This spring, a ramshackle house with cigarette-stained ceilings will go on the market in Falmouth, Massachusetts, a middle-class resort town on the back shoulder of Cape Cod. Enterprising realtors will find it set back from the road on a steep hill rolling down to a kettlehole pond and deem it a fixer-upper. That is a euphemism for tearing it down and building something larger, an air-conditioned summer palace without such a convoluted floorplan. The old house will endure, however, in my memory.
In that house, my grandparents lived the last 25 years of their lives, and in the summers when I was young, before sleepaway camp and my grandfather’s first heart attack, I would live there too, with my mother and sister. I owned neither a phone nor a watch, but bathing suits and books were always close at hand. My grandfather taught me how to grill, my grandmother how to jigsaw and crossword. We spent weeks there, visited by a rotating cast of friends and relations, including my father, who came down from the city most weekends. Whoever was at the house would gather for dinner around the hewn-wood farmer’s table in the kitchen more nights than not. The meals were simple, local and familiar: my grandmother’s meatloaf, macaroni salad, plenty of cod, corn on the cob, burgers and sausages. On special occasions, we’d wrap the table in newsprint and boil lobsters live in a cast-iron pot.
After dinner the children cleared the table while the adults poured decaf coffee and Woodbridge cabernet. Someone opened the French doors to let in the breezy chorus of the warm night, and someone, usually my grandmother, would start the conversation. A lifelong consumer of literary magazines, paperback novels and Winston cigarettes, she would hold forth on politics, culture, history, movies or books. Someone would disagree — “Go Set A Watchman wasn’t worth the paper it was written on! Sanders doesn’t stand a chance in the general election!” — and we would be off to the races. Each dinner guest was expected to chime in, and from an early age I was held to the same standard. Soon enough, “Max, what do you think?” became a familiar refrain. I tried my best to follow the fast-paced conversation and vehement declarations and, most importantly, gain the understanding I needed in order to be taken seriously.
I soon found I loved learning about what was going on in the world, and I was absolutely captivated by discussing it with others. I got hooked on the power of an educated conversation to broaden and deepen my understanding of everything around me. I am a writer and I love to write, but my first and deepest love is to converse. I never wanted those summer nights to end.
Since those halcyon days, I’ve pursued any opportunity for dialogue on my favorite subjects. It starts with reading, endless reading: history books, novels, biographies, essays, culture-diagnosing Substack thinkpieces, canonical works from time immemorial. Recommendations from friends, assignments from professors. Most of all, I read magazines. I love The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Economist, County Highway, The Atlantic, n+1, Collegetown, Esquire, Mass Transit and Car & Driver.
Today, I study history and government in the College of Arts and Sciences, and would major in all the humanities if I could. I play saxophone in the Big Red Marching Band and once tried to convince 300 people that pegging was not gay. I debate politics and philosophy every Tuesday with my beloved Cornell Political Union, and usually keep the argument going at Qahwah House or Collegetown Bagels afterward. I love meals with friends, open mic nights and dressing well. I am obsessed with the TV show Mad Men which, in my opinion, is an unparalleled dissection of the myth of the American dream. I am illogically fiercely Italian-American and terrible at poker.
What will I write about? What I love and what’s on my mind. Susan Sontag once wrote that a writer is someone who pays attention to the world, and my columns will often take a contemporary event or personal observation as a jumping-off point for a broader observation or argument. I’m particularly fascinated by the unique cultural and social dynamics at Cornell, unpacking the assumptions of the stories we tell about the world and ourselves, and of course, the interplay of national politics and everyday life. My colleague Zak Kheder ’26 mourned the “Death of the Polymath,” but I’m holding out hope.
The name of my column, Take a Seat, takes its primary inspiration from the seat I was offered at my grandparents’ kitchen table all those years ago. It’s also an homage to the table I occupy most days in the Temple of Zeus, where I do much of my most important thinking (and arguing). “Take a seat” could also be read as an admonition and a warning. Be humble. Listen. Observe. Accept the limitations of your understanding. Likewise, it demands that you don’t walk away from the table either, as we are so frequently tempted to do. Finally, Take a Seat is an invitation. If you agree, disagree or just have a thought to share, write to me about it or pull up a chair in Zeus. I’m always happy to talk.
