Ariel Levy + Emily Nussbaum | The Rules Do Not Apply

The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy and Emily Nussbaum discuss Levy’s “painful, funny” new memoir “The Rules Do Not Apply.” Buy a copy here: www.strandbooks...
When 38-year-old New Yorker writer Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true.
In “The Rules Do Not Apply,” Levy tells the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed. Like much of her generation, she was raised to resist traditional rules-about work, about love, and about womanhood.
“I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can’t have it all.”
Levy discusses her "grieving, hopeful, painful, funny" memoir with Emily Nussbaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic for the New Yorker.
Recorded March 29, 2017

[@fileboy2002]

Thanksgiving in Mongolia was just heartbreaking. What I remember most was that Levy used an oddly flat, dispassionate tone to describe what must have been one of the most terrifying and tragic events of her life. That somehow made the event described seem evevn worse. A brilliant narrative choice.

[@jamiereneeanderson989]

It would be a dream come true to be able to talk to her. She is a beautiful and inspiring woman. I wish her nothing but the BEST.

[@theinkbrain]

Brilliant, magnetic, beautiful, confusing woman!