William Gaddis: The Art of Fiction (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
William Gaddis
Considered an "experimental" writer, William Gaddis stripped his novel JR of description and internal voice, crafting a volume developed almost entirely in dialogue with no chapter breaks. What follows is a conversation between the interviewer, Zoltán Abádi-Nagy, and Gaddis about this decision back in 1987:
Share on FacebookInterviewer
I call your book-length dialogues floated dialogues because while you present everything through dialogues -- background information, letters, newspaper articles, radio texts, TV texts -- too many outlines become blurred, persons and objects are externally undifferentiated, everything is allowed to be viewed through what is spoken only. The omniscient narrator gives insignificant, descriptive details of the physical situation in which the dialogue is carried on, but he is of no help with what the reader would be interested in.
Gaddis
I will tell you something in that area, if you like a theory, which I may have come up with after I wrote the book -- I'm not sure. It is the notion that the reader is brought in almost as a collaborator in creating the picture that emerges of the characters, of the situation, of what they look like -- everything. So this authorial absence, which everyone from Flaubert to Barthes talks about, is the sense that the book is a collaboration between the reader and what is on the page.
Interviewer
But the floated dialogue makes the reader's part very difficult. The omniscient narrator expresses no view of his own. The reader is left to imagine the psychological motivation behind what is said. What the reader is left with -- in the absence of reliable authorial/narratorial information and of the pyschologically more reliable direct interior monologue form -- is what could be called vocal behaviorism.
Gaddis
Well, this interior monologue you speak of is just too easy, obvious, boring, lazy, and I would agree right up to the last; I always cringe at the world behaviorism. But again it is very much this notion of what the reader is obliged to supply. We go back to McLuhan and his talk about hot and cool media. Television is the hot medium, to which one contributes nothing except a blank slate, and the next day you say, What was that show we saw last night on television? It disappears because you put nothing into it. So nothing remains, as Gibbs remarks in JR. In this case it was my hope -- for many readers it worked, for others it did not -- that having made some effort they would not read too agonizedly slowly and carefully, trying to figure out who is talking and so forth. It was the flow that I wanted, for the readers to read and be swept along -- to participate. And enjoy it. And occasionally chuckle, laugh along the way.
Harold Bloom: The Art of Criticism (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
Harold Bloom
Writer and literary critic Harold Bloom is no stranger to controversy. No, he courts it. Not surprisingly, I could quote parts of the Paris Review interview just to get some people -- or a lot of people -- all riled up. Particularly some remarks on "the school of resentment," The Color Purple, and anything to do with women writers (oops, I mean "gender studies"). Instead, this is what I quote:
(On humility)
Share on FacebookYou know, I've learned something over the years, picking up copies of my books in secondhand bookstores and in libraries, off people's shelves. I've written so much and have now looked at so many of these books that I've learned a great deal. You also learn this from reviews and from things that are cited in other people's books and so on, or from what people say to you -- what you pride yourself on, the things that you think are your insight and contributions . . . no one ever even notices them. It's as thought they're just for you. What you say in passing or what you expound because you know it too well, because it really bores you, but you feel you have to get through this in order to make your grand point, that's what people pick up on. That's what they underline. That's what they quote. That's what they attack or cite favorably. That's what they can use. What you really think you're doing may or may not be what you're doing, but it certainly isn't communicated ot others. I've talked about this to other critics, to other writers; they haven't had quite my extensive sense of this, but it strikes an answering chord in them. One's grand ideas are indeed one's grand ideas, but there are none that seem to be useful or even recognizable to anyone else. It's a very strange phenomenon. It must have something to do with our capacity for not knowing ourselves.
Steven King: The Art of Fiction (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
Stephen King
Stephen King on the levels of detail:
Share on FacebookInterviewer: The use of brand names in your novels especially seems to irk some critics.
King: I always knew people would have a problem with that. But I also knew that I was never going to stop doing it, and nobody was ever going to convince me that I was wrong to do it. Because every time I did it, what I felt inside was this little bang! like I nailed it dead square -- like Michael Jordan on a fade-away jump shot. Sometimes the brand name is the perfect word, and it will crystallize a scene for me. When Jack Torrance is pumping down that Excedrin in The Shining, you know just what that is. I always want to ask these critics -- some are novelists, some of them college literature professors -- What the fuck do you do? Open your medicine cabinet and see empty gray bottles? Do you see generic shampoo, generic aspirin? When you go to the store and you get a six-pack, does it just say BEER? When you go down and you open your garage door, what's parked in there? A car? Just a car?
And then I say to myself, I bet they do. Some of these guys, the college professors -- the guy, say, whose idea of literature really stopped with Henry James, but he'll get kind of a frozen smile on his face if you talk about Faulkner or Steinbeck -- they're stupid about American fiction and they've turned their stupidity into a virtue. They don't know who Calder Willingham was. They don't know who Sloan Wilson was. They don't know who Grace Metalious was. they don't know who any of these people are, and they're fucking proud of it. And when they open their medicine cabinet door, I think maybe they do see generic bottles, and that's a failure of observation. And I think one of the things that I'm supposed to do is to say, It's a Pepsi, OK? It's not a soda. It's a Pepsi. It's a specific thing. Say what you mean. Say what you see. Make a photograph, if you can, for the reader.
Philip Larkin: The Art of Poetry (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
Philip Larkin
Someone contacted me last week about a manuscript, then mentioned poems. I admit, I know little about poetry. I look for imagery and sensual detail --which may or may not be the reason d'être of poetry these days. And story, particularly love stories. Anne Carson gets me every time. The Beauty of the Husband.
Perhaps British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) would understand:
I've never had "ideas" about poetry. To me it's always been a personal, almost physical release or solution to a complex pressure of needs -- wanting to create, to justify, to praise, to explain, to externalize, depending on the circumstances. And I've never been much interested in other people's poetry -- one reason for writing, of course, is that no one's written what you want to read. Probably my notion of poetry is very simple. Some time ago I agreed to help judge a poetry competition -- you know, the kind where they get about thirty-five thousand entries, and you look at the best few thousand. After a bit I said, Where are all the love poems? And nature poems? And they said, Oh, we threw all those away. I expect they were the ones I should have liked.
The Paris Review interview took place in 1982.
Share on FacebookThe Women in the Middle of Duras’s The Lover, Part 1
Place d'Alma (site of Princess Diana's crash)
Smack in the middle of The Lover are two character sketches, both of foreign women in Paris during the War. Their appearance made Chris stop reading, shooting me a glance over the book's edge to ask: What are these doing here?
What are they doing there? The book never tells, and the characters never appear again. I find them representatives of a female figure who reappears throughout Duras's work--tragic, bored, found fascinating by others, isolated from her homeland as the last strains of a dying colonialism play out. Anne-Marie Stretter of The Vice-consul, The Ravishing of Lol Stein, L'Amour, and India Song is the best known Duras character of this type. In the Indochina of The Lover, this figure is The Lady from Savanna Khet whose lover shot himself in Vinh Long's public square.
The War is the end of Duras's family story in The Lover. With her brother's death, the others are dead to her. This is why Paris of World War II figures so much in the story--a story ostensibly about Indochina and her Chinese lover. And even in this Paris, this haunting--hunted?--female figure is found, caught in a simple character sketch. As a reader, I live for moments like this one--a portrait taken from so many angles, the figure/person denies me immediate access like a Picasso portrait, yet I can still graze up against something precise :
Share on FacebookMarie-Claude Carpenter. She was American -- from Boston, I seem to remember. Very pale eyes, grey-blue. 1943. Marie-Claude Carpenter was fair. Scarcely faded. Quite good-looking, I think. With a brief smile that froze very quickly, disappeared in a flash. With a voice that suddenly comes back to me, low, slightly grating in the high notes. She was forty-five, old already, old age itself. She lived in the sixteenth arrondissement, near the place de l'Alma. Her apartment was the huge top floor of a block overlooking the Seine. People went to dinner there in the winter. Or to lunch in the summer. The meals were ordered from the best caterers in Paris. Always passable, almost. But only just enough, skimpy. She was never seen anywhere else but at home, never out. Sometimes there was an expect on Mallarmé there. And often one, two, or three literary people, they'd come once and never be seen again. I never found out where she got them from, where she met them, or why she invited them. I never head anyone else refer to any of them, and I never read or heard of their work. The meals didn't last very long. We talked a lot about the war, it was the time of Stalingrad, the end of the winter of '42. Marie-Claude Carpenter used to listen a lot, ask a lot of questions, but didn't say much, often used to express surprise at how little she knew of what went on, then she'd laugh. Straightaway after the meal she'd apologize for having to leave so soon, but she had things to do, she said. She never said what. When there were enough of us we'd stay on for an hour or two after she left. She used to say, Stay as long as you like. No one spoke about her when she wasn't there. I don't think anyone could have, because no one knew her. You always went home with the feeling of have experienced a sort of empty nightmare, of having spent a few hours as the guest of strangers with other guests who were strangers, too, of having lived thorugh a space of time without any consequences and without any cause, human or other. It was like having crossed a third frontier, having been on a train, having waited in doctors' waiting rooms, hotels, airports. In summer we had lunch on a big terrace looking over the river, and coffee was served in the garden covering the whole roof. There was a swimming pool. But no one went in. We just sat and looked at Paris. The empty avenues, the river, the streets. In the empty streets, catalpas in flower. Marie-Claude Carpenter. I looked at her lot, practically all the time, it embarrassed her but I couldn't help it. I looked at her to try to find out, find out who she was, Marie-Claude Carpenter. Why she was there rather than somewhere else, why she was from so far away too, from Boston, why she was rich, why no one knew anything about her, not anything, no one, why these seemingly compulsory parties. And why, why, in her eyes, deep down in the depths of sight, that particle of death? Marie-Claude Carpenter. Why did all her dresses have something indefinable in common that made them look as if they didn't quite belong to her, as if they might just as well have been on some other body? Dresses that were neutral, plain, very light in color, white, like summer in the middle of winter.
Character Sketch: Duras, The Lover
Marguerite Duras
In my editing work, I've been thinking a lot about character development, particularly of minor characters. Vivid description brings to life the protagonist. Vivid minor characters bring to life the world of the protagonist and the tensions that enliven it. Baldwin knew this; so did Salinger.
In what little personal reading time I have these days, I return to my roots: Duras, Colette, Sagan, art histories about Cassat, Morisot, and Manet. I know I've quoted The Lover before, but a few additional passages of the book continue to tease me. If all you know of The Lover is the film, go to your nearest used bookstore and pick up a copy. It's about the damage of war--the war within families, the war between nations, the war spawned of racism. It's about the people who shrivel up in the face of the hunter, and those who confront it, trembling or stoic. It's about the shame of poverty. It's also an index of the themes, characters, and storylines that appear and reappear throughout Duras's oeuvre. The Lover makes great bookends: read it before reading the oeuvre, then after.
Today, I have a simple quote to share: the opening paragraphs. They describe the protagonist -- Duras herself. Descriptions of main characters often constitute the most awkward passage of a book. Maybe it's just me. Do I need to know the color of hair or the color of eyes? Not if I don't learn something more, the fleshiness of that being. Such as in this:
Share on FacebookOne day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said, "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.
I often think of the image of the image only I can see now, and of which I've never spoken. It's always there, in the same silence, amazing. It's the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight.
Very early in my life it was too late. It was already too late when I was eighteen. Between eighteen and twenty-five my face took off in a new direction. I grew old at eighteen. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, I've never asked. But I believe I've heard of the way time can suddenly accelerate on people when they're going through even the most youthful and highly esteemed stages of life. My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one, changing the relationship between them, making the eyes larger, the expression sadder, the mouth more final, leaving great creases in the forehead. But instead of being dismayed I watched this process with the same sort of interest I might have taken in the reading of a book....
Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Art of Fiction (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Things happen that we do not understand. This holds pride of place in Isaac Bashevis Singer's work:
Share on FacebookI don't know if I should call myself a mystic, but I feel always that we are surrounded by powers, by mysterious powers, which play a great part in everything we are doing. I would say that telepathy and clairvoyance play a part in every love story. Even in business. In everything human beings are doing. For thousands of years people used to wear woolen clothes and when they took them off at night they saw sparks. I wonder what these people thought of their woolen clothes? I am sure that they ignored them and the children asked them, Mother, what are these sparks? And I am sure that the mother said, You imagine them! People must have been afraid to talk about the sparks so they would not be suspected of being sorcerers and witches. Anyhow, they were ignored, and we know now that they were not hallucinations, that they were real, and that what was behind these sparks was the same power that today drives our industry. And I say that we too in each generation see such sparks that we ignore just because they don't fit into our picture of science or knowledge. And I think that it is the writer's duty, and also pleasure and function, to bring out these sparks.
More on Where Characters Come From: Graham Greene (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
Graham Greene
Interviewer: Many of your most memorable characters, Raven for instance, are from low life. Have you ever had any experience of low life?
Greene: No, very little.
Interviewer: What did you know about poverty?
Greene: I have never known it. I was "short," yes, in the sense that I had to be careful for the first eight years of my adult life but I have never been any closer.
Interviewer: Then you don't draw your characters from life?
Greene: No, one never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one cannot remember what toothpaste they use, what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.
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Robert Lowell: On painting and poetry (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)
Robert Lowell
Formative reading figures often as a topic of inquiry in The Paris Review Interviews. Poet Robert Lowell's formative reading at St. Mark's (his high school) was art history.
[M]y school had been given a Carnegie set of art books, and I had a friend, Frank Parker, who had great talent as a painter but who'd never done it systematically. We began reading the books and histories of art, looking at reproductions, tracing the Last Supper on tracing paper, studying dynamic symmetry, learning about Cézanne, and so on. I had no practical interest in painting, but that study seemed rather close to poetry. And from there I began.
Paul Cézanne, Self Portrait
