Q&A

Q: You set IN THIS RAIN at the intersection of politics, real estate development, and crime. Why?

A: It's a broad intersection. Lots of room to manuever.

Q: The book has a large cast, ranging from street kids to the Mayor of the City of New York. Did you need so many people to tell this story?

A: One of the features of life in a large city is that anything that happens involves a lot of people. When you go to your piano lesson there'll be fifty people on the bus and twenty-seven more you pass between the bus stop and your piano teacher's apartment. And that's in your life as a private citizen. The story in IN THIS RAIN is the story of public citizens and public events, and how they relate to private citizens and their lives.

Q: You were an architect in New York City for years. Do your experiences in that field find their way into IN THIS RAIN?

A: Absolutely. The physical fabric of the city is important to me, and endlessly fascinating. I tried to make IN THIS RAIN as rich in New York's sensory impressions as I could.

Q: Well, it's very rich. Anything specific?

A: Yes: an astounding encounter I had with members of the local community when my firm was working on an addition to a school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, years ago. The original building was a red-brick classical structure of the kind New York built for schools at the turn of the last century. We thought it was a handsome building, though it needed repair, and we planned a harmonious addition, respectful of the original and of the surrounding built context -- also red brick, tall windows, sloped roof, that sort of thing. The public agency client had us present the proposed design to community representatives.

They hated it.

They told us they thought the original building was a witch's castle and they didn't want any more of that: they wanted glass, steel, openness, a building that would tell their kids they were welcome in the 21st century. I was blown away: these people -- bus drivers and nurse's aides -- were reading architecture. They were taking meaning from design without any education in how that's done. And the meaning they were taking was different from what we'd intended. That taught me that one of the things we'd been told in architecture school was true: buildings speak in very powerful voices. And that another wasn't: a person has to be taught the language they speak in order to understand them.

Q: That's not true?

A: These bus drivers and nurse's aides understood perfectly.

Q: Did you alter your design?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you have to do much research for IN THIS RAIN, or was it all from your experience?

A: The construction and development details were from experience. But I did my usual neighborhood research. I won't write about a place I haven't been to, and when the nature of the place is an important focus of the book, as the character of Harlem was in this case, I spend a lot of time there.

Q: "The character of Harlem" -- it's interesting that you put it that way, because Harlem itself does seem almost to be a character in IN THIS RAIN. As do City Hall, Sutton Place, and upstate New York.

A: I meant them to. The theme of IN THIS RAIN is in some ways the relation of places to people, how we shape our environment and how it shapes us.

Q: There's darkness, greed and corruption in IN THIS RAIN, but also what Booklist called "An exuberant celebration of the rainbow city in all its crime-drenched glory." Did you mean to be celebrating?

A: I think of this book as my love letter to New York. But it's the kind of letter you write when you're way past "My beloved is perfect" and also past "If you snore again tonight I'll run away screaming." It's the letter you write when you know very well your beloved's faults and you're in love beyond reason anyhow. That's my relationship to New York.