The Star Talks to Mark Naison
Mark Naison has two secrets to his productivity: grazing and napping. “I’m a great believer in napping and eating several times throughout the day,” said Mr. Naison, who turns 70 in May.
A professor of history and African-American studies at Fordham University in the Bronx, Mr. Naison and his wife, Liz Phillips, the principal of P.S. 321 in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, divide their time between a three-bedroom house in Springs and half of a brownstone in Park Slope.
Most days, Mr. Maison dozes for two hours, often in separate catnaps. Once on the South Fork, he likes to nap in his car. Last Thursday, for instance, he logged three naps at three different places — Louse Point, Gerard Drive, and Indian Wells Beach. With his seat reclined back, the windows rolled down, and a gentle cross breeze, he said he nodded off instantly.
With a two-day teaching schedule, Mr. Naison often lands in Springs late Tuesday night, with two solid days of writing before driving back to the Bronx at 3:30 a.m. Friday morning. After a 45-minute catnap in the garage, he arrives at his office by 7 a.m., refreshed and ready to take on the day.
“It gives me two whole days where I can write. I’ve written as many books in the last 10 years as I did in the 30 years before that,” said Mr. Naison, who writes at a computer desk adjacent to the kitchen. “This is the world’s best place to write. Nobody can find me. I just need quiet space and lots of food. I don’t smoke, but I drink lots of coffee and eat anything I can find.”
His routine seems to be working. A seventh book, “Before the Fires: An Oral History of African-American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s,” published by Fordham University Press, comes out in September. Robert Gumbs, a visual artist and graphic designer, is the co-author.
Twenty years ago, the couple, along with their two children, first visited the South Fork in search of an “ideal sports vacation.” Twelve years ago, they bought their house in Springs. Despite two hip replacements, a torn meniscus, and an injured Achilles tendon, Mr. Naison is a dedicated golfer, who frequents the Montauk Downs course. “It’s my all-time favorite golf course, one of the best affordable public courses in the entire country.”
When not golfing, Mr. Naison can be found at East Hampton In door Tennis, where he plays tennis to exhaustion. On summer days, however, when school is no longer in session, he can pass a whole afternoon lying in a hammock or watching sports on television. Meanwhile, he said his wife is perfectly content to spend six hours at the beach, accompanied only by a book.
Whether playing sports or writing, Mr. Naison operates at one of two speeds: “A hundred miles per hour — or zero,” he said. “I focus on things with high levels of concentration, and I feel no pain. I’ll play hurt.”
The only child of two schoolteachers, Mr. Naison grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He skipped the third and seventh grades, graduating from high school two years early. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood, Mr. Naison adopted a half-nerd, half-thug identity. Competitive sports, whether basketball, baseball, football, or tennis, became the through line from which he said he redeemed his socially awkward self.
At 16, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied American history and became the captain of the men’s tennis team. His parents threatened to send him to Brooklyn College if he ever earned less than a B.
After his freshman year, Mr. Naison grew interested in the civil rights movement, realizing that while he had grown up around black kids, they had never talked about race. With a goatee and his hair long, he said he began to acquire a certain edge — and the newfound admiration of attractive-looking women. “Never change a winning formula,” said Mr. Naison, who still sports a goatee. “I’m never going to shave this sucker off.”
Around that time, he also started making trips to East Harlem to tutor students and help with tenant organizing. “What I saw was all these people working hard to keep heads above water, but there were these overwhelming forces keeping them down,” he said. “It changed me. It made me feel that I could use my skills and talents to help other people who didn’t have the same advantages. I found a larger purpose.”
In the spring of his senior year, Mr. Naison started dating a black woman who attended City College of New York. Although their relationship lasted for six years, his parents disapproved and never acknowledged her existence. With two fellowships and a taste of financial freedom, he enrolled in a doctoral program in American history at Columbia, where his dissertation explored the Communist Party in Harlem. As a member of Students for a Democratic Society and frequent organizer of sit-ins (and later under F.B.I. surveillance), his days were spent participating in left-wing causes.
In 1970, needing to find a job, he sent out applications to every history program in the New York metropolitan area. Fordham’s Institute for African-American Studies called him in for an interview, quickly hiring him as its first white academic in an all-black department. The campus, largely comprised of commuter students, many of whom are first-generation college students, was a natural fit. He’s been there ever since.
By 1972 and newly single, Mr. Naison said he first eyed Ms. Phillips while giving a guest lecture at the New School on underground resistance. The couple married in 1974 at City Hall, accompanied by a 10-piece funk jazz band from Fordham — he in an orange blazer and floral-printed shirt and she in a see-through chiffon dress.
“We have a lot of fun together. I’m somewhat flamboyant and a little out there,” he said. “She’s extremely efficient and organized.” Their children, Sara Naison-Tarajano, 39, and Eric Naison-Phillips, 34, attended Yale University and now work in finance. A 12-year-old granddaughter, Avery, who recently placed fourth in the country in the 800-meter dash, may prove, he said, the most talented athlete in the family.
In recent years, Mr. Naison’s racial activism has spread to education. While working on a Bronx-based oral history project, he discovered what he saw as teachers being demonized for low test scores and schools being used as scapegoats for racial and economic inequality.
He said he was frustrated by the federal Race to the Top and Common Core, and by the general proliferation of test preparation. In 2013, he helped form the Badass Teachers Association, a national Facebook group of teachers unified by opposition to testing. Though no longer affiliated with the group officially, he remains staunchly opposed to testing and believes that “middle-class parents should opt out in solidarity of poorer districts. I hate grit. Rigor and grit is child abuse. Let them have fun. Let them play, and dream, and run around.”
A prodigious participant in social media, Mr. Naison posts updates to his 5,000 Facebook friends (the networking site’s limit) 20 to 30 times each day and has tweeted more than 20,000 times to his 4,100 Twitter followers. A dozen times throughout a two-hour interview, his computer pinged with Facebook updates.
“Since I don’t sleep in huge bursts, I can do this between my naps,” said Mr. Naison, who averages five hours of sleep each night.
Whether talking about his next book project or his marriage of 42 years, Mr. Naison projects a quality of unflappable optimism. Above all, he possesses the rare quality of a man deeply content with his life.
“I love my job. Everyone at my age at Fordham is retiring,” he said. “As long as kids sign up for my courses and I’m having fun, I’ll go on until I need a brain transplant.”