Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. It's beach read season, and we want to remind you about our Summer Reading Challenge. Through the end of Labor Day weekend, we are inviting our listeners to read at least one book in five different categories, including a classic you've been meaning to get to, a book about or set in New York City, a memoir or biography, a debut, and a book released in 2025. Head to wnyc.org/summerreading to register and to download the Summer Reading Challenge PDF. Again, that's wnyc.org/summerreading.

Now, if you're looking for one place to get started in the category of a book based in New York City, here's one that just came out in a handy portable paperback edition. The novel Four Squares is the second from Bobby Finger, co-host of the popular podcast Who? Weekly. You may remember his great debut, The Old Place. His second novel turns the lens to New York City, circa 1992 and 2022. Artie Anderson is a 30-year-old living in the West Village. It's the '90s, and Art hustles as a copywriter, but that's not where his passions lie. Deep down, he wants to finish his novel about a group of queer friends living in New York during the AIDS epidemic.

He has a good life, a small group of friends, but things get complicated when he meets Abraham, a standoffish lawyer at the Bar Julius in the West Village. Despite his friends being a bit hesitant about Abe's intentions, the two eventually become lovers until they aren't anymore. Then the book takes us decades later. It's 2022 and Art is now 60 years old. We find out that he's alone. His friends and community are no longer in his life for reasons that we will not spoil for you.

After a sudden leg injury, Art starts attending a senior center for LGBTQ people where he encounters a cast of queer elders who are also grappling with solitude and the desire to seek community and intimacy. Interweaving through two stages of Art's life, Four Squares is a tender story about friendship and connection amid lost, and often the overlooked experience of aging as a queer person. The New York Times praised Finger's "inviting tone of warmth and decency, his empathy for these people and their world, his bright humor and skillful timing and clever phrasing." Here's my conversation with Bobby Finger.

[music]

You were on the show a few years back to cover your first novel, The Old Place, that's based in a fictional town in Texas. It's good [unintelligible 00:02:56] you grew up in. Four Squares is based right here in New York, where you currently live. How long was the desire to write a book with New York as the backdrop?

Bobby Finger: I was hesitant. I was more eager to write a book about Texas than I was to write a book [laughter] about New York City. The story in The Old Place was one that was long lingering in my mind. It's something that was long stewing. I worked on it in different forms for a long time until it became the novel that is now published. I wasn't quite ready to write about New York City yet.

I felt like I hadn't been here long enough, even though, at this point, I've been here for 15 years. I wanted to be sure I got it right. There was more pressure. The Old Place was truly a part of me. It felt like was part of my DNA. I felt perfectly allowed to write that novel. This one, I felt like I needed to, I don't know, prove myself or prove to myself that I was allowed to write about New York City.

Alison Stewart: You go back to 1992. You had to, obviously, do research to find out what it was like to live in New York in '92. Where did you go to get the real experience, the experience of people who'd been through the AIDS epidemic crisis?

Bobby Finger: I did a lot of reading, nonfiction-- a lot of fiction, actually. The most interesting piece of research that I did beyond my volunteer process with SAGE, which is, definitely, the inspiration for GALS in the novel. GALS exists in a different space than SAGE, and is way more socialization-focused than SAGE, which is a lot more advocacy-focused, although GALS does do those things. After I had some experience with that, I had the idea for a novel about someone who finds himself in this place for the first time, and is on the younger end. Doesn't feel old, doesn't feel young anymore, and has to make friends.

I was in a, I don't know, maybe naive way, I was completely unfamiliar that this place existed, being SAGE. When I was there, I was just so delighted by all of these older queer people, 60s, 70s, 80s. There could have been some 90-year-olds that I interacted with who were just so delighted to see each other, so delighted to see me living robust social lives and knowing that there was a place that made that possible for them. I felt like, "Oh, I never think about this. I never really think about what I will need in the future." That was the first inspiration.

Maybe the most, I don't know, important moment to me of the writing process came later in one of the final drafts. I went to the Library of Congress with the intention of looking at the documents of a queer writer who had all of his papers from his life available to access for researchers. I was denied that request for complicated reasons. The librarian at the Library of Congress said, "What are you working on?" I told him the idea of the novel and what it was about.

He said, "We just got a submission or a donation from another queer writer who lived during the AIDS epidemic in the '80s from New York. He gave us all of his materials. They're not processed yet, they're not organized, they're not cataloged, but you can look through them if you want to." I spent a couple days there just sifting through all of this stuff. What I found so nice about this is, the novel is small in that a lot of these queer people are just sitting around in their apartments and talking, or going to the bar, eating takeout, watching movies on HBO that they got illegally. [laughter]

To me, I love those sorts of small domestic slices of life, that sort of novel. I felt like I'm writing about this horrible moment in queer history. It almost feels unfair to make something so small. In looking at those items from that writer, just the everyday banal things that he did with his friends, partners, lovers, whatever, I realized this is life. This was life then and it's life now. It almost gave me permission to keep going with it.

Alison Stewart: The protagonist of Four Squares is Artie. It's 1992. We meet him. He's a 30-year-old man living in the village. What excites him at that point in his life? What's exciting to him?

Bobby Finger: What's exciting to him are his friends. In 1992, and this is-- I set the novel in 1992 in part because I think of it as this transitional period where people, including Artie and his friends, have been living in New York during these horrible days of the epidemic, watching all of their friends die constantly, just constantly going to funerals. At this point, treatment is on the horizon. People aren't dying instantly. It's not a death sentence.

For the first time in many years, they're forced to actually contend with their future, and they are allowing themselves to see that they have time. He's, I think, embracing his friendships a lot more for the first time and enjoying just the quiet times that they have together without the burden of that constant trudge through activism, protest, death. He's just so happy to have these people in his life, which is why later on in 2022, he's so lost without them.

Alison Stewart: We're going to ask you to read a little bit of the book. This is a point when Artie and his friends, they're at Julius, their favorite bar around the corner. Art's friend, Adam, tells him the last time he cried at the bar when he found out that he got an inconclusive HIV test. Will you read this passage for us?

Bobby Finger: Sure. His friends didn't try to mask their relief, but they did hold their tongues, knowing better than to ask why he didn't tell them sooner. This wasn't about their own feelings. It was about his. One of the toughest things about any friendship is remembering that the mere act of listening is often not only enough, but also the totality of what the other person wants. Sometimes there is no follow up question, no complimentary personal anecdote, no soothing cliche that will do more than a silent nod or caress of the hand or pat on the knee.

"I didn't mean to drag down the mood," Adam finally said with a forced grin. "I'm really, totally fine, I promise. This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last time." "Well, I'm glad," Artie said, "but still inconclusive. What a nightmare. I'm sorry." Adam shrugged as the memory of way fell upon all of them like an invisible dusting of snow. "Could have been worse. This is the world now." They knew the world he meant. It was the world too many straight people had spent the first decade of the pandemic pretending didn't overlap with their own.

Their world wasn't insular or even hidden. It was right there, within spitting distance of everyone else's, worlds so close to each other that they shared an orbit, an atmosphere, an apartment building. The last time Artie emerged from a testing location on 19th Street, a passerby shouted, "Stay away from me, faggot." Since his childhood, as the most effeminate boy in school, the word had struck him like the remnants of a broken glass. Non lethal but liable to scar with emotional reverberations that linger long after cleanup. When a glass breaks in a room, you change the way you walk inside it. You keep your eyes peeled for pieces you miss, just in case one finally proves unavoidable and pierces your skin, drawing yet another stream of blood.

Alison Stewart: That was Bobby Finger reading from his novel Four Squares. Four Squares, it's the name of his book, the book that Artie's writing. Let's get all the books right. It's the four squares are Abington, McCarthy, Father Demo, and Washington Square.

Bobby Finger: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Do they have meaning? Anything special about those four squares?

Bobby Finger: They are. In the world of the book, his friends don't all live on each of these squares, but when he was fictionalizing his friends, he wanted to set it in this place that was so special to him. To me, it was special because I've never lived in the West Village. I love going to the West Village. Part of the fun-- The most fun I had researching this book wasn't rifling through documents and reading books and watching movies and various things like that.

I was just wandering those streets, and really looking up at the buildings for the first time, and taking in those squares for the first time. You walk past them all the time, but you don't read the plaques. The significance was just-- It was Artie's fictional in the world of the book, but also mine when I was looking at things more fully for the first time. It was special to me.

Alison Stewart: When he publishes his book Four Squares, how is it received? How does he want it to be received?

Bobby Finger: It's received with a whisper.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] The worst book signing ever.

Bobby Finger: The worst book signing ever at a bookstore he loves, which is like another indignity, and a bookseller he finds cute who doesn't give a damn about him. It's disappointing to him, but ultimately, I really do think that Artie is just relieved to have gotten it out. There's a sting to the lack of success or the lack of any buzz, but really, the fact that his friends came, the fact that he proved to himself and to Abraham that he was able to finish this novel that he'd been working on for so long was really all that mattered. Ultimately, it helps him get his career as he ages.

Alison Stewart: When you were thinking about putting out your own book, did you have similar feelings? [laughs]

Bobby Finger: Yes. I remember-- This sounds darker than it is.

Alison Stewart: Oh, no.

Bobby Finger: I remember my most vivid memory of the day that my first novel came out, which was something I had worked on in various other forms for a long time. The novel itself came together quickly in a way that I wasn't expecting. Like, I got an agent. She told me I could finish the manuscript. I did. I got an editor. Then it was published in that later stage of the pandemic in 2022. I was surprised by this, and I was almost speechless. I remember when I got back from the little book party I had with my friends after the novel came out, I was in my apartment with my husband, and he said to me, jokingly, "You can die now."

Alison Stewart: I know.

Bobby Finger: He meant it as a joke, but I think he was serious, because he was saying, "You did this thing that you didn't think you could do, and it's huge. It's huge for you." I don't want to compare it to children at all, but it's like, I'm never going to have kids. There's something truly unbelievable about having a book that will be around somewhere for, hopefully, the foreseeable future. It's going to be somewhere on a shelf, even if it's collecting dust and the spine isn't cracked. That's really-- I still can't believe it.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Bobby Finger. We're talking about his new book, Four Squares. The book weaves back and forth through time. 2022, 1992. When we meet Artie in his 60s, he's living in New York. He's ghostwriting for celebrities. He picks up writing gigs here and there. He's trying to-- sugary breakfast cereal, try to start an ad for it. Can't do it, whatever. It's clear that he's grappling with loneliness, truly. What motivates Art to start thinking about his life, his priorities?

Bobby Finger: It's the departure of the two closest people in his life, and they are both connected to Abraham. Abraham was bisexual, so he had a wife. He had a messy relationship, and that is one-- He was a walking red flag.

Alison Stewart: [unintelligible 00:14:25]

Bobby Finger: This is why all of his friends were saying, "Why are you with this guy? He's married to a woman. He's constantly cheating. He's lying to you." He's mean. Your meet-cute wasn't cute at all-

Alison Stewart: Not at all.

Bobby Finger: -in Julius. Still, there was something about this man that stuck with him. He doesn't quite understand it. He just loved him. He changed the trajectory of his life. When Abraham dies, he leaves behind a daughter and a wife, Vanessa and Hallie. He puts his entire affection for Abraham onto these two women. He gives them basically the entirety of his life, especially after he no longer has his closest friends for a reason, again, we won't spoil. When they announce that they are leaving New York City, he realizes that he's always been-- Not only is he going to be alone, maybe he's been alone this whole time. He has to actually put some work into finding friends, which is something that he hasn't done for decades.

Alison Stewart: You just said something so interesting, that he just loves him, that Artie just loves Abe. That doesn't necessarily bring you closeness. It doesn't necessarily bring you-- When you're in love with someone, the other person can be doing anything but to just love them.

Bobby Finger: You're right. That's the thing that his friends don't understand. Like I said, he doesn't really understand it either. He just loves him. That might be one of the things that's so impossible for him to deal with. He's obsessed with this guy, but he can't even articulate why. He just matters to him. He needs him by his side.

Alison Stewart: Early on in 2022, he gets injured on his leg, and he ends up on one of those scooters that you have to scoot around on, which is-- [laughs] That's so uncouth. He goes to GALS. This is a brain teaser. If he hadn't had the leg injury, what might have happened to him?

Bobby Finger: I thought about that before. I don't think he would have become a member early. I honestly think he would have given up. I don't think he would have volunteered more than a handful of times. Then he would have said, "I really don't know that I belong here yet. That's why I injured him, because I couldn't believe him as someone who was going to continue going to this place when he is such a deeply uncomfortable and aimless man. I needed him to break his foot. [laughter] I needed him to put him on a scooter.

Alison Stewart: Slow him down in some ways.

Bobby Finger: Yes, slow him down. It slowed him down.

Alison Stewart: At GALS, the elders there, they're fun. They poke shade at each other. These actions are so vivid, the way you describe them. What did you learn from the folks that you met at SAGE? What did you learn about aging as a queer person?

Bobby Finger: That it's a privilege. That it's really a privilege and that the people who go there really seem to acknowledge it as a privilege. I think, specifically in the generation that I'm in now, and that they're in now, the people who are taking advantage of SAGE's offerings lived through stuff I never lived through, and they went through things I can only imagine and try to imagine in the novel.

They just really do, for the most part, in my experience, see every day as a gift. They feel extremely fortunate and extremely lucky. They're broad in the book. They're a little fun. They're a little loud, [laughter] maybe a little louder than a lot of people in real life. I really wanted them to celebrate life in a way that was almost infectious to Artie, because he internalizes it. He's depressed, he's sad, he's traumatized, but he hasn't really acknowledged the gift that he's been given, like the gift of a future, the gift of getting older.

Alison Stewart: Did you have an elder that you liked writing? Which one?

Bobby Finger: I loved writing Annabelle. I loved writing Annabelle, the woman with the loud glasses who was mysteriously quite wealthy. I loved writing Gregory. I loved writing Jasmine. There's a character who's kind of a sourpuss, a little-- What I liked about her is that she's dour. She's not as excited as the other people, but she's still there. She gets something out of it. She shows up for dinner every day or most days because she likes these people, even if she's not laughing as much as everyone else.

Alison Stewart: There's another elder, Sterling Bismarck, who's a former big time actor who Art is going to help write his memoir. If you were to talk about Sterling on Who? Weekly, what's his status?

Bobby Finger: Sterling. I love Sterling. [laughter] Sterling is my favorite elder. He doesn't go to GALS. He stays in his apartment.

Alison Stewart: Those are great scenes.

Bobby Finger: I love.

Alison Stewart: Those are great scenes.

Bobby Finger: I think that's my favorite chapter, if I had to pick one. Who is he? He's a former them who become a prestige them and maybe a generational who, who you would recognize-- You'd recognize the mustache. You'd say, "Why have I seen this?" Or, "Why did my parents watch this show when I was growing up?" Maybe you'd only hear about him on people or else likely when, unfortunately, he died or got sick because that's the headline he is making in his older age.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Bobby Finger. Four Squares is his second novel. It's out now. Writing a book. This is about you. We'll put the book to the side. When do you find time? Are you a morning writer? Are you a thousand words by the end of the summer writer? What's your skill?

Bobby Finger: I love talking about this. I love talking about this with other writers because everyone is so different. I'm always shocked by everyone's answers, and everyone's shocked by mine because we can't believe that there are other ways to do this. I cannot write in the morning.

Alison Stewart: You can't?

Bobby Finger: I can't. Also, my podcast, we record three mornings out of the week. The mornings, even when on days I'm not recording, I'm working on the show. For years and years, the mornings have been my Who? Weekly time. I found that I also can't write at night because I like to cook. I like dinner. I have these very--

Alison Stewart: We're narrowing it down now.

Bobby Finger: Right. No, fully. It's an elimination game. What's left? The afternoon. I have, out of necessity, the afternoon has become the time I can write because it's the time that is the most malleable and the most free. I like writing. I wrote some of the early chapters of The Old Place doing Jami Attenberg's 1000wordsofsummer project. I love daily word counts, but I found what works for me even more is the weekly word count.

I would love to get 1,000, 1,500, maybe even 2,000 words a day. That would be amazing. I love a deadline. I love a mandate. If you can't reach that, then I feel very depressed. I get a middle ground by adding the weekly word count, "Okay, I'll make it up on this day. If I can make my X thousand words by Sunday, I'm good." I give myself weekly word counts. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: We're doing the Summer Reading Challenge around here, and we're asking guests who've written books, and who are guests, if they would participate. You talked about a few different things you're thinking about reading. Your debut novelist, Ways and Means by Daniel Lefferts.

Bobby Finger: Yes. It's also set in contemporary New York. It's so exciting and plot-hungry. There was another category on there that was books that are going to be adapted into TV or movies. Ways and Means, as far as I know, has not gotten that yet, but, oh, that would be a great limited series.

Alison Stewart: You have on your turn it a TV series or movie, People Collide by Isle McElroy. Oh, they were a guest. They were great. That's a great book.

Bobby Finger: That's a great book. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Recommended by a friend, Loved and Missed.

Bobby Finger: Oh, Loved and Missed. I wanted to-- Maybe I shouldn't say this on the air, but that's fine. I wanted to call this novel Old Fruits. [laughter] They changed it. I respect the opinion. I love the opinion. I love the title Four Squares. It makes so much sense. One of my favorite things as a reader is the-- I don't know if there's a term for it, but when you're-- the late game final chapter reveal that reframes the title of a novel where you get added context. You think you know the name, you think you know what it means, and then, "Oh, no, it means so much more than that." Loved and Missed was recommended by a friend just two weeks ago. Loved it. It has one of the best instances of the title explanation in the final pages. It's unforgettable.

Alison Stewart: That was Bobby Finger. His new novel, Four Squares, is Out in Paperback.