III.

Israel Shamir is reported to have a handful of names. The Guardian noted that Magnus Ljunggren, a retired professor of Russian literature at Gothenburg University, claims that Shamir has at least six names: Shamir’s birth name was Izrail Schmerler; in 1992 he became a Swedish citizen and went by Jöran Jermas; and then after he was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem he took the name Adam Ermash.

I know one of your names is Jöran Jermas, right?

Yeah, well, I have so many names.

Where does that name come from? Because that’s on your Swedish passport, right?

Ah, eh, you know when people started to attack me I started to be worried about my freedom of movement. One wants to be able to move, so as not being stalked.

So, which is your real name?

Israel Shamir.

What about Izrail Schmerler?

What’s that?

Well, people said that’s your birth name.

That’s something that I really can’t say anything about.

Shamir is a chameleon. As we sat in Moscow last winter, and as he told me how he loved the snow and ice and liked to ice skate in Red Square, he looked Russian. In the picture on his website, where he appears to have a little darker skin and is wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh around his neck, he looks more Palestinian. And I am sure, if he were wearing a kippah while reciting verses from the Talmud in Hebrew that day, I’d think he was Jewish. It is hard to pin down the truth, but Shamir said he was born in Siberia to Jewish parents, moved to Israel in the 1960s, fought in the ’73 war as a paratrooper, and then became a journalist, living in London and working for the BBC. After that, he lived in Japan for a while and then returned to Israel to work for Haartez.

Shamir gave a speech at Tufts University in April 2001 about Arab-Israeli relations. The Tufts student newspaper reported that Shamir said: “Israeli people represent a virus form of a human being because they can live anywhere.” Shortly after, Palestinian rights groups, and two men in particular, Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish, sent out a mass email warning about Shamir’s anti-Semitic views disguised as leftist pro-Palestinian activism.

You once described Jews as a virus in human form.

I never did; no, that’s an invention of Jerusalem Post. Yes, I remember when they did it. That’s absolutely a silly thing. And then they quoted it so many times; I did not say that. People accuse me of everything, you know, so I’m used to it.

This goes back to the smear jobs. Why do you think you’re a target?

Well, you know, first of all some things that I say is complicated. And it’s easy for people to make misrepresentations. Maybe because people are unhappy with what I say and they want to smear me so I will look more awful. Why not to say truth, you know? I say things just how they are, you know?

In 2001, Shamir and Norman Finkelstein spoke at Columbia University. After the speech a Jewish man came up to Shamir and asked, “Are you Jewish?” Shamir told me that he was silent. He could not answer the question because he was in a transition from Judaism to Christianity. I asked him if he is Jewish, and he said quickly and assertively, “Now I am surely not.” I asked how he could not be Jewish if his mother and father were both Jews. He said, “It is a question of choice. I believe it is a question of choice.”

Being published on David Duke’s site, and having a regular gig writing for Russia’s anti-Semitic newspaper Zavtra, one would think Shamir wouldn’t have much Jew-loving company. He leaned back, itched his mustache, and said, “I met many people who are described as anti-Semites but I didn’t meet more than one who would be in real terms hating real human beings. They could hate the concept or hate an idea, but to hate Jews on a personal level, I never came across such thing.”

In Shamir’s eyes, being an anti-Semite is a good thing. If you are never called an anti-Semite, then it means that you support warmongering, brainwashing, and the subjugation of native people, in the name of Israel.

What if someone said: “I hate Jews and I wish Hitler killed all of them.”

People say such things.

Would that be labeled anti-Semitic?

Well, you know I’ve heard it very often from Sephardic Jews in Israel. I heard it quite a few times actually. [Laughs.] “Pity you didn’t burn in Auschwitz, a pity all of you didn’t burn in Auschwitz.” I heard it many times.

That’s awful.

Well, yeah. I don’t think that much about it.

Shamir had the poker player’s gift of never letting his guard down. He never committed to a concrete statement, no matter what the topic was. Once the questions got more controversial, he smoked contemplatively and stared out the window to the gray wall. At some point, though, he brought up Auschwitz, and I felt as though someone had just given me an ice pick. I chopped away.

That’s interesting you said “burn in Auschwitz” because your definition of Auschwitz is that it was a Red Cross internment camp. What is your definition of Auschwitz?

I’m not even interested in Auschwitz, you know? I have no interest in it. What I said there is something different. What I said there was that it was perceived as—internment camp.

By who?

By everybody. By Jews in Palestine, by Europeans, by English, by Russians, by Americans. You know when the rumors of mass annihilation came to Palestine they were strongly refuted by the Jewish authorities. It was reported by many publications that life was so awful. Things are so bad as it is and people come and bring such horrible stories … that was published in many newspapers in Israel in those times. The Jewish authorities were very strongly against this sort of rumor. And it was universally thought—yes, it was a deportation camp, nothing especially wonderful about it, nobody thought it was a resort, nobody did. People thought it was a deportation camp, quite awful place.

So, it was a concentration camp?

Yeah, but when I say concentration camp is a word that was used a long time before during the Boer War, when the English fought against the Boers in South Africa. There they built concentration camps; that’s how the word became coined.

This definition of concentration camp didn’t help Shamir’s point, for more than 26,000 women and children died in the South African camps from hard labor and starvation. Shamir stubbed his cigarette out as if tapping out an aggressive form of Morse Code, smashing the butt again and again. I put my butt in the ashtray and he stubbed it out, too, as if I hadn’t done a good enough job.

So, Auschwitz as being a place to exterminate Jews …

This idea came to existence only after the war.

So, it’s a rumor?

No, no, no. I don’t say that at all. No.

But you said, “the rumor of mass annihilation.”

I can repeat more clear. I am not all that interested in what was in reality. I am interested in perceptions. Something I am dealing with is perceptions. So, perceptions during the war was that it was quite awful deportation camp, where people were deported and kept, worked hard labor, this sort of thing. That’s how it was perceived. Only after the war, different perception came. And that was a perception of mass annihilation, and mass murder, and all that.

So, it’s not a fact that there was mass annihilation?

Shamir lost his relaxed demeanor, shifted in his seat, and contracted his shoulders. He covered half his face with his tanned, wrinkled hand and continued, trying to keep it together.

That’s, not, I did not say that at all. I didn’t even say that, I didn’t even intend to say this or other way. What I say is that there was no such perception during the war. This perception came after the war.

But so which one is true?

I am not even interested in this kind of question. That is something that is very much outside of my interest.

But can you comment about if these concentration camps were for mass murder?

Ah, I have really no knowledge about it at all. I was not interested in it because I reject the idea that it is important, you see?

IV.

The waiter arrived and placed a cappuccino in front of Shamir. He politely thanked him in Russian. Shamir added no sugar, sipped from his cup, and then quickly popped a sugar cube in his mouth. I could hear his tobacco-stained teeth crush it with quick staccato crunches.

How far along are we with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Meaning?

Well, that the Jews have a goal of world domination.

Ah, well, well, well. That is kind of a very good and very complicated question. Basically the Protocols describe in this or another way some idea of creating impoverished world. A world where there is no spirit.

Do you think that is real? And that’s what’s happening?

Well, I do think that this process takes place. It’s the process of impoverishing the spiritual component of the world. This process surely goes on.

But are the Jews behind it?

Well, in total, I don’t think so.

So, you don’t think the Jews are behind that?

Not that much, not that much.

But a little bit?

Well, let’s say that it could fit some Jewish ideas. It could be explained by some Jewish ideas. For instance, the idea that there should be no religion, that the Gentiles should not have a religion: That is kind of an important Jewish concept. We should try to understand why people thought it is connected with Jews. That this kind of Kali Yuga process, the process of impoverishing the world. How come? Why people thought it is connected with Jews? Anyway that’s an interesting question. That’s what I say the possible explanation is that it is connected with the Jewish concept that non-Jews do not have direct access to God.

So, you write about how especially American goyim are brainwashed by Jewish media lords. Can you explain that a bit? How far are we? Do you think I am a brainwashed goy?

Well, first of all I don’t know. How would I know? That’s something I don’t know. It is very much impossible to know. There is a huge part of brainwash, for sure. That is what goes on a daily basis.

And what do they try to brainwash? What do the Mammonites—and what you say are quote-unquote the Jewish media lords—what are they trying to brainwash?

Well, they try to induce you with the feeling that Jews are very, very wonderfully special.

Are they not?

No.

They same as everyone, or worse?

The same, absolutely same. They try to induce with concept that whatever happens to Jews has some kind of special meaning for the world.

So, what are you trying to say? That Gentiles and Jews are the same?

Well, what I say is a little more complicated than that.

It was nearing the end of our interview. My smokes were dwindling quickly, and Shamir had already started on his second red-and-silver pack of Dunhills. I asked him: “And what’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear ‘Jews.’ ” His chin was in his right hand as his eyes looked toward the bar. He was silent for nine seconds. “Not again,” he said, punctuating his curt sentence with a long laugh. “Not again? What do you mean by that?” I asked. With no hesitation he replied, “That I am very tired of hearing this word.” He laughed heartily.

V.

On Tuesday, I sat staring out the window, watching the frozen trees and the frozen pond across the street. Every now and then large chunks of ice fell from the 12-story roof and smacked the street, or got buried in a pile of snow. This was my second-to-last day in Moscow, and I had a feeling the day before was the last time I would ever get to see my man. I called Shamir, but he didn’t pick up. I called two more times within a half hour, but no one answered. I reread certain sections of his work and tried to make sense of the man I’d been studying and the man I met. There were two different Shamirs, if not more: the anti-Semitic writer who unabashedly admits that Jews have used the Holocaust to benefit themselves and who believes that “Jewish Media Lords” have hijacked the newspapers and TV to brainwash readers into thinking that Israel is always right and Jews are the chosen people. Then there was the person I met: a gentle, polite man, who was not easily provoked and was frozen solid.

Then I received an email from Shamir. It said, “I am leaving Moscow for a stay in a monastery and will be unable to see you. I explicitly request you: Do not publish a single word without me checking the text first.” I realized that this man was afraid of what others said about him. He was discreet and controlling. He had different names for a reason. He had something to hide: a certain fear, a certain darkness, that had consumed him. Who knows what the origins of his fear are? “This time of certainty is over,” Shamir writes. He insists that Gentiles need to stand up to the elite Jews in government, the media, and anywhere else they’re hiding, or risk, he says, falling “into a New Dark Age, into a bleak anti-Utopia, and our children will not forgive us for our passivity. Or we still can pull and push, and hope for the best.” His hope is to transform his private darkness into a light that others will follow. In the meantime, he hides himself.

Two weeks later I received a Facebook message from Paul Bennett, Shamir’s editor and fellow writer on Counterpunch, a biweekly newsletter that describes what it does as “muckraking with a radical attitude.” The email started to outline how smart and misunderstood the “underdog” is and how we can learn a lot from a man with Shamir’s intelligence. But then it became a little bit threatening. “I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to understand why it would pay better to attack Shamir than to support him, but I think you may be young enough and still idealistic enough to appreciate his fine points,” wrote Bennett, a U.S. citizen, a proclaimed fan of Shamir’s, and the editor of the English versions of Shamir’s books.

Maybe he doesn’t mean it. Maybe he just wants to make a splash. But after five months following the man, I don’t think that is the case. Shamir has disguised his prejudice against Jews in the guise of a moral dilemma—to be or not to be a Jew­—and by making the right decision for other humans to follow. Reading Shamir’s work is like looking at a map of Moscow’s metro. The city and its metro system are built in circles: The innermost circle is Red Square and the Kremlin, and the outermost circle is the outskirts of the city, but they are all connected. From the center, you can easily go out to the edge. Shamir leads you to believe that you, as a reader, are getting to the epicenter of morality by admitting that elite Jews in power are evil Mammonites whose main goal is to make Jerusalem the spiritual capital of the world and to enslave the Gentiles. But the more you read, the more you try to analyze, the further away from morality you actually become.

In his Facebook message, Bennett continued to explain why as “a budding journalist” it would pay not to smear “our friend.” “When we speak to him we must realize that we are one degree away from global movers and shakers like Julian Assange,” he wrote. In the early 2000s, Shamir was nothing but a marginal anti-Semite and a prolific writer. But at that time one could write him off as a lunatic, or a self-loathing-Jew, or just a weirdo. But now, with Assange’s backing, Shamir has become a legitimate source of news and facts with a legitimate platform that is hard to ignore. His ideas may be heretical, mad, coming too fast to digest, but the Age of Assange has made Shamir less eccentric, more central—a dangerous man.

Will Yakowicz is a writer based in New York.

Outside my window in Moscow everything is frozen, the thick ice-coated ground, the wind whining through alleys between the gray apartment buildings that stick out from 5-foot bases of hard snow, the orange dump trucks full of snow chugging along the street. Seven floors down, men in blue and orange overalls and black snowcaps are smashing the 3-inch-thick layers of ice coating the sidewalks with wooden-handled-and-metal-ended ice picks. Then there’s me, waiting in my thermals for the supposed Russian representative of WikiLeaks, a man who says his name is Israel Shamir, but who is also known as Jöran Jermas, and Adam Ermash, and who spends his time between Sweden, Israel, and Russia.

I have spent too much time in the paranoid corners where Shamir’s articles appear, on websites that claim the Jews planned the attacks of Sept. 11, Jews convinced the George W. Bush Administration to go to war in the Middle East, Jews have nuclear weapons not to just destroy Lebanon and Iraq and Syria, but Europe, too. Shamir says he was born in Novosibirsk, Siberia, in 1947 to Jewish parents but in 2004 was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem. While he claims to be a Palestinian activist, a believer in the “One State Solution,” his work reads more like right-wing anti-Semitic propaganda. He writes and speaks about the existence of “Jewish Media Lords” who have hijacked newspapers and TV to brainwash Americans into carrying out “Judaic goals,” which include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As he writes in one of his books, Cabbala of Power, “The Jewish ‘plan’ is no secret; there is no need to re-read The Protocols or to ask Jews what they want.” In addition to having accused Israel of all manner of crimes, he has also been labeled a Holocaust-denier by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Shamir and I first corresponded via email four months ago. After he canceled a planned interview in February, we began talking on the phone every week, but he still refused to schedule an interview. The most he would promise me is that if I come to Moscow and called him, he might meet me, but then again he might not. “Things are getting very complicated,” he explained. “All I might have is an hour.”

The day before I left New York for Moscow, I bumped into Norman Finkelstein, a scholar and Holocaust-doubter who was denied tenure at DePaul University because of his published work, The Holocaust Industry, which claims the factual account of mass-extermination has been exploited so Jews can “gain immunity to criticism.” I had emailed Finkelstein early in February, after Shamir told me they were friends. Finkelstein wrote back, “I want nothing to do with this article. [Shamir] is a maniac.” So, when on another day on Gravesend Neck Road in Brooklyn outside of a closed-down Russian Apteka, I saw a tall man with gray thin hair wearing a brown corduroy blazer with a Palestinian flag pin on his lapel, I recognized him as Finkelstein and approached. As two young boys ran past us wearing kippas, he elaborated on his email: “He’s sleazy—Shamir said we were friends because he’s sleazy, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he stated while his nose ran in the February wind. “He has invented his entire personal history. Nothing he says about himself is true. And you won’t get this article published anywhere.”

One night before my trip, I realized that I started to believe this dark character who crawled out from the perverse nooks of the Internet to save my goy soul from the people he called “Jewish Media Lords.” I was sitting up on my couch at 4 a.m. reading a Shamir article about IDF soldiers who steal Palestinian organs and sell them on the black market. Then I read an article that called Jews “Christ-Killers” and another that said “a Jewish media lord—and one of the nastiest: Arthur Sulzberger Jr.” owns the New York Times. Hardly convincing, but then why was I starting to doubt the Times? I realized I had better get some sleep.

When the sun came up that first morning in Moscow, I called Shamir and told him I was in town. He told me that it’s “too hard to tell” if he would be able to meet. He suggested that if I called him at 2 p.m., he might have a better idea. If we met it would be at the Dom Zhurnalista, the Journalist’s House, off Arbatskaya metro station. While I waited and smoked, I re-read Shamir’s Cabbala of Power. Jews as a group, he argues, don’t know what they want, but at the very least they want war. Shamir quotes the Bible to explain, “‘The locusts have no king, yet they attack in formation …’ (Proverbs 30:27) and devastate whole countries as if by plan.” In Masters of Discourse Shamir writes, “There are no important media outlets in the US that are not owned or controlled by Jews.”

I was drifting in the silver smoke sitting near Red Square. I was there to meet a marginal weirdo and a notorious Holocaust-doubter. But I was also meeting a man who has real power in the newest form of journalism. Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, had given Shamir access to cables and made him the organization’s representative in Moscow. Is Shamir crazy, or not? The question seemed important.

On March 1, 2011, the New York Times published an article about a report about a phone conversation that was never recorded. According to this article, Julian Assange told the British magazine the Private Eye that there is a Jewish conspiracy against WikiLeaks led by British journalists, including editors of the Guardian. The report, written by the publication’s editor, Ian Hislop, was based on a phone conversation Hislop had with Assange on Feb. 16, 2011. During the conversation, Hislop claimed that Assange stated the Jewish conspiracy to smear WikiLeaks was spearheaded by the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, investigations editor David Leigh, and by Index on Censorship’s John Kampfner. Although Rusbridger is not a Jew, Assange stressed that he is “sort of Jewish,” because he and David Leigh, a Jew, are brothers-in-law. But what really bothered Assange was a different article by the same publication titled, “Man in the Eye: Israel Shamir,” which claims Shamir is a Holocaust denier. Assange said that the article was “crap”—one more example of the Jewish conspiracy against WikiLeaks.

At 2 p.m., I called Shamir. He said he would meet me in one hour. I pulled it together, drank one more cup of coffee, and jumped on the subway. I was close.

II.

I first became curious about Shamir when the original reports came out in December in Russian and Swedish newspapers, and then in Reason and on the blog of New York Magazine, which claimed that he was the Russian “content aggregator” for WikiLeaks, as well as a “Holocaust denier.” I became more curious when I read an excerpt of the aformentioned Private Eye article about Shamir’s alleged anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying beliefs and his direct relationship with Assange. And I became very interested when I read WikiLeaks’ statement on its website: “Israel Shamir has never worked or volunteered for WikiLeaks, in any manner, whatsoever. He has never written for WikiLeaks or any associated organization, under any name and we have no plan that he do so. He is not an ‘agent’ of WikiLeaks.”

A spokesman for WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, confirmed this when I called to ask if Shamir was directly connected to the organization. “No, he is not,” said Hrafnsson. “He only worked on the Cable Gate release, like hundreds of other journalists.” Then the line went dead.

In Moscow, on my way to meet the man, I exited Arbatskaya Station and walked underneath the busy bul’var. I came out to see snow, ice, and a big black iron gate, behind which lay a courtyard and the Journalists’ House. In front of the big beige building was a set of stairs, which led down to a café. Through the window, I could see Shamir sitting at a table.

We said hello. Shook hands. “How do you like Moscow?” he asked me in fluent English, but with a Russian accent tinged with a Hebrew one, or possibly the other way around. I reached for my cigarette. He did the same. Shamir had recognizable human qualities, like a strong handshake and a fine smile. It felt nice to talk with someone, because I had been alone during my days of wandering and waiting around Moscow. Then I remembered that I was dining with a man who dedicated his life’s work to writing about why it’s wrong to be a Jew. And I knew from my reading of his work that there was something in his ice-hard anti-Semitic soul—be it anger, prejudice, or a reincarnation of an ancient darkness into modern anti-Israel sentiment—that genuinely scared me. I thought about an excerpt from Cabbala of Power: “In order to save the world from possible spiritual devastation, the Jewish state must be dismantled. … It can be done softly, without bloodshed, by creating a democratic state for all residents of Palestine, native and adoptive Palestinians. It won’t be a Jewish state, but Israeli Jews will eventually be absorbed by Palestinians, as the Jews of old were absorbed by Palestinians during the 2nd to 7th centuries.”

To me, it read like soft-core ethnic cleansing. But it was too late to analyze, as I was already studying his tan, wrinkled face and his thick, bristly mustache. Israel Shamir was a short man, neither fat nor skinny. His gray-and-black loose curls puffed around his cranium, and he sat with his elbows on the table after he fumbled to get his voice recorder to work. His hands touched, rubbed, and pressed his mustache, forehead, and temples incessantly throughout our conversation. He ordered the salad with sliced radish on top, and I ordered the borscht.

We talked about Julian Assange, of whom he said, “My acquaintance with him is so superficial. I have this very superficial view of the man.” He scratched the base of his nose above his lip. He turned his head and looked at the gray painted brick wall of the stairway out the window.

I know that when Assange was in Ellingham Hall in the Norfolk County that you went to visit him. He introduced you as “Adam.” I know you have a couple different names. Why were you introduced as Adam?

Well, Adam is my real name as well, Christian name as well. I actually use it quite often.

Yes, Adam Ermash, right?

Just Adam. Usually in many books I have it “Israel Adam Shamir.”

It was also reported that at Ellingham Hall, with Julian Assange and you were introduced as Adam, that you asked for cables about the Jews. Why did you ask for cables about the Jews and did you get any?

Oh, yeah, I have a lot of cables about the Jews. [He grins.] I have thousands of cables about the Jews.

And what do the cables say about the Jews?

Oh, it’s a very entertaining thing. I want to write about it, but I haven’t had time yet. But I think it is a very entertaining subject. A lot of cables about Jews.

Give me one example, what does a cable say?

One of them for instance that was published by me in a Russian newspaper a couple of weeks ago, there was a piece by the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow saying that Russia has no anti-Semitism.

And does Moscow have anti-Semitism?

No, surely not.

He finished his salad and put his napkin on his lap and pulled out one of the two packs of Dunhills he brought. He smoked cigarettes constantly, and he smoked with heart and vigor; he truly seemed to enjoy the act of smoking. The waiter stopped by, and Shamir ordered a cappuccino politely and nonchalantly. Our pasta did not look appetizing—noodles with chucks of tough meat in a brown oily sauce.

What is hatred?

That’s something I don’t, I’ve never experienced.

You’ve never experienced hatred?

Nuh-uh.

He was silent for 10 seconds until I asked the next question.

Well, on your site you say you’re a lightening rod for smear jobs. Do you think people hate you?

Well, they have a practical meaning also. I don’t think someone smears me because somebody hates me personally all that much. That would be very odd. I mean, provided I don’t feel hatred for others, would be strange to think someone hates me all that much.

Do you think you could be provoked to hate? What if you saw a murder?

Yaaaa …

As I understand you’ve seen terrible things that murderous Jews have done. When you were in the settlements you saw the hilltop youths—

One gets annoyed, you know. One gets annoyed. Ah, one gets annoyed. But I kind of personally don’t think I have ever felt such strong, passion as hatred. Hatred is very strong passion. I don’t think I’ve ever came close to it.

When you write about the IDF as SS soldiers in Gaza?

No, that’s not out of anger. That’s not even out of very strong anger. Or any way, that’s what I try, not to write … angrily. First of all, if one writes angrily, people do not read it. [Laughs.]

It would take days for the Moscovite ice pickers to chop through his ice. But every now and then, Shamir gets tired of smiling and laughing things off.

When I was in the West Bank there was definitely hostile feelings towards the Palestinians.

Yes. [Laughs.] Yes. Very silly, very silly. My mother lives in a settlement, called Eli.

Eli? I’ve been there.

Yeah, oh, you know. And she’s very much a settler. Very ideological. Very keen on all this stuff. She can speak forever about how awful everybody else is to them. I’ve tried many times to tell her why not kind of look at it differently, why not to see that people can live together? Basically to try to live together peacefully. That would be good enough. But kind of she didn’t really like it.

It must be hard for her to read your stuff.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes …

What does she say about your books?

Well, she doesn’t like it. [Laughs.] She doesn’t like it.

I think about how he described the Hilltop Youth once in his book Flowers of Galilee. “They seemed like nothing you ever saw. To their shaven heads, black boxes were strapped by narrow black belts; black belts crisscrossed their bare arms. The Jews put on the phylacteries … for a morning prayer, but on these young men they looked like the amulets of a warlike tribe. They wore dark trousers and dark tee shirts; white shawls with black stripes flew behind their backs. Their rifles were pointed at us. They looked possessed by some strange demon.”

Shamir continued talking about his Jewish settler mother. “Well, that’s the way with mothers. So we don’t have to worry about it all that much. We don’t have obligations of this sort towards our mothers,” he said casually. He rested his left arm on the table and held his chin in the cup of his right hand. It was getting dark outside, but our interview was far from over.

For the second installment of this article, click here.

Will Yakowicz is a writer based in New York.

A Conversation With Gore Vidal [Atlantic]