A Telephone Call Between New Friends

Writer Amanda Stern '89 Calls Writer Abigail Thomas '59

AS: It is so nice to meet your voice.

AT: It’s so nice to meet your voice.

AS: How did you find yourself at Friends Seminary?

AT: I was going to go to Brearley, where my sisters went, and then word came from somebody to my parents that there was an opening at Friends. And there hadn’t been an opening since like, Kindergarten. My God did I want to go there.

AS: Had you just moved to New York?

AT: Yeah, we moved a million times. We moved to New York City when I was 16. To Washington Square West and I was ready for that. I lived right on the park. You could send your six-year-old sister there on a bicycle by herself. It was safe as houses.

AS: What year was this?

AT: It was 1958. I went to Friends in 1958 and 1959. Friends was my 11th school. I was used to the unfamiliar smell of school and that had become a familiar smell. Oh, there’s that unfamiliar smell; I know that. Friends was the first place I’d ever gone where I felt welcome. I didn’t feel like a stranger. The people were friendly; I made friends. There was something completely different about it from every other place. I mean, I’d gone to a very, very good school before that, a girls’ school, but I was never part of anything. It was just a completely different feeling. It wasn’t cliquey. I was always sort of on the outside, which is where I belonged, but at Friends there were people who hung together but it wasn’t exclusive. And you found your good friends pretty quickly. In fact, there used to be a coffee shop on 14th Street called Blynn’s, and four of us would go there every day after school. We’d have coffee and English muffins and talk about Freud and Kierkegard. Oh, we had these deep, long discussions—it was hysterical. It was just wonderful. It’s been gone for 50 years.

AS: What did the Meetinghouse look like then?

AT: It was white and it had these long wonderful dark pews. It was wonderful. I had already had some experience with—not being a Quaker—but going to Quaker meetings because when we lived in Snedens Landing, a teacher took me under her wing and took me to meetings. So, I knew about the power of it. I knew the quiver that can go through you, and it was just extraordinary. It was great. I don’t know what makes a Quaker school different from all other schools, but they’re different.

AS: Have you gone to Quaker meetings since high school?

AT: No, no. And I didn’t in the city, either. But I know how to be quiet, and I know what comes from that. The way I’m quiet these days is to let my monkey mind loose because my monkey mind is what I’m after. And I don’t care if he swings from his tail off the ceiling. If I’m quiet and nothing else is going on, I see where my mind wanders. And I often find something that’s interesting to write about. I mean, even if it’s a paragraph, at least I’m working. Because you must know that when you’re a writer and you can’t write there’s absolutely no point. I mean, I have four kids and 12 grandchildren and one great granddaughter, and if I’m not writing there is absolutely no point to me. Despite all the family, despite everything, I sink into a slough of despond. But fortunately, since the pandemic, sitting here quietly in my chair going nowhere, I’ve been a very good observer of what goes on outside my window. And also, the quiet allows the back of your mind to move forward to the front of your mind. You find out what you’ve been thinking about without having to think about it.

AS: Did you ever talk in silent meeting?

AT: You know I did once, and for the life of me I can’t remember what I said. But it meant a lot to me. I have these bald spots in my memory, and I wish to God I knew what I’d said, but it was something that mattered to me. I don’t know what I said, but in that school I said whatever popped into my mind, and none of it was ever censored. You could find out who you were. Because there was nobody telling you not to talk like that, or dress like that, or to shut up. It was a different atmosphere from any place I’d ever been, and boy had I been to a lot of places.

AS: Tell me about your favorite teacher.

AT: Oh, Dr. Hunter! I just loved Dr. Hunter. He was passionately in love with everything he taught, and he taught everything! He was the Upper School. He taught modern European history, American history and comparative religion—everything I was interested in, he taught. And he was, I can still remember he had a certain way—his handwriting was unusual. And I can’t describe it to you, but I know it exactly. I remembered exactly the way he made his A’s, which was different from the way everybody else made their cursive A’s. And if he would look at us, and we had blank looks on our faces, he would say “You, bunnies. You, bunnies! This is interesting. What is the matter with you, you bunnies?” and that was the worst thing he would ever say to anybody.

AS: How old was he?

AT: Oh, he was in his 70s. He was also wonderful looking. You know? He was just a really interesting looking man. He was not tall. I don’t even know how long he’d been there, probably forever. But he was the Upper School.

AS: Do you feel like your teachers respected you?

AT: I felt like the teachers at Friends let me be who I was. I could argue. I could say outrageous things, and they were taken seriously. And I did say outrageous things. I was kind of a wild child. And I’d never been that before. It was partly because you just were who you were, you know? It was just possible to be a little outrageous and nobody shunned you or, or told you to behave yourself. It was very free and non-judgmental. It was a lovely place. It really was.

AS: If you hadn’t gone to Friends, do you think you’d be the person you are now?

AT: I think the experience was really key. I mean, I had a fairly screwed up life after that. But I look back on Friends with as much affection as I have for almost anything. The old friends. The brick building Friends. It was lovely. It was just all air and light or rain or whatever was going on outside.

AS: Friends made me believe in myself in ways no one had before. It seems like you had a similar experience.

AT: Yes, absolutely. Be myself. A self I hadn’t known before.

AS: Do you remember some of the authors you read?

AT: We read Silas Marner. We read George Eliot. We read the poetry of George Herbert and Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Dunne, and Coleridge. We did the old dead white men. But I was glad. I loved it all. It was an old-fashioned curriculum. It was the 50s. I think if it had been middle 60s, it would have been different. God knows we knew about a whole lot more, but it was interesting to me. I didn’t mind it. It was all made interesting and it was brand new to me.

AS: How did you get to school every day?

AT: I used to walk to school with Gail Culkin because she lived in the Mews, and I would walk up, pick her up in the Mews, and then we walked to University Place and up and then over.

AS: How often do you think about Friends?

AT: It comes into my head a lot because I’m proud of having written eight books with a high school education. I have reverse snobbery. I’m sometimes curious about why I never felt I should have a college education, although I suddenly had a great many children.

AS: Can you talk a little bit about the connection and importance of silence and writing?

AT: It’s extremely important, don’t you think? You can’t know what you’re thinking if you’re busy busy busy. You need to settle into yourself. It’s almost like napping, right? It’s like letting the aquarium settle so you can see the fish.

AS: So you never felt discomfort with the silence; you embraced it immediately?

AT: Oh yes. I did. You felt something that you didn’t feel anywhere else. You felt a sort of weird connection to everyone else in the room. You were sort of one person even though you weren’t. It was a real experience. I loved it. I took right to it. I wanted to be silent. There was a hum in that room. There was something extraordinary going on.

AS: You haven’t been to a meeting as an adult?

AT: No, I haven’t.

AS: Why do you think that is?

AT: Because I’m pretty quiet. I’m a little bit content with my own quiet here. When I’m in gear, I’m my own best company, and I want my own quiet. It’s a different quiet in meetings. It’s a different thing. It’s not always productive, my own quiet, but there’s almost always something that captures my attention to write down even if it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s always interesting to start not knowing where you’re going. It’s that possibility. Possibility is a physical feeling, it’s such a high. You don’t know where you’re going, but you’re going somewhere, and you’ll find out. Often, it’s nothing, but you’ve been at something.

AS: You like the not knowing?

AT: Oh, I love the not knowing. Someone said to me a couple months ago, there are two kinds of people: the people who take the long way and the ones who just want to get where they’re going. And I thought about it, and I wrote about it, and went sideways about it and I couldn’t do that if I weren’t quiet. I couldn’t do that if I didn’t live alone. If I lived with somebody…imagine if you’re in the middle of doing nothing and something is happening, and somebody wonders if we’re out of coffee, or could he make me a sandwich, and do I want mayo? I would become my least favorite version of myself. Not that anyone is beating down my door, but I am so glad to live alone. Co-habiting…I mean I’ve been married three times, and I can’t imagine ever living with someone ever again. Well, maybe Viggo Mortensen. No, I couldn’t even stand Viggo. Any other consciousness in this house would be awful.

AS: How would you frame your work for the people who have never read it?

AT: I don’t have a very good memory, but what I do have a memory for, I do have a good memory. I write about a moment until I’m done, and I don’t add any extra like furniture or weather and then I move onto the next moment. I get it the way I like it and then I do a lot of samurai editing. That’s how I do it. I don’t want to seem good. I just want to be honest. I expose the parts of myself that I’m least proud of, but once I’ve gotten it up out of the dark and into the light it, doesn’t have the power it had on me. And when it’s lost its power, you can forgive yourself and then you can move on because guilt just keeps you in the headlights.

AS: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

AT: Just write and don’t look over your own shoulder. Don’t criticize what you’re doing because it won’t be good the first time around. Nothing is good the first time around. That’s just the beginning. And don’t stop. Always, always save your first draft—none of which may appear in what you finally write, but that’s where the fire started, so if you’ve gone on and lost your thread, go back to the first draft, which will be unrecognizable, but your fire will light up again. Save your first attempt, which is why you should write long hand and not on a computer because it’s too easy to change as you go along, and then you don’t have a first draft anymore. And don’t compare yourself to anyone else, and don’t think “Oh, I’m too old,” or “I don’t know anything.” Just start. You can start with the sentence: “This is a lie I’ve told before…” and then see what happens. You can look around and just write about what you’re looking at right now. And there are no rules, if you’re writing memoir. The only rule is you have to be honest, and you have to go down to the basement and drag up the shit that is down there. And you have to write about it. Even if it’s just for yourself. What you do for yourself can be very useful for other people. You can make other people feel human. Just write. Have adventures. Take risks. Do stuff.

AS: Have you been reading at all during the pandemic? I’ve only managed to read one book for pleasure.

AT: Oh no. I’ve been having such difficulty reading. What was the one book you read during the pandemic year?

AS: Oh. It was a book called “Safekeeping.”

AT: (Laughter). Oh, I’m very honored. Thank you.

Amanda Stern ’89 has published 13 books (11 for kids and two for adults). Her most recent memoir is “Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life.” She lives with her dog in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Abigail Thomas ’59 has written eight books. Her most recent are the memoirs “Safekeeping; A Three Dog Life” and “What Comes Next and How to Like It.” She lives with her dogs in Woodstock, NY.