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- [00:00]
Alison Stewart
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. All this week we've been highlighting great options for summer beach reads. We've had a Murder in Paris with Laura Lipman, a ghost haunting our protagonist with Clarence Haynes, two sisters fighting with Jennifer Weiner, a couple breaking up with Katie Yee. And for our last installment, we make a trip to the Upper west side and the latest novel from best selling author Chris Pavoni. Usually Paffoni writes thrillers set in exotic places like Paris, Zurich, Luxembourg and Lisbon. But his latest novel is set in a co op building on Central park west named the Bohemia. Think the Dakota or the San Remo. The residents are the uber wealthy. And of course the doorman who lends the book its title. He oversees all the suspense and intrigue that will be familiar to fans of Chris Pavone. People living double lives, love life or death situations. As we learn from the first line of the novel, quote, there are sure a lot of great places to kill someone in this city. The novel is called the Doorman. Here's my interview with author Chris Pavoni.
- [01:41]
Chris Pavoni
First of all, before we talk about my work, I would just like to thank you for your work. There is such a fire hose of horrible emergencies going on right now and it's easy to neglect the things that are important but not urgent. And I'm so grateful that you continue to provide this space for people to talk about things that are not necessarily urgent but still important parts of our cultural conversation.
- [02:04]
Alison Stewart
Well, thank you very much.
- [02:05]
Chris Pavoni
So thank you.
- [02:06]
Alison Stewart
So no doorman, huh?
- [02:07]
Chris Pavoni
No doorman. No. I grew up in New York city in the 1960s and 70s and 80s in a part of Brooklyn that people did not move to with undergraduate degrees and entry level jobs in finance. If you moved to Crown heights in the 1970s, you were doing it because you were immigrating from Haiti or Jamaica and this is where your cousin lived. And that was a very, very different New York than it is right now. That was the New York of Ford to city drop dead and the crack epidemic and needles everywhere and vicious acts of random violence everywhere. And people sort of clutched their pearls about 380 murders last year in New York City in 1990. There were, I think 2,240. So by orders of magnitude, a very, very different city.
- [02:54]
Alison Stewart
Did you know any doormen? Did you have. What were your impressions?
- [02:58]
Chris Pavoni
No, I didn't know any doormen growing up. I mean, we had security guards, which is a very different thing. There are a lot of security guards sitting in buildings in New York City who are there to make sure that no violence happens, really. But a doorman is a very different thing. And as I've lived with doorman for the past few years, I've come to realize that the job isn't so much about hailing cabs and carrying bags. It is to be a person there for the residents all the time, every day, to interact with and to be nice to. And it's a very unusual relationship that's not really about providing a tangible service a lot of the time, but simply being the nice person in the world.
- [03:39]
Alison Stewart
In the acknowledgments, you mentioned your friend, a doorman.
- [03:42]
Chris Pavoni
Yeah.
- [03:42]
Alison Stewart
That you dedicated your book to. Could you tell us a little bit about him?
- [03:45]
Chris Pavoni
Oh, my God, yes. Johnny was one of the first people you meet when you moved into this building. And he worked at our building for 37 years. It's the only job he ever had. He had the type of magnetic warmth that you could feel from across the street. People would come after they moved away just to visit with Johnny again. And a few, not long after we moved into the building, he got sick and he went to the hospital. And as soon as he was able, he returned to the front door, and he continued to hail cabs and carry bags and hold the door while also definitely dying. And one day at the end of his shift, another doorman asked him how he was feeling, and he said, I'm so tired, man. And he went home and he died. And he had time to plan his memorial service. And what he planned was for his memorial service to be a couple of blocks from our building so that the people he worked for could more easily come than the people he lived with. He lived his whole life on one block in Harlem. He only ever had this job, and he was buried in his doorman uniform with the cap on. The only non regulation item with was he was wearing a New York Mets pin on his necktie.
- [05:00]
Alison Stewart
So why did you want to center your novel around a doorman?
- [05:05]
Chris Pavoni
I wanted to take a look at this sort of upstairs, downstairs environment in New York. It's always intrigued me, and I think it's such a crucial part of New York City, this being elbow to elbow. Every crowded subway car is A miracle of diversity in this city of every race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation. Tattoos are not everything. And if you're on a credit subway car, you see all of this humanity all at once. But a lot of people also do their best to try to sequester themselves off from the rest of humanity here. A lot of people shuttle themselves around in town cars and live in fortress like buildings like my own. And they don't really interact with that many people who aren't exactly like them, except in this very specific circumstance of the people who live in a building interacting with the people who work there. And I thought that that was a fascinating intersection and provided, I think, a great opportunity to talk about these subjects in the context. These subjects meaning race and racism and class and income equality and money and its corrupting influence on everything. To talk about those issues, but in the context of actual relationships among actual people who are dealing with problems of their own and problems that involve one another.
- [06:21]
Alison Stewart
I'm speaking with Chris Pavoni. He's the author of the new novel the Doorman. You know, so many of your novels are set overseas in Lisbon and Paris. How did you look at New York City as a place to set a novel, especially when it's a place where you live?
- [06:38]
Chris Pavoni
Well, first of all, I set a novel in New York City during COVID when I wasn't going anywhere. So I looked around me and I thought, wow. But also, a lot of what I've tried to deliver in those books that are set overseas is not really a trip to Europe. It is really a specificity of place and a sense that readers are going somewhere that they may know a little bit about but aren't completely familiar with. And I love that aspect of myself as a reader of fiction, being introduced to some part of the world that I'm already a little bit interested in, but don't know a lot about. And I feel like for a lot of people, New York is that. I mean, for granted, I'm talking right now to a bunch of New Yorkers, but this book is being published all over America and all over the world. And for most people, the Upper west side of New York City is just as far in as Lisbon.
- [07:28]
Alison Stewart
Why did you set it on the Upper west side of New York City as opposed to, say, Fifth or Park Avenue?
- [07:34]
Chris Pavoni
Well, I live on the Upper west side. That's part of it. But I also wanted to examine a couple of different religious and cultural differences between the east side and the west side in a way that I think will be familiar to a Lot of New Yorkers and perhaps enjoyable. But also I honestly took a lot of inspiration from Bonfire of the Vanities. And that book, which I don't remember exactly when I read it, was published in the late 1980s. And the thing that's on my shelf is a hardcover. So I definitely read it about then. That is a tremendous book about race and class and money and crime and adultery and murder. It is also pretty outdated in a lot of ways. It's also arguably a sexist book and a racist book and frankly an insane book in some ways. But it's still an immensely propulsive and enjoyable. And I wanted to do an updated version of that to try to address a lot of the same things, but with a more contemporary sensibility and with some very important differences.
- [08:38]
Alison Stewart
Okay, so the book is very suspenseful and I don't want to give too much away.
- [08:43]
Chris Pavoni
Thank you.
- [08:43]
Alison Stewart
So I'm going to ask you, how do you describe it? How do you describe the plot?
- [08:48]
Chris Pavoni
The plot?
- [08:49]
Alison Stewart
Yes.
- [08:51]
Chris Pavoni
It's a thriller about a doorman who gets caught up in a web of adultery, robbery and murder. And I think, as you alluded to earlier, it's pretty clear from the opening sentence that somebody in this story is going to die. The journey that the reader on is to figure out who that is and when and where and how. And actually, most interestingly, I think why.
- [09:16]
Alison Stewart
Also, what's really interesting in the book is the character development.
- [09:20]
Chris Pavoni
Thank you.
- [09:21]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk about a couple of them. Chickie Diaz.
- [09:23]
Chris Pavoni
Yes.
- [09:23]
Alison Stewart
Longtime doorman. He's been there 28 years. How would you describe his relationship with the residents?
- [09:30]
Chris Pavoni
Oh, Chickie is relentlessly upbeat. Chickie is always happy to be at work. He's always happy to greet everybody, to greet all the residents, to greet the neighborhood people and their children and their dogs and the tourists who never stop taking pictures. Chicky has decided to go forth into the world and try to never take offense and try to meet everybody where they are. And even if where they are is not particularly nice to him, what he tries to do is give back nice in return. And Chickie is a very big guy who has decided that he wants to try to make himself be smaller. It's a different way of moving through the world, a non confrontational way of moving through the world.
- [10:09]
Alison Stewart
Emily Longworth lives in the penthouse. She's married, two kids. She decides she kind of wants a certain way of life, even if that means living with her husband Whit, who's kind of a masters of the universe with a really dark side. We shall say how would you describe her?
- [10:28]
Chris Pavoni
Emily thinks of herself as a good liberal. And a lot of what I try to address in this book, in a way in the background, not as the plot, but always simmering there is what does it mean at this moment in time in America to be a liberal? And I think a lot of people disagree very strongly on what that means. Exactly. Even if they agree on 99% of the issues, the remaining 1% drives them apart. And I wanted Emily to be one of those people who finds herself in the position of being accused of being things that she's not, of being affiliated with a man who she didn't choose because of his money, but she happened to end up a very, very rich person, and she's trying to move through the world doing good, despite being married to somebody who definitely does not.
- [11:19]
Alison Stewart
I'm curious if you. Not if you're concerned, but did you think about people who would read this book and not take a liking to some of the liberal tone of the book? In fact, I was on Goodreads. Don't go on Goodreads. But there was a MAGA person who had read your book and had a lot to say about it.
- [11:38]
Chris Pavoni
Oh, yeah. No, I'm not concerned with people hating the book. I'm more interested in making the book extremely enjoyable to people who are willing to like it.
- [11:53]
Alison Stewart
Emily says in the novel, reflecting on her prenup, she writes, there was absolutely no way that she and her children could live on $900,000 per year.
- [12:03]
Chris Pavoni
So she.
- [12:04]
Alison Stewart
The money matters to her.
- [12:06]
Chris Pavoni
Well, she lost track of things. You know, you get used to whatever you get used to. And she's somebody who has a couple of kids who travel a lot and they've never been on a commercial flight. And although that's a rare thing, it's not a fictional thing. There are people in the world who are exactly like that. And that doesn't make them bad people. That just makes them people with a tremendous amount of money. And I think one of the questions is, what is it worth doing for that money? And I think there are. Almost all of us in this world will have to admit that we have made choices in our lives for money. And once you've made any choice for money, then, as the old trope goes, the rest is just a negotiation. And where do you draw the line between what's an acceptable compromise to make for money and what's not? And one of the problems with Wit is that he. Whit, Emily's husband, became a billionaire by being a profiteer. And I Think a lot of us would agree that that's a bad thing to be, but maybe the profiteers wouldn't and maybe their spouses wouldn't either. That that line is something that it's up to all of us to draw.
- [13:12]
Alison Stewart
Julian is. He's also married. He has two kids. He's an art dealer. He's rich, but he's not rich rich, so to speak. He also, you know, he's very clear when some racial moment, crazy racial moments happen during a board meeting. When you think about what Julian want, what does he want?
- [13:33]
Chris Pavoni
Oh, that's a very good question. Julian wants to know what his purpose is in this world right now and what role there is for somebody like him. He's a person who has moved through the world on the backbone of privilege, but what he's done with that privilege is set out to right the historical wrong of underrepresentation by black people in the world of fine arts. And he is increasingly finding himself edged out of the business that he invented and wondering, what am I for?
- [14:06]
Alison Stewart
Usually writers, they have sympathy or actors have sympathy for their characters. Sometimes writers have sympathy for their characters. Do you have sympathy for all your characters?
- [14:16]
Chris Pavoni
I love the three main characters in this book. I really do. I love their failings, I love their problems. I love the momentous decisions that they make at the end of this fateful and fatal day that this book takes place in. I don't love all of the minor characters, but I loved writing them. And I think one of the great joys of writing fiction is, in fact to be able to write about people who you don't like and to do it possibly with sympathy and, I hope also sometimes with humor. But to actually get those characters on the page and point out what it is about. I think, among other things, hypocrisy that drives people like me crazy. People like me. What does that mean? Novelists.
- [15:03]
Alison Stewart
There aren't any spies in this novel, but most of the main characters have some sort of a double life.
- [15:09]
Chris Pavoni
Yeah.
- [15:11]
Alison Stewart
What makes that compelling to you?
- [15:13]
Chris Pavoni
Oh, I think that's the reason I write spy fiction, or I have written spy fiction to begin with, is not because of the spy versus spy, country versus country, state secrets thing, but because I think one of the most powerful stories there is, one of the hardest places for a person to find themselves is in an intimate relationship of any sort, whether it's a professional sort or an espionage sort or sexual or marital. In an intimate relationship where you realize that you can no longer trust your partner and that you have been Betrayed. And I think we all live with some type of fear of that no matter what we do, no matter who we're married to or who we work for, there's always the possibility nagging that somewhere that you will unlock somebody's phone and discover something you really didn't want to know.
- [16:05]
Alison Stewart
There's sexism in the doorman, there's homophobia. Racism is omnipresent. We get a classic co op board scene. Did you start out wanting to write about income inequality or was that just like a natural byproduct of the story you were telling?
- [16:22]
Chris Pavoni
I think that's an essential part of the story I was telling. I mean, I set out to write a book about this moment in New York. And I think one of the things that makes a New York novel such a compelling piece of literature is that here in New York we face all of the problems all of the time. They're always right there in front of us. There's no way to ignore them. And I think that's the beauty of writing a book about New York is you get to address all of those things, but in the context of characters and story and the politics, whether they're social or political. Whatever you want to call the point of view in this story is not there so that I can stand on a soapbox and yell about what I think. It's there because these are the things that actually drive the plot, that these are the conflicts that put these characters onto these collision paths that all converge at the end, where not all of these people survive.
- [17:12]
Alison Stewart
Before you were a novelist, you were an editor?
- [17:14]
Chris Pavoni
I was.
- [17:15]
Alison Stewart
How does that influence your writing?
- [17:18]
Chris Pavoni
Aha. That's a very good question. I think I am very, very amenable to editing as an ex editor, but I'm also very, very focused on making sure at the beginning of the process that I know what the book is. And a lot of people start writing and they have an idea floating around their head. I want to tell this type of story. I want this to be the protagonist. I want this to be the ending. And it's fine. It's great to have those floating up in your head. But until you commit those things to words on paper, you don't necessarily have it. You don't know if it's really there. Because writing things down is not just a way of communicating, it's a way of thinking. And I always write a page of description about a book before I start writing the book to make sure that I have the protagonist, I have the antagonist, I have the main conflict. I know the general shape of the story. I write something, it's really just for me to make sure that I know why this should exist in the world, to justify it. Because if a book can't be justified as its place in the world, then it doesn't actually belong in the world.
- [18:24]
Alison Stewart
In the acknowledgement sections you write, if the impulse ever strikes to drop a kind of note to anyone who has created anything, I urge you not to fight it. First of all, when was the last time someone dropped you a note?
- [18:38]
Chris Pavoni
It happens all the time. I'm so grateful for it.
- [18:41]
Alison Stewart
What did it mean to you?
- [18:43]
Chris Pavoni
It means so much. And it's one of the reasons that I do it so much that there's a the Especially social media has created the opportunity for people to tell each other how much they hate each other, especially anonymously. But it is also an opportunity to very easily reach out to people and tell them that they created something that you really enjoyed. So I do that all the time.
- [19:05]
Alison Stewart
That was my conversation with Chris Pavoni, author of the novel the Doorman. It's a great pick for a beach read. Or you can check off a box in your all of It Summer Reading Challenge. It counts in the category of a book published in 2025 or a book set in New York City. I'm Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, Genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.