No one came to interview me on my 90th birthday so I interviewed myself.
BERNARD HOLLAND: What were your goals in life? Have you achieved them?
BH: From an early age my life’s ambition was to do absolutely nothing. After 80-odd years of obstacles and detours I am nearing my goal.
BERNARD HOLLAND: But people still see you hunched over your computer.
BH: I confess. I have been taking a stab at poems though admittedly with a very blunt knife.
BERNARD HOLLAND: You read a lot. What?
BH: I gravitate toward short things–Borges, Rachel Cusk, Chekhov–and long things–Burton, Mishima, Canetti, Banffy (a hidden giant), currently Javier Marias (Henry James meets John Le Carre). I love Georges Perec’s “Life a User’s Manual”—a kind of encyclopedia of things that interest me.
Always Marcel P, emperor of all things long.
BERNARD HOLLAND: What books on music do you read?
BH: Very few. I admired Ian McEwan’s “Amsterdam” for nailing the contemporary music community (spot-on, uncanny}.Thomas Bernhard’s fantasy Glenn Gould (“The Loser”) is fun too.
BERNARD HOLLAND: What are your thoughts about the state of classical music?
BH: My thoughts about the state of classical music belonged to The New York Times. When I retired I had to give them back.
BERNARD HOLLAND: Other obsessions?
B: The Yankees, the Nets.
BERNARD HOLLAND: To which philosopher do you always return?
BH: Groucho Marx who once said, “Who says I have to make sense?”
BERNARD HOLLAND: Any other big thoughts these days?
BH: I prefer little ones. Big thoughts lack ballast. I read a book on criticism by a prominent film critic a while back—page after page of wispy, lovely words. I’m sure every one of them had deep meaning for their writer but to me they were like unmoored balloons, filled with gas, floating off God knows where. Words like “truth or “beauty” are a refuge for the inarticulate. They sound seductive but deliver little. You want to say something? Tell a story.
Plato knew it. So did Jesus. There is more meaning at the end of a pointed finger than every essay on truth and beauty ever written. (Even yours, Mr. Keats.) Sorry. I do go on..
BERNARD HOLLAND: Do you read critics?
BH: I always keep up with Alex Ross. I’ve read things by Justin Davidson I admire. I like the depth and civility of British music writers but they are usually engaged in a kind of Consumer Reports (this performance is better than that one). I try not to listen that way. Every performance is different; learn from each of them.
BERNARD HOLLAND: How do you want to be remembered?
BH: I waver between “music critic,” “newspaper man” and “not at all.” Nobody remembers who reviewed the premiere of Grieg’s Piano Concerto nor should they. The first time I walked into a newspaper city room I felt at home and in love. And to be at the New York Times! The Times gave me entry into worlds I otherwise would not have known. It treated me with unfailing courtesy and respect and in return I never missed a deadline that was in my power to make. If I have a tombstone, let it read “He wrote clean copy and filed on time.”
BERNARD HOLLAND: How are you coping with retirement?
BH: Handsomely. During my working years in the music world I was surrounded by connoisseurs and experts always happy to lift me to their stratospheric levels of wonderfulness. Retirement has freed me from the chains of excellence. Mediocrity interests me. My scotch is at the bottom of Johnny Walker’s color chart. Great wine gives me hives I doze in the arms of the second-rate. Oh how happy I am.
BERNARD HOLLAND: What are you listening to these days?
BH:. Silence. It’s very powerful.