Amy Sohn is the well known writer of the column Naked City for New York magazine. Her first novel, Run Catch Kiss, was released in 1999 and is about the adventures of a young woman named Ariel Steiner, who lives in New York and writes a raunchy column called "Run Catch Kiss" for City Week.
Her latest book is My Old Man. Its about former rabbinical student Rachel Block, who is now a bartender in Cobble Hill, and her Brooklyn neighborhood. Rachel has always been the perfect daughter, getting straight A's and dating nice Jewish boys, until she falls in love with Hank Powell, an iconoclastic screenwriter twice her age who is NOT JEWISH.
Check out the official website of Amy Sohn
Daniel Robert Epstein: Happy Birthday!
Amy Sohn: Thank you.
DRE: Youre welcome.
AS: My mom sent me an email and she didnt wish me a happy birthday, so I asked her about that. She said that she was saving it until she gave me a present. I dont understand the logic.
DRE: Sounds like she forgot your birthday.
AS: No, shes a good mother. Do you have a recorder attached to your phone?
DRE: Yes.
AS: Do you ever use it on people and they dont know it?
DRE: A few weeks ago, there was a fight in my family and I was a big part of it. My sister was ranting at me over the phone, so I decided to record some of it. I might play some of it for her kids in 20 years.
AS: I have one too and Ive left it on by accident and then heard how I am in conversations. Its really embarrassing when you hear yourself not listening or constantly interrupting.
DRE: How autobiographical is My Old Man?
AS: 69 percent.
DRE: Was that figured out by statisticians at MIT?
AS: If you want a more elaborate answer I can elaborate on it.
DRE: Were you a rabbinical student?
AS: That I made up. Though at one point I was considering becoming a rabbi.
DRE: Like all good Jews from Brooklyn.
AS: I was also president of my temple youth group. I was involved with the city region federation of my temple youth, which was nicknamed Crafty, which I thought was an unfortunate name, since crafty is a stereotype assigned to Jews. I was very active when I was a teenager and probably a lot of it was because I was interested in Jewish guys.
DRE: Are you not interested in Jewish guys anymore?
AS: Im married to a gentile.
DRE: An NJ?
AS: A civilian.
DRE: Is NJ for real?
AS: The first time I heard it was when someone said it to me a couple of years ago. An older woman was referring to the new girlfriend of a relative. She leaned over and whispered Shes NJ.
DRE: Is your husband way older than you?
AS: Hes a little older than me, but nothing in the book is based on him. It was nearly finished when I met him. Maybe in the sense that Hank Powell is stubbornly his own person and refuses to be told what to do by anybody. My husband is definitely that way. Hes not a joiner and I am a big joiner.
DRE: In what way?
AS: I like parties, socializing in large groups and I like meetings.
DRE: Why?
AS: Well when youre self employed and work alone, all of that stuff is fun. We have very different views about family. I feel obligated to my family and I love getting together with them. If he had his way, wed see family a total of once or twice a year including his side and my side.
DRE: Was there a reason there was such a long break between your books?
AS: Its very hard to start the second novel. I did write a book in-between which was the companion guide to Sex in the City. My actual output comes to be a book every two years. It took me a long time to figure out what to write about after Run Catch Kiss. Part of it was that I didnt want to do the same thing again or do a sequel. I needed to find a plot and a subplot. It evolved pretty organically because I had a number of relationships with older guys so I started thinking about that as a theme. My own relationship with my father had always been a theme in my writing. Ive also moved to Cobble Hill in March 2001 which is when I started writing this. Cobble Hill is this neighborhood that is a weird combination where you have this young family element and also this hipster single element, so I feel caught between the two.
DRE: One critic wrote of the book This family is so dysfunctional it's enough to make Portnoy complain.
AS: Yeah, that review was pretty negative. In the New York Times Book Review it said that I take father/daughter relationships to a place you never wanted them to go. I saw those sentences isolated as pretty good.
DRE: How does doing your column influence the book?
AS: I think that writing the column influenced the book in that it helped me become a better researcher, as the second novel took more research. I learned some of the tools of how to do that and I interviewed a lot of people for the book in the way that I interview people for the column. Also, I did this column about new moms and there is this passage in the new book where Rachel is mocking all the uber-moms in her neighborhood. This whole Stepford culture of new mommyhood is something Ive been thinking about for a while. They are so holy about motherhood which seems to be very much a product of these times. Mothers used to be so ho-hum and not so proud of it. Maybe that comes out of a lot of women who left their careers to be a mom and now have to find a way to make motherhood their new job so they discuss it as obsessively as they would a job in the workplace. I wrote a column about dating a single father and that is obviously a theme of the book. You would have to be an obsessive reader of all my columns and my book to notice everything. Writing the novel provided me with a lot more independence and solitude than my column. On the days I was writing my column, it was a pain to go out and research and meet the deadlines, but then I could spend a couple of hours working on my book in the fantasy of my own mind.
DRE: Are you working on another book?
AS: I havent started my next novel yet, but I am working on a television project, which I cant say much more about except that it deals with singlehood and couplehood. Im also working on an original screenplay which is a romantic comedy. Today in fact My Old Man is being sent to a bunch of Hollywood studios with a writer/director attached. There could be news about it in the next couple of weeks. My dream who I would want to play Rachel would be Maggie Gyllenhaal or Zooey Deschanel.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Her latest book is My Old Man. Its about former rabbinical student Rachel Block, who is now a bartender in Cobble Hill, and her Brooklyn neighborhood. Rachel has always been the perfect daughter, getting straight A's and dating nice Jewish boys, until she falls in love with Hank Powell, an iconoclastic screenwriter twice her age who is NOT JEWISH.
Check out the official website of Amy Sohn
Daniel Robert Epstein: Happy Birthday!
Amy Sohn: Thank you.
DRE: Youre welcome.
AS: My mom sent me an email and she didnt wish me a happy birthday, so I asked her about that. She said that she was saving it until she gave me a present. I dont understand the logic.
DRE: Sounds like she forgot your birthday.
AS: No, shes a good mother. Do you have a recorder attached to your phone?
DRE: Yes.
AS: Do you ever use it on people and they dont know it?
DRE: A few weeks ago, there was a fight in my family and I was a big part of it. My sister was ranting at me over the phone, so I decided to record some of it. I might play some of it for her kids in 20 years.
AS: I have one too and Ive left it on by accident and then heard how I am in conversations. Its really embarrassing when you hear yourself not listening or constantly interrupting.
DRE: How autobiographical is My Old Man?
AS: 69 percent.
DRE: Was that figured out by statisticians at MIT?
AS: If you want a more elaborate answer I can elaborate on it.
DRE: Were you a rabbinical student?
AS: That I made up. Though at one point I was considering becoming a rabbi.
DRE: Like all good Jews from Brooklyn.
AS: I was also president of my temple youth group. I was involved with the city region federation of my temple youth, which was nicknamed Crafty, which I thought was an unfortunate name, since crafty is a stereotype assigned to Jews. I was very active when I was a teenager and probably a lot of it was because I was interested in Jewish guys.
DRE: Are you not interested in Jewish guys anymore?
AS: Im married to a gentile.
DRE: An NJ?
AS: A civilian.
DRE: Is NJ for real?
AS: The first time I heard it was when someone said it to me a couple of years ago. An older woman was referring to the new girlfriend of a relative. She leaned over and whispered Shes NJ.
DRE: Is your husband way older than you?
AS: Hes a little older than me, but nothing in the book is based on him. It was nearly finished when I met him. Maybe in the sense that Hank Powell is stubbornly his own person and refuses to be told what to do by anybody. My husband is definitely that way. Hes not a joiner and I am a big joiner.
DRE: In what way?
AS: I like parties, socializing in large groups and I like meetings.
DRE: Why?
AS: Well when youre self employed and work alone, all of that stuff is fun. We have very different views about family. I feel obligated to my family and I love getting together with them. If he had his way, wed see family a total of once or twice a year including his side and my side.
DRE: Was there a reason there was such a long break between your books?
AS: Its very hard to start the second novel. I did write a book in-between which was the companion guide to Sex in the City. My actual output comes to be a book every two years. It took me a long time to figure out what to write about after Run Catch Kiss. Part of it was that I didnt want to do the same thing again or do a sequel. I needed to find a plot and a subplot. It evolved pretty organically because I had a number of relationships with older guys so I started thinking about that as a theme. My own relationship with my father had always been a theme in my writing. Ive also moved to Cobble Hill in March 2001 which is when I started writing this. Cobble Hill is this neighborhood that is a weird combination where you have this young family element and also this hipster single element, so I feel caught between the two.
DRE: One critic wrote of the book This family is so dysfunctional it's enough to make Portnoy complain.
AS: Yeah, that review was pretty negative. In the New York Times Book Review it said that I take father/daughter relationships to a place you never wanted them to go. I saw those sentences isolated as pretty good.
DRE: How does doing your column influence the book?
AS: I think that writing the column influenced the book in that it helped me become a better researcher, as the second novel took more research. I learned some of the tools of how to do that and I interviewed a lot of people for the book in the way that I interview people for the column. Also, I did this column about new moms and there is this passage in the new book where Rachel is mocking all the uber-moms in her neighborhood. This whole Stepford culture of new mommyhood is something Ive been thinking about for a while. They are so holy about motherhood which seems to be very much a product of these times. Mothers used to be so ho-hum and not so proud of it. Maybe that comes out of a lot of women who left their careers to be a mom and now have to find a way to make motherhood their new job so they discuss it as obsessively as they would a job in the workplace. I wrote a column about dating a single father and that is obviously a theme of the book. You would have to be an obsessive reader of all my columns and my book to notice everything. Writing the novel provided me with a lot more independence and solitude than my column. On the days I was writing my column, it was a pain to go out and research and meet the deadlines, but then I could spend a couple of hours working on my book in the fantasy of my own mind.
DRE: Are you working on another book?
AS: I havent started my next novel yet, but I am working on a television project, which I cant say much more about except that it deals with singlehood and couplehood. Im also working on an original screenplay which is a romantic comedy. Today in fact My Old Man is being sent to a bunch of Hollywood studios with a writer/director attached. There could be news about it in the next couple of weeks. My dream who I would want to play Rachel would be Maggie Gyllenhaal or Zooey Deschanel.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
Is every girls dream to work for a crazy company in new york and have two hour long lunches drinking Appletinis? Not to say it's conclusive proof, but the few girls I've met who've worked in PR or whathaveyou in NY hated it.
The only thing that is required to substantiate happiness in New York is money... All of the extra fluff, the posh job, the collumn, is just icing on the cake to add flavour to the story. the happy ending is always the big catch man, the audacious bad boy who's too bad to stay away from, the Cosmos, and the Manolo Blahnik shoes.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is so getting it's makeover now.
[Edited on Nov 07, 2004 by Sadistic_Miike]