This Much I Know: Douglas Kennedy

"I grew up thinking that I’d never leave New York, it was my entire world, but I ended up in Ireland for 11 years"

Sat, 18 Sep, 2021 - 06:00

I’m a mid-century American. I was born in 1955 and grew up in a 650-square-foot apartment in New York City, back when Manhattan had a middle-class. When I was nine years old I was accepted into the Collegiate School, probably the most academic of New York’s schools. They only take 45 boys each year and it was full of very wealthy children.

John F Kennedy Jr was there, Leonard Bernstein’s son, the sons of the people who ran the Seagram company, and I was just this middle-class boy who got in. My father was of an Irish Catholic background and grew up in a working-class corner of Brooklyn and my mother was of German Jewish background and grew up in a lower-middle-class corner of Brooklyn called Flatbush.

My earliest memory is waiting on the corner of 19th Street and 2nd Avenue for a school bus to pick me up. I was six years old and there was this little girl there with her father. I was with my father as well and he was dressed in a suit and tanned jacket. Both men were in their early 30s and wearing hats. The little girl kept hiding behind her father and peeking out at me. It was the first time I felt that push and pull of interest that is the story of so much of one’s romantic life.

I grew up thinking that I’d never leave New York, it was my entire world, but I ended up in Ireland for 11 years, then London, and now I live largely between Paris and Berlin.

It was always my dream when I was young to write. I was told that I had talent, but actually becoming a writer was very hard graft. I started out writing radio plays for RTÉ and BBC and then I had a stage play at the Peacock theatre in Dublin, which I used to run. I discovered that I wasn’t much of a playwright, and started working on my first book while writing newspaper columns. I had a very small contract with an English publisher for my first book, Beyond The Pyramids, and moved to London in 1988.

I hit London at the very right moment. It was booming and there was a huge amount of money around. Newspapers seemed awash with cash, magazines were flourishing. I was very fortunate. I was a cultural writer for many years and started doing travel writing for magazines and I wrote essays, all while writing my books. It was brilliant. My friends and I still talk about that era. It was a rare moment and we were very lucky.

The greatest challenge I have ever faced, without question, was ‘pulling’ my son out of autism. [In an article which Kennedy wrote himself, he explains he used The Lovaas Method to help address the issues caused by his son’s autism — “a controversial way to teach autistic children that was pioneered at UCLA by Norwegian psychologist Ivar Lovaas. With my friend’s help I set up a Lovaas school for Max at home.”]

Max is now 29 and is living in New York and has a MA in Photography from the University of London. I could not be more proud of both of my children; Max and my daughter Amelia. They are interesting, thoughtful, highly original, and very decent people. The thing that scares me most in the world is anything happening to them.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who had an interesting life, was a good friend, and was an interesting writer. There are 25 books on the shelf in my apartment that I’ve written, held up by a clock. I’m hoping there are at least another 10 books in me to fill up that space.

I’m best at writing the next sentence and maintaining a vast amount of curiosity and my greatest quality is perseverance. Even during the very bad times in my life, I’ve never stopped working. I’m also very fortunate that I have several very close friends. I couldn’t pick just one that I turn to most.

The lesson I would pass on would be to never try to be popular. It’s always a disaster when you do. Having never been popular, I can promise you it makes for a more interesting life.

The greatest advice I have ever been given was from my grandfather. He was a jeweller in the diamond district of Manhattan. Right before he died, when I was 28 years old and living in Dublin, he told me that he thought I was going to have a very big career and said: “Never fall in love with the aroma of your own perfume.” Two things surprise me. The first is people who are vindictive and mean and the other is anyone who can do something creative that makes me envious in the best sense of the word. I love discovering anything that makes me want to up my game.

If I took a different fork in the road I would have loved to have studied music and been an orchestral conductor. I’m mad about music. However, I’m someone who is very happy on his own and is not a general when it comes to mustering the troops so I don’t think it would have been a very good fit. But, you never know.