Sociologist Richard Sennett is a professor at New York University, emeritus professor at the London School of Economics, and a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge. Before accepting the 2012 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize and talking about how diverse societies cohere, he offered a book recommendation (Open City), a composer to avoid (Wagner), and his distaste for boasting (an American habit).
Q. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
A. I had a food column briefly in Vogue. I love to cook, and I was fired after three months. I had nothing but fights with my editor, who said all my recipes were too fattening.
Q. What’s your favorite city?
A. London, which is where I live.
Q. Where would we find you at 9:00 p.m. on a typical Friday evening?
A. Probably at a restaurant. We live near the central meat market in London, and so we’d be eating beef.
Q. How do you procrastinate?
A. I don’t. I’ve got real Protestant work ethic. I suffer guilt if I don’t get things done.
Q. What’s the last novel you read?
A. Teju Cole’s Open City, which I loved. It’s a wonderful novel.
Q. If you could have a beer with anyone in history, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
A. I wouldn’t have a beer because I’m allergic to hops. Probably Johannes Brahms, the composer I like most.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. I went over to Disney Hall, and I listened to part of Mahler’s Ninth, which they were airing in a rehearsal or something like that.
Q. What’s your biggest pet peeve?
A. I get very angry at people who are very boastful-I don’t like that very much. That’s a bad American habit.
Q. What’s the biggest way the Internet has changed how people work?
A. It’s made it better and worse. It’s made it better because when you need to do something efficiently you can communicate instantly with somebody else. I think e-mail has made things worse by substituting quantity for quality of interaction with people. If you get 50 or 60 emails a day, you’re not focused on any one of those.
Q. What’s your least favorite word?
A. “Like.” I mean, like …
Q. Who’s the most overrated classical composer?
A. Good question! Wagner-a composer I can’t bear.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.