June 29, 2019 at 03:24AM
Last week, New York ran a cover excerpt of What Do We Need Men For?, breaking the allegation against Trump. The president first responded in a written statement that read, in part, "I've never met this person in my life." (A circa-1987 photograph is included in the article and Carroll's book, in which Carroll, her then-husband Johnson, Trump, and his then-wife Ivana appear to be in conversation.) He has since told the Hill, "I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened." Carroll writes that she told two of her friends about what she calls the "fight" soon after it happened. (They corroborated her story in a Times article published Thursday.) Here, in an interview with Vanity Fair, she talks about her book, hideous men, and the past week in her life.
Vanity Fair: Who have been your sources of advice over the years?
E. Jean Carroll: Henry David Thoreau, the great P.G. Wodehouse, Jane Austen. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius—seriously, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Henry David Thoreau, that's the block. P.G. Wodehouse because nothing gets Bertie Wooster down. And that is it. I go to my friends. Each one has a category. [Lisa] Birnbach gives me career advice, and Carol Martin gives me personal advice. I went to Robbie [Myers], the past editor of Elle magazine. Robbie never steered me wrong.
Tell me about Carol Martin and Lisa Birnbach going public as the two women you talked to.
It was very difficult in this world, where it's so divided, to convince two of my very closest friends. And they always say, "Anything you want, E. Jean, we will do to support you. Anything." But to actually ask them to go on the record was a step that neither of them wanted to take. It took Megan Twohey of the Times, Miss Big Foot Pulitzer, who is one of the most wonderful people who ever walked or crawled the earth. It took her five days. And finally Lisa Birnbach called her best friend. I think I'm her best friend, but she called probably her real best friend, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jamie Lee said, "Why are you hesitating? What's the big deal? Speak on the record. That's it." After talking with her family, and after talking with her partner, and after talking with everybody she could talk to.
You write in the book that the original proposal didn't include your personal experiences, which include the accusations. Was there anybody you consulted as you shifted it into what it became?
No, no. Reading letters for 26 years from women, it made no difference whether it was about their careers, or their kids, or their love lives, or their outfits, or their weight, or their orgasm—it didn't matter. There comes a line in almost every single letter where the cause of the woman's problem is revealed, and that cause is men. And so year after year, all I do is sit there and say, "Get rid of him. Get rid of him. Get rid of him. Get rid of him."
I ran out of ways to say, "Get rid of him." So I just figured out one day, let's just get rid of the buggers. And so I came up with a plan for doing away with the male sex. But I had to find out, before we get rid of them forever, do we need them for anything? So I hit the road. Only went to towns named after women, only ate in cafes named after women, only wore clothes designed by women, fed my dog Rachael Ray dog food. We took it to the extreme. And then I get out of the car in the town named after a woman and ask people, "What do we need men for?" And boy, the answers were just juicy. I had the best book in the world. And then of course, all hell broke loose when Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor dropped the Harvey Weinstein bomb in the New York Times. Remember how the country rose up? The women? We all knew guys like this.
Last week, New York ran a cover excerpt of What Do We Need Men For?, breaking the allegation against Trump. The president first responded in a written statement that read, in part, "I've never met this person in my life." (A circa-1987 photograph is included in the article and Carroll's book, in which Carroll, her then-husband Johnson, Trump, and his then-wife Ivana appear to be in conversation.) He has since told the Hill, "I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened." Carroll writes that she told two of her friends about what she calls the "fight" soon after it happened. (They corroborated her story in a Times article published Thursday.) Here, in an interview with Vanity Fair, she talks about her book, hideous men, and the past week in her life.
Vanity Fair: Who have been your sources of advice over the years?
E. Jean Carroll: Henry David Thoreau, the great P.G. Wodehouse, Jane Austen. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius—seriously, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Henry David Thoreau, that's the block. P.G. Wodehouse because nothing gets Bertie Wooster down. And that is it. I go to my friends. Each one has a category. [Lisa] Birnbach gives me career advice, and Carol Martin gives me personal advice. I went to Robbie [Myers], the past editor of Elle magazine. Robbie never steered me wrong.
Tell me about Carol Martin and Lisa Birnbach going public as the two women you talked to.
It was very difficult in this world, where it's so divided, to convince two of my very closest friends. And they always say, "Anything you want, E. Jean, we will do to support you. Anything." But to actually ask them to go on the record was a step that neither of them wanted to take. It took Megan Twohey of the Times, Miss Big Foot Pulitzer, who is one of the most wonderful people who ever walked or crawled the earth. It took her five days. And finally Lisa Birnbach called her best friend. I think I'm her best friend, but she called probably her real best friend, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jamie Lee said, "Why are you hesitating? What's the big deal? Speak on the record. That's it." After talking with her family, and after talking with her partner, and after talking with everybody she could talk to.
You write in the book that the original proposal didn't include your personal experiences, which include the accusations. Was there anybody you consulted as you shifted it into what it became?
No, no. Reading letters for 26 years from women, it made no difference whether it was about their careers, or their kids, or their love lives, or their outfits, or their weight, or their orgasm—it didn't matter. There comes a line in almost every single letter where the cause of the woman's problem is revealed, and that cause is men. And so year after year, all I do is sit there and say, "Get rid of him. Get rid of him. Get rid of him. Get rid of him."
I ran out of ways to say, "Get rid of him." So I just figured out one day, let's just get rid of the buggers. And so I came up with a plan for doing away with the male sex. But I had to find out, before we get rid of them forever, do we need them for anything? So I hit the road. Only went to towns named after women, only ate in cafes named after women, only wore clothes designed by women, fed my dog Rachael Ray dog food. We took it to the extreme. And then I get out of the car in the town named after a woman and ask people, "What do we need men for?" And boy, the answers were just juicy. I had the best book in the world. And then of course, all hell broke loose when Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor dropped the Harvey Weinstein bomb in the New York Times. Remember how the country rose up? The women? We all knew guys like this.