Late Night with Jerry Izenberg

Our Continuing Conversation. Tonight's Episode: Working with Animals.

“Why don’t you buy the man a fucking razor?” Jerry says in lieu of Hello.

And we’re off.

“All I do is buy my father razors,” I say.

“C’mon! Your dad has a lot of Miss Americas and he wants to look good for all of them. I don’t know why you won’t just buy the man a razor. He raised you.”

I was about to ask Jerry how he was feeling but he yells at me when I do. He tells me about a project he’s working on for the New Jersey State Museum, in which, as part of an interactive installation, he will take viewers through his hometown in Newark — the old ballparks, diners, warehouses, apartments in which he and his family lived. It is a city, even to this day, even though Jerry’s in his 90s and now lives in Henderson, Nevada that still has a hold of and on him.

“It made me.”

He has completed a memoir of those early days in Newark. He’s still debating the title.

For now, he’s calling it “The Jew Book.”

“I was the horniest 11-year-old in New Jersey,” he tells me. “That’s in the book.”