Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fourth Series

469 Pages·1976·10.393 MB·English

by  George Plimpton

_ The PARIS REVIEW Interviews _
W. H. AUDEN * »NE SEXTON
JOHN STEINBECK #® JOHN UPDIKE _:
~ROBERT GRAVES=VLADIMIR NABOKCG Z
_ CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD= ISAK DINESE”™~
GEORGESEFERIS = JORGE LUIS BORG: Ye

Edited byy George Plimpton and

introduced byWilfrid Sheed

4th SERIES
A Penguin Book
TheParis Review interviews beganin 1953and continue
today—a uniqueexploration ofcontemporarywriters -
and writing. Recognized as an indispensableadjunctto
modernliterature, these interviews are alsofascinating
in theirown right. Through searching questions ad-
dressedto greatliterary artists, they reveal, betterthan
anything else could,the minds and methods behind the e
published works. AsVanWyck Brooksnoted, “‘the
writers draw portraits ofthemselves.”
Here isasampleofwhatcriticssaid aboutthisfourth
volumeofParisReviewinterviews:
“Enchanting and instructiveenoughto makeonewonder
whetherwritersofthis caliberwill everagain appearin
such profusion” —Eric Redman, Washington Post
, |
“You can sinkquietly intothis amplevolumeand not be
heard from for a month.” —Kirkus Reviews
‘Arresting epigramsfairlyleapoffthepages.Also abun-
dant, asalways, arethe down-to-earth shoptalk,theo-
rizing, and practical adviceaboutwriting that have made
the Writersat Workseriesthe best manual foryoung -
writers ever assembled.” —Bookletter
Coverdesign byGail Ash
LiteraryCriticism
ISBN014
PENGUINBOOKS
WRITERSATWORK
FOURTHSERIES
The Paris Review, founded in 1953 by a group of young
Americans including Peter Matthiessen, Harold L. Humes,
George Plimpton, Thomas Guinzburg, and Donald Hall,
has survived for twenty-seven years—a rarity in theliterary-
magazine field, where publications traditionally lastfor a
fewissues and then cease. Whilethe emphasis of TheParis
Review’s editors was on publishing creative work rather
than nonfiction (among writers who published their first
short stories there were Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Evan
_ §. Connell, Samuel Beckett), partof the magazine’s success
can be attributed to the public interest in its continuing
series of interviews on the craft of writing. Reasoning that
it would be preferable to replace the traditional scholarly
essay on a given author’s work with an interview conducted
with the author himself, the editors found a form which
attracted considerable comment—from the very first inter-
view,withE.M.Forster,whichappearedin theinitialissue,
inwhichthedistinguishedauthor, thenconsideredthegreat-
est novelist in the English language, divulged why he had
not been able to complete a novel since 1926. Since that
early interview the magazine has continued to complement
its fiction and poetry selection with interviews from a wide
range of literary personages, which in sumconstitute an
authenticand invaluable contribution to theliterary history
ofthepastfewdecades.
WRITERS AT WORK
The Paris Review Interviews
FIRST SERIES a\
Edited, and with an Introduction, by MALCOLM COWLEY
E.. M. Forster Frank O’Connor
Francois Mauriac Robert Penn Warren
Joyce Cary Alberto Moravia
Dorothy Parker Nelson Algren
James Thurber Angus Wilson
Thornton Wilder William Styron
William Faulkner Truman Capote
Georges Simenon Francoise Sagan
SECOND SERIES
Edited by GEORGE PLIMPTON and introduced by vAN WYCK BROOKS
Robert Frost Aldous Huxley
Ezra Pound Ernest Hemingway
Marianne Moore S. J. Perelman
T. S. Eliot Lawrence Durrell
~ Boris Pasternak Mary McCarthy
Katherine Anne Porter Ralph Ellison
Henry Miller Robert Lowell
THIRD SERIES
Edited by GEORGE PLIMPTON and introduced by ALFRED KAZIN
William Carlos Williams Saul Bellow
Blaise Cendrars Arthur Miller
Jean Cocteau James Jones
Louis-Ferdinand Céline Norman Mailer
Evelyn Waugh Allen Ginsberg
Lillian Hellman Edward Albee
William Burroughs Harold Pinter
Writers at Work
The Paris Review Interviews
FOURTH SERIES
Edited by George Plimpton
Introduced by Wilfrid Sheed
PENGUIN BOOKS
PenguinBooksLtd,Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England
Penguin Books,625 MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NewYork 10022, U.S.A.
Penguin BooksAustraliaLtd,"Ringwood,Victoria,Australia
PenguinBooksCanadaLimited, 2801 JohnStreet,Markham,Ontario,CanadaL3R 1B4
PenguinBooks(N.Z.)Ltd, 182-190WairauRoad,Auckland 10,‘NewZealand
FirstpublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyTheVikingPress 1976
PublishedinPenguinBooks 1977
Reprinted 1979
Copyright © TheParisReview,Inc., 1974, 1976
Allrightsreserved
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGINGINPUBLICATIONDATA
Mainentryundertitle:
Writersatwork.
1. Authors—Interviews. I. Plimpton,George. II.TheParisReview.
[PN453.W735 1977) 809 77-7034
ISBN0 1400.4543 0

PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaby
TheMurrayPrintingCompany,Westford, Massachusetts
SetinVideocompAvanta
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Farrar,Straus&Giroux, Inc-.:
Excerptfrom“DreamSong #68”andanexcerptfrom “DreamSong #147”
from TheDreamSongs byJohn Berryman.
Copyright © 1964, 1969byJohn Berryman.
Reprintedwith thepermissionofFarrar,Straus&Giroux, Inc.
TheJohnBerryman interviewisreprintedwith thepermission
ofFarrar,Straus&Giroux, Inc.
GrovePress, Inc.,andtheSterling LordAgency, Inc.:
From“MexicoCityBlues’byJackKerouac.
Copyright © 1959byJackKerouac.
Reprintedbypermission.
Macmillan, Inc.,andMacmillanAdministration(Basingstoke) Ltd.:
From “TheDynasts”byThomas Hardy.
NewDirectionsPublishingCorp.:
DelmoreSchwartz,SelectedPoems:SummerKnowledge.
Copyright 1938byNewDirectionsPublishingCorporation,
1966byDelmoreSchwartz.
ReprintedbypermissionofNewDirectionsPublishingCorporation.
Random House, Inc.,andFaberandFaberLtd:
From CollectedPoemsbyW. H.Auden.
TheViking Press:
FromJournalofaNovejbyJohnSteinbeck.
Copyright © 1969bytheEstateofJohnSteinbeck.
From Steinbeck:ALifeinLetters,
editedbyElaineSteinbeckandRobertWallsten.
Copyright © 1975 byElaineSteinbeckandRobertWallsten.
ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica,
thisbookissoldsubjecttothecondition
thatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise,
belent,re-sold,hiredout,orotherwisecirculated
withoutthepublisher’spriorconsentinanyformof
binding orcover.otherthanthat.inwhichitis
publishedandwithoutasimilarcondition
includingthisconditionbeingimposed
onthesubsequentpurchaser
Contents
Introduction by Wilfrid Sheed ix
1. ISAK DINESEN 1
2. CONRAD AIKEN 21
3. ROBERT GRAVES 45
4. JOHN DOS PASSOS 67
5. VLADIMIR NABOKOV 91
6. JORGE LUIS BORGES 109
7. GEORGE SEFERIS 147
8. JOHN STEINBECK 179
9. CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD 209
10. W. H. AUDEN 243
11. EUDORA WELTY 271
12. JOHN BERRYMAN 293
13. ANTHONY BURGESS 323.
14. JACK KEROUAC 359
15. ANNE SEXTON 397
16. JOHN UPDIKE 425
Notes on the Contributors 455
vu
Introduction
Ts 1s partly an act of reparation. A few years back, I wrote
a somewhatlofty piece about the second collection of Paris
Review interviews, suggesting that the information thereinwas
neither better nor worse than Hollywood gossip. I was mortally
sick by then of hearing about Hemingway’s number-twopencils,
and I felt they had about as much to do withliterature as, say,
whether Aldous Huxley slept in pajama tops or bottoms.
It was a dishonest piece (I was too young to be honest) in that
I artfullyconcealed how much I had enjoyed the volume—which
meantithadsomekind ofvalue, ifnotthekind I was lookingfor.
It was also an ingenuous piece because I did not yet realize that
gossip is the very stuff of literature, the materia prima of which
both books and their authors are made. From Homerto Bellow,
gossip is simply what authors do, in books and out; and no fine
distinctionsare madebetweencraftgossip and thewisdom ofthe
keyhole. In fact, Aldous Huxley’s sleeping arrangements would
have interested Flaubert a good deal more than Hemingway’s
pencils. Literature is the one subject in the worldone cannot be
priggish about. |
Can the interviewasa form passbeyondtherealm ofnecessary
small talk into art itself? Perhaps.Whenever a good writer uses
words,literature is a possibility, and in the interviews that follow,
the subjects have a distinct interest in producing literature. Be-
Ix
x Writers at Work
cause the interviews represent the authors’ contributions to their
owngossip: Thesearetheirown faircopiesofthemselves,andthis
is the way they would like to be talked about. Hence,their idlest
comments take on the urgency of missing pieces. If a movie star
says that he sleeps with the windows open, we are probably get-
ting a coarse reading of his present image. But if an authorsays
so, he is adding a workmanlike stone to his monument. He1s
tellingyou forone thing thatheis thekind ofauthorwho doesn’t
mind talking about the mundane personal—whether archly, as
one might expect of Nabokov, mock eruditely a la Burgess (“the
Elizabethans didn’t even have windows, you know”), or with the
exhaustive candor of a Jack Kerouac. In any event, he knows as
movie actors do not that such details can immortalize a character
forbetter or worse, and heis taking no chances.It is his business
to know it. Novelists in particular spend a lifetime sabotaging
their characters with one loathesome habit or ennobling them
with a perfect gesture. So they are careful when they dress them-
selves for the public. As their own most important characters,
they deserve the most attention.
This is not to suggest The Paris Review’s urbane corps of
interviewers peppertheir victims with inane questions—far from
it. But as one moves from theartful table setting that introduces
each interview through one’sfirst glimpses of the great man into
the actual questions, one senses a continuity of self-creation that
would reveal itself equally in small or large matters. This author
will be a grouch, that one generous; and they will notslip, unless
intentionally. For these people are masters of disguise, of con-
trolled performance, and this is the record they want to leave.
Which doesn’t mean thereare no real people in thisbook. The
real person includes the magician andhis tricks. Novelists begin
life as liars. It is their apprenticeship (and I’m notsure that poets
aren’t even betterat it); but by their maturity they don’t need to
lie anymore. Thetruth itself is a trick. The mask of a Vladimir
Nabokov is welded seamlessly to his face: the persona in the
interview is as real and unreal as Humbert Humbert himself.
I stressNabokovbecausethegreatestnovelistgives thegreatest
Introduction xi
performance. Heis, to the tip of his tongue, the Nabokov man:
a dispossessed nobleman whose blood runs irony and whowill
neverstooptobeinglikable. (Heislikable.)W. H.Auden,playing
for the poets, is not far behind. His interviewingself is, or was,
anextraperson,liketheHolyGhost,generatedbyself-contempla-
tion. Auden couldapparentlyanswerquestions foreverinaserene
stream, without lapsing from character. He has given so many
interviews that his answering service could give a perfect Auden
_ response to anything.
Auden’sself-monument was complete, and he wasn’t about to
tamper with it. Consider in contrast his old friend Christopher
_ Isherwood,still trying on faces like a boy in a prop department.
In fact his boyishness is his mask. He talks about his discovery of
Eastern spirituality as if it had happened yesterday and not back
in the thirties when he and therest of the class, Aldous Huxley
and Gerald Heard, discovered the East on the American Gold
Coast. Yet who seems younger? The owlish, born-old Auden or
Isherwood, the professional boy?
Novelists, sincethey need so many, perhapssettlelesswellinto
_ a single face than poets. Because the other quite spectacularly
boyish interviewee is John Updike—stillyoung, ofcourse, and, as
an American,full of vital blank spaces that are filled in for Euro-
peans(prairie versus garden), yet earnest and eager for any age.
Updike answers the questions as though it were for a very impor-
tantexamandwithaguilelesssinceritythatseems,likesomething
in Henry James’s 7he American, both provincially earnest and
somehow moresophisticated than a European smartielike Nabo-
kov. Like The New Yorker magazine at its best, he is beyond
sophistication and even makes the latter seem rather a callow
thing in itself, a trap for arrivistes. Of all the subjects, Updike
gives the most honest day’s work and worries the least about how
he’s doing.
For sheer vulgar performance that in no way cheapens the
actor,AnthonyBurgess remainssomethingofa modelforwriters.
Hecangoon themostrattle-brainedtalkshowandmakeitsound
exactlylikeaParisReview interview,ifyousubtractthegibbering