I came to THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS by way of a course from The Teaching Company called “The Art of Reading”. It was a good course, I liked the instructor, and he was enthusiastic about the interviews. So I got volume 4 on Kindle, and began reading. I was hooked.
In THE PARIS REVIEW, the interview is its own art form. It’s got as much drama and richness as any short story, play, or essay. These interviews are like the “self-portraits” that great painters to do. The best interviews are timeless and will always say something important to readers and other writers. They are, as Philip Gourevitch wrote, “at once fine entertainments and profound soundings of the writer’s soul” (ix-x).
For me, the best ones were the ones that moved me. These interviews I marked up, essentially talked back to. The conversations I found most engaging were those with Truman Capote, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, and James M. Cain.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy reading Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, or Billy Wilder. I did. I enjoyed Wilder’s interview immensely, and I learned a lot about movies. The interviews with T.S. Eliot and Rebecca West were okay, but I didn’t engage with any of these as did with the others.
What was so special about Truman Capote’s interview? I’ve never read anything by him, except, maybe TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, if we accept that Harper Lee fronted that book for him. I certainly saw the movie BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, but didn’t read the book. I didn’t see the biopic about Capote. I’m not wild about biopics.
No, what made Capote compelling for me was all his good advice. I’ve always thought short stories tough work, and so did he. He called them “the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant.” He also said that whatever “control and technique” he possessed came from training in the short story (20). Amen, brother.
He defined “control” thus: “I mean maintaining a stylistic and emotional upper hand over your material” (20). This works for novels, too.
One thing he said stopped me cold and made me think. An author’s individual humanity has to come through loud and clear; it has to almost be a character in its own right. What did he mean? What does it mean to me?
For me, that means letting go and being a part of the story. That’s hard. As an academic historian, I am like a journalist and a lawyer. I’m not part of the story. I cannot intrude because it’s not my story. I’m supposed to analyze and draw conclusions from the evidence. Historians makes arguments and present evidence, but they don’t get involved. They’re supposed to be objective.
Fiction is about subjectivity and emotion. That means shedding my inhibitions to feel and be every character in my stories. I then have to render them faithfully in my authentic voice. That’s a tall order.
If I don’t let go, even a little, I’ll never hear the surprise, the twist of phrase or view that pops out of nowhere. It is a surprise when it happens. It means taking an emotional chance and going with it. It’s like riding the outflow of a three-turn or a back crossover:scary as hell, but beautiful when it happens.
I found an interesting solidarity with Borges. I thought I was only one who preferred epic to lyric poetry. Nope, Borges, too: “I have felt epic poetry far more than lyric or elegy” (117). In his case, it was because his family lived epic lives and for epic causes. I just like heroes, preferably ones who don’t think they’re heroes.
Lord Armitage doesn’t think he’s a hero; he does what he has to do, what he says he’s going to do. He wouldn’t consider a hero someone who simply does his or her duty.
Borges said that the epic had been saved by the Hollywood western (118). Perhaps he was right at one time, but I don’t think it’s true now. I think the disdain for heroes and mythology killed the Western. I admit I’ve never really cared for Westerns in their traditional form. They promoted ideas of rugged individualism and masculinity that didn’t ever exist.
The last Westerns I saw and liked were UNFORGIVEN (1992) and DEADWOOD (2004-6). They were dirty, violent, and vulgar. Nobody is ever too right or righteous. The only thing missing is the actual stench of sweat, blood, and horse shit. We can imagine.
I have to confess I got turned off to Kurt Vonnegut by his novel THE SIRENS OF TITANS. I really hated the absurdism, and it really isn’t a SF novel. I had to read it for a lit class on SF. I was also twenty-two.
After reading his interview, an interview I laughed aloud over on the train back from DC, I’ve got to try Vonnegut again. I particularly liked his comments about literary criticism and the English department. Don’t go looking there for writers, he says. Look everywhere else. The reason? “I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up it’s own asshole, so to speak” (188). Take that literary theorists and critics.
His theory, which he got from Paul Engle--”Don’t take it all so seriously” (193). Fine advice, especially for someone like me who gets too wrapped around her own axle.
Vonnegut was in it for the readers: “When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do” (195). This is precisely why I tend to dislike literary fiction. Nothing ever seems to happen, and the characters are drips. Vonnegut added, “It’s the writer’s job to stage confrontation, so the characters will say surprising and reveal things, and educate and entertain us all” (195).
Dashiell Hammett staged confrontations to find out what was going on. Perhaps that’s why he’s still read. Perhaps that’s why mystery fiction is still so popular. Things happen. Confrontations are the norm, not the exception.
Vonnegut liked Samuel Johnson, too. Anybody who likes Dr. Johnson is a’right with me.
James M. Cain, whose works I have been reading lately, comes across in his interview as an unrepentant SOB. Fair enough. He hated New York City: “not even a city, it’s a congerie of rotten villages” (214). He hated college creative writing courses: “This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don’t know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter” (215). Update that to computer, and it still applies.
Cain thought of himself as a novelist even though two of his best-known works are novelettes. His discussion of writing centered on the novel: “You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel” (218). He had other good advice for would-be novelists: “Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational” (224). Right on, dude.
However, being memorable doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to run right out and buy an author’s books. Memorable in one case means I will never, ever read that author. Who is this? Joan Didion, whose interview is last in the volume. A more cold-blooded, ruthlessly analytic, and surgically precise woman could not have come more clearly through the written word. Yikes! If I want detachment, I’ll read the DHAMMAPADA or the BHAGAVAD GITA--detachment with compassion from the fruits of labor, not chilly or frozen isolation from one’s emotional life. Even in nonfiction, that doesn't work.