Leon Levy Center for Biography | DT Max on Stephen Sondheim, with Adam Gopnik, December 13, 2022 at the Graduate Center @leonlevycenterforbiography8099 | Uploaded January 2023 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
In February 2022, The New Yorker published an exclusive online issue which featured excerpts from interviews longtime staff writer D. T. Max had conducted with Stephen Sondheim at the end of his life. Max was working on a major New Yorker profile timed to the eventual premiere of a new musical Sondheim was writing. The article generated an astonishing response from readers who praised it as one of—if not the best—interviews with Sondheim ever conducted; that Max had elicited a candor and vulnerability in the celebrated artist little shown before.
Now, Max brings together those unedited conversations in this commemorative collection. This book reveals this cultural icon—a star who disliked the spotlight—at his most relaxed, thoughtful, sardonic, and engaging, as he talks about work, music, movies, family, New York City, aging, the creative process, and much more. Throughout, Max sets the scenes of the interviews, shares his impressions of Sondheim during each session, and explains how their unusual relationship evolved over the course of their “pas de deux.”
This is a beautiful, surprising, and indelible portrait of an artist in his twilight, offering remarkable insight into the mind and heart of a genius whose work has indelibly influenced modern American musical theater and popular culture.
D. T. Max is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery, published in 2007, and Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, published in 2012.
Adam Gopnik has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1986. During his tenure at the magazine, he has written fiction, humor, book reviews, personal essays, Profiles, and reported pieces from abroad. He was the magazine’s art critic from 1987 to 1995 and the Paris correspondent from 1995 to 2000. From 2000 to 2005, he wrote a journal about New York life. His books, ranging from essay collections about Paris and food to children’s novels, include Paris to the Moon, The King in the Window, Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food and, most recently, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism.
In February 2022, The New Yorker published an exclusive online issue which featured excerpts from interviews longtime staff writer D. T. Max had conducted with Stephen Sondheim at the end of his life. Max was working on a major New Yorker profile timed to the eventual premiere of a new musical Sondheim was writing. The article generated an astonishing response from readers who praised it as one of—if not the best—interviews with Sondheim ever conducted; that Max had elicited a candor and vulnerability in the celebrated artist little shown before.
Now, Max brings together those unedited conversations in this commemorative collection. This book reveals this cultural icon—a star who disliked the spotlight—at his most relaxed, thoughtful, sardonic, and engaging, as he talks about work, music, movies, family, New York City, aging, the creative process, and much more. Throughout, Max sets the scenes of the interviews, shares his impressions of Sondheim during each session, and explains how their unusual relationship evolved over the course of their “pas de deux.”
This is a beautiful, surprising, and indelible portrait of an artist in his twilight, offering remarkable insight into the mind and heart of a genius whose work has indelibly influenced modern American musical theater and popular culture.
D. T. Max is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery, published in 2007, and Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, published in 2012.
Adam Gopnik has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1986. During his tenure at the magazine, he has written fiction, humor, book reviews, personal essays, Profiles, and reported pieces from abroad. He was the magazine’s art critic from 1987 to 1995 and the Paris correspondent from 1995 to 2000. From 2000 to 2005, he wrote a journal about New York life. His books, ranging from essay collections about Paris and food to children’s novels, include Paris to the Moon, The King in the Window, Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food and, most recently, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism.
