MARX My mom did everything herself because it was easier and she liked things done a certain way. Once she went away for a week and my father relied so much on her that she put name tags on my father’s clothes that said things like, “Wear with khaki pants Thursday.”

CHAST My mother was the one who made all the decisions and ran the show. My father never learned to how to drive because it made him profoundly anxious, so she did all the driving, even though she was an anxious driver, but it was a different sort of anxiety. My father didn't want to do anything. I think he would have been happy staying in the apartment, puttering around and reading the Times.

MARX My mother was very blunt. We grew up before they invented psychology. So my mother felt free to criticize without thinking there would be horrible consequences. She called it constructive criticism and I valued it because I knew she was telling the truth. She once read a piece of mine in Time magazine, and said, “Guess what? I hate it! But if enough people like it, I’ll change my mind,” which I completely understood.

CHAST My mother never offered that many opinions about my work, though sometimes she would get mad and say, “You’re using me and daddy to make fun of.” I’d say, “This is a general statement about, um …”

MARX And she bought that?

Would you both say that your childhoods were the gift that keeps on giving, workwise?

MARX Unlike Roz, I had a really good childhood. I learned the word bourgeois so I could say, “You are so bourgeois!” to my parents, because I was a Communist. A Communist in the suburbs. I envy you your worst childhood.

CHAST My parents didn’t try and make it bad. They were working all the time. My mother had this idea that if I ever socialized with other kids at the very best I would come home with impetigo and at the worst I would be learning things I shouldn’t be learning. So my childhood was about avoiding other children. It was like being locked in a Skinner box.