Lily Koppel

Professions :

Writer

Born :

March 15, 1981

There is something so hopeful about a diary, a journal, a new notebook, which Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf both wrote about. A blog. Perhaps we all are waiting for someone to discover us.

hopeful notebook waiting

I'm not a space writer, obviously, but I had bought this big photo book of the moon landing. You just get attached to certain stories that don't let you go.

letting-you-go moon book

Maybe the '50s and '60s were more awkward because everyone knew there were things under the surface, but no one talked about them.

awkward

I think Americans today look at the moon and think of it like apple pie or Coca-Cola. It's American. We planted our flag there. We see ourselves in it and don't like the idea of anyone else taking over the moon.

moon today thinking

I've met a lot of the astronauts, which was such an incredible experience. They're all very macho guys, like fighter pilots, but then there's a mysticism about them.

fighter incredibles guy

Americans are obsessed with wild, outlandish things. Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, and Michael Jackson are all wild, outlandish things.

outlandish mice obsessed

We've all heard about space and landing on the moon, but somehow it's a very tom-boyish adventure. It's planting the flag on the moon by Neil Armstrong, and it has this very male-hero edge to it.

flag space moon adventure

I'm still very interested in telling one-of-a-kind women's storie... by Lily Koppel

I'm still very interested in telling one-of-a-kind women's stories.

telling still very women

Apollo 11 was the movie premiere of moon landings, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Neil was a bit of a mystic, but also a taciturn guy from what I can tell. He really saw the moon as looking like the American high desert. He wasn't someone who dealt in metaphors.

looking someone desert moon

In our era of celebrity, where every life is made public through email, blogs and Facebook, one of the greatest oddities may be that there is not a livelier discussion about the individual's basic need for a more private space.

celebrity need space life

Ihab Hassan

Ingmar Bergman

Isabella Bird

Ivan E. Coyote

Al Feldstein

Bert Sugar

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