Brian Lair on WNYC.

So I had the extreme pleasure yesterday of seeing the one-man show at Lincoln Center by New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik.

It was just called Adam Gopnik's New York.

It was largely autobiographical. I'd call it observations about life in general through observations

about his life in particular. And I learned some things I didn't know along the way about some

giants in literary and artistic and intellectual history. Adam once wrote an article called

Proust and the Sex Rats, I'll let him explain. Another one, Picasso, gave his famous

painting, Gernica, to the Museum of Modern Art here in New York in 1939, declaring that it could

not be returned to Spain until Spain returned to being a democracy

after the Franco era. Moma did return the painting in 1981. I wonder if any artists here might

take a cue and loan out their works abroad for a while. Adam Gopnik's New York continues at the

Clark Theater at Lincoln Center through next Sunday. He is also

the author of many books and continues to write in The New Yorker after 40 years. His last two

pieces were about a Calder Garden show in Philadelphia and one called Donald Trump Architecture

Critic will get his take on that. He was last here in February and in August, the February

one was about his insomnia. Adam, we always appreciate and learn stuff when you come on with us.

Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure to be back with you.

First, on the very fact of you doing a one-man show, I mean, it's one thing for a professional

actor to memorize an hour and a half of lines doing a one-man show. I mean, it's one thing for a professional actor to memorize an

hour and a half of lines for a play and deliver them with comic timing and everything else. Your

day job is writer, not actor. You sit at a word processor. What made you want to do this or think

you could pull it off? Well, I suppose there's just the sheer ham that's been inside me all my life.

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