Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe for The New Yorker
The writer Judy Blume lives in Key West—“an exciting place to live,” Blume told me, in March, when I visited. Chickens roam free, orchids “grow like weeds,” cats wander in Hemingway’s house, and disco plays out drag-bar windows, all in DeSantis-era Florida. Blume and her husband, George Cooper, moved to Key West thirty years ago, and have been doing their best to foster a kind of quotidian paradise, for themselves and the community. They live on the water and walk two miles every morning, with walking sticks, choosing their “A route” or “B route.” They have a favorite source of Key-lime pie and a coterie of friends. Blume co-founded and works at an independent bookstore, Books & Books Key West; Cooper founded an independent movie theatre, the Tropic Cinema. Books & Books has a robust children’s section, with a shelf and a half of Blume’s novels—brisk sellers, which she often signs. That week, her 1970 coming-of-age classic, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” appeared in a small display, in pink paperback, and at the Tropic a poster for its new screen adaptation, with a tastefully nostalgic seventies font, was in a coming-soon display in the lobby. It opens this week.
My day with Blume began at 8:45 a.m., when she picked me up in a two-door convertible outside my hotel. Cooper, eighty-five, was behind the wheel; Blume, also eighty-five, was cheerfully wedged into the back seat. “Hello!” she said. They pointed out landmarks as we drove to breakfast. “Here’s the cemetery with the famous tombstone that says ‘I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK,’ ” George said, looking pleased. I told them about an idea I’d had for an epitaph—“BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME”—and we talked about their spring plans: premières of “Margaret” and a documentary, “Judy Blume Forever”; a visit from Blume’s biographer; Blume being fêted at an awards luncheon in New York. As Cooper dropped us off at a Mediterranean restaurant, he smirked a little. “You know the thing you just said about the tombstone?” he asked. “That’s how I feel about all this.” We laughed, and then he drove off.
Read more at New Yorker.