New York City’s reigning nightlife impresario may well be Paul Holdengräber, director of public programs at the 42nd Street Library. His cheerfully inclusive “LIVE from the NYPL” interview series blasts away fusty cultural assumptions by featuring Patti Smith as well as Zadie Smith and such unlikely pairings as Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens. Holdengräber tunnels under the withered call-and-response rituals that shape most Q&As to take his onstage conversations to deeply emotional, invariably surprising places.
Born in Houston, Texas, to Austrian immigrant parents, Holdengräber was founder and director of the Institute for Art & Culture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. In 2003, he was named a chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2010 he received the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art. Holdengräber spoke with CityArts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, exactly “547 steps away” from his Fort Greene home. [Elena Oumano]
Paul Holdengräber, host of “LIVE from the NYPL.”. Photo by Jocelyn Chase
Paul Holdengräber: Yes. A little over seven years ago, the then-president of the New York Public Library, Paul LeClerc, asked me to oxygenate the library, which really impressed me. Ever since then, my goal has been to make the lions roar, as I’ve repeated 5,432 times, make a heavy institution levitate, make it dance—make it rock and roll when we have Patti Smith; rap when we have Jay-Z; or God knows what when we have Harry Belafonte. It’s important that all and everything under our roof is represented in some way, and we have much more than books. We have ideas we need to animate.
So this is a dream job in a way, and it’s partly a job I created in a dream. I created it in the way I live and work. I made it clear that the most important thing was creating a series that would interest much of New York—where we’ll start, as we did with 500 names on an email list and now have 25,000—and, hopefully, bring the average age from 63 to 36.
I like the fact that, in a way, my job is antithetical to what we believe a library is. But it’s the only hope because what are libraries for today? To some extent they’re for the exchange of ideas, for forms of congregation that bring people together. They are certainly not the way people do research any more. So my role is to excite people to think, to make them discover something new each and every time and, in the process, also myself.
It’s important to keep surprising oneself, that’s what I’m really after. For example, what did I know about Jay-Z? Nothing. I approach all these things with the euphoria of ignorance.
I notice interviewers often interrupt and don’t have the patience to sit while the person pauses.
One of the most important parts is to listen, slow things down and be silent—seeing what happens when nothing seems to be happening. A lot does happen. It’s anguishing to be quiet. Talking is much easier. At one moment, Colm Tóibín and I were talking about literature and learning by heart and I asked, “Colm, do you know any poems by heart?” He said, “What?” “Do you know any poems by heart?” After nine seconds of silence, he turned to the audience and recited a Sylvia Plath poem. After that, all I could do was say, “Thank you very much.” It was amazing, staggering.
Your series has been described as “quirky,” which to me reflects a resistance some people have to eclecticism and a holding on to arbitrary and pointless differences between high- and lowbrow.
They are arbitrary and pointless because we don’t think this way. The constructions are made by organizations and institutions, but not if we let our mind and soul and heart think freely. I love this quote of Napoleon’s regarding one of his generals: “He knew everything but nothing else.” It’s dangerous to live that way.
When you read a great book, you wonder, who is this person? On one level, you feel you know them intimately but you want to know more—are you standing in for the audience that wants to know more?
I am the curator of public curiosity. It’s important to be the stand-in for what I imagine to be the public curiosity, ask questions I imagine the audience will have to satisfy the general curiosity and, hopefully, ask questions people didn’t even ask themselves but would want an answer to. And I don’t always speak to people about what they’re known for. I’ve had discussions with Werner Herzog about everything, sometimes everything but film. It basically means I become the vessel of my subjects.
Vassal or vessel?
In some ways both. In some ways I am surrounded by the voices of others. But I’m unlike some people who interview; I do like my own personality to come through, maybe more. One’s body comes into play. I’m not neutral; I’m deeply subjective in some way as I try to be the spokesperson for the public curiosity that’s in the room. Unlike some people, I don’t believe people are less interested now and there’s a dumbing down. If you offer people substance, they actually want more. People don’t just want to be fed; they want to be nourished. There’s a way of nourishing them, there’s a way of thinking, reading, watching, smelling.
When you prepare for an interview, do you think of specific questions?
I do, but I think more of the arc of a conversation. Where do I begin, where do I end?—and what happens in between. God knows. I try to get minimally involved with fear of what the next question is. You can get so anxious about “and, and,”—I’d love when I grow up to have a conversation without any notes.
I’m not there yet. To see what happens, respond to what the person is saying rather than what you’ve prepared. Maybe it’s questioning in the deeper sense of question—the notion of quest, the notion of trying to go deep into a subject.
Sometimes, actually, my job is deeply rooted in dissatisfaction. You do not feel content, it’s not working, and so what? Like any collector you continue, and you hope that the next conversation is better. You have to try. My dissatisfaction comes from the notion of a platonic ideal of the perfect conversation that hasn’t yet happened; it’s always in progress.
LIVE from the NYPL features Harry Belafonte Oct. 12 and Def Jam founders Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin Oct. 14.
