On his grandmother's faith and political beliefs
"What [a] tormenting situation, to be an intellectual woman of her generation and grow up with this enormous identity, but it was an identity founded on belief that she couldn't sustain. She was violently secular. She loved culture and she loved books and all sorts of things that Jews care for, but she couldn't believe in the Jewish God, or any God, and she felt terrible about it.
"She felt enraged that other people didn't see the obviousness all at once, but she substituted, I think, at some point, other kinds of beliefs — belief in ... humanism, and I think if she was at any point seriously a Communist ... that was a belief. And as anybody who studied the history of communist movements knows ... it's analogous [to religion]; it draws passion out of people and sometimes irrational passion.
"So all of these things are muddled up for her. And maybe some of those later beliefs become disappointed, violently disappointed, as well. Other gods die: The god [of] literature fails her, the god of socialism fails her.
" ... I was very interested in the book in writing ... about someone who was so into so many kinds of theoretical freedoms. She embraced such diversity. ... Diversity was heroic to her."
On growing up on a commune where nudity was common
"You shouldn't overlook the human ability to partition things and make special categories and create exemptions.
" ... For me there were the typical teenage fascinations with the mysteries of the bodies of the girls I was going to school with, where to glimpse a bra strap might've blown my mind. And at the same time, I'd go home and I'd go up to my dad's studio and sit there with him and draw from a naked model for a few hours. But that was art; that was another thing.
"Or I might take a shower with my cousin at her commune because they had a group shower and that was interesting to me, too, and probably titillating. But I kept these things very tightly organized in order to function. So each thing was its own separate reality."
The Record
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