← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
The New Novel 'Playworld' by Adam Ross About a Lost Child Actor
00:23:50
Author Adam Ross draws on his experiences as a former child actor in his new novel, Playworld.
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WNYC Studios
Listener supported WNYC studios.
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Alison Stewart
You're listening to all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In the novel play world, it's 1980s in New York City. At just 14 years old, Griffin is a successful child actor starring on a well liked TV show. He has two loving parents and a devoted younger brother. But between acting school and wrestling, Griffin can't seem to keep up or find anyone who will listen to him until he meets Naomi, a friend of his parents and the wife of a very wealthy man. Even though Naomi is 36, she becomes kind of obsessed with Griffin and Griffin likes that she's a good listener. Soon they are having weekly meetups in Naomi's car. Griffin also finds himself drawing the attention of his wrestling coach, a predatory man who uses private practice time as an excuse to abuse his athletes. As Griffin navigates around New York City and tries to navigate his adolescence, he learns all sorts of mixed messages about what it means to be an adult. It's also a great novel about our city in the 1980s, the New York Times writes. Playworld takes readers back to New York City during the waning, gentle but grayish days of the Carter administration and watches through adolescent male eyes as America flips over to the lurid Reagan technicolor. Tonight at 6:30, Adam Ross will be speaking at McNally Jackson Seaport. But first he joins me in studio to discuss Play World. Nice to meet you.
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Adam Ross
It's nice to meet you too.
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Alison Stewart
So many details in the story, they come from your own life. How did you decide how to make this, how autobiographical to make this?
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Adam Ross
I like to say that Play World.
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WNYC Studios
Rhymes with my life.
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Adam Ross
You know, I was, you know, I was a, I was a child actor. My parents were in the, in the arts in Manhattan. My, but my mother was a former professional dancer. My father was on musical Broadway and was a voiceover guy. So these were, these were settings, these were experiences that I knew well. But you know, when you're, when you're writing fiction and I would sort of, I would make a distinction between, you know, fiction and autofiction in the sense that you're not, you're not doing something that is so, so porous or so transparently your life.
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WNYC Studios
You have to Bend things.
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Adam Ross
You have to, you have to change things. And so that was, that was one of the reasons why I labored over the novel so long. I mean, I mean, short answer, short answer really is the, it's, it's the differences in fiction that make it fiction. Right. I mean, it's, you know, I was in no way, shape or form as successful as Griffin is. I was in no way, shape or form faced with the kind of choices Griffin was.
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Alison Stewart
But you were a 14 year old New York.
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Adam Ross
But I was 14 year old New York at a very unique time in Manhattan. And I was a New York child.
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WNYC Studios
Actor starting around the age of 11.
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Adam Ross
So, you know, you were, you were adjacent to certain kinds of greatness and adjacent to a very particular species of creative in Manhattan. Right.
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Alison Stewart
This is a coming of age story.
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Adam Ross
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Do you have a favorite coming of age story?
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Adam Ross
Oh, wow, that's such a great question. You know, I'll say this. The coming of age story, if it is even really considered a buildings Roman in the strict sense of the word, and a book that was on my mind a lot, not in terms of structure, but in terms of, shall we say, energy and just a torrential amount of specificity and content was the Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bello, who just, who just kind of, you know, in his third book, just kind of poured all of his talent into rendering Chicago both as a boy and later in his life. I mean, it was. And that's part of what Play World. That's part of what I set out to do in Playworld. I was just like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to fully commit to creating the sight sounds, the slant of light, the griminess, as I thought it was like pointed out so beautifully in the Jacobs review, but an enduring magic of Manhattan that keeps getting reiterated generation to generation.
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Alison Stewart
There are parts of this book that.
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Listener
Have made me laugh, I have to admit.
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Alison Stewart
It's in two parts.
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Listener
It's in a Carter administration and the Reagan. I'm up to Carter. Yes, don't tell me anymore. Well, you can tell me a little bit more.
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Alison Stewart
Why did you want to define the.
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Listener
Book between the Carter administration and the Reagan administration?
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Adam Ross
Oh, it's such a good question, you know. Well, first of all, because it was such a consequential moment in American history, which on a spooky action level with Carter just recently dying and us having an entertainer president coming in, which of course I didn't plan for, has these odd echoes. But, you know, here's, here's here's what I came to realize as I was writing a book about that distinction. You know, so much of. Well, it's kind of like what was the Reagan era's main message more and more and more. Well, it was more and more. It was more and more and more, but it was deregulated small government. Right. And so we moved from the Carter administration, with all of its malaise, into the get mine now era of the go go 80s. The Reagan administration, where in the Reagan administration, just like we were parented at that time, we Gen Xers, we were deregulated. We were kids parented by de. We had deregulated parenting.
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Progressive Insurance
Yes.
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Adam Ross
Right. And so in some ways, the parents in the novel stand in for the political sphere and kind of manifest the voracious appetites that we just saw, you know, coming to fruition in the Reagan era. I will say this one other thing, which is also that, you know, there's a way in which, you know, some of the major changes in tax policy began in 1981 when Reagan signs the Kemp Roth act, which seems, like, wonky, maybe to listeners, but it was one of the biggest tax cuts in history. And so it's the beginning of, of, of, of America cashing a check on the future and that they're not sure how they're going to pay back. And so in some ways, that's what the adults kind of do in Griffin's world. So, yeah, deregulated parenting, which is, of course, like, you know, the things that Griffin does that I did in my childhood in America, I think are unimaginable to parent, to allowing parents, Parents allowing their kids to do.
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Listener
Now I'm wondering about the age of 14. Griffin's 14. I was 14 in 1980. I remember.
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Adam Ross
Yes.
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Listener
I grew up in Jersey.
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Adam Ross
Yes.
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Listener
You wish you could be a kid in New York when you were 14. What is it about being 14 in New York at this time?
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WNYC Studios
Well.
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Adam Ross
That'S such a great question because it is usually for most kids, such a pivotal year in terms of moving from simply taking the world as it is to beginning to question it, which, if you look at the arc of Griffin's. I mean, I won't spoil it for you, Alison.
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Listener
Thank you.
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Adam Ross
But if you look at, if you, if you look at the arc of Griffin's, of his, you can spoil it.
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Listener
It's okay.
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Adam Ross
Well, I mean, my job. I mean, he, he begins to learn how to say no to certain things. And, and, and part of that is. Is. Is him beginning to have a critical posture toward these things that are happening to him that are. That are. That are terrible.
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Listener
Yeah.
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Adam Ross
And. And he begins to learn how to protect himself, which is why, I mean. I mean, what's his name? His name is Griffin.
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WNYC Studios
What's a griffin?
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Adam Ross
A griffin in mythology is a protect. Is a monster that protects valuable things. And so part of what Griffin is learning to do in his sort of monstrous transformation is learning how to protect himself. And so to me, that's what 14 is. Because, you know, you see strange things, but you start to come up with a language for both, you know, your own experience and a language for your own boundaries and sense of self. You're just beginning. I mean, that's how we leave Griffin in the novel. He's just beginning to articulate who he is and what he values.
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Listener
We are talking about the novel Play World by Adam Ross. I'm gonna ask you to read the prologue for us.
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Adam Ross
Sure.
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Alison Stewart
I've got my book, too.
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WNYC Studios
Prologue in the fall of 1980, when I was 14, a friend of my.
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Adam Ross
Parents named Naomi Shaw fell in love with me.
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WNYC Studios
She was 36, a mother of two.
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Adam Ross
And married to a wealthy man.
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WNYC Studios
Like so many things that happened to.
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Adam Ross
Me that year, it didn't seem strange at the time.
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WNYC Studios
Two decades later, when I finally told.
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Adam Ross
My mother we were on Long island.
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WNYC Studios
Taking a walk on the beach, she stopped, stunned, and said, but she was such an ugly woman. The remark wasn't as petty as it sounds. If I was aware of it, then it neither repulsed me nor affected my feelings for Naomi.
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Adam Ross
It was just a thing I took.
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WNYC Studios
For granted, like the color of her hair. Wiry and ashen, it had the shading but not the shimmer of pigeon feathers. Naomi kept it long so that it fell past her shoulders. I knew it by touch, for my face was often buried in it. Only later did I wonder if she.
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Adam Ross
Considered herself unattractive because she always wore.
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WNYC Studios
Sunglasses, as if to hide her face. Large gold frames with blue tinted prescription lenses. When we were driving together, which was often that year, she'd allow these to slide down her nose and then look at me over their bridge. She might have considered this pose winning, but it was more likely to see me better. Her mouth often hung slightly open, her lower teeth were uneven, and her tongue, which pressed against them, always tasted of coffee. Naomi's car was a Silver Mercedes sedan, 300 SD, along with Turbo diesel, nickel plated on the back that made a deep hum when she drove. The interior, enormous in my mind's eye, was tricked out with glossy wood paneling and white leather back seats so wide and Legroom so ample they made the driver appear to be far away. It was in this car that Naomi and I talked most often. We'd park, and then she'd lean across the armrest to press her cheek to mine, and I'd sometimes allow her to kiss me. Other times we'd move to the back. Lying there with Naomi, her nose nuzzled to my neck, I'd stare at the ceiling's dotted fabric until the pattern seemed to detach and drift like a starred sky. This car was her prized possession, and like many commuters, she had turned the machine into an extension of her body. Her left thumb lightly hooked the wheel at 8 o'clock when traffic was moving, her fingertips sliding to 11. When it was slow, she preferred to sit slightly reclined, her free hand spread on her inner thigh, though after she lost her pinky the following summer, and even after being fitted with a prosthesis, she kept it tucked away. I was worried you'd think it was disgusting, she said, the digit hidden between the seat and her hip. She'd bought herself a diamond ring to hide the seam, and for the most part the likeness was uncanny, but at certain angles you could tell the cuticle's line was too smooth, the nail's pale crescent too creamy to match the others, like my father's fake teeth, which he occasionally left lying around our apartment. I was fascinated by it, though my curiosity wasn't morbid. I was a child actor, you see, a student of all forms of dissembling and had long ago found my greatest subject to be adults.
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Listener
That's Adam Rost reading from his new novel Play World. Griffin makes a move on Naomi at a family party.
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Alison Stewart
Why is he so bold in that moment?
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Adam Ross
Because he has no idea what he's doing. Because I think Griffin's great talent is for cosplaying adulthood. Griffin's great talent is also cosplaying childhood.
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WNYC Studios
And he can toggle between those roles.
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Adam Ross
But because he doesn't know what kind of deep waters he's in, he doesn't realize that in the heat of Naomi's initial attention at this party, because he's kind of an attention starved kid, as I think, again, a lot of Gen X kids were in weird ways. They weren't starved for friendship, but they were starved, I think, for a certain kind of parental attention he performs himself and he knows that maybe this is what he should be doing. But he almost forgets he's 14.
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Alison Stewart
Is that because he's an actor? Is that why he's performing so much?
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Adam Ross
Yeah, I think he's had success as an actor by. I mean, what is a child actor?
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WNYC Studios
Actor, generally speaking, does not have any.
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Adam Ross
Kind of sense of technique.
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WNYC Studios
A child actor, generally speaking, is comfortable being him or herself in front of the camera.
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Alison Stewart
And having some charisma.
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Adam Ross
And having. Yeah, and having some charisma, which Griffin.
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WNYC Studios
Which Griffin does have.
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Adam Ross
But. But, but. But again, there's not any self consciousness. And so he unwittingly. He unwittingly steps into her line of sight in ways that he's not prepared for. And going back to your earlier question, Alison, you know, he's also becoming a young man. And he's described in the novel. I mean, he's a handsome young man. And so being on the cusp of adulthood, I think he signals to her a certain kind of childhood that maybe.
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WNYC Studios
She feels like she's lost because she's.
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Adam Ross
In an unhappy marriage. And so, boom, unwittingly, the attraction is established.
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WNYC Studios
They give each other something.
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Adam Ross
She gives him attention, which he desperately needs, and he kind of gives her back a kind of innocence and a kind of passion. If, you know, as gray. As gray an area as it is. He does.
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Alison Stewart
But Naomi really likes to listen to him.
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Adam Ross
She does.
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Alison Stewart
What does she get out of listening to him?
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WNYC Studios
Well, I mean, I think that what.
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Adam Ross
She gets out of it is openness. And actually, I think at some point in the novel, as I recall in.
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WNYC Studios
Part one, she says to him, you.
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Adam Ross
Know, I really appreciate what an open book you are. And I think for Naomi in Look, there's no worse thing to suffer than loneliness in marriage. To me, it's one of the most.
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WNYC Studios
Acute forms of loneliness.
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Adam Ross
Right. And that's what I think she's suffering. And so she, too, is so available to that kind of intimacy of just. Of just. Of a young boy man just sharing everything. And that's how they start to get into trouble. That's how she lures him in some ways into forms of trouble. Because, you know, of course, it's predation. You know, I would never want the gray facts, the ambiguous facts of their relationship to muddle the fact that what she's doing is she's taking advantage of a situation. She's the adult. She recognizes that he's vulnerable, but she develops feelings for him.
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Listener
We learn early on in the book that when Griffin was little, he accidentally caused an apartment in a fire that destroyed all the family belongings. Yes, he killed the cat.
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Adam Ross
Yes, the cat.
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WNYC Studios
Spoiler.
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Listener
Spoiler. How do you think this affects Griffin in his teenage years?
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Adam Ross
Okay, I do just want to say there were certain People who read early versions of the novel and they were like, you killed the cat. How dare you kill the cat? So you definitely found, like, who are cat lovers and who are dog lovers. But how do I think it affects Griffin? I mean, what it does is Griffin has two things.
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WNYC Studios
He has an enormous sense of guilt and responsibility.
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Adam Ross
But also the most important thing is that the way in which his father in particular handles Griffin understanding what he did in an age where maybe it's.
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WNYC Studios
Really too early for Griffin to understand.
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Adam Ross
What he did, or the way in which his father kind of foists responsibility for that event on him. What it does, and this is something that happens in a lot of trauma, is it kind of.
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WNYC Studios
It peels Griffin away from himself.
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Adam Ross
He disengages as a kind of, I think, defensive reaction from his own feelings. And that detachment, that feeling of detachment from his own feelings is again, one of the novels, I think, most important arcs, which is, is he going to, you know, reconnect with himself? Because, because his acting, his acting in real life, you know, when he plays.
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WNYC Studios
Himself in real life, that is a defensive strategy.
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Adam Ross
That is, that is, that is a. That is, that is chameleonic. That is, you know, in all the.
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WNYC Studios
Oceanic imagery that's in Playworld.
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Adam Ross
That's, that's.
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WNYC Studios
He's like a cuttlefish.
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Adam Ross
You know, he just can disappear into background. That's what his family of origin has taught him because of something he wasn't responsible for. I mean, if you leave out candles, lit candles, your kid is gonna play pretend and maybe do something unwittingly bad, but he learns how to feel his feelings without fear of retribution.
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Listener
This amazing scene where they all go to the same therapist, like in half hour slots. What does it say about the family that they go to the same therapist?
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Adam Ross
Oh, my God. You know, it's so funny. Last night I was talking with a friend who. Both her parents, she's my age and both her parents were therapists. And it really was, she was like. It was the exact same thing when I was that age where, where our.
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WNYC Studios
Therapists were constantly socializing with their analysis.
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Adam Ross
And they were at parties. And so again, what does it do? I mean, I think, I think that one of the things I'm trying to capture, it's this, it's this double edged sword thing. And it goes like this, like, like, you know, Alison, like back in the day, we didn't have these language of boundaries, this language of boundaries. You know, we did, we didn't, we didn't. We didn't know what to call some of these things. And. And yet.
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WNYC Studios
And yet, at the same time.
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Adam Ross
You.
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Listener
Know, you knew it wasn't right. What are you trying?
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Adam Ross
Well, I mean, I mean, I mean, no, no, it's not that it wasn't right. It's just that on the continuum of, like, of the language we have for development, like, we didn't. We didn't think that that was, like, something you should or shouldn't be doing. And so, again, what does that do that makes Griffin, and especially his brother Oren, who doesn't trust anybody. It's a miseducation in what you reveal, what you don't reveal. And so that's another way in which the boys, because of this crazy world where they know that they're quote, unquote, being analyzed by their parents, best friend. It makes them hide things.
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Alison Stewart
Where'd the name Oren come from?
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Adam Ross
Oh, gosh. You know, I just, you know, the name Oren, I just love the music of it, you know, and that's. That's part of the, you know, there are, you know, when Griffin, later in the book, falls in love with a girl his own age, her name is Amanda. And the name Amanda means, you know, something worthy of being protected. Right. So there's real symbolism there. But there are certain characters, like Almoretti, you know, Tanner Potts, they're just names that have a certain musical quality that you, as an author, because you're going to live with them for years, you just like to say an Orin. It's just. I don't know, it's just a. It's both a strong name and it's. And it's. And it's. And it's. It's a musically beautiful name. And. And Orin's like that. I mean, Orin is this kid who has to be hard, but you learn throughout the novel that his hardness was once kind of soft, like his name is. So, I mean, I'm making it sound like I really thought it through. I just. I just love the name, you know.
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Alison Stewart
I want to get one more thing in before we run out of time. Is his wrestling coach. He's really involved with wrestling.
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Adam Ross
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
There's a lot that goes on there. You write about wrestling in such vivid detail. Did you wrestle?
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Adam Ross
I'm gonna brag on myself. I was a New York state champion wrestler in high school. Yes. Yes. So I wrestled for six years in high school, and now I do jiu jitsu, and I've been doing jiu jitsu for eight years.
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Alison Stewart
What does wrestling mean to Griffin?
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Adam Ross
Wrestling is the place where there is no acting, there is no dissembling. Wrestling is the, is the gladiatorial pit.
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WNYC Studios
Where nobody can pretend to be anything.
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Adam Ross
Other than they are.
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WNYC Studios
And so Griffin relishes this space where.
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Adam Ross
He'S pitted against somebody his weight, his, sometimes his weight. Well, sometimes his weight, you know, if he makes weight. But, but, but it's pitted against somebody where who he is is revealed to.
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WNYC Studios
Him in the contest.
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Adam Ross
And so he is passionate about this.
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WNYC Studios
But it's also the place, if you.
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Adam Ross
Think about his sort of, you know, original trauma, it's the place where he can possibly become adept enough to overpower.
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WNYC Studios
These monsters that are all around him.
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Adam Ross
But his, but, but you know, he does have an abusive wrestling coach and that's, and, and that's another adult character in a book that also touches on D and D. Yes, it is an.
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Alison Stewart
Entire chapter called Dungeons and Dragons.
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Adam Ross
That's right. It's, you know, he's got to fight monsters. And so, and so when you wrestle, you fight monsters, you know, when, but, but, but sometimes in life you fight other kinds of monsters.
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Alison Stewart
Adam Ross, we've been talking to him.
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Listener
About his new novel Play World.
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Alison Stewart
He will be speaking tonight at 6:30 at McNally Jackson at the seaport location. It's really nice to have you back in studio. You're in Tennessee now.
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Adam Ross
I've been in Nashville, Tennessee since 1995 and I'm the editor in chief of the Suwannee Review Literary magazine, which is the oldest literary magazine in America.
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Alison Stewart
FA Fant.
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Listener
FA Fan. Thanks for coming by.
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Adam Ross
Thanks.
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Alison Stewart
Allison Lakeisha Benjamin is New York born.
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Listener
And raised alto saxophonist who is nominated.
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Alison Stewart
For two Grammys this year.
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Listener
Coming up, she'll join us in studio with her band for a special live performance that comes up next right after the news headlines.
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