July 8, 2024 • 45 mins
This week, Martha talks to best-selling author Ann Leary about letting go of the need to be “nice,” a subject Ann explores in the title essay of her new book, “I’ve Tried Being Nice.” Following a passive-aggressive neighborhood squabble, this wry, witty author made the abrupt decision to stop being a people pleaser. She shares with Martha how that came about, plus how she works at her writing and the family stories that have helped shape it. From a nomadic childhood to her marriage to actor Denis Leary, Ann’s observations make for funny, relatable books – and a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with Martha.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Today's podcast is with my friend and very close neighbor,
And Leary. But before we start, I just want to
tell you what we were doing. I picked her up
at the gate, which is around the corner from her house.
There's another gate in between her house and my house,
but I don't unlock that gate even for Anne, and
(00:24):
so I made her go all the way around to
the next gate, and then we drove in my Polaris
down to the Maple Avenue house where we record this podcast.
But on the way we stopped and we weeded, and
I did a little description of the maple woodland and
I think I hopefully she learned a little bit about
(00:44):
Japanese maple trees. But then she said she loves tweed.
So Ann Leary's going to come back and weed some
more this afternoon after our podcast. But we're here to
talk about Anne's writing, about Anne's life and about her
perspective online and living. The new book that we are
also going to focus on is entitled I've Tried Being Nice.
(01:07):
There's some very funny things in this book, and I
think that we should start with Anne Leary reading one
little little paragraph that she wrote about her neighbor Martha Stewart. Okay,
can you read that? Sure?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And thank you so much, Martha.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I just want to say that just riding on Martha's
Polaris through her property is actually a wonderful way to
spend a morning. I know you've probably already been to pilates,
ridden two horses.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
No, I didn't ride, but I did go to pilates.
I have moved a lot of plants. I've been cleaning
out the vegetable greenhouse, and I'm like, you, busy, busy,
busy all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
You're more busy than I am.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I have a feeling you've also maybe started a new
business and maybe negotiated a truth in the Middle East
this morning.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I wouldn't that be good if I could?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I think you could, Martha.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Would I would like to try. I would like to
ring bring some next first. Okay, so read that little,
Read that little.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
This book is called I Tried Being Nice. It's an
essay collection. I was going to call it the Unauthorized
Biography of Martha Stewart because I wanted it to be
a bestseller, but it's It actually mentions Martha once. But
the title essay is about a problem I had with
Martha and I are neighbors, but was a different neighbor,
and I finally reached a breaking point and actually had
(02:20):
to say the words, look, I've tried being nice. This
is about reaching a certain age. We went gray early
in my family. My daughter thinks she found her first
gray hair at age twelve.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I found on my twenties.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
But anyway, during COVID, I decided I would grow up
my gray because I saw all these silver foxes, you know,
that were supermodels that had gray hair, and I thought
I would look like them. So I grew it out.
Took a couple of years. And then I'll also add
I was hit on a lot when I had gray hair,
more than when I was in my twenties.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I'd have I'd be out.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Getting the mail and you know, a guy would be
jogging pass. You'd circle back, ask me, you know what
was going on?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
People at gym?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
And then I realized all this attention I was receiving
from all these men, from men eighty to one hundred
years old. They thought I was like a super fit
former suffragist.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So anyway, my friend, this is what I wrote about you.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
You WI helped me very much in changing my perspective
of how I looked. My friend Martha said to me
one day, why don't you color your hair? I told
her that I was sick of coloring it, and I
always admired women with wonderful gray hair. I think it's
very attractive on certain women. I said it is, Martha said,
(03:34):
I just don't think you're one of those women. Martha
is the busiest person I've ever met, and she doesn't
have time for bullshit, so she's very direct, and she
also loves fixing things that aren't working.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well. See, I do like to fix things that aren't working.
And this title could possibly I've tried, being nice could
apply to my life and just so many other people's
lives that I know. I mean, it's just it's very
funny title, and we do reach a point. I reach
it every single day trying to be nice. I wake
(04:08):
up and say I'm not going to I'm not going
to say anything to anybody today that's not nice, and
then of course, five minutes into the day, I find
something to complain about. But that's that's just life.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It is life, and you're a busy person who has time.
I do do a lot. There's many things that I
talk about in this book besides being nice. I write
about my marriage, about dogs and kids and taking ballroom
dancing classes, traveling. But I do circle back a lot
to kind of exploring what it means to be nice,
and women have extra expectations on us, expecting us to
(04:40):
be nice. I've always experienced you as a nice person.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And I know you're what I think, what some people
think is nice.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Maybe is what I tended to do, especially when I
was younger, which is like people pleasing and trying to
ingratiate myself with others, and that comes from a place
of insecurity.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
And you don't have that, you have comm evidence.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But I know you're nice, and I think a good
sign of a nice person, especially a woman. I know
that you have friends that you've had for decades because
I know them personally, and you have people who have
worked for you for decades.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That to me is an indication of a person's character.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And also of surviving, you know, difficulties with those people
and being able to speak frankly and honestly. Yes, it's
not all just oh you you look so great today.
I can't do that all the time. My friend just
asked me the other night that she told me that
her back was hurting her terribly and she was really
having a hard time. And I said, well, if you
just exercised more and you lost about twenty five pounds,
(05:41):
maybe your back wouldn't hurt so much. And she was
so taken aback. But I'm used to talking to her
like that because because as we get older, you want
to be more frank and more honest and more and
you can't baby everybody all the time, right, And I
love I love that altercation you had with the neighbor.
To describe that altercation.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Okay, so yeah, we had just I've been living here
very long, and there were we The street I live
on is behind Martha's property. It's one of the most
it's a favorite walking street in our town. It's beautiful
and scenic Martha. It's called Maple Avenue, and Martha planted
all these maple trees all along Maple Avenue. It's absolutely stunning.
(06:18):
A lot of people walk with dogs off leash. We
have a few problem dogs, as Martha knows, because they've
actually interrupted broadcasts of hers with their screaming and barking
at the gate. But we have had awfully dogs come
on our property. We have one dog who's not dog friendly.
We had this one woman and I call her doodle
Lady in the book because Simon and Schuster actually made
me change the breed of her dog so I wouldn't
(06:41):
get sued by her. Her dogs kept coming on the property,
and I did the whole you know, it'd be so
nice if your dogs didn't come on the property, and.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
She did, Oh, they're so friendly, don't worry.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
And this went on for you know, a few weeks
of you know, me stopping and saying, coming out and talking,
and then one day the dogs came on and almost
got in a fight with my dog.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I jumped in my car.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I get up at five point thirty, but at noon
I'm often still in my pajamas because I write all morning.
I was in my pajamas. I go racing down Maple
Avenue and then I.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Saw the doodle Lady and didn't know what to say,
so I kept driving.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Then I circled back and I saw they looked uneasy,
because that's kind of scary. She circled back, and then
I rolled down the window, and without thinking, I said, look,
I've tried being nice. The woman actually staggered backwards grabbed
her dog.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
She thought you were going to kill her.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, if those are very powerful words, I learned it's
kind of like when the kids say no offense, but
you know what follows is going to hurt. So that
was the thing, and I write a little bit in
the book. I knew from reading and talking to friends
that when you reach a certain age and I could
say menopause, I understood that you actually stop doing trying
(07:55):
so hard to ingratiate yourself with everybody you meet. But
I thought it would happen gradually. I did know that
one day somebody would spill their coffee on me and
I would apologize to them for them doing that, and
the next day I'd open the door and say, get
off my property. So that's the title essay.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I had a friend who did the same thing. I
gave her permission to I have a lot of roads
on my property. No and they're private and there's no cars,
and you can walk your dogs very nicely for four
miles on my property. So I said to her, oh,
walk your dogs any time, but just make sure they're
unleashes right, And one day she was she let her
dogs off the leash, and my dogs were outside, and
(08:35):
my dogs ran over to her dogs and wanted to,
you know, play roughly with barking, and you know, my
dogs were protective of the property.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Territorialist.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
She called me up and she said, I think you
should euthanize your dogs. Oh my god. And I said,
what are you talking about. You were on my property
with your dogs unleashed, and you could have easily just
gathered them up and walked in the opposite direction if
you had them on a leash. And I said, you're
not welcome here anymore, right, And that was my end
(09:06):
of being nice.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Well that was you were super nice to let her
do that.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, But people, it's both sides of the story. And
that's what I really found interesting about this book. It
is both sides of the story, right, because your patience
gives out at a certain point and right, and the
other people's patients also gives out at a certain point.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And it's a hard transition to make from being the sweetest,
loveliest neighbor in the whole world. Don't ever turn on me,
I'm telling you right.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Now, I would never have reason to. You are a
wonderful neighbor, a very generous, kind friend. I just want
to say, I'm an animal nut. So your chows are
the They're ambassadors for the breed. So for them, I
know how friendly they are. So for anyone to say
that it should be no.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
All of your dogs are horse my feeling and well, anyway,
now we've gotten through them being nice party, and I
just want you want to know who exactly you are.
Anne Leary is a best selling author of six books,
including The Good House, which was made into a feature
film starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kleine. I loved that movie.
(10:14):
Her essay about marriage about her marriage in Trouble was
that your marriage Yeah, was adapted for the Prime video
series Modern Love starring Tina Fay and John Slatterly. Anne
is an animal lover and accomplished equestrian, and I often
see her on the writing trails in Bedford area, up
(10:34):
where we both live. Her latest book, I've Tried Being
Nice is out right now, and it's so fun to
have you come across the street and sit and talk
to me.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I'm so thrilled and I'm loving your setup here.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Do you remember when we first met, when you moved here?
What year was it? When you moved here.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
You know, I think we bought our place in twenty sixteen,
but we did some work and it was around twenty seventeen. Yes,
Muffin dwadle are real estate extraordinary agent brought me over.
I think I had met you at maybe some parties
in the past, but of course you wouldn't remember. But
she brought me over and you were very, very, very lovely,
(11:11):
and soon you had a dinner party and you just
were very welcoming and we were just it was just great.
It's been great getting to know you, and I'm always
learning more about you, which I find you fascinating.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
No, but what's fun is that this neighborhood has really
improved with the new homeowners that are coming, and I'm
so excited about living in Bedford now. When I first
came here, it was really quiet, and the Sunday nights
you just wanted to just go back to New York
with everybody else, because everybody just had this massive exodus
(11:46):
back to back to the city after a pleasant country weekend.
But now more people are staying, they're living out here.
I live out here full time and I commute. I
do the reverse commute to New York And it's kind
of a fabulous thing because I can be in the
city for dinner and get home and wake up with
the roosters crowing in the peacocks squawking, and et cetera,
et cetera. But to have you and Dennis Leary. Anne
(12:09):
is married to the actor Dennis Leary, who's not only
an actor, he's a comedian and he is a writer.
And that's a lot of fun. She has two fabulous children,
grown children. How did you meet Jennis in the first place?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So, Dennis and I.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I met Dennis when I transferred to Emerson College from
Bennington College and I was a writing major and I
was told by the head of the department, I should
take this comedy writing class with this man, Dennis Leary,
who I thought would be in his forties. I was
twenty and then this, so you know, Dennis was a
kind of a ginger, kind of blondish. You guys with
fair skin, they when they're twenty five, they look like
(12:43):
they're fourteen.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Kind of.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
He came in, but he was super good. He was
super cute. Anyway he walked in, I didn't think he
was the teacher. He was the first thing he said
you could smoke in class, and he said, smoke him
if you got him.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, like they say in the military. Anyway, he was
my teach.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Sure, I know it's very scandalous now, but it was
a super fun class. Years later, by the way, I
took the class, I got an a and we actually
started dating right after the class was over.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Not during because that would have been appropriate.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
No, yes, I earned my grade, honestly. But he actually
then we went on a couple of days. He stayed
over one night, and he never left Martha to this day.
It's been forty years. He turned out he didn't really
have a.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Place to live. I didn't know that, so he just
came rat it's in Boston. So we've been through a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
He actually, you know, he was just like a starting
out an open mic comic, and then he kind of
found his stride and became I guess famous after Yeah,
he gave and then so that was fun.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
We got to enjoy that together.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
There's a chapter in my book called Red Carpet Diaries
about our many like mishaps, fumbling along the Red carpet
when we were total rubes at first, and now we
kind of know what we're doing as you obviously know.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And these are twotiful people, and it's with her beautiful
blonde blocks. Now, thank you, mind I don't, but don't
you think you look better with blonde? Absolutely? Martha?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
When I would look at photographs then with my blonde friends,
I would always I was like, who's.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That old lady?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Who's the mother?
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Because it wasn't I didn't have that wonderful shock of
gray or the pet it was white.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
You were right, you know, That's what I was. I
meant to say before. It's not Martha was helping.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Sometimes you know a finach in your teeth and your
friend doesn't tell.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
You, no, I wasn't being a bitch.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I just you weren't the only went by the way.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're prettier than you were letting yourself. Thank you, and
more tried. And how many more men hit on you now?
Is a blonde?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I think now they're in you know I helped, There wasn't.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, I don't know, but they I think it was
mostly these older guys thought she's fit for being nineties.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Well to Dennis, you have two children, yes, how old
they were?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Not really thirty? I had to say that because I
was just thirty a few years ago, Martha.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I I just was thirty not long ago.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
They're wonderful kids.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
And Anne Ann Leary is just I did the math
this morning when I found out when you were born,
and you're just three years older than my daughter, So
I could.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Beat your mother. Well, that's shocking.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And I consider you much more unequal to me. I
think because I consider all my friends more equal to me,
because I like I hang out with younger people.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I do too. I had got people of all ages.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
But I actually think i'm the same age as I
can't guess. People say, but I think you might think
i'm your age because you're so much more active.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Than I am. You do you pack so much more
into a day, and you're so.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
You're playing so much tennis and doing all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I do that. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And I met all your tennis buddies the other night, Yes,
at your performance at the Bedford Playhouse and your husband.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Thank you for coming.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
It was great grade to sit there and hear you
bantered with each other. It was very nice.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It was super fun.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
What is it like living with Dennis who comes and
goes like I.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Mean, he does he's busy.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
He's busy with his career. He's always going to Canada.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah, you know what, I think it might be a
key to We've been married a very long time. We've
been living together a long time and married a long time,
and especially early on in the marriage, I never saw him.
I think that's the key to a successful marriage. I'm
fascinated by him. It's wonderful when he comes home. He's
always works with really interesting people. As you know, Martha,
I'm a bit of a hermit, so I like to
(16:33):
hear what exciting things he's done. But I like to
stay home. But I just find him funny. I think
we just we get along. We have great history together.
We've been together so long. No matter where he is,
he'll call me and say, turn on CNN or or
turn on this channel because it's somebody we both have
a thing because in the past we knew. It's just
(16:53):
fun to have that kind of history. You probably have
friends like that, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
It's just so you were trained as a writer. At
what point did you write your first book? So is
that when you were married.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yes, yes, my first book was called An Innocent Abroad.
It was just you know, borrowed from Mark Twain's book
but I but mine was an innocent comma abroad. It
was about having my son in London by accident. He
was supposed to be born in the United States. But
we went for a weekend, I went into premature labor
and six months later we came home. And it's kind
of how my husband's career was launched. He wrote because
(17:23):
we couldn't leave, he wrote this one man show the
Edinburgh Festival and it got awards and he came back
and did it the Actress Playhouse.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
So that so that was that was fortuitious, Yes, it was,
It actually was.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
It was scary and then it was good because it
all's well, that ends well. You know my son, he's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
He's very he's like seven feet, all the handsomest boys
and a writer.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Also yeah yeah, producer, yeah actually yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
So that but that book I didn't tell anyone, even Dennis.
I wrote like five chapters in an outline and secretly
sent it to this editor who was a friend of
a friend, because I was sure I didn't want the
shame of, you know, saying So it did get published
and then this is I think my sixth book, but.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I usually write fiction.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
These are that and this book are my only nonfiction books.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I prefer fiction.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
So where do you find the inspiration for each of
your books? I mean, start with the first one.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well and Innocent Abroad was you know this this thing happened.
It was very stressful and traumatic. I waited years until
it wasn't anymore. I found actually a friend of mine.
This was nineteen ninety when that happened, so there were
no cell phones. I wrote on paper, Martha to my
friends in the United States. And I have one very
(18:38):
funny friend who's also a writer, and I wrote even
though I don't know why, she sent me the letters
when she found out I was writing the book, and
I actually wrote funny things, funny things that were going on.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I don't use carbon paper.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I did when I was in school and write, you
know when I would write short story.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, we had to yes, carb I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Well, I used carbon paper any letters I wrote, like
to my husband. We got married in nineteen sixty one,
so wow, a long long time ago. But all the
letters I wrote to him, I kept carbon copies, so
some were by hand and some were on a typewriter.
But it was so easy. With a typewriter, you just
put in your yeah, your carbon, you know, they had
(19:18):
two sheets of paper and one sheet of carbon. But
I kept all those. That was so good because we
didn't have computers, right, we didn't have you know, word.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Typewriters that we're right. I forgot about that we would
have to Yeah, did.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
You write your first book on a typewriter or by no?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
By then I had probably a word or maybe I
had an early computer. But yeah, I don't know how.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Nineteen eighty two I got my first computer.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Wow, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
So then I started using that to write on.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I don't know how people wrote books.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
But my last novel was The Foundling, and it was
set in the nineteen twenties, and I don't know how
people researched books.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It was so easy.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
It's so easy now you can just, you know, find
anything online. Although I did go to place where the
book was set multiple times. I think you actually have
to go and be in a place. But I don't
know how people researched exhaustively.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Well, after you read I've tried being nice listeners, then
please read The Foundling and then also read The Good House.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
A good House thank you, Martha.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Than because those are the ones I love. Thank you.
I subscribed to Founding because I remember living, you know,
as your neighbor, hearing little bits about the Foundling over
a period that takes you a couple of years to yes.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
The Foundling was loosely based on a discovery I made
about my grandmother, who I never really knew, even though
she lived till I was a mother myself. But she
worked at a eugenics asylum in the nineteen twenties, and
it was called the Laurelton State Village for feeble minded
women of child pairing age.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I found that eugenics mean so thank you.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
I didn't know either at first, but eugenics was actually
a household word in the early twentieth century. It was
the law of the It wasn't like a scary cult.
It was actually, you know, the Immigration Act of nineteen
twenty four was a eugenics law.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It actually limited immigrants.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
From certain parts of Europe, and it's the law that
kept Anne Frank from coming here. It had to do
with keeping the right types of people coming. And it
also where my grandmother worked is where they sent bad
girls and they called them feeble minded because they were
prostitutes or they had been very sexual proclivities. Yes, in
(21:31):
those days, those things were against the law, and morality
was confused with criminality. And it was very sad but
also fascinating to find out all about it and realized
that my grandmother, she worked as a secretary at this place.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
She never spoke about it, so I think she was
embarrassed or when she realized, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I will never know. She probably spoke to my mother
about it. My mother never really wanted to talk. My
grandmother ended up very troubled. She was an orphan and
so I don't have much his and my mother and
she had to cut ties when I was a little girl,
so I've kind of been fascinated by her as a result.
What happens when you cut off a grandmother to a
curious daughter, that grandmother becomes fascinating.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Are we going to see that in a movie?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
It has been optioned as a limited series. Oh, that
would be yeah, that would be good.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Because that kind of history, that that people are kind
of embarrassed about, that America actually adopted some of those
policies is very fascinating and it would be an honest
thing to show it. Yeah, I just watched the is
a feature film of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her and
her first big accomplishment of pelic cart arguing about sex
(22:41):
discrimination involving a man and the tax law. It's interesting
watch the movie, I will, but it's cooled. I don't
even remember the name. I'll think of the name, Okay,
But that I mean that that we should know, we
should be very aware of what is because right now
so much of our law is being versed, so much
(23:01):
of our constitution is being questioned so much, and it's uh,
we have to understand what all of this is about.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yes, we were not taught.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I mean so the Nazis learned a lot of their
horrible policies.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
They learn from our eugenics.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
You know, the final solution of eugenics is genocide, and
fortunately the United States didn't ever go that far. And
when World War II happened, that's when eugenics came to
a screeching halt in the United States. In the UK,
but people in the UK are taught about eugenics in
public school and the United States really it's quiet, like
you know many things, It's just it was short lived.
Why revisit I think there's a good reason. Why why
(23:37):
do why go back there?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah? Interesting?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And so what about your writing habits? Because you are
writing all the time, I try to, I write it
and does not answer her phone all the time. It's
a texture. Maybe you'll get to answer in a couple
of days. What are your habits there?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
So I like to write in the morning. I'm the
brightest shock you might not believe that, because this is
the best. This is the best, Marta, this is the
best I could be. Yeah, you know, I like the mornings.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I'm a morning person, are you Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I mean I have confidence when I can write a
passage in the morning and think, okay, this book. I've
got a book here, And then I'll have lunch and
then return to it and read the same passage and
feel my face like burning with shep. Just like my
confidence kind of wanes. And so I don't write, you know,
after too much in the afternoons. I try to get
other stuff done then. But I do like to write
(24:27):
every morning if I can. And I tell people who
are new to writing if a book is really working
for me.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I used to say, I'm writing a novel and it's.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Just come alive and the characters are making things happen
without me. I used to keep going until it ran
itself out, and then the next morning I'd kind of
be in the dol drums again. And now I've learned
to stop. I stop it to put it away, because
the next morning I get to go back to it,
it's still alive.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
You know. That's just like a little.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And that's good to know. You learned yourself.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I learned, Yeah, you learn.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Over the course of time, each book taught me something
about writing.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
It's been testa So what three pieces of advice would
you give to aspiring novelists because there's probably a lot
of them listening to you right now.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Oh well, I always tell writers. First of all, if
you're an aspiring writer and you're writing, you are a writer.
I do believe for every published author, there's probably a
thousand more talented writers that just haven't been published yet.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Keep writing. Find out trusted friend.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
And this is the thing I say all the time
to young writers especially, Write everything as if you're writing
a letter to your best friend who gets you. That's
what I did with my first book, when my friend
saved my letters. I wrote in the tone I wrote
those letters to her. And when you write that way,
and I certainly did that in this book. I wanted
to be accessible. And I also have learned a lot
(25:49):
from my husband too, who did stand up comedy for years,
to trust the audience, to trust the reader, trust that
they are going to get I trust, you know, write
it to your best friend who gets you.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
I think writers often try to write in a very writerly.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Voice and also are kind of paralyzed with this thinking
of the reader, as this very stern critic at the
New York Times, he's going to hate it. And instead
think of your sister, your friend, your husband, whoever, your partner.
Because in that way you don't underestimate the reader. Readers
are smart, they will get they will get what you're writing,
(26:25):
and it just makes the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I think it makes for a better tone in writings.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So do you solitary? Some people, some writers say it's
so lonely to be a writer. Do you find that
it's lonely? No? But good?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
But it is hard when I'm writing fiction. So when
my kids were at home, I would be so caught
up in my story. I'd be driving them and they'd
be like mo, Mo, Mom, I would be not that attentive.
So I kind of live in a kind of fantasy
world a lot when I'm writing. But I don't find
it solitary. I find it lonesome when I've finished a novel,
especially The Good House.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That main character, He'll be Good was.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I just loved her and I was sad, and I
wrote it in the first person, so I was kind
of her for a while, and I was sad to
not be here at any posts. I kind of missed that.
But no, it's it's it's not that lonely. I'm a
loner though, as you know, I kind of spent a
lot of time by myself.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
My animal.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
No, you do, you are an animal over talk about that.
When did that all start?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Al So, we moved all the time growing up.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Why what was your father?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
My dad was in the military when I was very little,
but he also then it was just in marketing. He
worked at these corporations at various in these cities in
the Midwest that the whole town worked. We're seeing Wisconsin,
like which which companies Johnson Wax and we're se Dow
Chemical Company. You know, we worked for Carnie he is
(27:43):
the grass is always greener kind of person.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
He was just chronically unsatisfied.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I think, and you know, he's read this book and
I write about it and he acknowledges that. But you know,
we were uprooted a lot. We moved every couple of years,
so it did help me learn to make friends. It
actually made me an avid reader. We would often move
in the summer. I kind of lived in libraries. I
knew the one thing familiar in any town is the
Dewey decimal system. I knew where all the books were
(28:08):
in the stacks. And I really got into reading at
a very young age.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
But I think.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Also it was the best book you read while you
were in junior high school. Oh, my goodness, whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I remember the first big book I read, and it
was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I was
probably maybe younger than middle school.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Because I got a lot of attention. I had read.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I always read books about animals, and I had read
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck that I loved and
decided to read the Grapes of Wrap And I tell
people with kids john Steinbeck is super accessible to young readers.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's not complicated.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
But what was exciting to me about that book is
the structure is simple, but it was fascinating to me.
So if you recall, it's like the first chapter is
about this Jode family, and then the next chapter Steinbeck
pulls out and shows the dustball during the depression. Each
chapter alternated like that. It's very simple, but to me
(29:06):
as a young girl, instead of just the story, I
actually paid attention to the writing and the structure. So
probably that was the most influential. But I got a
lot of attention. It's a big book, and so I'd.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Grown up to get a lot of probably very impressed.
But about high school, it was the most exciting book
you read in.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Oh gosh, do you know what's so funny? I thought
The fountain Head was absolutely the sexiest book and the
most romantic book. Well now I think it's on. I mean,
all the books I loved are on banned book.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Lists, and I can't understand that at all.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Well, you know, our library here in Katona has this
wonderful band book club and they read all the banned
books because they're fabulous books.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
And it's too bad and.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
How sad that children aren't exposed to those in my
town in Noteley, New Jersey, we were allowed to proceed
at my age to the next library. There was the
Children's room, than the Stockton room, than the adult library.
So there were three libraries, and if you passed the
tests in the children's room, you were promoted to the
(30:12):
Stockton Oh my god, and then the stock The same
thing happened. So by the time I was twelve, I
was in the adult library, I'm sure. And I read
Marjorie Morning Star. Oh yes, And that was sexy, yes,
so sexy and so interesting. And so I propose because
at that time there were very few Jewish people in
my school, but I got to know all of them
(30:33):
through that book. And I loved reading that book. And
then I read Oh, from Here to Eternity. Oh yeah,
that's another crazy good book.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Books were sexy, I remember, And they're not like that anymore.
Passed around the bus, yeah, remember Jacqueline Susanne. Of course
we would pass them around. They'd open up to the
dirty pages.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, I don't know. It was a different time. I
guess kids watch stuff on their phones now.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But I read all the history, all the books about
Chica and the and and the Depression, and the John
Steinbeck's and the Pearl Book, did you read Pearl books?
Well the Earth?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I feel like I did the history of.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
China in one novel. So interesting. Yah, and kids are
missing out on all this stuff now?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Is that band?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
No? I don't think it's banned. I hope not. I
hope because it's the it's really the simplistic history of
the emerging China.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It's accessible.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, very very good. So people will probably write and
say that's not crappy book. But I found it extremely interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I know you're so well read.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I rely on Martha because we'll be riding through the
woods and Martha can tell she did.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
She's modest, but she can tell every tree without leaves
are on or off. I've begume to rely on her knowledge.
I don't know if you remember this. We were looking
at a house. I love looking at houses for sale.
We both we have a friend who's broken. Sometimes she
shows us these very impressive estates just.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
But we love looking at house.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
We were curious there was one that had this amazing
It was a beautiful home and had a marble mantle
piece and there was this Latin inscription on the top.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I'm so used to Martha knowing everything. I turned to
Martha and said, Martha, what does that say? And then
you started to you knew a few of the words,
and then you turned to me and said, what am I?
You're walking Wikipedia? But I said, kind of you kind of.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So in your books, at least you stay pretty local
in your books. At least four of your books include
New England as part of your story.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
And for those of who have never lived in New England,
what do you love about this area of the country.
You lived elsewhere, but you keep coming back here.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Well, I think because I moved from Racine, Wisconsin to Marblehead,
Massachusetts at age fourteen.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And that's a beautiful place.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
It is beautiful, the Northville Boston I love. I have
such a strong heart for that part of New England.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
But it was hard.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
It was very different. We lived in places that people
moved all the time. And then I moved to Marblehead
where you know, not only the kids had lived there
all their lives.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So I had their grandparents.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
I had classmates, multiple classmates who had like the cove
was named after their family, the street was named it
felt and so there was just this I think it
was good that I came as an outsider with a
weird accent, and that I quickly changed to fit in.
I just became very aware of this New England personality
that is quite distinct. I think it's as a kind
(33:39):
of a regional personality. I love a good towny from
New England. People who won't necessarily hug you, even though
you might be their best friend, but if you're in trouble,
they will have your back every time.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So I just kind of love that your book.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
The Children, it is about an unconventional New England family
which which is sharing a sprawling, beautiful lakeside home. Explaining
why this book is such a story of survival.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Well, so that we had a little cabin on Lake Waramuk.
I'm sure you know where they are.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So that was this other part of New England, which
is Connecticut, old money wealth, and I really explored that,
and I was kind of familiar with that in Marblehead,
but especially that old Yankee, the people who they have
millions and hundreds of millions probably in a trust fund,
but they turned their lights off because they don't want
to pay for electricity.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I knew very parsimonious.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Partimonious is a good word for it.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
And you know, so anyway, I explored that it's about
Uh did.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Weas earned our lights off in our house because we
didn't have any money? I read with a flashlight, did
you Yeah?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Well, first of all, because I was supposed to have
my lights out and I would be under the coverage
reading with a light right, so nobody could tell that
I was still up and reading.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
It's so funny, I Dennis Lye full the lights on
and I run around it and turn off lights, just
because the way I was brought up.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
But our kids have no idea. Remember if you called
a friend who lived in the next town over, it.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Costs oh yeah, total call.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, so your parents, you know, you'd have to babysit
an extra night to pay for.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Do you remember your phone number from from childhood?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Well? I had so many? Oh yeah, but I think
I do remember.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I think it's still probably my mother's phone number. She
stayed at Marblehead my dad moved on.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
I remember I remember my noteley well, it was a
party line North seven seven nine to two. And then
I remember my first married phone, which was at Columbia
University University five five two eight oh number of feet
in a mile? I remember that and so weird? Oh wow,
that I would remember these random phones.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, remember we memorized all our friends.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Now, yes, oh yeah, we didn't have We didn't have
a direct dial phone. Now do Now I knew everybody's
phone number. I don't know my daughter's phone number right now,
I have.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
To lock it up.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I don't know my mother's I have to look it
up too. It's embarrassing. But yeah, but I know my
friend from fourth grade.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Well, now your next book I want to show write
Outtakes from a Marriage. Okay, was that the most painful
book to write?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
You know, it wasn't really.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
So it's it's a you know, it's a book about
a woman who is married to a person who becomes famous,
and it, you know, describes their experiences on the red carpet.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
But he's having an affair.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
So everyone thought it was a bummer because when this
came out, everyone thought I was writing about our friend
Elizabeth Hurley, who is our friend and is a lovely person.
But you know, she and Dennis had done a movie anyway,
so it was like all over page six and it
kind of was a bummer. It wasn't at all about that.
It was that part wasn't autobiographical, but.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Just on a side. Did you watch Elizabeth Hurley's Sons movie?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Oh, my gosh, no, but I was. My Dennis is
one of his godfathers.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Oh he is a movie. Oh and she's in it.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Well, I'm not supprised.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Very weird movie. Watch it in the middle of the night.
Somehow I got to watch that movie. It's very weird.
He smiles a lot, very he is handsome. He's a
handsome boy. Yeah, but what what inspired you to write
that book about about? You know, the difficulty?
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I saw, you know, right, they say, right, but you
know I have you know, it's it's interesting. I feel
like it's a unique experience I have of being walking
on a red carpet with a person who's famous. What
happens is the photographers will do this thing of they'll
be polite and take pictures, and then they.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Say to me, can you move? Can you move out
of the thing?
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Because I'm known and what they call a waste of
editorial space and they want to have a famous person
next to do I just have funny things that I thought, I,
you know, I would add to that.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
But I also just I was also right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
About funny or bitter? Maybe did you ever feel bitter
about that?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I don't know if that which No, no, I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But the first book, which was about our son my
helpful editor first, So this was a memoir. The first
it was my agent, I'm my editor. He read it
and he said to me, you know, I like it.
I just wish the narrator were more likable. And I
said me too. I've been working on that all my
life because I was the narrator. It was about me,
and he actually thought I was a little bitter in that,
(38:19):
and he was right, and I took it. I fixed that.
I don't like that in a memoir. I don't want
to read how angry a person is. Maybe in out
takes from a marriage the character is angry.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
But again I usually write.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
About things when they're behind me. So that Modern Love
piece that is in this at my new essay collection
in an expanded thing. It's about a time when our
marriage went through a rough patch that lasted three years
and we actually thought we were going to get a divorce,
and we didn't.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Tennis saved our marriage.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
We went to marriage counseling, and the piece I wrote
for Modern Love was well received and so, but I
couldn't write that until that was behind us for a
few years. When it's when you're in it, you are bitter.
I couldn't have written that the way I did, which
was with the little humor.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Did you live in the same house when you were
breaking up?
Speaker 3 (39:07):
We did, but we had a couple of houses, so
it's like we had a house in the country and
the house in the city. We did, and we thought
the kids were being horribly traumatized by our very troubled marriage.
And when I wrote this piece years later for The Times,
I sent it as I always do, to my family
to make sure no one's embarrassed to.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Embarrassed by it, and my kids were shocked. They had no.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Idea we had any So I guess we did a
good job of hiding.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, so if you write too soon.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
One of my favorite essays is Nora Ephron and her
famous quote is everything is copy. Not everything is copy
for me when it intrudes on the privacy of those
I love.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
But almost everything is copy.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And it's only funny though with time, and I like
to be funny and not bitter.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's a very nice trait, and it comes across except
to the neighbor.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yes, I know, maybe you don't know. When I moved
here is when I stopped being so nice.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
So why did you move to Bedford of all places?
What do you here?
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Well, so we were downsizing and we wanted to get
rid of this. We had a big farm in the
country and many acres, and we had the place in
the city. Horses and yeah, horses. We just wanted a
smaller place. Our kids had moved out. We loved that
this was on the train. But I'd also been coming
to the Bedford Hunter Pace for twenty years and I
wanted I knew all the trails, so I kind of
(40:32):
knew it that way, and we bought a house that's
right behind where that pay starts. At the time, I
looked on the satellite image and saw this property across
the street that I thought, I thought your Your paddocks
were so square. I thought they were soccer fields, and
I said, WHOA, let's like buyer beware, I think there's
(40:52):
a really nice like school boarding school the street.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Because of the paddocks.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Did you think I thought there were soccer fields? But
it was Martha Stewart's property. Our pets love my dogs
sit upstairs in the window, and they every day watch
Martha Stewart living because there's so many, so much going
on here. My horse I used to ride here, wanted
to dump me and live in her barn because the
(41:18):
animals here are have a great life and are fascinating.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
And the field and the fields are great pastures, you know,
Oh my god, the horses do like I feel so
sorry when I see a horse or two and a
little little paddock with no grass and then just hate
to eat right like at my house. Yeah, I feel
I feel always so sad that would.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Be my house.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
But I'm so glad that you did move in across
the street. It's been such a pleasure to have you
and Dennis and the children as neighbors. And what are
the kids doing now?
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Our daughter is writing. She's about to go to law.
She works in writers rooms for television shows, so she
it's like a nomad's life. She goes for a few months,
works on a show as a writer's assistant. Sometimes she
gets to write as well, and then she comes back.
Our son is a producer. He works with Dennis, and
he found it and made it happen, and it's going
(42:11):
to be shooting in Ireland this fall, but it's set
in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Oh, collaboration. So you're on a book to right now
with I've tried being nice. Yes, Where are you going
on this tour?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
I mostly just the New England area. You know since COVID.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
What happened during COVID, A lot of book events became
virtual and they publishers realized, why are we spending all
this money? Now It's different for Jodpico and Stephen King.
They still do like multi city tours. But you know,
if you are kind of you know, it's okay selling author,
it's you know, you can do these virtual events, which
I do, but I also go to you know, I
don't like to fly that one, so places where I
(42:45):
can drive. I've been in Cambridge, I've been here. I'm
going back to Boston and going Thursday, I'll be in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire at the Music Hall. They do big events there. Yeah,
so a lot of New England things. I will be
at RJ. Julia here in Connecticut at Stanford Library. Of
places I can get too easily and otherwise I do
(43:06):
kind of virtual events and the easiest was coming right
across the street to Martha Stewart to do your podcast.
I thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
So great for you to be here, and I can't
wait for your next book. Of course, on your Instagram
page at Ann Leary One Word, you share a lot
of videos of your dogs doing tricks and you can
get to know Ann Leary very nicely with her love
of animals right there on Ann Leary, thank you well,
thank you for coming by, and thank you, and I
(43:36):
can't wait to talk more about writing. I'm trying to
write an autobiography.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I know that I cannot wait, though this is hard.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
I'm not because I'd like to write, but I'm not
a novelist and I don't profess to be a writer.
But I know it's going to be a long slog
to do a book like that, but I'm looking forward
to it. Yes, I have friends like Anne Leary that
I can sort of.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I write it as you're writing it to your best friend.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I'm reading your very very good piece.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Yes, write it, you know, like you're writing it to
Charlotte Beers or Memory Lewis.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Your friends. I love you. Guys are a few years
older than me.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I've gotten to know a couple of Martha's friends, and
I am watching you guys because I want to be
moving into the next part of my life and being
able to.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
I can't keep up with you now.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
But we're all curious. Keep up the curiosity, that's right,
and that's what I think is the best thing about
being a writer is your curiosity.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I think that's something a lot of people don't know
about you. You are authentically very curious, and that's what
makes anyone and.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
I think that will help us a lot with my
writing as I embark on this next phase. But and Larry,
thank you and best of luck with this book as
it and you don't need it, but good luck.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Thank you so much, Martha, and come visit against so
I would love to
Today's podcast is with my friend and very close neighbor,
And Leary. But before we start, I just want to
tell you what we were doing. I picked her up
at the gate, which is around the corner from her house.
There's another gate in between her house and my house,
but I don't unlock that gate even for Anne, and
(00:24):
so I made her go all the way around to
the next gate, and then we drove in my Polaris
down to the Maple Avenue house where we record this podcast.
But on the way we stopped and we weeded, and
I did a little description of the maple woodland and
I think I hopefully she learned a little bit about
(00:44):
Japanese maple trees. But then she said she loves tweed.
So Ann Leary's going to come back and weed some
more this afternoon after our podcast. But we're here to
talk about Anne's writing, about Anne's life and about her
perspective online and living. The new book that we are
also going to focus on is entitled I've Tried Being Nice.
(01:07):
There's some very funny things in this book, and I
think that we should start with Anne Leary reading one
little little paragraph that she wrote about her neighbor Martha Stewart. Okay,
can you read that? Sure?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And thank you so much, Martha.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I just want to say that just riding on Martha's
Polaris through her property is actually a wonderful way to
spend a morning. I know you've probably already been to pilates,
ridden two horses.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
No, I didn't ride, but I did go to pilates.
I have moved a lot of plants. I've been cleaning
out the vegetable greenhouse, and I'm like, you, busy, busy,
busy all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
You're more busy than I am.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I have a feeling you've also maybe started a new
business and maybe negotiated a truth in the Middle East
this morning.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I wouldn't that be good if I could?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I think you could, Martha.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Would I would like to try. I would like to
ring bring some next first. Okay, so read that little,
Read that little.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
This book is called I Tried Being Nice. It's an
essay collection. I was going to call it the Unauthorized
Biography of Martha Stewart because I wanted it to be
a bestseller, but it's It actually mentions Martha once. But
the title essay is about a problem I had with
Martha and I are neighbors, but was a different neighbor,
and I finally reached a breaking point and actually had
(02:20):
to say the words, look, I've tried being nice. This
is about reaching a certain age. We went gray early
in my family. My daughter thinks she found her first
gray hair at age twelve.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I found on my twenties.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
But anyway, during COVID, I decided I would grow up
my gray because I saw all these silver foxes, you know,
that were supermodels that had gray hair, and I thought
I would look like them. So I grew it out.
Took a couple of years. And then I'll also add
I was hit on a lot when I had gray hair,
more than when I was in my twenties.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I'd have I'd be out.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Getting the mail and you know, a guy would be
jogging pass. You'd circle back, ask me, you know what
was going on?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
People at gym?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
And then I realized all this attention I was receiving
from all these men, from men eighty to one hundred
years old. They thought I was like a super fit
former suffragist.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So anyway, my friend, this is what I wrote about you.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
You WI helped me very much in changing my perspective
of how I looked. My friend Martha said to me
one day, why don't you color your hair? I told
her that I was sick of coloring it, and I
always admired women with wonderful gray hair. I think it's
very attractive on certain women. I said it is, Martha said,
(03:34):
I just don't think you're one of those women. Martha
is the busiest person I've ever met, and she doesn't
have time for bullshit, so she's very direct, and she
also loves fixing things that aren't working.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well. See, I do like to fix things that aren't working.
And this title could possibly I've tried, being nice could
apply to my life and just so many other people's
lives that I know. I mean, it's just it's very
funny title, and we do reach a point. I reach
it every single day trying to be nice. I wake
(04:08):
up and say I'm not going to I'm not going
to say anything to anybody today that's not nice, and
then of course, five minutes into the day, I find
something to complain about. But that's that's just life.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It is life, and you're a busy person who has time.
I do do a lot. There's many things that I
talk about in this book besides being nice. I write
about my marriage, about dogs and kids and taking ballroom
dancing classes, traveling. But I do circle back a lot
to kind of exploring what it means to be nice,
and women have extra expectations on us, expecting us to
(04:40):
be nice. I've always experienced you as a nice person.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And I know you're what I think, what some people
think is nice.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Maybe is what I tended to do, especially when I
was younger, which is like people pleasing and trying to
ingratiate myself with others, and that comes from a place
of insecurity.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
And you don't have that, you have comm evidence.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But I know you're nice, and I think a good
sign of a nice person, especially a woman. I know
that you have friends that you've had for decades because
I know them personally, and you have people who have
worked for you for decades.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That to me is an indication of a person's character.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And also of surviving, you know, difficulties with those people
and being able to speak frankly and honestly. Yes, it's
not all just oh you you look so great today.
I can't do that all the time. My friend just
asked me the other night that she told me that
her back was hurting her terribly and she was really
having a hard time. And I said, well, if you
just exercised more and you lost about twenty five pounds,
(05:41):
maybe your back wouldn't hurt so much. And she was
so taken aback. But I'm used to talking to her
like that because because as we get older, you want
to be more frank and more honest and more and
you can't baby everybody all the time, right, And I
love I love that altercation you had with the neighbor.
To describe that altercation.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Okay, so yeah, we had just I've been living here
very long, and there were we The street I live
on is behind Martha's property. It's one of the most
it's a favorite walking street in our town. It's beautiful
and scenic Martha. It's called Maple Avenue, and Martha planted
all these maple trees all along Maple Avenue. It's absolutely stunning.
(06:18):
A lot of people walk with dogs off leash. We
have a few problem dogs, as Martha knows, because they've
actually interrupted broadcasts of hers with their screaming and barking
at the gate. But we have had awfully dogs come
on our property. We have one dog who's not dog friendly.
We had this one woman and I call her doodle
Lady in the book because Simon and Schuster actually made
me change the breed of her dog so I wouldn't
(06:41):
get sued by her. Her dogs kept coming on the property,
and I did the whole you know, it'd be so
nice if your dogs didn't come on the property, and.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
She did, Oh, they're so friendly, don't worry.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
And this went on for you know, a few weeks
of you know, me stopping and saying, coming out and talking,
and then one day the dogs came on and almost
got in a fight with my dog.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I jumped in my car.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I get up at five point thirty, but at noon
I'm often still in my pajamas because I write all morning.
I was in my pajamas. I go racing down Maple
Avenue and then I.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Saw the doodle Lady and didn't know what to say,
so I kept driving.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Then I circled back and I saw they looked uneasy,
because that's kind of scary. She circled back, and then
I rolled down the window, and without thinking, I said, look,
I've tried being nice. The woman actually staggered backwards grabbed
her dog.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
She thought you were going to kill her.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, if those are very powerful words, I learned it's
kind of like when the kids say no offense, but
you know what follows is going to hurt. So that
was the thing, and I write a little bit in
the book. I knew from reading and talking to friends
that when you reach a certain age and I could
say menopause, I understood that you actually stop doing trying
(07:55):
so hard to ingratiate yourself with everybody you meet. But
I thought it would happen gradually. I did know that
one day somebody would spill their coffee on me and
I would apologize to them for them doing that, and
the next day I'd open the door and say, get
off my property. So that's the title essay.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I had a friend who did the same thing. I
gave her permission to I have a lot of roads
on my property. No and they're private and there's no cars,
and you can walk your dogs very nicely for four
miles on my property. So I said to her, oh,
walk your dogs any time, but just make sure they're
unleashes right, And one day she was she let her
dogs off the leash, and my dogs were outside, and
(08:35):
my dogs ran over to her dogs and wanted to,
you know, play roughly with barking, and you know, my
dogs were protective of the property.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Territorialist.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
She called me up and she said, I think you
should euthanize your dogs. Oh my god. And I said,
what are you talking about. You were on my property
with your dogs unleashed, and you could have easily just
gathered them up and walked in the opposite direction if
you had them on a leash. And I said, you're
not welcome here anymore, right, And that was my end
(09:06):
of being nice.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Well that was you were super nice to let her
do that.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, But people, it's both sides of the story. And
that's what I really found interesting about this book. It
is both sides of the story, right, because your patience
gives out at a certain point and right, and the
other people's patients also gives out at a certain point.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And it's a hard transition to make from being the sweetest,
loveliest neighbor in the whole world. Don't ever turn on me,
I'm telling you right.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Now, I would never have reason to. You are a
wonderful neighbor, a very generous, kind friend. I just want
to say, I'm an animal nut. So your chows are
the They're ambassadors for the breed. So for them, I
know how friendly they are. So for anyone to say
that it should be no.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
All of your dogs are horse my feeling and well, anyway,
now we've gotten through them being nice party, and I
just want you want to know who exactly you are.
Anne Leary is a best selling author of six books,
including The Good House, which was made into a feature
film starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kleine. I loved that movie.
(10:14):
Her essay about marriage about her marriage in Trouble was
that your marriage Yeah, was adapted for the Prime video
series Modern Love starring Tina Fay and John Slatterly. Anne
is an animal lover and accomplished equestrian, and I often
see her on the writing trails in Bedford area, up
(10:34):
where we both live. Her latest book, I've Tried Being
Nice is out right now, and it's so fun to
have you come across the street and sit and talk
to me.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I'm so thrilled and I'm loving your setup here.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Do you remember when we first met, when you moved here?
What year was it? When you moved here.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
You know, I think we bought our place in twenty sixteen,
but we did some work and it was around twenty seventeen. Yes,
Muffin dwadle are real estate extraordinary agent brought me over.
I think I had met you at maybe some parties
in the past, but of course you wouldn't remember. But
she brought me over and you were very, very, very lovely,
(11:11):
and soon you had a dinner party and you just
were very welcoming and we were just it was just great.
It's been great getting to know you, and I'm always
learning more about you, which I find you fascinating.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
No, but what's fun is that this neighborhood has really
improved with the new homeowners that are coming, and I'm
so excited about living in Bedford now. When I first
came here, it was really quiet, and the Sunday nights
you just wanted to just go back to New York
with everybody else, because everybody just had this massive exodus
(11:46):
back to back to the city after a pleasant country weekend.
But now more people are staying, they're living out here.
I live out here full time and I commute. I
do the reverse commute to New York And it's kind
of a fabulous thing because I can be in the
city for dinner and get home and wake up with
the roosters crowing in the peacocks squawking, and et cetera,
et cetera. But to have you and Dennis Leary. Anne
(12:09):
is married to the actor Dennis Leary, who's not only
an actor, he's a comedian and he is a writer.
And that's a lot of fun. She has two fabulous children,
grown children. How did you meet Jennis in the first place?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So, Dennis and I.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I met Dennis when I transferred to Emerson College from
Bennington College and I was a writing major and I
was told by the head of the department, I should
take this comedy writing class with this man, Dennis Leary,
who I thought would be in his forties. I was
twenty and then this, so you know, Dennis was a
kind of a ginger, kind of blondish. You guys with
fair skin, they when they're twenty five, they look like
(12:43):
they're fourteen.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Kind of.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
He came in, but he was super good. He was
super cute. Anyway he walked in, I didn't think he
was the teacher. He was the first thing he said
you could smoke in class, and he said, smoke him
if you got him.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, like they say in the military. Anyway, he was
my teach.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Sure, I know it's very scandalous now, but it was
a super fun class. Years later, by the way, I
took the class, I got an a and we actually
started dating right after the class was over.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Not during because that would have been appropriate.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
No, yes, I earned my grade, honestly. But he actually
then we went on a couple of days. He stayed
over one night, and he never left Martha to this day.
It's been forty years. He turned out he didn't really
have a.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Place to live. I didn't know that, so he just
came rat it's in Boston. So we've been through a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
He actually, you know, he was just like a starting
out an open mic comic, and then he kind of
found his stride and became I guess famous after Yeah,
he gave and then so that was fun.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
We got to enjoy that together.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
There's a chapter in my book called Red Carpet Diaries
about our many like mishaps, fumbling along the Red carpet
when we were total rubes at first, and now we
kind of know what we're doing as you obviously know.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And these are twotiful people, and it's with her beautiful
blonde blocks. Now, thank you, mind I don't, but don't
you think you look better with blonde? Absolutely? Martha?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
When I would look at photographs then with my blonde friends,
I would always I was like, who's.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That old lady?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Who's the mother?
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Because it wasn't I didn't have that wonderful shock of
gray or the pet it was white.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
You were right, you know, That's what I was. I
meant to say before. It's not Martha was helping.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Sometimes you know a finach in your teeth and your
friend doesn't tell.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
You, no, I wasn't being a bitch.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I just you weren't the only went by the way.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're prettier than you were letting yourself. Thank you, and
more tried. And how many more men hit on you now?
Is a blonde?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I think now they're in you know I helped, There wasn't.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, I don't know, but they I think it was
mostly these older guys thought she's fit for being nineties.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Well to Dennis, you have two children, yes, how old
they were?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Not really thirty? I had to say that because I
was just thirty a few years ago, Martha.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I I just was thirty not long ago.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
They're wonderful kids.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
And Anne Ann Leary is just I did the math
this morning when I found out when you were born,
and you're just three years older than my daughter, So
I could.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Beat your mother. Well, that's shocking.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And I consider you much more unequal to me. I
think because I consider all my friends more equal to me,
because I like I hang out with younger people.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I do too. I had got people of all ages.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
But I actually think i'm the same age as I
can't guess. People say, but I think you might think
i'm your age because you're so much more active.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Than I am. You do you pack so much more
into a day, and you're so.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
You're playing so much tennis and doing all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I do that. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
And I met all your tennis buddies the other night, Yes,
at your performance at the Bedford Playhouse and your husband.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Thank you for coming.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
It was great grade to sit there and hear you
bantered with each other. It was very nice.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It was super fun.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
What is it like living with Dennis who comes and
goes like I.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Mean, he does he's busy.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
He's busy with his career. He's always going to Canada.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah, you know what, I think it might be a
key to We've been married a very long time. We've
been living together a long time and married a long time,
and especially early on in the marriage, I never saw him.
I think that's the key to a successful marriage. I'm
fascinated by him. It's wonderful when he comes home. He's
always works with really interesting people. As you know, Martha,
I'm a bit of a hermit, so I like to
(16:33):
hear what exciting things he's done. But I like to
stay home. But I just find him funny. I think
we just we get along. We have great history together.
We've been together so long. No matter where he is,
he'll call me and say, turn on CNN or or
turn on this channel because it's somebody we both have
a thing because in the past we knew. It's just
(16:53):
fun to have that kind of history. You probably have
friends like that, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
It's just so you were trained as a writer. At
what point did you write your first book? So is
that when you were married.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yes, yes, my first book was called An Innocent Abroad.
It was just you know, borrowed from Mark Twain's book
but I but mine was an innocent comma abroad. It
was about having my son in London by accident. He
was supposed to be born in the United States. But
we went for a weekend, I went into premature labor
and six months later we came home. And it's kind
of how my husband's career was launched. He wrote because
(17:23):
we couldn't leave, he wrote this one man show the
Edinburgh Festival and it got awards and he came back
and did it the Actress Playhouse.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
So that so that was that was fortuitious, Yes, it was,
It actually was.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
It was scary and then it was good because it
all's well, that ends well. You know my son, he's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
He's very he's like seven feet, all the handsomest boys
and a writer.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Also yeah yeah, producer, yeah actually yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
So that but that book I didn't tell anyone, even Dennis.
I wrote like five chapters in an outline and secretly
sent it to this editor who was a friend of
a friend, because I was sure I didn't want the
shame of, you know, saying So it did get published
and then this is I think my sixth book, but.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I usually write fiction.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
These are that and this book are my only nonfiction books.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I prefer fiction.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
So where do you find the inspiration for each of
your books? I mean, start with the first one.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well and Innocent Abroad was you know this this thing happened.
It was very stressful and traumatic. I waited years until
it wasn't anymore. I found actually a friend of mine.
This was nineteen ninety when that happened, so there were
no cell phones. I wrote on paper, Martha to my
friends in the United States. And I have one very
(18:38):
funny friend who's also a writer, and I wrote even
though I don't know why, she sent me the letters
when she found out I was writing the book, and
I actually wrote funny things, funny things that were going on.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I don't use carbon paper.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I did when I was in school and write, you
know when I would write short story.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, we had to yes, carb I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Well, I used carbon paper any letters I wrote, like
to my husband. We got married in nineteen sixty one,
so wow, a long long time ago. But all the
letters I wrote to him, I kept carbon copies, so
some were by hand and some were on a typewriter.
But it was so easy. With a typewriter, you just
put in your yeah, your carbon, you know, they had
(19:18):
two sheets of paper and one sheet of carbon. But
I kept all those. That was so good because we
didn't have computers, right, we didn't have you know, word.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Typewriters that we're right. I forgot about that we would
have to Yeah, did.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
You write your first book on a typewriter or by no?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
By then I had probably a word or maybe I
had an early computer. But yeah, I don't know how.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Nineteen eighty two I got my first computer.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Wow, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
So then I started using that to write on.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I don't know how people wrote books.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
But my last novel was The Foundling, and it was
set in the nineteen twenties, and I don't know how
people researched books.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It was so easy.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
It's so easy now you can just, you know, find
anything online. Although I did go to place where the
book was set multiple times. I think you actually have
to go and be in a place. But I don't
know how people researched exhaustively.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Well, after you read I've tried being nice listeners, then
please read The Foundling and then also read The Good House.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
A good House thank you, Martha.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Than because those are the ones I love. Thank you.
I subscribed to Founding because I remember living, you know,
as your neighbor, hearing little bits about the Foundling over
a period that takes you a couple of years to yes.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
The Foundling was loosely based on a discovery I made
about my grandmother, who I never really knew, even though
she lived till I was a mother myself. But she
worked at a eugenics asylum in the nineteen twenties, and
it was called the Laurelton State Village for feeble minded
women of child pairing age.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I found that eugenics mean so thank you.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
I didn't know either at first, but eugenics was actually
a household word in the early twentieth century. It was
the law of the It wasn't like a scary cult.
It was actually, you know, the Immigration Act of nineteen
twenty four was a eugenics law.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It actually limited immigrants.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
From certain parts of Europe, and it's the law that
kept Anne Frank from coming here. It had to do
with keeping the right types of people coming. And it
also where my grandmother worked is where they sent bad
girls and they called them feeble minded because they were
prostitutes or they had been very sexual proclivities. Yes, in
(21:31):
those days, those things were against the law, and morality
was confused with criminality. And it was very sad but
also fascinating to find out all about it and realized
that my grandmother, she worked as a secretary at this place.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
She never spoke about it, so I think she was
embarrassed or when she realized, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I will never know. She probably spoke to my mother
about it. My mother never really wanted to talk. My
grandmother ended up very troubled. She was an orphan and
so I don't have much his and my mother and
she had to cut ties when I was a little girl,
so I've kind of been fascinated by her as a result.
What happens when you cut off a grandmother to a
curious daughter, that grandmother becomes fascinating.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Are we going to see that in a movie?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
It has been optioned as a limited series. Oh, that
would be yeah, that would be good.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Because that kind of history, that that people are kind
of embarrassed about, that America actually adopted some of those
policies is very fascinating and it would be an honest
thing to show it. Yeah, I just watched the is
a feature film of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her and
her first big accomplishment of pelic cart arguing about sex
(22:41):
discrimination involving a man and the tax law. It's interesting
watch the movie, I will, but it's cooled. I don't
even remember the name. I'll think of the name, Okay,
But that I mean that that we should know, we
should be very aware of what is because right now
so much of our law is being versed, so much
(23:01):
of our constitution is being questioned so much, and it's uh,
we have to understand what all of this is about.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yes, we were not taught.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I mean so the Nazis learned a lot of their
horrible policies.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
They learn from our eugenics.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
You know, the final solution of eugenics is genocide, and
fortunately the United States didn't ever go that far. And
when World War II happened, that's when eugenics came to
a screeching halt in the United States. In the UK,
but people in the UK are taught about eugenics in
public school and the United States really it's quiet, like
you know many things, It's just it was short lived.
Why revisit I think there's a good reason. Why why
(23:37):
do why go back there?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah? Interesting?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And so what about your writing habits? Because you are
writing all the time, I try to, I write it
and does not answer her phone all the time. It's
a texture. Maybe you'll get to answer in a couple
of days. What are your habits there?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
So I like to write in the morning. I'm the
brightest shock you might not believe that, because this is
the best. This is the best, Marta, this is the
best I could be. Yeah, you know, I like the mornings.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I'm a morning person, are you Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I mean I have confidence when I can write a
passage in the morning and think, okay, this book. I've
got a book here, And then I'll have lunch and
then return to it and read the same passage and
feel my face like burning with shep. Just like my
confidence kind of wanes. And so I don't write, you know,
after too much in the afternoons. I try to get
other stuff done then. But I do like to write
(24:27):
every morning if I can. And I tell people who
are new to writing if a book is really working
for me.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I used to say, I'm writing a novel and it's.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Just come alive and the characters are making things happen
without me. I used to keep going until it ran
itself out, and then the next morning I'd kind of
be in the dol drums again. And now I've learned
to stop. I stop it to put it away, because
the next morning I get to go back to it,
it's still alive.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
You know. That's just like a little.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And that's good to know. You learned yourself.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I learned, Yeah, you learn.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Over the course of time, each book taught me something
about writing.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
It's been testa So what three pieces of advice would
you give to aspiring novelists because there's probably a lot
of them listening to you right now.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Oh well, I always tell writers. First of all, if
you're an aspiring writer and you're writing, you are a writer.
I do believe for every published author, there's probably a
thousand more talented writers that just haven't been published yet.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Keep writing. Find out trusted friend.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
And this is the thing I say all the time
to young writers especially, Write everything as if you're writing
a letter to your best friend who gets you. That's
what I did with my first book, when my friend
saved my letters. I wrote in the tone I wrote
those letters to her. And when you write that way,
and I certainly did that in this book. I wanted
to be accessible. And I also have learned a lot
(25:49):
from my husband too, who did stand up comedy for years,
to trust the audience, to trust the reader, trust that
they are going to get I trust, you know, write
it to your best friend who gets you.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
I think writers often try to write in a very writerly.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Voice and also are kind of paralyzed with this thinking
of the reader, as this very stern critic at the
New York Times, he's going to hate it. And instead
think of your sister, your friend, your husband, whoever, your partner.
Because in that way you don't underestimate the reader. Readers
are smart, they will get they will get what you're writing,
(26:25):
and it just makes the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I think it makes for a better tone in writings.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So do you solitary? Some people, some writers say it's
so lonely to be a writer. Do you find that
it's lonely? No? But good?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
But it is hard when I'm writing fiction. So when
my kids were at home, I would be so caught
up in my story. I'd be driving them and they'd
be like mo, Mo, Mom, I would be not that attentive.
So I kind of live in a kind of fantasy
world a lot when I'm writing. But I don't find
it solitary. I find it lonesome when I've finished a novel,
especially The Good House.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That main character, He'll be Good was.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I just loved her and I was sad, and I
wrote it in the first person, so I was kind
of her for a while, and I was sad to
not be here at any posts. I kind of missed that.
But no, it's it's it's not that lonely. I'm a
loner though, as you know, I kind of spent a
lot of time by myself.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
My animal.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
No, you do, you are an animal over talk about that.
When did that all start?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Al So, we moved all the time growing up.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Why what was your father?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
My dad was in the military when I was very little,
but he also then it was just in marketing. He
worked at these corporations at various in these cities in
the Midwest that the whole town worked. We're seeing Wisconsin,
like which which companies Johnson Wax and we're se Dow
Chemical Company. You know, we worked for Carnie he is
(27:43):
the grass is always greener kind of person.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
He was just chronically unsatisfied.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I think, and you know, he's read this book and
I write about it and he acknowledges that. But you know,
we were uprooted a lot. We moved every couple of years,
so it did help me learn to make friends. It
actually made me an avid reader. We would often move
in the summer. I kind of lived in libraries. I
knew the one thing familiar in any town is the
Dewey decimal system. I knew where all the books were
(28:08):
in the stacks. And I really got into reading at
a very young age.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
But I think.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Also it was the best book you read while you
were in junior high school. Oh, my goodness, whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I remember the first big book I read, and it
was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I was
probably maybe younger than middle school.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Because I got a lot of attention. I had read.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I always read books about animals, and I had read
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck that I loved and
decided to read the Grapes of Wrap And I tell
people with kids john Steinbeck is super accessible to young readers.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's not complicated.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
But what was exciting to me about that book is
the structure is simple, but it was fascinating to me.
So if you recall, it's like the first chapter is
about this Jode family, and then the next chapter Steinbeck
pulls out and shows the dustball during the depression. Each
chapter alternated like that. It's very simple, but to me
(29:06):
as a young girl, instead of just the story, I
actually paid attention to the writing and the structure. So
probably that was the most influential. But I got a
lot of attention. It's a big book, and so I'd.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Grown up to get a lot of probably very impressed.
But about high school, it was the most exciting book
you read in.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Oh gosh, do you know what's so funny? I thought
The fountain Head was absolutely the sexiest book and the
most romantic book. Well now I think it's on. I mean,
all the books I loved are on banned book.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Lists, and I can't understand that at all.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Well, you know, our library here in Katona has this
wonderful band book club and they read all the banned
books because they're fabulous books.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
And it's too bad and.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
How sad that children aren't exposed to those in my
town in Noteley, New Jersey, we were allowed to proceed
at my age to the next library. There was the
Children's room, than the Stockton room, than the adult library.
So there were three libraries, and if you passed the
tests in the children's room, you were promoted to the
(30:12):
Stockton Oh my god, and then the stock The same
thing happened. So by the time I was twelve, I
was in the adult library, I'm sure. And I read
Marjorie Morning Star. Oh yes, And that was sexy, yes,
so sexy and so interesting. And so I propose because
at that time there were very few Jewish people in
my school, but I got to know all of them
(30:33):
through that book. And I loved reading that book. And
then I read Oh, from Here to Eternity. Oh yeah,
that's another crazy good book.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Books were sexy, I remember, And they're not like that anymore.
Passed around the bus, yeah, remember Jacqueline Susanne. Of course
we would pass them around. They'd open up to the
dirty pages.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, I don't know. It was a different time. I
guess kids watch stuff on their phones now.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But I read all the history, all the books about
Chica and the and and the Depression, and the John
Steinbeck's and the Pearl Book, did you read Pearl books?
Well the Earth?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I feel like I did the history of.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
China in one novel. So interesting. Yah, and kids are
missing out on all this stuff now?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Is that band?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
No? I don't think it's banned. I hope not. I
hope because it's the it's really the simplistic history of
the emerging China.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It's accessible.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, very very good. So people will probably write and
say that's not crappy book. But I found it extremely interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I know you're so well read.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I rely on Martha because we'll be riding through the
woods and Martha can tell she did.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
She's modest, but she can tell every tree without leaves
are on or off. I've begume to rely on her knowledge.
I don't know if you remember this. We were looking
at a house. I love looking at houses for sale.
We both we have a friend who's broken. Sometimes she
shows us these very impressive estates just.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
But we love looking at house.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
We were curious there was one that had this amazing
It was a beautiful home and had a marble mantle
piece and there was this Latin inscription on the top.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I'm so used to Martha knowing everything. I turned to
Martha and said, Martha, what does that say? And then
you started to you knew a few of the words,
and then you turned to me and said, what am I?
You're walking Wikipedia? But I said, kind of you kind of.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So in your books, at least you stay pretty local
in your books. At least four of your books include
New England as part of your story.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
And for those of who have never lived in New England,
what do you love about this area of the country.
You lived elsewhere, but you keep coming back here.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Well, I think because I moved from Racine, Wisconsin to Marblehead,
Massachusetts at age fourteen.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And that's a beautiful place.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
It is beautiful, the Northville Boston I love. I have
such a strong heart for that part of New England.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
But it was hard.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
It was very different. We lived in places that people
moved all the time. And then I moved to Marblehead
where you know, not only the kids had lived there
all their lives.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So I had their grandparents.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
I had classmates, multiple classmates who had like the cove
was named after their family, the street was named it
felt and so there was just this I think it
was good that I came as an outsider with a
weird accent, and that I quickly changed to fit in.
I just became very aware of this New England personality
that is quite distinct. I think it's as a kind
(33:39):
of a regional personality. I love a good towny from
New England. People who won't necessarily hug you, even though
you might be their best friend, but if you're in trouble,
they will have your back every time.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So I just kind of love that your book.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
The Children, it is about an unconventional New England family
which which is sharing a sprawling, beautiful lakeside home. Explaining
why this book is such a story of survival.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Well, so that we had a little cabin on Lake Waramuk.
I'm sure you know where they are.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So that was this other part of New England, which
is Connecticut, old money wealth, and I really explored that,
and I was kind of familiar with that in Marblehead,
but especially that old Yankee, the people who they have
millions and hundreds of millions probably in a trust fund,
but they turned their lights off because they don't want
to pay for electricity.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I knew very parsimonious.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Partimonious is a good word for it.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
And you know, so anyway, I explored that it's about
Uh did.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Weas earned our lights off in our house because we
didn't have any money? I read with a flashlight, did
you Yeah?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Well, first of all, because I was supposed to have
my lights out and I would be under the coverage
reading with a light right, so nobody could tell that
I was still up and reading.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
It's so funny, I Dennis Lye full the lights on
and I run around it and turn off lights, just
because the way I was brought up.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
But our kids have no idea. Remember if you called
a friend who lived in the next town over, it.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Costs oh yeah, total call.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, so your parents, you know, you'd have to babysit
an extra night to pay for.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Do you remember your phone number from from childhood?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Well? I had so many? Oh yeah, but I think
I do remember.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I think it's still probably my mother's phone number. She
stayed at Marblehead my dad moved on.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
I remember I remember my noteley well, it was a
party line North seven seven nine to two. And then
I remember my first married phone, which was at Columbia
University University five five two eight oh number of feet
in a mile? I remember that and so weird? Oh wow,
that I would remember these random phones.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, remember we memorized all our friends.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Now, yes, oh yeah, we didn't have We didn't have
a direct dial phone. Now do Now I knew everybody's
phone number. I don't know my daughter's phone number right now,
I have.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
To lock it up.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I don't know my mother's I have to look it
up too. It's embarrassing. But yeah, but I know my
friend from fourth grade.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Well, now your next book I want to show write
Outtakes from a Marriage. Okay, was that the most painful
book to write?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
You know, it wasn't really.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
So it's it's a you know, it's a book about
a woman who is married to a person who becomes famous,
and it, you know, describes their experiences on the red carpet.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
But he's having an affair.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
So everyone thought it was a bummer because when this
came out, everyone thought I was writing about our friend
Elizabeth Hurley, who is our friend and is a lovely person.
But you know, she and Dennis had done a movie anyway,
so it was like all over page six and it
kind of was a bummer. It wasn't at all about that.
It was that part wasn't autobiographical, but.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Just on a side. Did you watch Elizabeth Hurley's Sons movie?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Oh, my gosh, no, but I was. My Dennis is
one of his godfathers.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Oh he is a movie. Oh and she's in it.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Well, I'm not supprised.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Very weird movie. Watch it in the middle of the night.
Somehow I got to watch that movie. It's very weird.
He smiles a lot, very he is handsome. He's a
handsome boy. Yeah, but what what inspired you to write
that book about about? You know, the difficulty?
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I saw, you know, right, they say, right, but you
know I have you know, it's it's interesting. I feel
like it's a unique experience I have of being walking
on a red carpet with a person who's famous. What
happens is the photographers will do this thing of they'll
be polite and take pictures, and then they.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Say to me, can you move? Can you move out
of the thing?
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Because I'm known and what they call a waste of
editorial space and they want to have a famous person
next to do I just have funny things that I thought, I,
you know, I would add to that.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
But I also just I was also right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
About funny or bitter? Maybe did you ever feel bitter
about that?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I don't know if that which No, no, I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But the first book, which was about our son my
helpful editor first, So this was a memoir. The first
it was my agent, I'm my editor. He read it
and he said to me, you know, I like it.
I just wish the narrator were more likable. And I
said me too. I've been working on that all my
life because I was the narrator. It was about me,
and he actually thought I was a little bitter in that,
(38:19):
and he was right, and I took it. I fixed that.
I don't like that in a memoir. I don't want
to read how angry a person is. Maybe in out
takes from a marriage the character is angry.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
But again I usually write.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
About things when they're behind me. So that Modern Love
piece that is in this at my new essay collection
in an expanded thing. It's about a time when our
marriage went through a rough patch that lasted three years
and we actually thought we were going to get a divorce,
and we didn't.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Tennis saved our marriage.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
We went to marriage counseling, and the piece I wrote
for Modern Love was well received and so, but I
couldn't write that until that was behind us for a
few years. When it's when you're in it, you are bitter.
I couldn't have written that the way I did, which
was with the little humor.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Did you live in the same house when you were
breaking up?
Speaker 3 (39:07):
We did, but we had a couple of houses, so
it's like we had a house in the country and
the house in the city. We did, and we thought
the kids were being horribly traumatized by our very troubled marriage.
And when I wrote this piece years later for The Times,
I sent it as I always do, to my family
to make sure no one's embarrassed to.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Embarrassed by it, and my kids were shocked. They had no.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Idea we had any So I guess we did a
good job of hiding.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, so if you write too soon.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
One of my favorite essays is Nora Ephron and her
famous quote is everything is copy. Not everything is copy
for me when it intrudes on the privacy of those
I love.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
But almost everything is copy.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And it's only funny though with time, and I like
to be funny and not bitter.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's a very nice trait, and it comes across except
to the neighbor.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yes, I know, maybe you don't know. When I moved
here is when I stopped being so nice.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
So why did you move to Bedford of all places?
What do you here?
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Well, so we were downsizing and we wanted to get
rid of this. We had a big farm in the
country and many acres, and we had the place in
the city. Horses and yeah, horses. We just wanted a
smaller place. Our kids had moved out. We loved that
this was on the train. But I'd also been coming
to the Bedford Hunter Pace for twenty years and I
wanted I knew all the trails, so I kind of
(40:32):
knew it that way, and we bought a house that's
right behind where that pay starts. At the time, I
looked on the satellite image and saw this property across
the street that I thought, I thought your Your paddocks
were so square. I thought they were soccer fields, and
I said, WHOA, let's like buyer beware, I think there's
(40:52):
a really nice like school boarding school the street.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Because of the paddocks.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Did you think I thought there were soccer fields? But
it was Martha Stewart's property. Our pets love my dogs
sit upstairs in the window, and they every day watch
Martha Stewart living because there's so many, so much going
on here. My horse I used to ride here, wanted
to dump me and live in her barn because the
(41:18):
animals here are have a great life and are fascinating.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
And the field and the fields are great pastures, you know,
Oh my god, the horses do like I feel so
sorry when I see a horse or two and a
little little paddock with no grass and then just hate
to eat right like at my house. Yeah, I feel
I feel always so sad that would.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Be my house.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
But I'm so glad that you did move in across
the street. It's been such a pleasure to have you
and Dennis and the children as neighbors. And what are
the kids doing now?
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Our daughter is writing. She's about to go to law.
She works in writers rooms for television shows, so she
it's like a nomad's life. She goes for a few months,
works on a show as a writer's assistant. Sometimes she
gets to write as well, and then she comes back.
Our son is a producer. He works with Dennis, and
he found it and made it happen, and it's going
(42:11):
to be shooting in Ireland this fall, but it's set
in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Oh, collaboration. So you're on a book to right now
with I've tried being nice. Yes, Where are you going
on this tour?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
I mostly just the New England area. You know since COVID.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
What happened during COVID, A lot of book events became
virtual and they publishers realized, why are we spending all
this money? Now It's different for Jodpico and Stephen King.
They still do like multi city tours. But you know,
if you are kind of you know, it's okay selling author,
it's you know, you can do these virtual events, which
I do, but I also go to you know, I
don't like to fly that one, so places where I
(42:45):
can drive. I've been in Cambridge, I've been here. I'm
going back to Boston and going Thursday, I'll be in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire at the Music Hall. They do big events there. Yeah,
so a lot of New England things. I will be
at RJ. Julia here in Connecticut at Stanford Library. Of
places I can get too easily and otherwise I do
(43:06):
kind of virtual events and the easiest was coming right
across the street to Martha Stewart to do your podcast.
I thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
So great for you to be here, and I can't
wait for your next book. Of course, on your Instagram
page at Ann Leary One Word, you share a lot
of videos of your dogs doing tricks and you can
get to know Ann Leary very nicely with her love
of animals right there on Ann Leary, thank you well,
thank you for coming by, and thank you, and I
(43:36):
can't wait to talk more about writing. I'm trying to
write an autobiography.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I know that I cannot wait, though this is hard.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
I'm not because I'd like to write, but I'm not
a novelist and I don't profess to be a writer.
But I know it's going to be a long slog
to do a book like that, but I'm looking forward
to it. Yes, I have friends like Anne Leary that
I can sort of.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I write it as you're writing it to your best friend.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I'm reading your very very good piece.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Yes, write it, you know, like you're writing it to
Charlotte Beers or Memory Lewis.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Your friends. I love you. Guys are a few years
older than me.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I've gotten to know a couple of Martha's friends, and
I am watching you guys because I want to be
moving into the next part of my life and being
able to.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
I can't keep up with you now.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
But we're all curious. Keep up the curiosity, that's right,
and that's what I think is the best thing about
being a writer is your curiosity.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I think that's something a lot of people don't know
about you. You are authentically very curious, and that's what
makes anyone and.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
I think that will help us a lot with my
writing as I embark on this next phase. But and Larry,
thank you and best of luck with this book as
it and you don't need it, but good luck.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Thank you so much, Martha, and come visit against so
I would love to
Host
Martha Stewart
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