The Wonderful Mr. Rakoff

This is an interview I did with one of my favourite writers, David Rakoff. I was so incredibly excited to have the chance to speak with him – he's like a cerebral hardon.

David Rakoff is a writer’s writer. Perceptive and worldly, he exercises a masterly command of the English lexicon and has become something of a bookish pin-up. He first gained public recognition through his work on National Public Radio’s This American Life and has since earned a solid reputation for delivering an acerbic commentary on human existence, writing for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vogue and Salon, among others.

Whether he’s comparing the relative merits of the Concorde over Hooters Air or documenting his attempts at achieving spiritual enlightenment through fasting, what separates David from many of his contemporaries is the empathetic sensibility that permeates his observational wit. We like him because he is just like us.

Luke Malone: You’re well known for your work on This American Life. What’s it been like to work on the show?
David Rakoff: I truly feel that I owe them my entire career. They made it almost single-handedly viable for first-person journalism and the non-traditional voice to become popular.

A lot of writers had their start on the show.
It’s been quite a springboard for many people. That’s very much Ira Glass’ [host of This American Life] doing and the door was pretty much opened by David Sedaris.

There seems to be a literary clique comprised of people like David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and yourself.
I’ve known them for about 10 years. We all met around the same time.

Is it weird to know each other for so long and then reach a certain level of fame more or less at the same time?
Fame and recognition are loose terms. I have a very nice little career but I don’t for a minute confuse it with actual fame. No one really knows who I am. For example, I’m forever finding myself in situations where people are purported This American Life fans and they’ve literally never heard of me. It goes in degrees. I’m nowhere near as prominent as David or Sarah, but the show’s growing popularity has helped all of us. From an outward perspective, it might look like one of those bad women’s pictures where all the young ingénue hopefuls share an efficiency apartment, then you cut to 10 years later and one’s a hat model, one’s married to a prominent lawyer and the other one is living a loveless but glamorous life as a book editor. It could seem that way but it’s what happens when everybody labours in an industry and time passes.

Does it bother you that when an article is written about you there are often comparisons to writers who are also your friends?
Not particularly. Here’s the thing: mammals are essentially reductive. It’s the way you move through the forest without getting bogged down with the details. Ultimately, if one spends more than an article’s length of time with any of us you see the differences. So, while I can understand a journalist’s need to compare me to David Sedaris, who is one of my best friends, I don’t think we’re that similar in terms of writing. David has become the touchstone by which everybody is compared, unless you’re writing something desperately serious and sad. He’s essentially become Dorothy Parker.

Some writers say they need to write to survive. You’ve said you find it difficult.
I find writing tremendously difficult. It’s like pulling teeth – through my dick. I love having done it. Of all the creative pursuits that I get to do, it’s the least fun for me but the one for which I have most respect. I get to act occasionally and that’s always great fun but with writing, I think it’s the very difficulty of it that makes me feel such respect for it. I once spoke to a ninth grade class and said how much I hated writing and they bloomed. It was like watching a field of flowers in time lapse. They just opened up and sort of inclined towards me. It was extraordinary, as if I’d gotten naked or something.

Of the stories you’ve written, are there any standout favourites?
There are always aspects that I’m attached to. As for any particular favourites, they change all the time. I do a little spin on that old adage: I hate all my children equally.

What other writers do you look up to?
I’m filled with awe and admiration for other writers: Joan Didion, Edith Wharton, Hank Stuever. I’m forever being brought up short by how terrifically good other writers are. I should also acknowledge the fact that when I’m between books the thought of ever writing another one is as inconceivable to me as sprouting wings. That gives me a tendency to get rather sentimental and maudlin about writing. Imagine you had a Toyota and you crashed it and it’s gone. Every time you see someone with a Toyota that they are successfully driving you get a little weepy. I’m in my Toyota phase.

Your vocabulary comes across as highbrow when compared to many other popular non-fiction writers.
It’s interesting. I don’t think my vocabulary is all that. I’m aware of the fact that I have something approaching a vocabulary and that I really, really like language. I like having many colours in the palette at my disposal. People often talk about the vocabulary in my work and it sometimes takes on an accusatory tone, like I’m somehow trying to high hat people.

There’s that tall poppy syndrome.
It’s not meant to be a velvet rope to keep people out in any way; it’s simply meant to be as precise as possible. Also, there’s that whole argument about vocabulary being part of an elitist arsenal. I take a very specific political view, which is that the Republicans and the right wing in the United States have managed to demonise education and turn it into this elitist thing. For people to say that to be educated is elitist is, in fact, buying into this Republican canard. I think it’s both a myth and a lie that’s constructed to keep people benighted, uneducated and, ultimately, voting for governments who act against their best interests. I guess I’m over-thinking it, but do you know what I mean?

Yes, the government here in Australia has made getting a decent education increasingly difficult.
Well, if you ally the working classes with those causes, it’s actually against their interests. They cut the social programs and make these people’s lives materially worse. And it’s all done with this mendacious fabric of being more populist and anti-elitist. I’ve always felt that a vocabulary is a means to overcome that.

You present as fairly anxious and yet you’re also an actor. How does that work?
Acting is anxiety provoking but ultimately it’s about concealment. A great many actors are shy people. It’s a compensatory gesture. There was a point where I was so crippled by social anxiety that the very word ‘party’ was enough to fill me with dread; that’s not so much the case any more. My anxieties also encompass the more neurotic spectrum of phobias like claustrophobia, agoraphobia – all the typical, neurotic Jewish guy fears. I don’t like tunnels, I’m not crazy about bridges, heights aren’t my favourite.

What about planes?
Don’t love them. But I fly in them a lot. I always travel with some sort of tranquilliser so that I don’t become that hysterical person who’s soiling himself in public and ruining everybody else’s fun.