11:00his children, who were adults, went with him to Tel Aviv -- to Palestine -- it was in the '20s. His eldest son, not unusually named Avram -- however, had married a gentile. And it's a very interesting story. And I think there was a sort of tension in the family, because my grandfather would not really accept them, even though she came to Israel and converted, really until the end of his life. And whereas Avram, who I did know, and was beloved -- and so there was this sort of tension -- it was a family that was modern and that my grandfather 12:00wanted to be modern, but in this sort of "Fiddler on the Roof" way, there's a price that comes with modernity, and that was certainly true in the case of Avram.

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CW:In his early years, was your father in Kiev or outside Kiev? There's also the Nezhin -- do you know about that?

MA:I do not know. He was in Kiev and then in Moscow. I do not know many details of where he was. I think we can trace -- I know it mainly in terms of the theatrical world he was in. And that's one thing I should say -- the descriptions that I had from my father or anything that I've seen -- is, he really lived in urban Russia and really was not, except as research, involved 13:00with classically shtetl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community] Russia. His life was an urban life. His father was a rabbi in the city. His attraction was to Moscow, to Paris, to Berlin, to really center-- to New York -- to centers of artistic experiment. So, that's as much as I know of where he was. He possibly might have been -- but this is very half-remembered -- in Petersburg at some point, or at least I know there was a very culturally rich activity there, so I think he would have been drawn to it, but I don't recall something specific about that. I think at one point I was researching -- there was this cabaret world that the Culture League overlapped with, and it was in Kiev and Moscow and, I think, Petersburg, and so I thought my father might have been 14:00involved in some of that. But it's not exaggerating to say his religion was theater, and so he was where theater was alive and where it was vital. And that was what drew his attention.

CW:What was his education?

MA:As far as I know, he, again, went through regular cheder [traditional Jewish school] and learned -- Jewish education -- but he must have -- he did go to an arts school. I don't remember which. It's in the book my mother wrote with Frank Rich. And then, I know he apprenticed to Alexandra Exter. And so, there was a kind of formal arts school education, and then there was a kind of an apprenticeship education of working with these masters in Russia.

CW:As a teenager?

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MA:He left Russia, I think, around '22, when he would have been twenty-four. And so, I think -- and given that the revolution is '17, when he was nineteen, it must have been in that -- late teens, early twenties. And I know in the Culture League, where he was something like the secretary -- he had some official role in it -- he couldn't have been more than his very early twenties. Now, he also liked to write, and I know that he -- the manifesto for the Culture League was written by him and Ryback, I think, together. So, I think there was -- he had this artistic side, but I think manifesto and expression was also an interest of his.

CW:Did he talk about Exter?

MA:He did -- a little. Just about working with her. But I don't recall any 16:00specifics. We have several paintings that are either by her or by him as her student. We're actually trying to figure this out, and actually would be very interested in any Exter experts who can help us. Because we know that he worked on several productions with her. "Romeo and Juliet" is one; "Salome," I believe, is another. And he did have these sketches -- costume sketches -- that, as far as I knew, were by Exter, but there's some question as whether they are or whether they were his sort of apprentice-in-the-style-of-the-master kind of thing. I think mostly that he was inspired by her, but he didn't -- there weren't stories; there was just the fact of working with her.

CW:So --

MA:Oh, wait. I should say, the only other story he would tell about this is that in Moscow, what was already very traditional was Stanislavski, and that he found this very dated. And so, what became so revolutionary in America in method acting, I think, to my father, had seemed sort of antiquarian back in Russia. So, there was a little bit of out-of-phase-ness in that.

CW:So, in his early years, he was involved in Jewish theater and non-Jewish theater? Or --

MA:As far as I know, he was involved -- well, this is the complexity of my father. As far as I can say, he was only involved in non-Jewish theater, though 18:00he had, again, been involved in the Culture League. And I think there was what you might call a Jewish inflection to what he was doing and to his interests, but I don't know of any Jewish theater that he -- directly Jewish theater. Now, the only things I can think of is, he did write this book on Chagall, so he was obviously -- in the '20s -- and he obviously closely followed Chagall, and so must have known what Chagall was doing in Vitebsk and things like that. So, I'm sure he was alert to this. And he was involved with the Culture League. But in terms of any productions, my impression was more that he was involved in this modernist, constructivist, experimental world than -- but I should add, I don't 19:00really know what -- other than knowing broadly about what Chagall was doing -- what a Jewish modernist theater would have been in Russia at that time. The area that people are looking at a little bit with interest now is the next step where my father went, which was Berlin, where there was this cabaret world. And very, very recently people have been talking about the lineage from Goldfadn into cabaret into Dada, and with this sort of crossing point in Berlin. And I am assuming that would have been the world that my father would have been part of. I know that to support himself in Berlin, part of what he was doing is making these silk designs -- and we actually have one of them, which are quite 20:00wonderful. But I don't know --

CW:What were --

MA:I'm sorry?

CW:What were the silk designs?

MA:It was like shawls -- but that he would actually design, and I guess there was somebody who would make them for you. I don't know -- I don't think of my father as weaving. But we actually have one of those. I can try to find it. I forget where we've put it. But so, he was like a hustling artist, trying to find a way to make a living in Berlin in the very early '20s, and so he certainly would have been -- had a toe in, a participation in, that cabaret world, which drew from Yiddish theater, but, you know, it's this Venn diagram where it's also overlapping with and helping to invent Dada and sort of a broad theater. I think that's probably a good way to think of my father. Up until the late '20s, he's 21:00in this Venn diagram overlap where the part of the Jewish or Yiddish theater he's interested in sees itself as part of a modernist world and as sort of another voice in modernism, rather than being a Jewish world as opposed to -- it's sort of the Jewish inflection of a modernist, constructivist voice -- and very abstract, and abstraction -- back to the Culture League -- as being a Jewish voice. And if you think about it -- I mean, it's hardly new for me to say, but in this period, in the early twentieth century, the question of nationalism for Jews is really perplexing. What is your national identity? Is it Zionist? Is it Russian? Is it German? Is it American? Is it Jewish? But is it 22:00modernism? And these various levels of abstraction in which you find an identity. And I think that was very, very true for my father. His language -- his physical, spoken language -- in this period is Yiddish. And then, so he was in Berlin, and then he went to Paris. And he wrote two books. He wrote an early biography of Chagall -- or not biography, but sort of analysis, presentation -- and a book on Jewish graphic art, which I think was really a presentation of the Culture League.

CW:Did he -- one of the things I wanted to ask about was his relationship with Chagall.

MA:Well, in his book, he's very admiring of Chagall, but also critical. And I think he felt that Chagall could be too cute, could be too taken with himself, 23:00and was in danger of repeating himself. And I think there are two sides to this. I think my father was right, but I also think that, you know, there's envy. I mean, I think that Chagall was -- you know, the expression of everything I've just said was Chagall. And wonderfully, and beautifully. And so, I think in my father, there was both an astute understanding and appreciation -- I mean, after all, he knew to write the book; he knew who the guy was -- but also, a little bit of a critical analysis. And I would say about my father that he -- and how much this has to do with being the middle child in a complex family and how much maybe it was similar to his own father -- he very much wanted to have his own 24:00take, his own view of things. He always used to say he admired Socrates 'cause he liked doubt, and I think that he -- having his own angle of vision mattered to him. Which, in a way, is the opposite of doubt -- he wanted his decree, but -- so I think with Chagall, there was absolute admiration and understanding of his importance, but I think there was also a degree of criticism. Which, again, I think is astute, but I think it's not impossible to see in that competition, as well.

CW:Did they have a friendship?

MA:I don't know. I know there was some element of correspondence. I know they didn't stay in touch. And certainly, at no point when I was growing up was there 25:00ever -- you know, if my parents were in Paris or whatever -- any discussion of contact. I don't know if there was some kind of falling out or something because of what my father said, or if they just were not in the same orbit. So, I think there was some degree of contact, but I don't think -- they didn't stay in touch. And whether -- was that on either end or both or they just were sort of travelling differently, I wouldn't be able to say.

CW:Did your father talk about any -- other than -- well, we talked about the first one, possibly, but -- mentors that were important to him in his early life?

MA:Again, I would say Alexandra Exter. He would mention Tairov. But I think, at 26:00least in how he spoke about it, it was almost more the ambience and the world he was in more than one particular person -- and this sort of revolutionary moment in all senses of the word. And abstraction -- I think artistic abstraction really meant a lot to him.

CW:How did his father, the rabbi, react to the work?

MA:I don't know. As I say, we found these letters. I'm eager to find -- I mean, here's the two things I can say. His father went to Tel Aviv, and with most of his kids, and my father didn't. And in one way, I think it was because he wanted to be in the theater, and the center of the theater was not a provincial British 27:00mandate; it was New York or London or something like that. And he wanted to be where the world was modern, and that, again, to him, was New York. New York was his fantasy of skyscrapers and zippers and typewriters, and he wanted to be there. I think there was some element -- or it is not hard to imagine that there was some element of -- if he had always felt like the unnoticed child -- like, he was not going to go to be that in that world. He was going to be in his own place and his own -- and I think he did talk about that. On the other hand, there are photos of him going to visit the family in the '30s, and he looks very happy with his family. And he was in touch with them. So, I don't think it was a rift quite as with Avram, where literally, my grandfather didn't want to see him 28:00until he was on his deathbed. But I do think there was some sense of my father taking a different path and moving away. Now, again, it'll be interesting to see what these letters say. And one of my uncles in Israel -- I have two uncle Shlomo Aronsons -- unsurprisingly, since that was Solomon. One is a historian and one is a landscape architect. And Shlomo the historian did write a book about his grandfather -- about Shlomo the rabbi -- but it's in Hebrew and I haven't read it. And it's supposed to have lots of anecdotes. And it is interesting -- there is not much information about my grandfather, even though, as it says on his letterhead, he was chief rabbi in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. And it 29:00supposedly -- again, this is second- or third- or fifth-hand -- it was because he was quite the Zionist. And the religious world he was part of was less pro-Zionist at that moment. He was more political, in a sense, about building the state of Israel. So, I don't think there was a rift in a hard sense, but it was clear that my father chose to be somewhere else. But again, when you see the photos of him on the rooftop with his brothers and sisters in the '30s, he's very happy being with the family. And when I really think about it, two or three or his sisters -- two of whom were married, one who wasn't -- were around in New York for various reasons. And one was married and lived in New York; one came 30:00with her husband to New York because their grandchild needed medical treatment. But the point was that, much as he sort of defined himself outside of the family, I grew up knowing three of my aunts who were relatively nearby. And so, I think, for all of the sense of my father wanting to go it alone and be different, I think they stayed -- there was linkage, despite that. About his father directly -- his father died fifteen years or more before I was born, and so I really never heard much directly about their relationship. I think he had a kind of admiration for his father, who was said to be funny and wise -- to have a good feel for what a rabbi should be in a kind of human sense -- and I think 31:00my father liked that. But I think he probably felt somewhat distant. I will say that of the ten kids, not one of them were religious. But I don't think that, other than in the case of Avram, that led to a split.

CW:And he wasn't in Berlin very long -- just a couple years, right?

MA:Right.

CW:And so, in '24, he comes to New York -- is that right?

MA:Yeah. Again, he writes this book. The story is always that he made enough money from the Chagall book to come to New York. And he always said he arrived here with no money and no English. And so, he immediately went towards the Yiddish theater here, which was -- and at that time, he did a lot of things. He did book illustrations. He actually did a menu in Yiddish for a Chinese 32:00restaurant on Second Avenue, which must have served Jews who wanted Chinese food. So, he hustled. And he worked -- as I mentioned, did covers for "The Hammer." And then, he worked in the Bronx at the Unser Theatre, which was, again experimental. So, it was this way to continue in this modernist vein, which was very much what they were doing at the Unser Theater. And then he did murals for the theater itself.

CW:What, if any, political feeling did he have?

MA:Yeah, that's interesting. As I said, my father was, I think -- you know, his 33:00political hero was FDR, and so I would say he was pretty much an FDR liberal Democrat. He sometimes defined himself as an aristocratic socialist, in the sense that he believed in taste, he believed in aesthetics, he believed in -- the story he told was of seeing the Bolsheviks arrest an aristocrat of some sort who was being marched surely to his death or prison, and he always said that as that man was walking, you saw so much more grace and bearing and culture in him than in the men who were marching him. And so, I think he was very drawn to aesthetic values, but he said he believed that power should be nationalized or in the hands of the government. So, I think he had broadly big government views 34:00-- again, he loved FDR -- but did not otherwise express strong political views. But that's why the slightly odd case of him doing, I think, two or three covers for "The Hammer," which would one would assume was a Marxist publication -- as to whether that expressed a view he had at that time or if it was just a job. He did also do sets for this Artef production of "Jim Kooperkop," which, again, was pretty left. The story picks up for me in the '30s, where he was part of the Group Theatre, but he always talked about that in terms of him disagreeing with Odets, who was a close friend, and others who were saying, You have to write 35:00about the workers. And my father felt that this was false -- he felt it was just something that they were mouthing or that they -- you know, that that's not what art was -- to just have this agenda that you're crammed into. And so he was sort of known for not agreeing with the Group Theatre politically. I have started the process of doing a Freedom of Information, because he -- my parents were never -- never talked about being blacklisted or anything. They weren't. They certainly had friends who were. But it's kind of interesting to me -- here, you have a guy coming from Russia -- Jewish guy who had been there during the revolution, who was part of the Group Theatre -- that he wouldn't have encountered that. Now, was that because he was so known in the Group Theatre as someone who was not in agreement with the far-left positions? But I am kind of 36:00curious. Did somebody kind of investigate him for a while and see that he wasn't worth it, or what? It is conceivable that he had more left views when he arrived in the early '20s, and that by the time I was growing up in the '50s and '60s, it was important to him to draw a line against that and wipe that out? That's possible. It's possible that he had never really held those views. And the answer to that is, I don't know. In general, his family were all basic liberals in an Israeli liberal context, so I think that was sort of their shared points of view.

CW:I want to switch gears here --

MA:Sure.

CW:-- and ask, what did your father look like?

MA:Let's see. That's interesting. He was my height, maybe a little shorter. He had curly hair, and as he got older, sort of faded to that sort of horseshoe. Later in life, he grew a beard. For many years, he didn't. I think of him as a bit round or stocky, although he wasn't overweight or something. But I think he was certainly of a generation of men who didn't exercise or anything. I mean, he would like to walk or play croquet, but it wasn't like you go to the gym. And he had biggish lips. And I think he looked -- you could certain say he looked foreign. I mean, he didn't look sort of WASP American. He had glasses. He used 38:00to smoke a pipe. He gave that up, again, sort of later in life. But I think of him as sort of rounded. And I guess the strongest image I have is of his curly hair and black glasses -- would be what I think. The other thing I would say about my father -- my father had strong hands. And actually, over there -- if I can pull it -- oh, it's not here now. The artist Ruth Asawa, who was very close to my aunt -- my mother's sister -- did a cast of my mother and father's hands. And my father had a very strong thumb. And I remember -- I mean, he really did have a kind of knowledge in his hands. We have here a whole bunch of canes he 39:00carved. And I remember once him drawing a completely straight black line, and I just couldn't understand -- how can you do that? Like, how can you be that firm or that -- almost mechanical? But, you know, I mean, he was trained. But his art really has a tactility -- his sculpture, his paintings, his collages, and his theater work -- and I think he really had strength in his hands. And I did watch his hands a lot. I think he would hold his hands as he was talking, and his hands sometimes had little cuts from -- like, as he was working with something, he might have got a little cut from -- a papercutter or something or a mat cutter. But I think a lot of his -- almost contact with the world -- was these sort of strong hands, and sense of touch and tactility.

CW:What did he look like when he was younger -- like, in photographs? How would you describe him?

MA:Somewhat similar. There's a photo of him in Russia, I think, wearing boots -- like, leather boots. You know, you could say, like a young artist. He didn't look Jewish in the sense that his hair was cut, he didn't have a beard. He looked modern. I mean, we have photos of him -- I guess I could -- but I think dark, curly hair was a lot of what you would see in him. And I think he had a face that showed a certain intensity. Not so much melancholy, but it showed a certain interior fire, a certain intensity. He was a person who could be angry. 41:00And his features sort of reflected someone who could have strong thoughts or feelings. I would say strong features might be a good description. I'm afraid I can't remember his eye color. I'm assuming it must have been brown or black, but I can't describe his eyes particularly. Again, he had big, thickish lips. And so, the way in which people from Russia or Europe can -- it's a different set of features. It's almost more big-featured rather than fine-featured, and I would say that's what he was like.

CW:And how did he dress?

MA:That's interesting. I think at home, he would wear blue jeans and a blue work 42:00shirt -- like, very casual. But my mother said of him that he liked to be well dressed. He liked Paul Stuart, sort of English clothes. One of the things I remember most about him is, in winter he had a herringbone coat -- a gray herringbone coat -- and he would always have tissues in there, so if I had to sneeze or something, he always had some wad of tissues in his coat. And he would wear a hat -- again, I think just for the elements of style, not a -- he didn't wear a yarmulke. So, if you think of a man of the '40s or '50s wearing a hat and a gray herringbone overcoat. But when he would go to the theater -- you know, 43:00for opening nights, or if they went to parties -- I remember his black socks, and I guess men had -- it's not like a garter, but something that they used to hold their socks up -- that he would have that. So, I think he did like to dress nicely at events. You know, a social or theatrical event -- again, in this somewhat English style. And my mother also liked to dress nicely. But I think at home, he was -- in a more casual ambience, it was definitely much more of a kind of work shirt -- blue work shirt would be very familiar.

CW:Can you describe the home you grew up in?

MA:Sure. So, for the first four years of my life, we lived on Columbus Circle in 44:00what was torn down to become the Coliseum, which was torn down to become the Time Warner building. So, it was a walk-up. I don't remember how many floors -- three or four. And I have a few memories of being in that apartment, and we have some photos of it. So, it was a walk-up on Columbus Circle, but sort of facing -- towards the park. And then when I was four, I remember, we were told that the building was gonna be torn down, and we had to move, and my parents were very upset, and people were protesting. And I remember we got in a car and we were driving, and I didn't know where we were going and what we were doing, and where are we gonna live? And I thought it's as if we were looking for a place to live, but of course, they had rented an apartment. And they had rented an apartment on Eighty-Ninth and Central Park. And there were two apartments per floor, and the rear apartment was a well-known Czech filmmaker named Sasha Hammid and his wife, 45:00Hella. And my mother knew Hella, and so through Hella, they had learned of this apartment on the other side of the floor. And so that's where I grew up, on Eighty-Ninth and Central Park. It was the seventh floor, which was the top floor of the building, and the elevator came here, and there was a hallway, and then you entered the door. And if you opened the door, just to your right, there was a little room, which had a telephone in it. It was a little bit of a store room -- a window facing the building across the street, and then -- so there were pocket doors to there, and then pocket doors to here. And here was what became my parents' studio. So, that's where they worked. And they worked at home. And the windows faced the building across the street, and then faced Central Park. And then, there were pocket doors again to what was the living room. And that 46:00was where they would entertain guests and where some of the art that's here was. In fact, there was a couch here -- up till last week (laughs) -- that we had had there. So, that was the front of the house, and then there was this -- like in a railroad apartment, there's this -- you would walk back, and you would walk back, and then off of here was the kitchen. And then, you walk further here, it was my mother's room, my room, my father's room -- which was also kind of a studio -- and the bathroom. So, it was this sort of classic Upper West Side apartment, which they rented. And they stayed there until the early mid-'70s, by which point my father was getting more frail. Even though they were doing very 47:00well at this point in terms of their set designs. And I was off. And they felt that the neighborhood was becoming kind of unsafe. There were some break-ins -- they were even suspicious that the landlord was letting the break-ins happen 'cause he wanted to get rid of the rent control -- people who were there. And in fact, the place did go co-op. My father had wanted to build a studio on the roof, 'cause he always kind of wanted to end his life with -- or have this wonderful studio. He had always wanted to buy a barn in Connecticut and turn it into a studio. He was very good friends with -- although they had a clash, but they got back together -- with Kazan and Miller, and so we would rent places near them. And then, he wanted to buy a barn and sort of have this. But they 48:00instead, finally -- the next house over from here was a college friend of my mother's named John Stix, who was a director and involved in the theater, and they came out and visited John once and sort of fell in love with out here, bought the next plot, and built this house. To my regret that we didn't keep the Upper West Side apartment, but we didn't, and so they built this. So, that's where I grew up. And that neighborhood -- the Upper West Side in the '50s and '60s -- was kind of a mix. I went to school right next to -- we were on Eighty-Ninth; on Eighty-Eighth was Walden, which was a private, very, very left, progressive school. Andrew Goodman, who was one of the three civil rights 49:00workers killed in Mississippi, had gone to Walden. And I went there for nursery school, but then I wound up going to New Lincoln -- New Lincoln was originally on Eighty-First or Second and between Fifth and Madison -- for elementary school. And then the third through twelfth grade was on 110th Street. And so, the Upper West Side at that time was both Central Park West, where there were some very fancy buildings, but also a sense of, you know, a poorer neighborhood -- a more Hispanic neighborhood on Columbus and Amsterdam, and then a very Jewish neighborhood on Broadway. So, it was sort of a transitional mix. And that's the world I grew up in. And, of course, Central Park, which was there and was, you know, the playpen of childhood.

CW:What languages did you hear growing up?

MA:That's a good question. My mother spoke German natively; that was her native language. She was born in Prague, but she spoke German and did not speak Yiddish. My father -- but my parents would speak, him in Yiddish and her in German, when they were saying something about me or something I wasn't supposed to understand, so I definitely heard that conversation. And occasionally, my father would speak in Russian when he had guests or somebody came who -- and then twice growing up, we had Passover seders -- once at the home of Jack Garfein, who was then married to Carroll Baker, and once at our house. And then, 51:00I heard -- my father was fluent in Hebrew, and the way they did Passover -- which is not how we do it, but I guess it's not so unusual -- is, the men would sort of compete for who could speak it faster. And so, he could read fast Hebrew. But it just never came up, 'cause that really wasn't the world -- and the Hebrew school I went to, which was Stephen Wise, was very, very Reform, and so it was in English, other than -- and actually -- which I think is better than my kids -- we studied modern Hebrew. But anyway, so the languages I heard were basically English, primarily, dominantly. Sometimes, German-Yiddish combination, whatever that is. And occasionally, Russian, and even more occasionally, Hebrew. 52:00My mother also had studied French. And again, I think more in pronouncing individual words or names, she was attentive to doing that correctly, but there was never an occasion where I heard them speaking French.

CW:Can you describe a little more about the studio space?

MA:Sure.

CW:What would go on in there?

MA:Yeah. So, the way it would work is -- there are many stages to designing a Broadway show. First, a script would come in, and so my parents would read it and think about whether they wanted to do it. Or they would hear tell of a production, I guess, and try to nominate themselves. Famously, my father pitched himself to do "Fiddler," which, originally, Hal didn't want him to do. So, that 53:00was one phase. But then let's say they had the job. One thing I would say about artists -- and this is the world I grew up in, so it makes me sometimes not really understand the world -- it really has nothing to do with a normal schedule. So, my father would have an idea, and he would work on it: he would work on a sketch, he would work on a collage, he would work on trying to get some sense of what this set design should look like. And that might happen at 2:00 in the afternoon; it might happen at midnight. He would just work on this. He, at one point, wanted to -- the book that became the book about him -- he was trying to write a book, and he wanted -- one of the titles he had was, "The Designer's Kitchen." And so, there was, in a sense that he was cooking up something -- he was playing with ingredients. And so, once he came up with a 54:00look -- a design -- that he was happy with, there would be many occasions of having directors and producers, maybe actors, coming over, and he would show. And then, if that was approved, or some element was approved, they would start to build models. And my mother, as my father always used to say, was a very, very good model builder. And you build models at different scale -- you know, a half-inch to a foot or whatever it is. Because this design that my father had invented now has to work in three-dimensional space and not just in plausible three-dimensional space. This show is gonna appear in certain specific houses. It's gonna go on the road to Boston or Detroit or Philadelphia or whatever. It's 55:00gonna be in those houses, and then it's gonna land up in New York at a particular house. And so, they had to have the blueprints for that theater, which might be larger or smaller or have more or less space in the wings. So now, you're building this -- and so then they would also, very often when they were working on a show, have assistants. And the assistant would be there to help build the models. So, a typical day -- let's say I was off at school, I would come back -- there would be assistants: Ming Cho Lee, who later became a famous designer in his own right and taught at Yale for many years, was an assistant for a while, and then Jay Cook, and then Bob Mitchell. And they would help build the sets. But again, this sense of how it's different. It's almost more -- back to Alexandra Exter -- it's like apprenticeship, because they would eat together. You know, my mother would make some kind of lunch, and they would eat together and work. It really wasn't a clock-driven operation. And so then, 56:00of course, when you have a model, this is more where the director can envision the acting spaces. And so, obviously, there might be changes or iterations as the director sees this as problematic or wants more of that or whatever it is. And then, the lighting designer, the costume designer, surely were involved. I don't have memories of those conversations, but I know they must have been there. The next phase, after it had jumped through all of these hoops or been through all of this processing, is, you start to build the set. And there were basically, at the time, two scenic studios in New York. One was the Feller Scenic Studio, which was right near Yankee Stadium. I actually worked there for a while, just doing sweeping, so I know it. And I forget -- Nolan was the other 57:00one, which I don't remember where that was, maybe Brooklyn or Queens. But the point is, since I know Feller better, now the sketches, the drawings, the drops, the models would have to be realized. And my father famously was very involved. And supposedly, the guys who painted the actual sets both loved and hated him, or hated and loved him. Because on the one hand, he was extremely meticulous and engaged and would really be there as they were putting the color on the canvas, et cetera. Which was annoying and infuriating, but on the other hand, was really valuing what they were doing as a form of art. So, he would be there a lot. And when I was young, I remember, he would always come back -- because it was a scenic studio, he would bring back -- they would make wood blocks. They would 58:00cut out different shapes of wood that I could then build with and have -- make constructions in my room. So, those were the phases. And then, of course, the very next phase is, now there were rehearsals with the sets actually on the stage. And even then, and even once the show opened, there could be changes. So, there was this arc. Now the other thing I should mention about this -- my parents did one show a year, basically. Which also meant they were busiest during the summer, because you're leading towards the fall openings. And they were always conscious -- and I think with both envy and criticism -- of -- there were two other designers that were very famous in New York, Oliver Smith and Jo Mielziner, both of whom were excellent designers but who would do many shows and 59:00have a whole team of people working with them. And so, I think my parents defined themselves as taking more artistic risks, being less formulaic -- but it also meant that if this thing that you had spent a year working on failed, you basically had no income. And also, from the point of view of interesting the next producer or director, your calling card was diminished, as opposed to someone who they could count on to deliver something that would be liked and successful and et cetera. And so, I think my father always saw himself in some juxtaposition with the other artists.

CW:Who were the people who would come visit?

MA:I mean, I distinctly remember -- by category, it would be directors and producers and actors. Back to when I said theater was my father's religion -- in many respects, for both of my parents, it was also family. And I've thought about this recently a lot. I just read in a -- we have a men's nonfiction reading group, and we read a book on group dynamics. And I was thinking about how theater is really interesting, because you have to come together very intensely to form a production. And then, once the production's over, you splinter away. You're not together anymore. And yet, you're not completely not together, because you're part of the same world. You see -- you follow each other's careers, you go to the same parties. And so, you sort of weave in and out, even though the intense connection comes together around one show. So, that 61:00was their social world as well as their work world. And of course, there's always an overlap. If you're inviting directors and producers and actors and critics over, there's sort of the hope that they will like you or appreciate you or keep you in mind, et cetera. So, I certainly remember Harold Clurman being there -- quite -- they were close to him. I remember S.J. Perelman being there. I have a clear memory of what I'm about to say, but I also have told this story often, so (laughs) -- so I remember Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe coming over. I mean, so this was their world. I remember visiting the Kazans at Elia Kazan's home. And then, my father was very good friends with Al Hirschfeld, and we would go to visit them -- Al and Dolly and the famous Nina, who was just a 62:00little bit older than me, so I would always get presents from her. And then, a very, very good friend of theirs -- and his son and I are now thinking of doing something -- maybe trying to do a book about this -- was Don Freeman. And Don Freeman is best known now as a children's book author and the "Corduroy" books, et cetera, but Don had originally been -- he was a student of John Sloan's, and he did what Al did -- he did opening night sketches for the "Herald Tribune" and other newspapers. And so, Al, Don, my father, and to some extent -- although this we wove in and out -- Zero -- were friends. And so, even though my father only worked with Zero on "Fiddler," back to the '40s, they would sort of sketch 63:00each other and they knew each other. My father had had this sort of bohemian life before he met my mother. He had been married once before, but also this kind of guys' Russian tea room bohemian life, and I think Al and Don and Zero were sort of part of that. And so, that was sort of the world -- and then producers -- I know Kermit Bloomgarden -- this was sort of the world that they were in. And then, it's interesting -- actresses -- and the various actresses and wives, et cetera. And so, I think about this -- I really never had any concept of the idea of women not working. It was sort of a world in which women were involved in the arts, as men were. That's sort of just what people did. I mean, not all of my schoolmates' friends, necessarily, but -- I think if we 64:00analyzed it, it was a pretty unequal world. It was a pretty male world. The conversation was probably dominated by the men. But I think it was a world in which it was assumed that -- or a significant part of it were women who were actresses or involved in the theater in some way. So, that's sort of -- now, occasionally -- so, my father's sister Luba, who I think was the sister he was closest to, was married to a doctor who had been a family friend back to Russia. And they lived on Seventy-Second Street, so we would see them, but she died when I think I was six, in '56. And then, his sister Riva, who was unmarried, would visit periodically from Israel. And then, his sister Chyena lived on 116th 65:00Street. Now this is kind of relevant, because Chyena was married to Nakhmen Mayzel, who was this Yiddish author. And there was a very clear sense in my father's mind of, this is a world he was not part of. He saw Nakhmen as really trapped in a very insular, limited world. And my father really was reaching towards the English-speaking world, the public world. So, while Chyena was the relative I saw most often -- it's interesting, she was this very warm -- you know, I think of her shuffling around in her housecoat and making blintzes for me, and et cetera, but there are pictures -- she was this revolutionary gal back 66:00in Russia, and had been pretty fierce. But this is sort of where her life took her -- to be making blintzes while her husband was writing these Yiddish publications in a very limited world. So, I think my father -- there was a little bit of a sense of discomfort, or as if they were in different paths of separation. But we did see them from time to time.

CW:So, was there a connection to the world of the Maurice Schwartz theater later, when you were growing up?

MA:No. So, my father would tell funny stories. The Yiddish theater I heard about was just hilarious -- it was the Mel Brooks Yiddish theater.

CW:For example?

MA:I'll tell you -- although I think probably they're in Frank's book. So, he 67:00would always tell the stories of Maurice Schwartz -- two famous stories. One of, you know, opening night, he fills the main star's dressing room with flowers of every sort and description, but then he makes sure -- clear -- that they have to go back, because he's rented them from a funeral home. (laughs) And then, the story of, you know, it's time to pay everybody on some production, and he looks very sad, and they're all coming to get their money, and he said, "I'm sorry, I'm very ill." And they say, Well, what's wrong? He said, "I have no-money-ia." (laughs) And then my father would always tell the stories of -- and this was sort of his alienation -- of seeing these aged, middle-aged chorines on stage 68:00pretending to be these young women yearning for a man or yearning for their homeland, and he always found it incredibly false. He wasn't angry -- he would tell it in a very humorous way, about how ludicrous it was seeing those nostalgic stories. And so, he was quite entertaining about it. He'd never really talked about the part of the Yiddish theater that he had been involved with, except I think he was proud that -- so when Maurice Schwartz built the Yiddish Art Theatre on Second Avenue and Twelfth Street -- so the initial show was "The Tenth Commandment," and my father did the sets. And again, there were funny stories about that -- not from my father, but that -- I think it was -- it's opening night and it's like 1:00 in the morning and they've reached the end of the first act (laughs) -- you know, there's so much stuff. But this show 69:00involved heaven and hell. And heaven was a seat at the Metropolitan Opera -- a box seat -- and hell was a head, and it was the human mind. And it was this very constructivist set of the outline of a head with -- well, you could see the mechanics and the machines, and that -- my father's idea that hell is the human mind was something he was -- he was always very proud of that set. And I will say that as a teenager -- so this must have been '67 -- he took me -- well, he took me to some place that -- I went to see "Marat/Sade," the Peter Brook production, but then The Living Theatre came to New York, and he took me to The Living Theatre. And they used a set that was very similar to my father's set. And it's not so much that he felt stolen, as that he felt that what was supposedly so radical in 1967, he had done in 1927 in that set. So, I think he 70:00had a sense of pride in that particular set. But most of what he talked about of Maurice Schwartz was in this vein of humor. He was very funny in talking about how ludicrous it was. And so, that's why you definitely had a sense that it was something he left. But he really did not talk -- other than saying that what he did in those sets linked to what he had done with Exter and in Russia -- he didn't talk about the sense in which he had an attachment to the side where he was experimental.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Could you just briefly say something about your mom's background?

MA:Sure. So, my mother was twenty-two years younger than my father. And she was 71:00born in Prague. And her father was a conductor who was really very close to Schoenberg and Webern and Berg. So, if my father was one side of abstraction and modernism, visually, my mother grew up in the world of musical abstraction. And in a way, similar, in the sense that just as my father grew up around the rabbinical home, where everything was going on at home and they worked at home, she would have -- you know, they would have rehearsals at home. And certainly, their world was the world of art. So, he conducted important premieres of this Second Vienna School work, but by the '30s, it was harder and harder for him to get work, because he was Jewish. He was completely nonobservant, although my 72:00mother did tell stories -- by the very end, when she was in Austria -- of her relatives at Passover having to cover the windows so that no one would know that they were having a service. She grew up going to Catholic school -- not as a matter of belief, just as the best local school. I think she was drawn to my father partially because of his Jewishness. So, she was in Vienna studying to be a set designer at this school there, and already doing as a teenager -- working with Max Reinhardt. And really, she was quite talented. But her parents -- so her sister was in Amsterdam, where she had married a gentile who was a photographer and designer, and in his own way very experimental. And her sister, 73:00my aunt Truda, was a weaver who trained at the Bauhaus. So, it was that strand. And so, my mother was in Vienna. Her parents were brought to -- my grandfather applied for a job at Black Mountain to be in the music department and was initially turned down. And he had been approached about a possibility of working in the Soviet Union, but he -- wonderfully -- chose not to, and did, eventually, on a second try, get an appointment to head the music department at Black Mountain. And so, my mother, who was this student in Vienna, had a possibility, ultimately, to get to America. But she wanted to finish -- she was absolutely determined to finish high school and get her degree. But as a result -- and she 74:00was -- one day went to the opera, and it was a day where there was a lot of tension in the air and you had to -- so there was -- the opera area was very tightly managed. You had to show that you had a ticket to even be let in. And she went to the opera, and when she came out after the first act, the streets were lined with Nazi flags and the Germans had arrived between one act and the other of the opera. And the actor -- one of -- some famous actor -- did a "Heil Hitler" in the theater. And she said (snaps) in an instant, her fellow students turned against her and she was in danger. But she did manage to graduate. She had then kind of a nervous breakdown. She was in a sanitarium. She came to Amsterdam in time for her sister's wedding, on April 1st. There was a story 75:00about that. And then, she -- in 1939 -- and if you think about this, this is the very last moment -- she got to America. And so, she studied at Black Mountain, where my grandfather was. My grandmother also taught voice and bookbinding. My aunt taught weaving. Well, so my aunt was in Amsterdam, and her husband was a gentile, but he was -- the Nazis gathered anyone who they thought might be a potential leader of Dutch society and held them hostage in a castle. It wasn't that they were necessarily doing anything to them, but it was basically a warning to the Dutch -- like, If you rebel, we have all your best and brightest, and we can kill 'em. At one point, the Nazis decided to start sending these 76:00people to the front to fight, and Paul escaped. And he became one of the organizers of the resistance. There were a group of resistance organizers, and he was one of them. And so, he's now on the run from the Nazis, and she's in a kind of hiding. She pretended to be Indonesian, even though she didn't look Indonesian and she spoke gorgeous German. But the Nazis, in their insanity, wouldn't kill you if they couldn't prove that they should, and since they couldn't get records from Indonesia, they couldn't prove that she wasn't. But she sort of was on the move. And they actually corresponded. They even met. But eventually, he was caught and betrayed -- betrayed and caught -- and executed. Not just -- tried and executed by the Nazis. And she went, and she just hid. And 77:00she survived. And she came to Black Mountain. And so, then my mother was interested in theater, and so she came to New York. And she worked as my father's assistant. And they started to be in a relationship. And my mother wanted to be made a, you know, respectable woman -- which my father, in his sort of bohemian way, did not particularly want to do. So, my mother went to Luba to convince her brother to do the right thing. (laughs) And he did. And so, they got married.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

MA:And they worked together. She was then involved, sort of in two ways, in all of his shows. She worked on building the sets, but also, she sort of -- as she had seen as a child and as she -- she was the ameliorator. Just as her father 78:00had sort of learned to work with the big personalities of the Schoenberg circle, she would kind of make everybody get along. Sort of allow my father to be, as he could be, quite sharp, intense, argumentative, very much his own personality. Kazan wrote a book -- and I forget -- I think it's called "The Arrangement," but I'm not sure -- in which there's a character sort of based on my father. And he's very difficult and angry and fascinating, but -- almost like a Philip Roth character -- not a good Joe, you know? But my mother, in a way, allowed him to be that, because she could -- she had this Viennese charm and grace and skill at diplomacy and sort of keeping everybody happy. And so, that's the other way in 79:00which she worked with my father.

CW:What were they like as parents?

MA:That's interesting. I would say -- I mean, I think my father was more tending to be -- he would get angry more easily. And he and I clashed more. We would argue. I went through a socialist phase, which he was very annoyed by. So, they sent me to Walden and then mainly New Lincoln, which was very liberal, civil rights -- wasn't left -- and I went one year to a very left summer camp -- and I think they didn't -- so my father and I would clash. My mother was more ameliorative there, but also sort of more worried about how everybody was 80:00relating. So, I think -- some of the best times, my father and I would take walks sometimes in the park, or he would take me to art galleries or museums. But I think -- both because he was from this sort of European background and he was fifty-two when I was born -- I don't think he had -- he didn't know a lot about how -- what you do with kids. (laughs) I didn't have any brothers or sisters. So, he would try to carve things for me or bring me these blocks from the studio, but he wasn't the sort of dad you would go play ball with or something. I mean, he didn't know much about that kind of thing. I think he was more sort of in his theater world, and wanting to give me access to it or give 81:00me entry to it. There's a famous story -- again, these are stories, but -- when I was in ninth grade, it was parents' day at school, and our teacher decided to give a talk about art. I think she knew something about the history of art. And my father sort of interrupted to say, Everything you said is wrong. (laughs) Which was not exactly what the average kid wants your parent to do on parent day. But that's sort of what he was like. And actually, I'm still in touch with some of -- and one of my friends who was there in that class still remembers that. His name is Danny Allentuck and his mother was the actress Maureen Stapleton. And so, there were a lot of theater -- Zero's kids went to the same school, so there was a lot of that theater world there. So, I would say I was somewhat on my own as a kid, although I think my mother was sort of watchful 82:00about how I was doing. And I think work, really, was very consuming for my parents. And then my aunt, my mother's sister, lived in California, and my grandmother also, so until they passed away -- I mean, I had that connection, although it was on the other side of the country. So, I'd say as parents, they -- in a way, the world they brought me into or the world we shared was sort of art and ideas and stories more than a lot of very personal things, I would say. And I'm trying to think if there's something else. My father and I did start to clash a lot as I entered teenage and it was the '60s. But I think it's also true 83:00that that was the phase, from "Fiddler" on, where he was really coming into his own. I mean, he had had a long career -- he was now in his mid-late sixties -- but from "Fiddler," he, working with Hal Prince, and then -- and sometimes Sondheim and Robbins. And there was sort of this group that were doing "Cabaret and Company" and "A Little Night Music" and "Pacific Overtures," and his career was really blossoming. And in a way, it was for the first time. And that's the point of Frank Rich's book -- able to bring that sort of modernist experiment that he had done in the '20s to Broadway. And so, he was really in this moment of fulfillment, both because he was successful and because the culture was more ready for more experimental theater in Broadway. So, I think it was a time where 84:00he was very caught up in that, at the same time as I was sort of trying to find my own way. And so, I think we kind of clashed a lot in that period. But -- yeah.

CW:As a kid, were you interested in the theater world?

MA:Yes and no. I mean, I would go to rehearsals. I would also -- they took me at times to the opera -- not their own, but -- so I had sort of a toe in it. There's another story I often tell, but it's true -- so when I was thirteen, I went to camp in California. It was a camp near my aunt. And my father sent me two scripts to read. One was a sort of Marxist, apocalyptic, end-of-the-world 85:00fantasy, and the other was Tevye and his five daughters. And he said, "What do you think?" And I said, "No one's gonna be interested in Tevye and his five daughters." (laughs) "You should do the other one," which, of course, was never produced. (laughs) And luckily, my father did not listen to his thirteen-year-old son. But -- so I would -- they did bring me into -- I mean, show me scripts. I remember I would be sent out on the morning of a show opening to go bring back the newspapers and show him the reviews. And I would meet some of the guests who came. So, they brought me into the world. I certainly recall on my own -- oh, when I was eight, we went -- my father worked at Stratford-on-Avon in England, and I remember reading children's Shakespeare, and 86:00then later reading O'Neill plays. So, I think I kind of wanted to know and kind of get a sense of what this was, but I wasn't drawn to literally be in the theater. The only time was, when we did the school play in sixth grade, we did something based on "The Once and Future King," by T.H. White -- the Arthur stories. And I decided to do the sets. And I did a set based on the unicorn tapestry, and I was proud of myself for that. But I think the interesting thing there is -- not every sixth grader would know the unicorn tapestry -- is that I think my real interest was in history. And I do say this often: I think children of immigrants get interested in history, because you have to connect the world you live in with a different world. You know that the world you're in now is not 87:00exactly the same as the world you come from, and so you become aware of the need for a bridge -- for a bridge of explanation -- which could be of any sort, but for me, that bridge has always been history. So, while I did do that set for the unicorn tapestry and felt kind of proud of it, I was not as drawn -- or I wasn't as involved in the visual arts. I was more involved with history and sports. Again, Central Park was my playground, so -- and I grew up just as the Mets were born, and great years for the Knicks, et cetera. So, I think I was allowed or given sort of an entry, without really feeling like this was my world. I wasn't 88:00like the kind of kid who felt like, Wow, the theater -- this is where I belong! And I obviously decided not to learn German or Yiddish -- to understand what my parents were saying or to -- you know, there are books around here in various languages. And so, I was sort of defining myself as American. My languages were Hebrew -- I did -- I was pretty good at that point, and Spanish. So, I was really kind of going away from the past, and not towards it.

CW:What was Jewish about your home?

MA:There are two opposite answers. The first answer is nothing. I mean, we did not do anything. My father was contemptuous of the idea of Jews going to 89:00synagogue on High Holy Days. To him, it seemed incredibly false and social and pretentious, and just sort of rich people buying a ticket to show off their furs and having nothing to do with faith. And as I said, he was extremely angered by the prayers of extolling God in his greatness. And I think some overlap, perhaps, then, of the great rabbi -- you know, the great God -- all of this which he felt alienated from. And again, my mother grew up in a completely non-Jewish home -- non-Jewish practice. As you may know, Schoenberg converted to Christianity and then converted back, and Mahler had converted to Christianity. And that world of sort of German high culture modernism was really not in any 90:00way practicing -- although, again, my mother did talk a little about her relatives. And several of her relatives were in Terezin. All of them survived. One died very shortly after, when she reached Israel. I'll get to that. But, having just said that, I would also say: absolutely. I mean, my father had a very thick sort of Yiddish accent -- Yiddish-Russian accent. His entire world was sort of a certain kind of Jewish culture. He would talk about authors -- Ilya Ehrenberg, Yud Lamed Peretz. He would talk about authors that had meant a lot to him. And so, I think in terms of culture and identity and values and a 91:00sense of who they were, absolutely. In terms of practice, not at all. I was bar mitzvahed, which I wanted to be. I think they wanted me to be, I think it just sort of an assumption. And a lot of my friends went to a Conservative synagogue, which I did initially and then didn't last in, and so then I went to this Reform one. I was bar mitzvahed -- and here's where my memory is confused -- I think it's the day after, but that would mean it was on a Sunday -- Kennedy was assassinated, John Kennedy. And so, it was -- you know, it all happened, but it was certainly, in some sense, (laughs) overshadowed by the moment. And after 92:00that, my parents did not put any pressure on me to go. But I wanted to stay. I kind of liked -- actually, we had very good classes in comparative religion, which I really liked. And then initially, I went to Brandeis. And so, I was sort of in a Jewish world, but it really was not a world of practice. It was a world of sort of outlook, culture, worldview, assumption. And my mother would -- you know, my parents would talk about anti-Semitism -- it would certainly come up, and a sort of bitter assumption of what the world is. And, of course, my father was a Zionist, and most of his family was in Israel. And this was pre-'67, so it was sort of plucky, left, liberal Israel. Uncomplicated, in a certain way. So, 93:00that was certainly part of it. But so, I -- and I think for my mother -- oh, and then, starting in -- gosh, I'm not sure -- maybe 1960, maybe slightly later, my father designed two synagogues. He designed -- one was in Washington, where the rabbi was Balfour Brickner, who was -- had been at Stephen Wise, and actually later married my wife and I. But he invited my father to come design the bima, and he did. And then, he did another one in Port Washington. And so -- and I think he was approached about perhaps doing some others. And I think he liked -- it was a good -- it was suited to what he was doing. The imagery -- I mean, he 94:00used -- this is the Cohanic blessing, which he taught me. He taught me how to do it. And so, I guess he had a sense of being Cohens. But it really had nothing to do with observance. It had absolutely nothing to do with specific prayers or observance. It had to do with just sort of who you are. And I think for my mother, it was, in a way, this something that had been completely absent. I think it gave her some gratification to be -- to have some touch with this Jewish identity, which had been really invisible, but brought to her by my father.

CW:How did having these parents and growing up in this world impact, if at all, what you decided to do?

MA:Well, I think one, there was this sense of history. I think something else -- the first book I wrote was called "Art Attack," and it was a history of the avant-garde, written for teenagers. And in some ways explicitly, it was based on my experience of going with my father to art galleries, where in one way when I would look at Brâncusi or something like that, it just made no sense to me and I was disdainful of it. But on the other hand, my father sort of gave me a sense of what this was and why it mattered. And so, I would see Picasso and I would -- we would go to MoMA and I would see "Guernica," which was there at the time, and so I felt -- so both I had an impulse to do for others what my father did for me 96:00-- to explain -- but I think in a certain way -- before, when you asked me about my parents and I was talking about it -- I think this idea that young people are on the edge of and can be brought into a world of adult conversation, a world of adult interest, a world of adult complexity, a world of adult aesthetics, a world of adult politics and history and ideas -- that really became my career. Because while I did get my doctorate in American history and I focused -- oh, well there's two other -- I focused on the editor-author relationship at the beginning of the twentieth century, in particular -- Edith Wharton and her editor -- in one way, that was like my parents. I was interested in an art world that was also commercial, like the theater. You know, for them, it was the 97:00theater, for me, I was dealing with book publishing. I think it's interesting that I wanted to write about the most sort of WASP New York world. The world that my father entered rather than the world he was in. And so, in a way, I was trying to explain the world that he would join in. And it is interesting -- the guy I wrote about, William Crary Brownell, who was this arch-WASP and disdained by the rebels of the '20s as the essence of genteel New York, did write one passage in his first book, which was his best book, about New York. He contrasted New York and Paris, and he was saying how much Paris has this sort of aesthetic unity, and New York is just chaos. It's a mess. And he didn't like all the signs in Yiddish and German and all that. But there's this one passage in which he lists all of the sort of chaos of New York, which is beautiful and so 98:00energetic. And it reminded me so much of what my father loved in New York. Like, all the things of the city -- the sounds and things of machines and coin dispensers and elevators. So, there was this meeting place of Brownell and my father, though they would never have met. But then, even though that was my doctorate, even when I got my doctorate, I was already working in children's books. And so, I think that idea that you can take things from the adult world and invite kids into it is sort of like my parents having these famous guests over, and allowing me to come in and have my moment to, What'll you be when you grow up -- or me to express some thoughts or ideas of my own. And so, I do think 99:00in some ways, I identify still with that kid who's gaining access to this world but still being in a kid world, and so that's really what I've made my career. I teach also -- training librarians. And it's funny, I was just having a disagreement with another teacher, and she wanted me to emphasize more training librarians in sort of getting to known teen popular culture. And I said, In a way, I want to break that. I feel like that's easy -- that's there already. That's fine. I want to show them something they don't know, which is these more sophisticated or adult ideas and art movements and experiences. And so, the book my wife and I will publish -- this is our second book together -- in February is about Robert Capa and Gerda Taro photographing the Spanish Civil War. No kid in 100:00America even knows that the Spanish Civil War exists -- existed. But the idea that an artist can bear witness -- the idea that an artist can use photographs to try to alert the world to something is very contemporary. So, I try to find this meeting place -- rather than saying, What are kids into now, I'm sort of beginning with, What's out there to know, and then, How can we make a link to a younger person, a teenager. And so that, I think, is how all of this fits together in some way. And I think also just -- I would say this -- I think my father was the child of revolutions. He was born in 1898. He was born at this period of change in the Jewish world, change in Russia, change in art and 101:00aesthetics and intellectual -- and politics. And I think that sense of the vitality of change was really true to him -- and, I think, something that I want to try to bring to young people in anything I do. And that's an inheritance from them.

CW:What is your feeling about your Eastern European heritage -- Yiddish heritage?

MA:I mean, I think I grew up mostly influenced by my father's humorous disdain for it. And I think it's also true that when I would -- I really loved Chyena, but Nakhmen always did seem sort of -- I don't know, small and afflicted. Like, this guy in a white shirt who I could not really speak to 'cause he didn't 102:00really speak English, who was sort of troubled or off in some way. Not -- I don't mean mentally, but sort of not at peace with the world he was in. By the way, I think the Meisels were somehow related to my grandmother. This is something I've heard, too -- and it's very possible that marriages would have been, in a very limited universe. But when they had the exhibit in Paris of my father's work, they brought in -- it was in two galleries, it was a wonderful exhibit. And they had a group playing there called Blik. Blik is great. And they are these French young people in their thirties who sing in Yiddish. But they -- it's not klezmer. What they were singing then were songs from the Gulag, very 103:00kind of intense and dark. It sounded almost more like Kurt Weill. And their second album is fado, and then I think the third they want to do blues. And so, they're sort of exploring Yiddish singing in this kind of deep intensity, but not in its classical -- or its most familiar forms. And I think through them, I've gotten a sense that there is this vitality now, and there is this something aborning now that isn't about nostalgia, or it isn't about a rejection or an unwillingness to enter a modern world, but is a vitality of its own. And I think one thing I was struck by, when I think of the Culture League and I think of my father -- it was such an international moment. It was where the art of Moscow and Kiev and Berlin and Paris and Prague and Warsaw and New York and London were 104:00all in combination, all in discussion, all in exchange -- and then Tel Aviv, in some ways, although it was more provincial. But there was this -- and Buenos Aires -- you know, fluidity of people and ideas. And I think that's what we're beginning to have again now. And I think that feels exciting to me -- and that sense in which we're creating this kind of global, mobile culture that isn't, again, against -- it isn't trying to preserve, it isn't trying to step outside of the world, but it's another voice in the world, drawing on these many different traditions and cultures and experiences. And that feels very dynamic to me, and very alive, and great to see and hear. When my older son was bar 105:00mitzvahed, we actually brought the couple who is the heart of Blik to play, and it was just wonderful. I mean, it was just really, really wonderful. And so, even though I don't understand Yiddish, I could feel the dynamism of that moment. And I think in some ways, that's why it feels appropriate to me that there's been this renewed interest in my father's sort of Yiddish theater phase -- is that it's of a piece with, or it speaks to, the contemporary vitality and liveliness in the Yiddish world. The other thing I'll say -- my younger son is now at a Reconstructionist synagogue for preparation for his bar mitzvah, and it's actually really pretty intellectually interesting. I'm still not in any way observant, but the discussions -- inasmuch as we participate in them -- are 106:00interesting. And every year, since Marina and I -- my wife and I -- were dating, I do write a seder. And that's interesting. So, this year, we had at our seder -- since none of us read Hebrew, but there were two guests who read Hebrew. One was Alisa Solomon, who wrote the book on "Fiddler," and the other was Amira Hass, who's this Israeli journalist who lives in Ramallah and had lived in Gaza and really is the most -- she's done the most to really explain and understand and absorb and be within a Palestinian point of view. And that was wonderful. It was really a great experience. And so, I think I'm trying to construct -- every year in the seder, the theme for me is the question of, Why are we doing this? Which is, of course, there in the service, but I also have it, because I'm not 107:00completely sure, (laughs) because there isn't anything else! And yet, I kind of enjoy that, and I think by now, my older son is old enough to be engaged in that conversation in some way -- in a meaningful way. And so -- yeah.

CW:Are there any other favorite stories about your father?

MA:Let me think about this.

CW:We can come back to it, too.

MA:Yeah. I mean, as I said, he wasn't athletic, but he liked to play croquet. He was very competitive. And croquet, again, I think, came from these times of being in Connecticut where there were lawns and so you could set up -- but he was quite competitive. There's a famous story that I can tell, which is -- so at one point in the '20s or '30s, he was working a summer job at, let's say, 108:00Grossinger's, one of the Jewish Catskill resorts. And part of his job was to carve canes. I can show you -- he did quite a magnificent job of doing that. And people would come up and ask him questions about how he did it or whatever -- where he got his ideas. And it is very telling of my father's personality and very true of him that he got sick of answering the same questions, so he wrote a table of answers, and when people would come up to him, he would just point with his cane to the appropriate answer. (laughs) So he didn't actually have to talk to anybody, (laughs) he would just -- I guess it's an early form of database. So, that would be my father. He didn't feel like he had to be nice, he didn't feel like he had to smile to the people who were basically paying his salary. 109:00And I guess he wasn't there so classically to find a girl to date, he was there to make a buck and carve some canes and suffer no fools. And I think that was true of my father. I can't -- I was thinking, I don't -- my parents didn't have strong comments on civil rights or any of the big issues of the day. I mean, New Lincoln was integrated, and that was sort of part of its identity, and they were, you know, happy to have black friends over, et cetera. But I don't think -- oh, and my father liked John Lindsay a lot. And again, I think, as an aristocratic liberal, it was my father's cup of tea. I think he liked someone 110:00who had that sort of Upper East Side quality but was a liberal, and that was my father's kinda guy, or one of them. I'm trying to think what else -- my mother's mother, who lived until, I think, the '60s, my father didn't get along with. And she was very Germanic. And my father always would say she could make a meal out of potato skins -- and I think, in some ways, probably true. (laughs) I mean, there are stories about how when they were really poor in Europe, my mother and her sister and her mother would go to the soup kitchen to eat, and all of their money would go to make sure her father had a nice meal. Not because he demanded 111:00it, but because the sense of identity of the family was him and his career. I don't know if there had been a boy, would it -- was it gender as well? And so, I think in a way, my grandmother was this kind of German housewife who would make a meal out of potato skins. And I think to my father, there was something very cold and austere about that, which was very different from how he saw himself. I don't know. There are recordings of him. There's a recording he did with Garson Kanin. There was an exhibit about him at the Lincoln Center Library, and Garson Kanin did an extensive interview with him. And there is a book about immigrants 112:00working in the arts in America that draws heavily on that. And that book argues that my father was sort of alienated from the commercialism of Broadway, which is sort of what he says in that interview. I have to say, I always saw that as somewhat of a trope of how artists talk, which was -- you know, you can always say, The commercial theater is dying, no one does any creative anymore. I tend to think that my father both actually believed things like that and also wanted to be in the commercial theater. That's where he wanted to be. He didn't want to be in some small experimental place. I haven't viewed that -- I want to show that tape to my sons, because they have never seen their grandfather. I mean, 113:00they've seen photos, but they've never heard him.

CW:Did you have a favorite of the productions?

MA:Oh, yeah. I did. So, my father did that early Yiddish theater stuff. And then, there was a long phase where the sets he was asked to do were more realistic. And then in the '50s, what Frank and my mother call "epic theater." This was -- in a way, if you think of abstract expressionism and Jungian psychology, it was sort of trying to reduce things to some kind of essence -- which your American culture was doing that, and the arts. And my father did some kind of wonderful sets in that way, but some people thought they were too heavy. And that was probably true -- they're beautiful, but maybe not great as sets. And then, in 1960, he did a show called "Do Re Mi." And "Do Re Mi" was, in some 114:00sense, a vehicle for Phil Silvers, who was Sergeant Bilko on TV, which I watched, so I was very excited. The female was Nancy -- I can't remember her second name, but she was a sort of comic, funny woman. And it was about corruption in the jukebox industry. And if you think of 1960, this is just at the beginning of youth culture -- it's sort of rock 'n' roll just before British Invasion, radio, everything like that. And my father did these sets. And you can see it -- he cut up my "MAD" magazines, he used Alfred E. Neuman from -- in the sketches. And he did -- the art style is very pop art, and it's very "Mad Men"-looking -- very kind of modern and clean. And he did this thing called the 115:00jukebox curtain, which was -- the set was these five jukeboxes -- very stylized, not literal. And that's my favorite set of his. Supposedly, the audience clapped at the set. The show was rather minimal. And it -- okay. The transition of Broadway is that up until exactly this moment, one way a Broadway show became a success -- 'cause if you think about it, it's in New York, right? So, how are you going to become a national success? So, one was, it would be covered in "Life" magazine. They would do a photo spread of this year's -- or this season's. But the other way is, you had a hit song. You would produce songs that everyone was now singing -- songs from "My Fair Lady" or "South Pacific" or "West Side Story." And so, the idea is for the show to produce a song that would 116:00now become a standard and that people would sing everywhere or people would buy the sheet music. And the transition is in the '60s, because at this moment, you're no longer having pop songs becoming mass culture, you're having rock 'n' roll. But they did -- "Do Re Mi" had this song called "Make Someone Happy," and that was its signature song that became a standard. But the show did not do well, and my father was actually criticized for having, in a certain way, overwhelmed the show. And that was -- it actually made him hard to get work. But I loved that show. And maybe it was because I was ten and we were entering the '60s and it was sort of my life, my world, that he was displaying on the stage, 117:00not the sort of epic stuff or things like that, but the vitality of the world that I was entering. I think intellectually, I like "Company" and "Pacific Overtures" quite a lot. But I think as a kid growing up, I loved "Do Re Mi." And I think it's also 'cause I loved Phil Silvers. So, I got (laughs) to see someone up close. So, I would say that was a favorite for me.

CW:Would you mind talking about his death?

MA:Sure. So, my father -- my parents lived out here, and he was weakening -- getting older. And so, he was doing fewer shows and smaller productions. I mean, 118:00his last sort of big -- he worked for the Met, and he worked with Baryshnikov on a "Nutcracker." And he and Baryshnikov -- who lives right near here, or lived right near here -- would speak in Russian. And I think there was a kind of sense of connection there for him that was gratifying -- you know, because Baryshnikov -- not just that they spoke in Russian, but there was sort of a connection to the art world of Russia. My father had gone back in '64. Oh, this link -- so he went back on a State Department visit in 1964. And when he was there -- he had two sisters who had stayed, and I don't remember which, but the story always was 119:00that they had married wrong, in that they married a Menshevik followed by a Trotskyite, and so both of their husbands were killed or sent to the Gulag. So, my father, when he got there, somehow contacted one of his sisters -- and this was during Khrushchev -- and said he was gonna come visit her. And she lived on, like, the fifth floor of a walk-up. And he came to the apartment building, and she refused to see him, because it was too dangerous for her to be connected to an American, even one who had sort of official right to be there. And so, my father ran up the stairs to go to the door of his sister, and he had a heart attack. And that was in '64. And he was flown off to Helsinki, 'cause he didn't 120:00want to be treated in Russia. And from then on, he was weakening. Not day-to-day, but there was -- he had more -- and I think my father always had some degree of heart trouble. Growing up, I know he had to watch his diet and would take pills. I think it was sort of frustrating to him, because he grew up -- I mean, one thing I noticed about growing up -- he -- we absolutely did not keep kosher, but I think he tended to eat kind of dairy things with dairy. I mean, it was more or less what he was used to, it wasn't a position or an argument. And I think at one -- I remember one year around Easter, my mother wanted to make a ham -- which we ate ham all the time, but I think it upset my father -- that he didn't want that. But so, he had to watch his diet, and he had 121:00to eat less cream and things like that. And I think that was frustrating to him. So, as he was -- we're now getting into the '70s, he was weakening. And he had a series of heart attacks. And then finally -- they were living here -- he went -- he was taken to the nearby hospital. And he was really -- by that point, he was also -- it also affected him mentally. He was sort of disturbed, very angry all the time. I think that side of him that could be oppositional and angry by this point was no longer about issues. It was more just -- it was his Lear raving that he was in. And so, we saw each other, but he -- it wasn't great. I mean, he 122:00was not in the best of condition. And he was dealing with his mortality. And then, he died. So, I wasn't there exactly at that moment, but I was sort of there in that phase.

CW:When do you think of him now?

MA:That's interesting. That's really interesting. I mean, certainly when I'm here. One of -- I remember -- I associate him with MoMA, which looked differently at the time. But MoMA used to be across the street from the Donnell Library, which was destroyed. But the Donnell Library had a very good young 123:00adult section -- the Nathan Strauss Library -- and I used to go to the Donnell a lot. And sometimes -- so that association of MoMA and the Donnell bring him to mind. I think looking at his shows, his art. We have some of his art in our house where we live, and so it reminds me of him in some ways -- just seeing it. So, I think it's more his creations that bring him to mind than -- (laughs) -- certainly, when I get angry at my sons, I remind myself of my father. (laughs) So, I think of him then. So, I think it's more -- again, another version of an ambient presence more than one specific charge. Although again, in wanting to 124:00show my sons this tape of him -- you know, it is strange to realize that someone who is so vividly part of my sense of myself is invisible to them. They have no sense of -- and yet, to me, he's such a defining part of myself and my world and how I grew up. And when I realize they really have no association with him, it's odd. It's not just that it's disappointing or sad, it's to realize, that's generations -- that they've grown up in a world -- just as, when I think of it, I never met my grandfather, or either of them, so I have no sense of what they were like as a sort of three-dimensional person, and yet must have been so 125:00defining for my parents. So, I want my kids to have some sense. They both knew my mother -- Sasha more than Raphi, but they both knew my mother. And Marina's mother is still alive. I never met my father-in-law. So, it's -- yeah.

CW:Well, thank you.

MA:Oh, thank you. Those were great questions -- very good questions.

[END OF INTERVIEW]