Journal of the Short Story in English, 41 | Autumn 2003, « JSSE Twentieth Anniversary » [Online], Online Since 13 June 2008, Connection on 03 December 2020

Journal of the Short Story in English Les Cahiers de la nouvelle

41 | Autumn 2003 JSSE twentieth anniversary XXe anniversaire du JSSE

Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/112 ISSN: 1969-6108

Publisher Presses universitaires de Rennes

Printed version Date of publication: 1 September 2003 ISSN: 0294-04442

Electronic reference Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis (dir.), Journal of the Short Story in English, 41 | Autumn 2003, « JSSE twentieth anniversary » [Online], Online since 13 June 2008, connection on 03 December 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/112

This text was automatically generated on 3 December 2020.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part one: Critical Essays

Foreword Emmanuel Vernadakis and Linda Collinge

“Ché la diritta via era smarrita”: Dante’s Commedia in Beckett’s Texts for Nothing Theoharis Constantine Theoharis

Les voix du voir : illusions d’optique et reflets sonores Liliane Louvel

The short story according to Woolf Christine Reynier

Kipling and semiotics in “How the Alphabet Was Made” Laurent Lepaludier

“The fiction that makes us real”: Playful Accreditation in David Arnason's “The Sunfish” Héliane Ventura

Fathers in Alice Munro’s ‘Fathers’ Mary Condé

Sequences, Anti-Sequences, Cycles, and Composite Novels: The Short Story in Genre Criticism Suzanne Ferguson

Part two: Interviews of short story writers

IRELAND

John McGahern - b. 1934 Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis

Benedict Kiely - b. 1919 Franck Kersnowski

ENGLAND

John Wain, Remarks on the short story John Wain

V.S. Pritchett (1900-1997) Ben Forkner and Philippe Séjourné

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Graham Greene (1904-1991) Philippe Séjourné

A.S. Byatt - b. 1936 Jean-Louis Chevalier

Louis De Bernieres b. 1954 - Mavis Gallant - David Madden Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis

SCOTLAND

Muriel Spark - b. 1918 Jeanne Devoize and Claude Pamela Valette

CANADA

Alistair Macleod - b. 1936 Linda Collinge and Jacques Sohier

Mavis Gallant - b. 1922 Anne-Marie Girard and Claude Pamela Valette

CARIBBEAN

Olive Senior - b. 1941 Dominique Dubois and Jeanne Devoize

Merle Collins - b. 1950 Thorunn Lonsdale

UNITED STATES

Peter Taylor - (1917-1994) John H. E. Paine

Elizabeth Spencer - b. 1921 Anne-Marie Girard, John H. E. Paine and Corinne H. Dale

Grace Paley - b. 1922 Emmanuel Vernadakis and Jean-François Dreyfus

Barbara Kingsolver - b. 1955 Bénédicte Meillon

Tobias Wolff - b. 1945 John H. E. Paine

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Part one: Critical Essays

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Foreword

Emmanuel Vernadakis and Linda Collinge

1 Founded by Ben Forkner in 1983, the Journal of the Short Story celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. An official celebration, organized by the Journal editors and by Olivier Tacheau, director of the Presses Universitaires d’Angers, took place at the University of Angers on May 22. John McGahern was the guest of honor and participated actively by reading from his story “Gold Watch” then answering questions from the audience. He also accepted to participate in an interview which is published here for the first time and read two additional stories — “Korea” and “Parachutes” — whose recordings you will find on the accompanying compact disc. We were impressed by his skill and touched by his kindness, helpfulness and generosity. The anniversary issue is therefore dedicated to John, and also to Madeline McGahern, as a mark of our inmost gratitude and sincere friendship.

2 The issue is a double volume and includes both a series of critical essays and interviews of short-story writers. Although each piece was initially meant to stand alone, as it were, brought into thematic sequences the papers and interviews take on a new import and endow the volume with a quality in keeping with the genre it is devoted to; for indeed it was our intention that the volume followed a principle of unity and read, if not like a novel, at least like a short story cycle!

Staff contributions

3 The renewal of the reading committee has been one of the most significant undertakings of the Journal in the past few years. Their dedication has been priceless in the shaping of each issue, but we also hope their readers’ reports have been appreciated by contributors as a means of breaking the isolation with which the researcher is so often confronted. We are pleased to announce that the critical essays in this volume have been written exclusively by members of the new editorial staff composed of short story scholars from French and International Academia. Their contributions are tokens of commitment and friendship.

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4 Four years ago, John McGahern attended a talk given by T. C. Theoharis on Beckett and Dante. In Theoharis’ own words, it was a “discussion off the top of [his] head” on the common points and differences in the ancient Greeks’, Dante’s and Beckett’s reactions to the human condition. In January 2003, when we asked John McGahern to be our guest for the celebration of the JSSE 20th anniversary, he still remembered the talk. It is for McGahern’s sake that Theoharis wrote “‘Ché la diritta via era smarrita’: Dante’s Commedia in Beckett’s Texts for Nothing,” a piece which will certainly mark Beckett studies.

5 In her essay on “The Short Story According to Woolf,” Christine Reynier proceeds like an archaeologist. Proportion, perfection, honesty, inconclusiveness, freedom, intensity, ethics and aesthetics are some of the scattered fragments she found in the diggings. She put them together into a theory dominated by a feminine “I”, shifting the short story from a masculine ground of “confrontation” to a feminine ground of cross- fertilization.

6 In her essay on the visual qualities of the short story, Liliane Louvel gets down to the root of the Word to study the way in which concept and sound become vision. To illustrate her theory she discusses two of Woolf’s stories. Her meticulous study points out that the mode of expression that gives the short story its distinctive statute is the reflective voice of a narrating Eye.

7 Plunging into the Canadian and post-modern depths of Arnason’s Icelandic past, Heliane Ventura, too, plays with reflections. She discusses the dialectics between reality and fiction in a witty and completely new reading of his well known story “Sunfish.” Keeping up with the latest publications and evolutions of the genre, Mary Condé chose to study a recent and as yet un-collected story by another Canadian writer, Alice Munro, and proposes a feminist approach to the story.

8 In his cratylian essay on Kipling’s “How the Alphabet was Made,” Laurent Lepaludier discusses the workings of meaning in the process of creating signs. His paper offers a synthesis of the various linguistic processes at work as perceived by theorists and the artist at the turn of the century.

9 Suzanne Ferguson’s substantial essay on “Sequences, Anti-Sequences, Cycles and Composite Novels: the Short Story in Genre Criticism” has been used to conclude the section not only because of its wide scope and insight but also because, at some point, each of the other essays finds an echo in it.

10 The essays are followed by an index of proper names of more than 500 short story writers and critics covering JSSE issues from 1 to 40. The index will soon be available on both the Angers http://buweb.univ-angers.fr/PRESSES/revues/JSSE/JSSE.html and Belmont http://www.belmont.edu/english/dept.cfm?idno=220 websites, updated every year

Writers’ insight

11 A long-standing (twenty-year!) tradition of the JSSE has been inviting short-story writers to Angers to read from their work and participate in an interview during the Research Center’s annual conference. In twenty years, seventeen writers have been interviewed by members of the editorial staff. It was our wish for this anniversary issue to bring together these interviews - four of them in first publication - in a single

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volume, not only to pay homage to these generous writers, but also to propose an “anthology of reflections” on the short-story writing process. Though each writer has his own personal experience of writing, a number of recurrent ideas become visible in this juxtaposition of dialogues. The following selection of quotes from the interviews reveals how writers conceive their work and how they conceptualize short-story writing. It is also meant to whet your appetite for further reading of this anthology…

Being a reader first

“I was a voracious reader. I tell all my writing students: ‘You learn to write by reading.’” - Olive Senior “I don’t think you can be a writer without being a reader first, and you need to read a lot, for the pleasure and for the experience. When I was ten or eleven, I was given the run of a l9th century library and for about five or six years, maybe more than that, I would come on my bicycle and return five or six books then take five or six books away.“ - John McGahern “I was a keen reader, like a lot of writers are, and having read a great deal, I guess I just began to put things together.” - Grace Paley “I was a voracious reader. I would not say I had read the whole of Walter Scott but I had read a good half of him by the time I was sixteen. And I had read the whole of Thackeray, most of Dickens and was on to Balzac and Tolstoy.“ - VS Pritchett

Influences

“I love Hemingway, Chekhov, Tolstoy…“ - Tobias Wolff “Arnold Bennett was so passionately fond of Chekhov that he had two complete sets of Chekhov's stories – one in his London house and one in his country house.” - John Wain “I love Turgenev’s work and I think Turgenev’s novels are more closely linked to the novella than they are really to the long novel.” - John McGahern “I think Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ is one of the finest short stories, not only in the English language, but in literature.” - Graham Greene “I was very much interested in the form of the short story as I read in Joyce ; people of my age were really reading a lot of Joyce at that time.” - Grace Paley “I think Beckett’s ‘Dante and the Lobster’ is one of the greatest short stories.” - AS Byatt “I think any short-story writer owes something to Maupassant.“ - VS Pritchett “In the field of the short story, Guy de Maupassant is one of my favourite authors. Henry James, of course, is the outstanding one.” - Muriel Spark “Maupassant has always been very important to me.“ - John Wain

Personal history and writing

« Il est bien évident que la réalité nourrit la fiction. (…) Certaines de mes nouvelles sont autobiographiques, mais toujours de façon déguisée. Je n’ai rien fait qui soit entièrement autobiographique. Il n’y a que des éléments. » - Mavis Gallant “There are a great deal of autobiographical elements in my stories, but they are transformed or filtered.” - VS Pritchett “In some way, I’ve made all my serious writing mistakes when I stuck close to the facts. They have to be reimagined, reinvented, reshaped, so basically they conform to an idea and not to oneself.” - John McGahern

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Defining the genre:

-the short story and poetry

“The short story is much closer to poetry than it is to the novel, even though they are both prose.“ - Grace Paley “I was quite a child when I started writing and I wrote poetry. When I was about 30, I started writing narrative poetry which told a story, and from that I moved into the short story.” - Muriel Spark “My fundamental view about the story is that it begins as a poetic insight, and that it is also a way of seeing through a situation, a ‘glimpse through’, as someone has said in which you are in fact writing something perhaps like a short poem. I think the best examples of the short story in this sense are the sonnets of Shakespeare. Each sonnet is an intricate piece of poetry, but at the same time it is ‘a glimpse through’ the life, a situation, the instance of feeling that he is evoking.” - VS Pritchett “I think a short story is much closer to a poem than a novel is.” - AS Byatt “A perfect short story is like a perfect song.” - Barbara Kingsolver

-the short story and drama

“I’ve written a volume of one-act plays, Presences. (…) I think that the short story is much closer to the play than it is to the novel, that it’s a dramatically compressed literary form, and I’ve pointed out that it’s much more natural to go into a play than to go into a novel, generally speaking, for short-story writers and yet short- story writers are pushed into writing novels by the market.” - Peter Taylor “In Ireland, there was a link with the Abbey Theatre where they produced a large number of one-act plays, and the one-act play was the thing which was becoming extremely popular in Europe outside Ireland. Really the idea had come to Ireland from Europe. Such plays are of course a step to the writing of short stories.” - VS Prtichett “The short story is much more closely connected with drama or the poem than the novel.” - John McGahern

-the short story vs. the novel

“The short story, vis-à-vis the novel, is almost exactly like a drawing as compared to the painting.“ - John Wain “People like to read novels as if they were getting into a nice hot bath. They like to ‘lose themselves’. Whereas in the best stories you find yourself. The best stories wake you up. Even if they wake you up to preposterous things, they do wake you up.” - VS Pritchett “There is an enormous difference between a novel and a story. The novel is closely connected with society. A short story has a completely different rhythm than a novel.” - John McGahern “The novel depends enormously upon its sense of a stable social structure and the short story does not really depend on there being a social structure at all. Perhaps there is one of some sort, but it can direct itself to life outside the theoretical or practical interest of the country.” - VS Pritchett “I think a short story is driven by plot and a novel is driven by character. A short story doesn’t really give you room for a full characterization, whereas a novel requires a great deal of characterization, to sustain your interest and to compel you through the entire story.” - Barbara Kingsolver « Le roman a besoin de tisser des liens entre les événements, et il faut être Stendhal ou, mieux encore, Flaubert, pour réussir à rendre chaque passage intéressant. Par

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contre, dans la nouvelle, tout le ‘connective tissue’ est supprimé. Il n’y reste que les temps forts. » - Mavis Gallant

-concision and thought in short-story writing

“A story must never explain, it must enact and suggest.“ - VS Pritchett “I think that all good writing is suggestion.“ - John McGahern « La description fait partie de ce superflu que j’évoquais à propos du roman. Je la trouve inutile et ennuyeuse. Une atmosphère se dégage d’elle-même, elle se crée autour du récit, comme par magie. Si vous voyez, le lecteur voit aussi, quelques indices suffisent. » - Mavis Gallant “One should really leave something for the reader to construct, something individual so that every reader should get something special for himself.“ - Muriel Spark “One of the things that I am at home with in Chekhov is the degree to which he trusts his reader to travel beyond the given, to collaborate with him in the making of his stories, and this is most evident of course in his endings. Chekhov was doing something very different from what, say Tolstoy, was doing. Tolstoy wrote a short story like a novel, and there was a sense of finality to his conclusions.” - Tobias Wolff “I started seeing things in a very condensed clear way, as images. I start making it into a thing much more like a poem, which is a story, and it can have people attached to it who don’t have to have immensely complex characters or histories.” - A.S. Byatt “I like to write with a kind of intensity.” - Alistair MacLeod “I work the stories out in my head before I go to my computer. Therefore I feel that they’ve been worked on by my unconscious a lot before I actually put them on paper. I believe that the work comes from a very deep part of myself.” - Olive Senior “I never write anything unless it is in my head for a long time.” - John McGahern “Everything that I have done has been well received and I think part of that is because I thought a lot about it.” - Alistair MacLeod « Il faut parfois des années pour qu’une histoire prenne corps. L’idée germe et mûrit petit à petit, j’y réfléchis, elle me travaille, et je ne me mets à écrire que lorsque je la sens tout à fait au point. » - Mavis Gallant Though short-story writers rarely perceive themselves as theoreticians, the theoretical insight they provide is a precious resource for scholars. The Journal is glad to make these resources available and hopes to continue for years to come as a tool for progress in the field of short-story research.

AUTHORS

EMMANUEL VERNADAKIS JSSE Co-editor

LINDA COLLINGE JSSE Co-editor

Journal of the Short Story in English, 41 | Autumn 2003 9

“Ché la diritta via era smarrita”: Dante’s Commedia in Beckett’s Texts for Nothing

Theoharis Constantine Theoharis

1 Samuel Beckett ended his days immobilized, watching televised tennis and reading Dante’s Commedia, presumably alternately. He is most likely to have seen in both the game and the epic that ceaselessly plenary limitation that fascinated him throughout his career: order shot through the void. Placed together this way, the orders bestowed by a game and a story bring the following questions readily to mind. When does repetition amount to development, when does motion make a journey, when do increase and decrease indicate growth and decline? These riddles, and their cognates, constitute the struggles to act, to know, often simply to be that exhaust and enliven the wanderers in the wilderness, the decrepit masters and servants, and the disembodied mouths and voices that people Beckett’s fictional world. How much of the order shot through their void is a game and how much a story? Texts For Nothing, published in one volume with Stories in 1958, presents a mostly motionless, sometimes disembodied wanderer in a wilderness who asks, at the moment of his newest paralysis, in thirteen unlucky monologues, whether he can or should make himself a story and so “go on” with the game of ending for good. Dante’s epic journey starts in a moment of panic and terrified exhaustion, a moment when a wanderer in the wilderness can’t go on any more and has to go on. In his alternately grim and tender musings, Beckett’s paralytic occasionally compares himself to Dante’s cosmic pilgrim, who journeyed through all kinds of death, in the medieval poem, to find his way back to the living. The comparison involves not only a man in a bog envying, benignly and tritely, a man in the stars, but more significantly life sundered from order, from the “via diritta,” and life enacting order, journeying on the straight path, absolutely. And not, in this comparison to Dante, the order of a game, which deleteriously toys repeatedly with the reality of life in the void, but the order of a story, which, as Dante conceived that aesthetic form, once, and for all time, fills the void life stumbles into with the energetic rest of the real.

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2 Beckett’s speaker has fallen at evening into a bog on a hillside. Face down in the muck, he occupies himself mentally with various symbolic departures from the spot, but never leaves it. Instead of achieving energetic rest, the deliberate enacting of an intelligible and desired purpose, the man in the muck drifts in a torpor of murmuring shifts from memories of his former life to self-canceling and contradictory accounts of his current situation. These include evanescent fantasies, errant speculations, hapless analysis, and the aspiration to escape all that by telling a story. In number 5, towards the end of an intermittent fantasy that he is clerk, scribe, judge and prisoner in his own trial, the speaker breaks off for a moment. It’s tiring, very tiring, in the same breath to win and lose, with concomitant emotions, one’s heart is not of stone, to record the doom, don the black cap and collapse in the dock, very tiring, in the long run, I’m tired of it, I’d be tired of it, if I were me. It’s a game, it’s getting to be a game, I’m going to rise and go, if it’s not me it will be someone, a phantom, long live all our phantoms, those of the dead, those of the living and those of those who are not born. I’ll follow him, with my sealed eyes, he needs no door, needs no thought, to issue from this imaginary head, mingle with air and earth and dissolve, little by little, in exile.1

3 The tiring game here is not only the trial, but also all the unavailing murmuring of which it is a piece. And, of course, the fantasy hasn’t even achieved the full status of game, it’s only getting to be one. If it were one, there would be an ordered way to be in the muck, and that is precisely what the speaker cannot manage. An ordered way would be a real way, a way that doesn’t come and go, a way to reliably pursue, to enact deliberately. Deliberation in his case can only be imagined. And even then, not as something he does to pursue happiness-the objective of all human action and all stories representing it, as Aristotle’s Poetics puts the matter-but as something done to him in a courtroom to judge the culpability of his moral and psychological helplessness where action is concerned. He seems to know as much, since he dismisses the game-like fantasy momentarily here, before lapsing into its final collapse at the end of the section. The almost game of being on trial, and recording it in writing, is dismissed because it is merely tiring, and what he wants, of course, is not to be tired out by words, but, somehow, to be changed by them, to be taken or to go out of being in the bog, to end. Appropriately enough, his temporary relief from the imperfect trial-game scenario temporarily presents an action, a story of following an imagined ghost, an image of himself or a projection out of himself, who bodiless, can pass through all physical barriers into an exile that will end in the dissolution he has all along desired.

4 A living exiled journey through a phantom realm of the dead lead by a phantom to achieve deliverance evokes Dante’s Commedia, especially for readers familiar with Beckett’s frequent references to that epic throughout his works. In Texts for Nothing the allusions to Dante’s symbolically salvific narrative glint sporadically, amounting to leitmotifs of yearning for the most concrete and elaborately systematic presentation of life as a divinely ordered story, an action through which souls partly make and partly take their given place in the real. In number 6, the speaker ends a memory of having seen his own eyes in a mirror shared first by his father and, later, his mother, with the following longing for the sense of identity felt by characters who can tell stories. I was, I was, they say in Purgatory, in Hell too, admirable singulars, admirable assurance. Plunged in ice up to the nostrils, the eyelids caked with frozen tears, to fight all your battles o’er again, with tranquility, and know there are no more emotions in store, no, I can’t have heard aright.2

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5 I was so and so, the thief, I was so and so the late-repenter, I was so and so the just ruler. Through hundreds of such on the spot interviews with dead souls in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, Dante encounters the encyclopedic forms of human action, and so learns and then writes the order of happy and unhappy relations that longing, tempered by intellect and will, makes between every human life and the real. The term “singulars” here is a sardonic reduction of moral agency, that securely felt “I” the bogged speaker keeps disavowing, to an etiolated, merely grammatical form. What he admires in Dante’s dead is the “assurance,” which their place in the after-life gives them, that they acted, that they brought about the end they now live out, that, in and through their lived and their told stories longing and rationality and will coalesced in such a way in them as to make them all “singulars,” each a self, an “I” which none, even in their suffering, are moved to disavow.

6 The particular singulars referred to, those “plunged in ice up to the nostrils, the eyelids caked with frozen tears,” occupy the first and third of four rings in the ninth and last circle of Hell, where traitors to their kin, homeland or party, guests, and finally benefactors, successively freeze ever more intensely in the concretely isolating form of that deceitfulness by which they lived with those close to them. The physical torment counts more in this reference to Inferno than the ethical offense, appropriately for Beckett’s speaker, who is not tortured for treacherous misdeeds, but frustrated by the lack of any available action whatsoever. Keeping track of his physical identity is usually more than this speaker can manage; the ethical dimension, that of stories, simply drops out of his consideration, even as he invokes it in the Dante reference. As he admits in the passage, concerning the emotionless, tranquil rehearsal the sinner’s make of their old battles, he “can’t have heard aright.” As further proof that the ethical sense is missing from his sardonic parody of the Wordsworthian lyric impulse in storytelling, he notes at the end of the section: But first stop talking and get on with your weeping, with eyes wide open that the precious liquid may spill freely, without burning the lids, or the crystalline humour, I forget, whatever it is it burns. Tears, that could be the tone, if they weren’t so easy, the true tone and tenor at last. Besides not a tear, not one, I’d be in greater danger of mirth, if it wasn’t so easy.3

7 The earlier Inferno reference to “caked” and “frozen” tears, recalls Canto 32, lines 46 through 48. There, traitors to their kin are immersed up to their necks in ice, so that “their eyes, which wept upon the ground before,/shed tears down on their lips until the cold/held fast the tears and locked their lids still more.”4 This second reference, specifically in its citation of the desire for the tears to “spill freely” from the eyes, and most particularly in the word “crystalline,” shifts the Inferno citation to the third ring of ice. There, traitors who murdered their guests while feasting them at table lie on their backs, sheathed in ice, with their faces exposed to the freezing air. Of them Dante writes: Their very weeping there won’t let them weep, and grief that finds a barrier in their eyes turns inward to increase their agony; because their first tears freeze into a cluster, and, like a crystal visor fill up all the hollow that is underneath the eyebrow.5

8 The anti-hosts enjoy a unique status among the damned. Their offense is so heinous that no time to repent of it is allowed them. At the moment of their sin their soul

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plunges immediately to ring three of circle nine and a demon takes possession of their earthly body, inhabiting it in the world above until the destined moment of its physical death. The punishment for their social deceit thus takes an ironically absurdist physical form of deceit, one that falsely contradicts a first principle of truth itself: they seem to be, although they are not, in two places at one time.

9 Although the speaker seems ignorant of the split identity of these tear-tormented frauds, he attributes the same doubling to himself often across the thirteen monologues. Sometimes as a fantasy, sometimes as a protective denial, sometimes as a metaphysical assertion or biographical speculation the bog-man claims repeatedly to be active in the world he left behind and mired in the slimy ditch at one and the same time. In #1 “I’m up there and I’m down here, under my gaze, foundered,” in #7 “And what if all this time I had not stirred hand or foot from the third class waiting-room of the South-Eastern Railway Terminus…,” and so on.6 This split agency goes farther in these short texts than the Cartesian division of consciousness against extension that has become a common-place topic in Beckett criticism, vitiating consciousness itself, as the speaker indicates in #4: He tells his story every five minutes, saying it is not his, there’s cleverness for you. He would like it to be my fault that he has no story, of course he has no story, that’s no reason for trying to foist one on me. That’s how he reasons, wide of the mark, but wide of what mark, answer us that. He has me say things saying it’s not me, there’s profundity for you, he has me who say nothing say it’s not me. All that is truly crass. If at least he would dignify me with the third person, like his other figments, not he, he’ll be satisfied with nothing less than me for his me.7

10 The all doubting Cartesian ego is certainly at play here, but its doubting has been shifted to the realm of material extension. Now the body, the second “person” in this metaphysical argument about being and story-telling, does all the deconstructive thinking. Beckett deepens the Cartesian inquiry into being here, replaying it not only as a grammatical quarrel between a mental “I” and various bodily kinds of “me,” but also as a quarrel between two other “persons,” the Father and Son in the Christian Trinity, and their analogues in literary thinking and practice, the God-like author and his image-bearing creation. Reversing a more modern Italian literary forebear, Pirandello, Beckett’s character, despite his contradictory shunning and longing for a story, is in flight from and not in search of an author, especially a divine one. From #1, “Here at least none of that, no talk of a creator and nothing very definite in the way of a creation. Dry, it’s possible, or wet, or slime, as before matter took ill.”8 The idea that creation troubled matter unwilling to receive it, as a disease troubles an organism, recalls Freud’s metaphysical speculations about thanatos, the “death wish” in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and, more generally, the diagnosis of decadence and nihilism to which Nietzsche ceaselessly subjected all the claims of moral consciousness on life.

11 Their modernist, anti-Christian atheism breaths through this next repudiation of life in words—specifically of rationality and morality shaping longing, the formula for mimetic narration--from #6: Blot, words can be blotted and the mad thoughts they invent, the nostalgia for that slime where the Eternal breathed and his son wrote, long after, with divine idiotic finger, at the feet of the adulteress, wipe it out, all you have to do is say you said nothing and so say nothing again.9

12 The “nostalgia for that slime where the Eternal breathed,” is a paraphrase of Freud’s idea that matter desires to return to its unformed, uncreated, and most especially

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unliving state. Here the prehistoric memory in the death wish is sublimated by the counterpart urge Freud pairs it with—“eros,” the urge to live and create more life. The nostalgia is for the moment when the slime received breath, after all, not for the moment before that creative sigh. Words offend, the speaker asserts, when they transform the strongest wish backward—the wish not to be at all—into nostalgia for the original energy of the first creative act, God’s breathing life into the slime that became Adam, and then all of us. The strong weakness of this “mad thought,”—that human life is a divinely spoken creation, and that language can reveal and enhance saving knowledge of that idea-is what the speaker would blot out. In Christian accounts of the creation, the “Eternal” who breathed creatively with a word was the Father, the breath was the Holy Spirit, and the word was the Son. Beckett packs that dogma into his reference to Jesus’ writing, that sublimating revision of the Mosaic code which amounts, in Christian thinking, to a second creation of life and a new story of spiritual rescue.

13 The slime where the son wrote with divine idiotic finger, long after his creative words spoken to Genesis mud in Eden, is now the ground of the temple in Jerusalem. The scene, narrated in John’s gospel, chapter 8, verses 1 through 11, presents Jesus writing on the ground in response to the scribes and Pharisees, who have asked him to comment on the Mosaic requirement that the adulteress they have brought before him should be stoned. The accusers will not allow Jesus his literary subterfuge, which Beckett presents here as an actually dim-witted or distracted, “idiotic,” dirt doodling, and press him for an answer. After Jesus tells them that he who is without sin amongst them should cast the first stone, he bends down and writes, enigmatically, in the ground again. During the second divine scribble, the accusers, conscience stricken, depart without executing the adulteress. Jesus then rises, and exonerates the woman, telling her to go and sin no more. The speaker has no more enthusiasm for the enlivening moral creativity of the Son’s temple writing than he had for the physically creative language that same Son uttered in Eden. Forgiveness of adultery appears here, ironically, as a species of “eros,” a morally ennobling desire for life to continue, and, as such, is anathema. While vengeance on eros may be reprehensible, restorative extinction, or at least the desire for it, persists as the only good the speaker won’t despair of. But even that can only exist in saying so—“all you have to do is say you said nothing and so say nothing again”—which leaves the speaker in the same wordy tension between “thanatos” and “eros” that he’s been in all along.

14 Against all this shunning of stories and their schizoid tellers stands the figure of Dante, who not only invented split-identity sinners, but who casts himself simultaneously throughout his poem as one. The pilgrim progressively undergoing the liberating journey through the after-life, named, with some anxiety, along the way as “Dante,” is also Dante the earth-bound writer, authoritatively recounting his otherworldly experience. While the pilgrim Dante recovers his imperiled soul, the author Dante writes that story of spiritual rescue as an “allegory of the theologians,” effectively claiming that his epic poem has the moral and spiritual authority of God’s writing. Thus, extravagantly and radically, for the author, the pilgrim, and their readers, the Commedia doubles as the Bible itself.10 Standing as savior to his own endangered self in the work, Dante assumes the ultimate authorial figure of God in relation to his own mortal image. His words, like God’s, reveal the unfailing order reconciling alienation and longing. To speak theologically, Dante’s words, re-enact the Father’s “Power,”

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displayed in the Son as “logos,” as creative “Word.” They redeem life by fashioning its story.

15 Beckett’s ditched fool does not always angrily resolve to blot out the idiotic writing of the two-personed author God. In text #1 the speaker’s recollection of his father telling him a story in childhood includes a tenderly naive diminishing of the divine aspiration in storytelling, particularly in Dante’s. Yes, to the end, always muttering, to lull me and keep me company, and all ears always, all ears for the old stories, as when my father took me on his knee and read me the one about Joe Breen, the son of a lighthouse keeper, evening after evening, all the long winter through. A tale, it was a tale for children, it all happened on a rock, in the storm, the mother was dead and the gulls came beating against the light, Joe jumped into the sea, that’s all I remember, a knife between his teeth, did what was to be done and came back, that’s all I remember this evening, it ended happily, it began unhappily and it ended happily, every evening, a comedy, for children. Yes, I was my father and I was my son, I asked myself questions and answered as best I could, I had it told to me evening after evening, the same old story I knew by heart and couldn’t believe, or we walked together, hand in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds, each in his worlds, the hands forgotten in each other. That’s how I’ve held out till now. And this evening again it seems to be working, I’m in my arms, I’m holding myself in my arms, without much tenderness, but faithfully, faithfully.11

16 In his epistolary account of the Commedia as an allegory of salvation, written for his patron Can Grande della Scala, Dante defines “comedy” in conventional medieval fashion as a story that begins unhappily and ends happily. The definition suffers in Beckett’s translation.

17 His speaker has “a comedy for children” told to him, and replays the scene in memory ever after, to “lull me and keep me company.” The alienating fear of night coming brings on the longing for protective love from the story-telling father. In the ritual repetition of the narrative scene the son becomes the teller and the hearer of the tale, “I was my father and I was my son.” While this identifying bond accurately portrays the psychology of listening to stories, especially the childhood psychology, it also turns the comforting company into solipsism. Becoming his own father every evening, the boy doesn’t take on his father’s edifying authority to ask and answer meaningful questions about the story. Instead he blots it out. And how could it be otherwise, since this son is, for all his formal identification with the story-telling father, only a boy? In the absent presence of the unloving father, the story-telling boy loses confidence in the tale’s power to be a lesson. The father does not and the son cannot give an inspiring presentation of how the boy, like Joe jumping into the sea, might do “what was to be done.” “I asked myself questions and answered as best I could,” the speaker says, “I had it told to me evening after evening, the same old story I knew by heart and couldn’t believe.”

18 The revelatory grace of authorial cooperation between Father and Son, the theological truthfulness which Dante claims for his comic telling of the old story of dangerous rescue drops out here. Instead of the discovery of an order that masters danger, instead of cathartic identification with the action that brings happiness out of unhappiness, the telling and hearing lapse into a habitual standoff of alienation and longing. The hope blighted in the tale telling is indistinguishable from the barely survived loneliness binding the father and son on those evenings when they walked along without playing the story-game. “I had it told to me evening after evening…or we walked together, hand

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in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds, each in his worlds, the hands forgotten in each other (emphasis mine).” This grammatically ambiguous “or” does little to distinguish the silent times from the story times, and much to make them sadly interchangeable.

19 The unbelieving story-teller who holds himself in his own arms “without much tenderness, but faithfully, faithfully,” poignantly rehearses and empties the promise of ordered deliverance from alienation and longing that writing like Dante’s and the Bible’s makes. “That’s how I’ve held out till now.” The faith keeps true to a linguistic form whose content has no reliable but an ever-desired power to lull or comfort the all ears teller. Yet once more, “this evening,” breathing over slime again, the faithful word “seems to be,” eternally, working. The cold comfort of this faltering theological frame for Dantean narrative, recurs later in # 5, where the speaker says: The sky, I’ve heard—the sky and earth, I’ve heard great accounts of them, now that’s pure word for word, I invent nothing. I’ve noted, I must have noted many a story with them as setting, they create the atmosphere. Between them where the hero stands a great gulf is fixed, while all about they flow together more and more, till they meet, so that he finds himself as it were under glass, and yet with no limit to his movements in all directions, let him understand who can, that is no part of my attributions.12

20 In Luke’s gospel, in chapter 16, verses 19 through 31, Jesus tells the story of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man at whose gates the beggar lay without ever being cared for. At their deaths, Lazarus goes to Abraham’s bosom in the sky and the rich man to flames in Hell. Looking up and seeing Lazarus comforted, the rich man asks Abraham to send the beggar to comfort him in Hell, to touch his burning tongue with a single drop of water. Abraham denies the rich man’s plea, arguing that he and Lazarus have the afterlife their lives merited, adding, in verse 26, “And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” When the rich man asks instead for Lazarus at least to go and warn the rich man’s brothers to act charitably and so be saved from his torment, Abraham rebuffs him, observing in verse 29, that the scriptures must suffice for their salvation—“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” When the rich man counters that the words of a man come back from the afterlife would have more moral authority to bring about repentance, to give an unhappy beginning a happy ending, Abraham ends the conversation, asserting that if the scriptures have not sufficed no ghostly visitor from the afterlife could ever be ethically persuasive.

21 The great Biblical gulf fixed between earth and sky is a startlingly magnified image, in reverse, of the mean gully Beckett’s stalled pilgrim has fallen into. Where his hero of many stories stands face up to view the sky and the earthly horizon, the speaker who can successfully summon no story lies face down, his only prospect the pit of a pouch in a hill. All movement in or from that pouch is denied the speaker, while his greatly accounted hero can move laterally “with no limit.” That hero’s storied position on the vertical axis, where the “great gulf” between sky and earth is fixed, always keeps him at one earthly point, immovably distant from the heavens. There “he finds himself as it were under glass.” But his position on the horizontal axis, where “all about” the sky and earth “flow together, till they meet” (at the horizon) allows him unlimited “movements in all directions.” The speaker can’t understand how these opposed positions of earth and sky affect his hero’s motion—“let him understand who can, that is no part of my attributions—” but he does know that the sky and earth, motionless or

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still, are necessary elements of stories—“they create the atmosphere.” In this case that atmosphere is suffused with literary-theological claims.

22 The speaker’s hero stands not only in that great gulf, through which Jesus says, and Abraham says, no heroic storyteller can pass to bring moral instruction or physical relief, but on a spot with panoramic access to the horizon, where that great gulf curves down to close itself. While the horizon limitlessly approachable by the speaker’s hero is physically an illusory meeting of earth and sky, morally and psychologically it presents a naturally instructive and inspiring symbol of desire satisfied. The optical trick the horizon plays reads here as one more image of the promise stories make—that wanting ends in having. That devoutly wished consummation is what Beckett’s speaker and the parable’s rich man do not understand and cannot experience in heroic stories, and what the Bible and Dante’s Commedia, proclaim in heroic tales of deliverance.

23 In Jesus’ parable the rich man fails to persuade Abraham that a traveler returned to the living from the world of the dead with first-hand tales of the eternal punishment awaiting wrongdoers there would have more persuasive force to redeem them than the scriptures. Dante’s rewritten Bible provides precisely the moral exemplar Abraham and Jesus denied the rich man. In his Commedia, the great gulf fixed between the damned and the saved is crossed by Beatrice, who leaves Heaven to summon Virgil in Hell and send him to the base of that earthly hill where Dante, at evening, is stalled on his journey out of the terrifying forest of error. Unfit yet for the direct path to happiness, Dante learns from Virgil that he must travel a long detour through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and observe in those realms the full extent of the soul’s eternal reward for its earthly choices for happiness or unhappiness before he can travel the direct path of virtue again himself.

24 Like Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a work Beckett makes extensive use of in his play Endgame, Dante presents his own penitential experience to his audience as a corrective tale, with this important difference. Unlike Dickens’ ghost or Jesus’ beggar, Dante’s narrator goes to and comes back from the dead alive, improving on the narrative miracle sought by the rich man who ignored Lazarus and offered to an ultimately reformed rich man by Dickens. In a complexly ironic gesture of humility, Dante improves even on those classical and Biblical antecedents for such a journey to whom he fearfully compares himself in Canto 2 of Inferno, line 32: “I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul.” Neither the princely empire builder nor the converted Pharisee who established the theological and institutional foundations of Christ’s church told the story of their qualifying trip to the after-life themselves. Only Dante derives his authority to tell the dangerous story of death turned to life by claiming that he has lived through it himself. On that authority, he presents his Commedia as the paradigm-- imperial, ecclesiastical, and literary-- for every storied change from unhappiness to happiness. There is no stronger claim in Western literature that life calls for and flourishes in a story.

25 The courage and ambition in that claim, the audacity in it, prick Beckett’s speaker time and again. When he resists the spur to make life fictive, there are comments such as this one in #4: What am I doing, talking, having my figments talk, it can only be me. Spells of silence too, when I listen, and hear the local sounds, the world sounds, see what an effort I make, to be reasonable. There’s my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don’t say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that’s the mistake I

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made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.13

26 When he’s game, as he is at the close of #6, the “me” can say “I” as if he were, like Dante or God, his own author: No, grave, I’ll be grave, I’ll close my ears, close my mouth and be grave. And when they open again it may be to hear a story, tell a story, with living creatures coming and going on a habitable earth crammed with the dead, a brief story, with night and day coming and going above, if they stretch that far, the words that remain, and I’ve high hopes, I give you my word.14

27 The adjectival “grave” here contains a punning noun, and recalls that ditch where life and death change places. Here the resurrection is figured as the speaker’s long hoped for ability to tell a story. Beckett varies this “grave” hope that words have the power to “stretch that far”--to raise order out of chaos--in the speaker’s final reference to Dantean storytelling in the closing lines of #9. The graveyard, yes, it’s there I’d return, this evening it’s there, borne by my words, if I could get out of here, that is to say if I could say, There’s a way out there, there’s a way out somewhere, to know exactly where would be a mere matter of time, and patience, and sequency of thought, and felicity of expression. But the body, to get there with, where’s the body? It’s a minor point, a minor point. And I have no doubts, I’d get there somewhere, to the way out, sooner or later, if I could say, There’s a way out there, there’s a way out somewhere, the rest would come, the other words, sooner or later, and the power to get there, and the way to get there, and pass out, and see the beauties of the skies, and see the stars again.15

28 The allusion in the final phrases is to the end of Inferno, where Virgil and Dante exit Hell. My guide and I came on that hidden road to make our way back into the bright world; and with no care for any rest, we climbed— he first, I following—until I saw, through a round opening, some of those things of beauty Heaven bears. It was from there that we emerged, to see—once more—the stars.16

29 In the end, as in the beginning, the chance for longing to be appeased, for reality to be felt and thought and lived as something good, hangs on the power to “say There’s a way out there” for the bog-man, as for Dante. “Say” is distinguished here from merely making the sounds or shapes of words. That power exists amply in the hillside and the infernal ditch. What Beckett’s speaker lacks, and what Dante restores in himself in his Commedia, largely through the divinely sanctioned guidance of the sayer who created the conscience of Imperial Rome, the forebear of Christ’s Church on earth, is another power in “say.” That greater force expresses, indicates, adjudicates, establishes, orders and creates a dynamic relation between consciousness and it’s object, between yearning and it’s promised joy. And that relationship is the “via diritta,” “the way out there,” which Aristotle’s Poetics, and the theological allegory of the Bible and Dante’s star walk offer.

30 Beckett’s speaker can invoke that journey in the weak sense, he can make the sounds and shapes of the words, but he cannot take it himself. The problem seems to be one of conviction in his case. Dante’s “via diritta” was lost because he erred. Beckett’s hero hasn’t so much erred as failed, exhausted his capacity to bring meaning into or out of words, to make them stories. The conviction Dante felt, the heroic sense of guilt and

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purposeful atonement, has faded to irritation and unavailing complaint for Beckett. Certainly his hero can muster “sequency of thought” and “felicity of expression,” but the comparison of these to Dante’s does more to discredit than to celebrate the robust sense of “say” glorified in the Commedia. The celebration, such as it is in Beckett, is a sparkling in detritus. Seen against the starry exit from Hell, the impulse to make and shape the sounds words come in amounts to little more than sweat on the literary brow. “So long as the words keep coming nothing will have changed, there are the old words out again. Utter, there’s nothing else, utter, void yourself of them, here as always, nothing else.”17 But the working out of Adam’s curse in this uttering still bears some stamp of the theological glory which brought Adam into being. Face down, Beckett’s authorial persona can’t help but twitch his muttering upward a bit. A glow, red, afar, at night, in winter, that’s worth having, that must have been worth having. There, it’s done, it ends there, I end there. A far memory, far from the last, it’s possible, the legs seem to be still working. A pity hope is dead. No. How one hoped above, on and off. With what diversity.18

NOTES

1. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 98. 2. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing. (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 104. 3. Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 105. 4. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. Allen Mandlebaum, (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 295. 5. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. Allen Mandlebaum, (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 305. 6. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 77, 108. 7. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 92. 8. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 83. 9. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 103. 10. For an extended treatment of the radically inventive relations between classical and medieval moral and literary theory and poetry in Dante’s Commedia see Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination by Peter S. Hawkins. 11. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 78- 79. 12. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 96-97. 13. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 93. 14. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 105. 15. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 121. 16. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. Allen Mandlebaum, (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 317. 17. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 82. 18. Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 84.

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ABSTRACTS

La voix narratrice qui s'engage dans la construction des Textes pour rien de Samuel Beckett, commence un récit qu'elle abandonne, reprend et abandonne de nouveau, emportée par la colère, le désespoir ou la lassitude. Ce processus de recommencement est truffé de références à la théologie poétique de la Divine Comédie de Dante. Le présent article compare le grand pouvoir qu'ont les histoires de Dante à évoquer la réalité, au statut d'évocation inférieur des histoires de Beckett. Cela pour montrer l'attachement nostalgique de Beckett à l'idée que la langue peut engendrer le réel sans pour autant y croire.

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Les voix du voir : illusions d’optique et reflets sonores

Liliane Louvel

1 Cet article devrait me permettre de poursuivre la série des interrogations sur le reflet après celles que j’ai pu me poser à propos du miroir1, d’offrir aussi une légère variation sur les pouvoirs de ce dernier en avançant une réflexion sur les pouvoirs du miroir d’eau et de ses simulacres. Il devrait ainsi permettre d’examiner le lien entre la nouvelle et le visuel, en s’interrogeant sur l’existence d’un possible lien structurel unissant l’image et la nouvelle, ainsi que le postule Valerie Shaw2. Ce faisant, la relation texte/image, soit, l’image en tant que déclencheur de discours (ou de silence) devrait trouver là un nouvel éclairage. On se demandera alors de quel type de discours il s’agit. En quoi la nouvelle et plus particulièrement ici, l’une des nouvelles de Virginia Woolf, verse une pièce au dossier de la relation texte/image.

2 Car après avoir pendant longtemps analysé l’image en des termes propres au langage (grammaire de l’image, syntaxe du visible, etc.) il semble opportun de retourner « la lettre » vers l’envoyeur et de se demander en quoi la peinture ou, plus largement, le visuel au sens d’arts visuels mais aussi d’image de « tout ce qui se voit sous le soleil » (pour parler comme Poussin) et est constitué par un regard en tant qu’image ou découpe du visible, a influencé la littérature, lui a donné une forme qu’elle n’aurait pas autrement. C’est ce qu’a bien vu Valerie Shaw, même si elle assimile un peu trop hâtivement l’écriture woolfienne ou celle de Katherine Mansfield à l’Impressionnisme : « because it leaves a sense of something complete yet unfinished, a sensation which vibrates in the reader’s or spectator’s mind and demands that he participates in the aesthetic interchange between the artist and his subject3 ». Ainsi, voyant dans la forme de la nouvelle, qui exige la densité du discours et la compression des effets, un caractère commun avec l’unité d’effet des arts visuels, V. Shaw appuie son argumentation sur une citation de Henry James qui, lui aussi, faisait appel à ces derniers et ceci du point de vue formel et non métaphorique : Individually, each story might be self-contained and limited in representational power, but when accumulated these “illustrations” could make up a comprehensive survey, comparable to the inclusive though wandering vision afforded by a camera

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obscura. James himself drew the visual analogy when he wrote in 1888 to tell Stevenson that for the next years he planned to concentrate on short fiction: “I want to leave a multitude of pictures of my time, projecting my small circular frame upon as many different spots as possible.”4

3 « [P]rojecting my small circular frame », l’utilisation de ce que l’on pourrait appeler un objectif ou un œilleton de cadrage comme celui qu’utilisent les cinéastes, montre à quel point James découpait le réel en autant de vignettes susceptibles de « faire image », et de donner naissance à une nouvelle. Nouvelle qui, enchaînée à d’autres, ne manquerait pas de produire un panneau, un panorama de son époque.

4 Valerie Shaw insiste encore sur le parallèle entre la peinture et la nouvelle, parallèle qui prend valeur de concept opératoire. « One of the aims of the present study is to suggest that such comparisons between the short story and the visual arts are not merely rhetorical5. » (12) Elle rappelle que lorsque James écrit dans ses notes pour « The Coxon Fund » : « The formula for the presentation of it in 20,000 words is to make an Impression –as one of Sargent’s pictures is an impression6 », il attire l’attention sur l’aspect le plus significatif de la nouvelle qui la différencie des romans. L’« impression » (en italiques dans le texte) dont l’unité avait été recommandée par Poe, comme on le sait, resurgit comme double articulation entre le textuel et le visuel. En tant qu’« effet » soudain, la forme brève produit, selon James, une « impression » de totalité, de saisie globale (à noter que dans « impression » on a une combinaison du visible en tant qu’empreinte et de l’affect résultant de cette empreinte). En outre, « impression » se réfère à un nouveau mode du peindre qui était en train de changer le mode du voir, et par conséquent le mode d’écrire. L’Impressionnisme, tout comme le Post- impressionnisme dans le cas de Virginia Woolf et de Katherine Mansfield, changeront effectivement la donne visuelle, montrant comment il y a bien interaction entre peinture et littérature ainsi que la fécondité du dialogue entre les « arts sœurs ». Où l’on verra aussi que voix et voir entrent en résonance de manière frappante. Oh, oh ! Je vois, j’entends, je vois les voix que j’entends ! […] La voix tire l’œil. C’est toujours du trait : division de l’espace, incision, mais aussi trait lancé, décoché vers l’autre. Image et texte, arc et cible l’un pour l’autre.7

5 La synesthésie comme mode opératoire utilisé par J-L Nancy résonne en écho de l’ouvrage de Jonathan Rée I See a Voice, qui emprunte son titre à Shakespeare : I see a voice; and now will I to the chink, To spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face.8

6 Or voir, pour V. Woolf, devient forcément entendre, comme on le verra. Voir, c’est faire voir des voix, imag/iner, sur le mode de la rêverie synesthésique.

Fascination de l’œil, la nouvelle-image

7 Le lien entre la nouvelle comme saisie « instantanée » d’un moment, d’une émotion, et l’image relèverait donc, si l’on en croit V. Shaw, d’une affinité profonde. La nouvelle, bien cadrée sur la page, entrerait en résonance avec le tableau, l’image ou le miroir, en tant que « morceau fini de l’espace infini9 ».

8 Or, le miroir (comme avatar de l’image) déclencheur de réflexions et générateur de discours représente une pierre de touche de l’esthétique woolfienne. Faisant rivaliser la littérature avec la peinture, et entrant en compétition avec sa sœur Vanessa Bell en une incarnation de la rivalité des « arts sœurs », « the sister arts10 », Woolf envisageait le

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dialogue entre image et texte de manière paradoxale. Pour elle, il articulait à la fois l’impuissance à dire la peinture et la réaffirmation de la supériorité de la littérature. « What a poet you are in colour » écrit-elle en 1940, complimentant Vanessa à propos d’un portrait de Quentin11. Ce à quoi Vanessa répondait : « I don’t see how you use colours in writing, but […] perhaps you don’t really describe the looks but only the impression the looks made upon you12. » Toujours l’impression, qui évoque la métaphore ancienne qui servait à figurer la pensée et la mémoire à l’instar de l’impression du cachet sur la cire. La couleur, pour Woolf, restera l’un des aspects les plus déconcertants de la peinture. Cependant, elle écrira des nouvelles proches de l’instantané du tableau et tentera, en particulier de « rendre » la couleur, comme en témoigne la courte nouvelle « Blue and Green ». C’est une autre courte nouvelle, « The Fascination of the Pool13 », qui ici jouera le rôle de « témoin », au sens d’indicateur, des glissements entre texte et image.

9 « The Fascination of the Pool » est une courte nouvelle écrite en 1929, qui fait suite à l’écriture de « The Lady in the Looking-Glass » à laquelle elle fait « pendant ». Denise Ginfray rappelle que cette nouvelle a été écrite « pendant la gestation de “The Moths”» qui deviendra The Waves14. En mai 1929, Woolf s’attarde dans son Journal sur une forme élaborée à partir de « petits croquis » qui s’apparenterait à un récit sans en être vraiment un, mais après tout…, ou encore à une pensée en train de se faire : Every morning I write a little sketch, to amuse myself. I am not saying, I might say, that these sketches have any relevance. I am not trying to tell a story. Yet perhaps it might be done in that way. A mind thinking. They might be islands of light—islands in the stream that I am trying to convey: life itself going on.15

10 On le voit, le lien entre la peinture, le visuel et l’écriture est constamment présent chez Woolf puisque, spontanément, elle évoque la forme rapide et sensible du croquis pour parler de ses petites compositions brèves qui lui servent à « garder pied » (sur de « petits îlots de lumière » et d’écriture) au milieu de l’immense courant, de The Waves, tentative de « rendre » la vie, rien de moins.

11 Nouvelle très courte, saisie en un instant, « The Fascination of the Pool » répond à l’extrême aux exigences de Poe. Elle correspond aux critères de Woolf elle-même, si bien mis en lumière par Christine Reynier dans son article où elle analyse et développe les définitions de l’écrivain en ce qui concerne la nouvelle en particulier à partir de l’essai « On Re-reading Novels ». Ces critères sont ceux de la brièveté et de l’honnêteté, ce dernier se déclinant selon trois composantes : l’incomplétude, la liberté, l’intensité16. On peut donc penser que comme un tableau, la nouvelle brève laisse une « impression » instantanée intense sur l’écran intérieur du spectateur, à l’instar d’un croquis « a sketch » ce qui rejoint d’autres préoccupations de Woolf comme dans « A Sketch of the Past ». A remarquer que si l’on parle de l’espace court de la nouvelle (sur la page, dans le temps) on opère un brouillage entre les coordonnées fondamentales humaines que sont le temps et l’espace, récupérées par Lessing dans le Laocoon où il oppose les arts du temps (poésie, musique) aux arts de l’espace (peinture, architecture, sculpture). Car évoquer l’espace réduit occupé par la nouvelle sur la page c’est aussi évoquer le temps de sa lecture réduit, forcément. On le voit, la nouvelle qui fuit toute définition rejoint en cela la relation texte/image elle aussi située dans une oscillation constitutive échappant au carcan des différences définitives.

Journal of the Short Story in English, 41 | Autumn 2003 23

12 On peut alors se demander quel lien il y a entre image et discours ? C’est dans la mise en scène de l’interrogation du spectateur que nous trouverons un début de réponse.

13 « The Fascination of the Pool » occupe deux pages qui se font face (en miroir donc) ou occupent les deux côtés d’une même page selon l’édition. La forme de la nouvelle rappelle celle des « petits poèmes en prose », tentative de « peindre avec des mots ». Rien ne s’y passe si ce n’est l’impression d’un moment sur la conscience d’un spectateur assis auprès d’une mare et qui, la contemplant, se laisse aller à une rêverie qui fait de lui, une caisse de résonance des voix du passé. En cela, Woolf trace bien une petite esquisse ou un croquis, une histoire qui n’en n’est pas une, tout en en étant une : « I am not trying to tell a story. Yet perhaps it might be done in that way. » Il s’agit de restituer le cours fluide d’une pensée, « A mind thinking ».

14 Le titre de la nouvelle, comme celui d’un tableau, est de l’ordre de la deixis. C’est un indicateur minimal mais déjà un indice esthétique et un déclencheur d’imaginaire. « The Fascination of the Pool » désigne une forte attirance, une rêverie hypnotique face à un lieu marqué du signe du redoublement de l’objet en son reflet (figuré par le double oo du signifiant lui-même). « A pool » est une mare reflétant le ciel en son œil liquide. Comme une nouvelle, la mare, à la différence d’un lac, par exemple, est saisie en un clin d’œil en son entier. Dans « The Fascination of the Pool », elle est constituée par le spectateur en réservoir de pensées retenues dans l’eau après le départ de leurs « propriétaires ».

15 Le terme de « fascination » désigne un pouvoir. Il vient de fascinatus, participe passé de fascinare (influencé par le latin fari, parler indique le Webster’s)17 : 1. to cast a spell over (to bewitch, enchant) 2. to transfix and hold spellbound by or as if by an irresistible power (ex the serpent fascinating its prey before striking) 3. to command the attention or interest.

16 L’étymologie permet de faire le lien entre le pouvoir, le regard et la voix puisque la fascination peut s’exercer essentiellement de deux manières : par le truchement du regard, de la chose vue, elle-même fascinante et par celui de la voix qui jette un sort. C’est très exactement de cette double fascination que Woolf entretient son lecteur dans cette nouvelle ; comme une incantation magique, la nouvelle met le lecteur sous hypnose tout en reproduisant l’état dans lequel s’est trouvé le narrateur anonyme « one ». Les voix du voir fascinent et déclenchent l’imaginaire.

17 Cette nouvelle dévoile une autre fascination de Woolf qui lui sert souvent de moteur de la création littéraire, (que l’on songe à l’abondance des images d’eau dans son œuvre18), c’est à dire la rêverie sur l’eau dont on sait comment l’écrivain finira par y inscrire son dernier trajet. Or l’une des pensées/voix qui fait retour au milieu d’une autre qui a vite fait de l’étouffer, appartient à une morte par noyade, ce qui n’apparaît que dans le cadrage des parenthèses comme entre deux eaux : « And I was very happy said another thought glancing briskly over the girl’s despair (for she had drowned herself). »

18 Ensuite, c’est le pouvoir de l’image et la méfiance de l’écrivain envers elle qui se dit ici aussi puisque l’image semble ressortir d’un enchantement, d’un sort que l’on jette.

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Cadrages

19 C’est à une sorte d’exploration des profondeurs (celles de l’inconscient peut-être) sous l’eau, au niveau individuel et au niveau collectif, « in the common pool » que se livre le narrateur perdu dans la contemplation de la vision liquide. Et « very deep » est répété deux fois dès l’incipit qui offre un bel effet de cadrage : « It may have been very deep— certainly one could not see to the bottom of it. Round the edge was so thick a fringe of rushes that their reflections made a darkness like the darkness of very deep water. » On peut en effet parler d’effet de cadrage puisque un chiasme jouant de la symétrie : « very deep » « darkness »/ « darkness » « very deep » vient mimer l’effet de doublage à l’instar du reflet renvoyé par un miroir, reflet forcément énantiomorphe, c’est à dire inversé. Le cadrage est également suggéré au niveau diégétique puisque la mare est elle-même littéralement ourlée d’une frange de roseaux : « round the edge was so thick a fringe of rushes », qui l’entoure et en obscurcit l’eau.

20 Enfin, l’effet de cadrage opère au niveau macro-structurel. La nouvelle s’ouvre sur « It », embrayeur on ne peut plus neutre, dans la phrase d’ouverture « It may have been very deep », qui trouve son signifiant à la première phrase du second paragraphe immédiatement varié au pluriel : « But if one sat down among the rushes and watched the pool-pools have some curious fascination, one knows not what – », signifiant repris en même temps qu’une amorce de réponse est fournie à la question du sens dans la clausule : « That perhaps is why one loves to sit and look into pools. » On est passé du premier mot de la nouvelle « It » à « pools » le dernier, soit, du singulier au pluriel, du spécifique à un générique qui renforce la leçon de la nouvelle, en repassant par pool « and we flow back again over the edge into the pool » et par la mise sous couvercle du centre de la mare occupé par le reflet du panneau annonçant la vente de la ferme du moulin : « And once more the whole of its centre is covered over with the reflection of the placard which advertises the sale of Romford Mill Farm. » Cette évocation clôturait le premier paragraphe de la nouvelle : « the centre of the water reflected the white placard and when the wind blew the centre of the pool seemed to flow and ripple like a piece of washing », symétriquement à la seconde évocation de clôture.

21 L’effet d’incomplétude que Woolf revendiquait pour la nouvelle est sérieusement mis à l’épreuve dans cette nouvelle-esquisse solidement verrouillée au niveau textuel. On a là une fin bien fermée pour reprendre la terminologie de Gerlach19, avec l’énoncé d’une sorte de vérité sur un ton définitif qui suit l’annonce, au niveau diégétique, du recouvrement de la surface de la mare par le panneau de vente. On retrouve la même stratégie de clôture dans « The Lady in the Looking Glass20 », nouvelle écrite peu de temps auparavant, on l’a vu, et qui porte en sous-titre « A Reflection ». La structure parallèle entre le début et la fin de cette nouvelle la cadre également comme le miroir support de la rêverie : « People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms » phrase de conclusion qui reprend et condense la première phrase de l’incipit là aussi : « People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms anymore than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime », etc. Dans cette nouvelle le narrateur est également en quête d’une vérité inatteignable, labile comme le miroir et ses reflets, aussi trompeuse et fausse.

22 La vente de la ferme du moulin de Romford, avec toutes ses composantes, animaux, outils, machines, représente l’arrêt de la transmission familiale de génération en génération. Le panneau de vente a été placé en bordure de la mare par zèle ou

Journal of the Short Story in English, 41 | Autumn 2003 25

plaisanterie, sur une souche d’arbre. Il se reflète dans l’étang : « One could trace the big red letters in which Romford Mill was printed in the water. A tinge of red was in the green that rippled from bank to bank. » L’impression très visuelle est rendue par le figural qui joue sur le littéral : les lettres rouges sont « imprimées dans l’eau » et « font » image. C’est la matérialité du signifiant minimal, la lettre, qui est mise en scène, tout en étant paradoxalement inscrite dans un élément liquide et sans cesse mouvant. Ce qui ne manque pas de déclencher un jeu de rivalité avec l’art abstrait quand une nuance de rouge vient tacher le vert qui fait des ondes de rive à rive. Les lettres à la surface, l’« écrit rouge sur fond blanc », qui ferait un bon titre de tableau, ont « infusé » dans l’eau dormante.

23 Les couleurs de la nouvelle, couleurs minimales primitives21, le noir, le blanc et le rouge sont donc augmentées du vert : « the red and black letters and the white paper seemed to lie very thinly on the surface, while beneath went on some profound under-water life like the brooding, the ruminating of the mind ». Ce qui se dit clairement ici c’est l’impuissance et la superficialité de l’écriture condamnée à rester en surface tandis qu’une vie subaquatique, à l’instar de la pensée méditative, agite les profondeurs. Et les vies passent : « Many, many people must have come there alone, […] dropping their thoughts into the water, asking it some questions, as one did oneself this summer evening. »

Pensée, miroir, sombres profondeurs

24 Le narrateur s’interroge sur le mode d’une pensée qui revient vers son origine avec l’ambigu « as one did oneself » et interroge le miroir d’eau à l’instar des êtres qui sont passés par là, le miroir étant un « réservoir d’images », un réservoir de sens22. On ne saisirait les choses que de biais, à travers leurs ombres et leurs reflets, jamais directement, toujours en images, en énigme et en miroir. […] dans cette entreprise commune aux peintres et aux philosophes se fera jour le souci constant de définir l’image comme un lieu de réflexion, au plus près du centre où s’élabore l’activité même de penser. 23

25 D’où s’ensuit la nécessité de la pensée oblique, la fonction réflexive du miroir et le lien entre spéculation et spécularité.

26 Paradoxalement ici, le miroir d’eau ne reflète pas comme on pourrait s’y attendre, le ciel, ou la Majesté, mais ce qui y est contenu en son tréfonds, les pensées et les voix de ceux qui sont passés par là, l’humain comme des archives celées dans les sombres profondeurs. En un phénomène d’inversion, le miroir ne renvoie donc pas d’image vers le haut, vers son extérieur et vers un spectateur), mais vers son intérieur. Il se creuse des voix d’antan, vers ce qu’il semble contenir. Narcisse abimé dans son image d’eau fait entendre son histoire d’outre-onde, et les voix d’Echo n’en finissent pas de leur répondre24.

27 Il y aurait dans le miroir quelque chose qui tiendrait de l’appel à images : […] est-ce le propre du miroir que d’appeler les images, quand il est lui-même à peine une forme, une surface à peu près sans détermination, un objet presque tout entier réduit à sa fonction ? N’étant que par ce qu’il montre, le miroir serait ainsi le support de toutes les images que l’on veut bien y projeter, l’occasion privilégiée des métaphores, et la seule manière de le distinguer d’un espace purement fantasmatique est de faire valoir sa pertinence au sein d’une réflexion sur l’espace, la vision et l’image, en insistant sur l’historicité de son motif […] Pourquoi ceci

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plutôt que cela ? Pourquoi ceci plutôt que rien ? Le miroir est donc une manière d’interroger l’individuel, non pas dans l’abstrait, mais dans le champ d’une pratique et dans l’espace d’une œuvre. 25

28 Le narrateur ne manque pas de tenter de trouver une raison à cette fascination : « perhaps, that was the reason of its fascination ». L’image, le lieu, fascinent en eux- mêmes mais la réaction première est d’y trouver une logique, un sens, comme dans « The Lady in the Looking Glass » où le narrateur, face à un miroir, se met à inventer une biographie au personnage qui s’avèrera ne pas être à la hauteur du fantasme. Réservoir de vies, de voix, l’image de l’étang contemplée par le narrateur-Narcisse résonne d’échos insoupçonnés.

29 Réservoir de pensées-poissons, « fancies, complaints, confidences », « but in a liquid state floating on top of another, almost disembodied », la mare frémit de leurs ondes. Le lexique de la spéculation fluide imprègne toute la nouvelle. Le mélange du réel et de l’imaginaire qui joue au niveau du figural amène le narrateur à mêler l’image et la chose : « a fish would swim through them [fancies, complaints, confidences], be cut in two by the blade of a reed ». Tout à coup, les pensées se mettent à « prendre », à coaguler « to form recognizable people—just for a moment », pour aussitôt se défaire.

Les voix du voir

30 Dans la seconde partie de la nouvelle qui fait suite aux interrogations d’un observateur posté au bord de l’étang et perdu dans sa contemplation, non de lui-même mais de sa propre fascination, se lèvent des pensées et des voix qui, comme Echo, vont résonner et se mettre à raconter des histoires. Comme dans les essais où Woolf traite de la peinture, « Walter Sickert: a Conversation » ou encore dans la préface à l’exposition de Vanessa Bell26, le narrateur se met à confectionner de petits récits qui sont autant d’aveux de la fuite devant l’image pourtant point de départ. La contemplation du visible à la Narcisse « and one saw a whiskered face formed in the pool leaning over it, drinking it ». ne peut « avoir lieu » que si des mots se lèvent pour la dire : « And the voice chuckled liquidly » ; jusqu’à l’extraordinaire : « all crumbled, of course, the thoughts seemed to say ». Agnès Minazzoli le note : « Ombre éloquente, l’image parlerait-elle d’elle-même, sans le renfort des mots ? Mais qu’en est-il de l’écho qu’une image, aussitôt vue, fait résonner en nous, réveillant, avec le plaisir et le désir de la voir, celui d’y répondre par écrit27 ? » Les mots, comme réponse à l’image, donc, inéluctablement. La voix devient l’équivalent de l’ombre projetée du photographe sur l’objet photographié : une représentation qui énonce une fiction et affirme une présence, désignant l’origine du discours en une boucle autoréférentielle. V. Stoichita établit un parallèle entre l’ombre reflétée dans l’eau d’une photographie de Stieglitz en train d’opérer, et l’eau chez Monet : « Chez Monet comme chez Stieglitz, l’eau change de statut : de surface réfléchissante elle devient lieu d’une projection28. » Chez Wolf aussi l’eau contemplée donne lieu à un test projectif créatif. On y voit ce que l’on y projette.

31 Ainsi, dans une très petite section du court espace textuel occupé par cette nouvelle- esquisse, c’est-à-dire dans les deux paragraphes de la seconde partie, le lecteur va entendre quatre histoires et voyager à toute allure, et en zigzag, dans le temps. Des dates faisant référence à l’Histoire de l’Angleterre sont rendues par des événements particuliers : 1851, la grande exposition sous la reine Victoria, symbole de la puissance de l’Empire, 1662, le règne de Charles II, la restauration, 1805 la victoire de Nelson sur

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Napoléon, enfin, une voix hors du temps, sans date précise cette fois-ci, une voix profonde soulève toutes les autres : Alas, alas sighed a voice slipping over the boy’s voice. So sad a voice must come from the very bottom of the pool. It raised itself under the others as a spoon lifts all the things in a bowl of water. This was the voice we all wished to listen to. All the voices slipped gently away to the side of the pool to listen to the voice which so sad it seemed-it must surely know the reason of all this. For they all wished to know.

32 Cette voix si triste qui vient des profondeurs, celle devant laquelle toutes les autres s’écartent, est celle qui sait « la raison de tout cela ». Objet du désir de tous, désir d’entendre, désir de savoir, hélas, aussitôt apparue, la voix d’ombre disparaît : but there under the man who had been to the Exhibition ; and the girl who had drowned herself and the boy who had seen the fish ; and the voice which cried alas alas! yet there was always something else. There was always another face, another voice. One thought came and covered another. For though there are moments when a spoon seems about to lift all of us, and our thoughts and longings and questions and confessions and disillusions into the light of day, somehow the spoon always slips beneath and we flow back again over the edge into the pool.

33 Ce qui est décrit ici, outre un condensé des histoires contées plus haut, c’est le fonctionnement de la mémoire involontaire et du souvenir-écran qui fait qu’aussitôt entraperçu, le souvenir disparaît laissant une impression, un malaise. Impossible d’atteindre le fond de l’étang du souvenir, de savoir. Reste l’image et son défi au texte, à la voix. D’où le recours à la polyphonie pour rendre le collectif et le ton de la pastorale élégiaque pour restituer l’intime, l’individuel. Chacun les contenant tous. Nous avons bien vu plus haut que « Le miroir est donc une manière d’interroger l’individuel, non pas dans l’abstrait, mais dans le champ d’une pratique et dans l’espace d’une œuvre29. » On pense bien sûr aussi à The Waves et à la figure de l’œillet composé des personnages réunis autour de la table, invitation à laquelle ne se rendra pas Percival, « l’absent de tout bouquet ». La nouvelle met donc en scène la présence de l’absence en une « saisie de la présence » dont parle Jean-Luc Nancy, qui serait une présentation, ou « la présence en sujet », une force de l’image aussi. Et d’insister sur l’intensité de la re- présentation, prise non pas au sens de présentation seconde, mais de présentation forte, ostension, monstrance comme le disent les anglophones pour désigner l’ostensoir qui a bien un lien avec l’image puisqu’il contient (et expose) le corps du Christ sous l’espèce de l’hostie30.

34 L’écrivain donne la parole aux voix qui se sont tues, elle les met en pré-sence, « en prae- sentia, en être-en-avant-de-soi […] Dans l’image, ou comme image, et ainsi seulement, la chose-que ce soit une chose inerte ou une personne-est posée en sujet : elle se présente31. » D’où aussi le côté côté fantas(ma)tique et mortuaire de l’évocation qui correspond en cela à « l’étymologie de imago- représentation du mort32 », et memento mori. Lorsque Montaigne écrit « je peins le passage », c’est bien encore à la peinture qu’il emprunte sa métaphore. Woolf, elle, voit le passage en termes de fluidité, celle du temps qui passe, de l’image qui monte du fond de l’étang, de la voix qui raconte son histoire. La vie passe jusqu’à la douleur sous la vase, tout au fond d’une vérité qui ne peut ad-venir totalement, d’un non-événement qui ne trouve pas son « lieu ». L’opération de voilement/dévoilement de la représentation devient ici celle d’un recouvrement, celui de l’eau-miroir par les lettres d’un panneau de vente.

35 Dans ce bref espace d’une « nouvelle-instant » pour évoquer Godenne, ou encore de ce que l’on pourrait appeler une nouvelle-miroir puisqu’elle ne dépasse pas le temps d’une

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brève contemplation, c’est tout le vacillement du monde qui est donné à voir avec la méditation sur l’œil de l’étang retourné vers ses profondeurs, vers ce qu’il a de plus intérieur. Caisse de résonance du passé, il est aussi caisse de résonance de la pensée du narrateur qui projette dans ces profondeurs ses propres fantasmes, sa « réflexion » et son reflet.

36 Cette nouvelle propose une mise en scène du rapport entre le texte et l’image, lorsqu’une mare se meut en miroir d’eau et absorbe la pensée d’un spectateur qui, à son tour, le lui rend bien en lui prêtant une vie et des voix.

37 Où l’on assiste une fois de plus à l’animation d’une image (ici à la limite puisqu’il ne s’agit pas d’une image créée de la main de l’homme mais d’une image achéropoiètique), par un narrateur qui ne peut s’empêcher d’en faire surgir des histoires courtes, « short stories » contenue dans cette courte histoire, « short story » elle-même prenant la forme d’un dessin rapide « a sketch », tout en osant rivaliser avec les plus gros romans, puisque, « plusieurs siècles nous y contemplent » à leur tour ou tout au moins quatre récits de vies. La capacité plastique de la nouvelle à contenir sous forme comprimée, compressée (au sens où César les forge), tout un monde, microcosme reflétant un macrocosme, est bien mise en scène ici lorsque le miroir d’eau, forme finie de l’espace infinie, devient une « figure » au sens fort. Rappelons aussi l’ambiguïté du miroir qui, dans l’iconographie traditionnelle, pouvait représenter la vérité mais aussi la duplicité et la vanité.

38 Dans les deux nouvelles où elle confronte l’art de l’écrivain au miroir de vérité, Woolf n’oublie pas la duplicité du reflet et en joue poétiquement. Le « playpoem » dont elle souhaitait inaugurer la forme est peut-être ici déjà activé. Objet hybride, « The Fascination of the Pool » oscille entre des pôles instables : Histoire/histoires, passé/ présent, voix/voir, texte/image, poésie/prose. Cette instabilité de l’impression fugace, de l’effet fugitif, rivalise avec le souvenir dans l’esprit du lecteur qui reste fasciné par la rêverie enchantée au bord de l’eau frangée de roseaux. Une bulle de rêve hypnotique qui tient sur deux pages en miroir.

NOTES

1. Dans L. Louvel, L’Œil du texte, PUM, 1998, et Texte/image, images à lire textes à voir, PUR, 2002. 2. Valerie Shaw, The Short Story, a Critical Introduction, London, New York, Longman, 1988, 12. 3. Ibid., 12. 4. Henry James, Letters, III, 240 (3 July), ed. Leon Edel, 1974—cité par Valerie Shaw, op. cit., 12. 5. Valerie Shaw, op. cit., 12. 6. Henry James, The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdoch, New York, 19, in Valerie Shaw, op. cit., 12. 7. Jean-Luc Nancy, Au fond des images, Paris, Galilée, 2003, 124. 8. Jonathan Rée, I See a Voice, London, Flamingo, 2000, qui cite Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.i.190-1. 9. Voir Agnès Minazzoli, La Première ombre, Paris Minuit, 1989.

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10. On pourra lire à ce sujet Diane Gillespie, The Sisters’ Arts, The Writing and Painting of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1988. 11. Nigel Nicolson et Joanne Trautmann, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, lettre 381, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1980, p. 294. 12. Diane Gillespie, op. cit., p. 277. 13. Virginia Woolf, « The Fascination of the Pool », in Susan Dick (ed.), The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989, 226-227. 14. Voir l’article de Denise Ginfray, « De « POND » à « POOL », ou l’esquisse d’une écriture », Le pur et l’impur, Colloque de Cerisy, Catherine Bernard, Christine Reynier, PUR, 2002, 121-133. 15. A. Olivier Bell, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 3, 28 mai 1929, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1982, p. 229. In Denise Ginfray, op.cit., p. 122. 16. Christine Reynier, « De l’honnêteté et de l’impureté : l’art de la nouvelle selon Virginia Woolf », Le pur et l’impur, op. cit., 167-177. 17. « Cf. Gk baskainein to bewitch, speak evil of, fr. baskanos, sorcerer, slanderer, prob fr. a Thracian or Illyrian word akin to Gk phaskein to say, phanai to say. » (Webster’s Dictionary) 18. Ne serait-ce que dans les titres déjà comme The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse, The Waves. 19. John Gerlach, Toward the End, Closure and Structure in the American Short Story, Alabama, University of Alabama Press, 1985. 20. On peut se reporter à mon étude de la nouvelle : Liliane Louvel « ‘The Lady in the Looking Glass’. Portrait(s) de dame(s) avec miroir », C. Reynier, C. Bernard, Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines, hors-série, Métamorphose et récit dans l’œuvre de Virginia Woolf, octobre 1997, 70-86. 21. Voir à ce sujet Michel Pastoureau, Bleu, Histoire d’une couleur, Paris, 2000. 22. Agnès Minazzoli, op. cit., 13. 23. Agnès Minazzoli, op. cit., 12. 24. On le sait, dans le mythe, la nymphe Echo, éprise de Narcisse, représente l’équivalent sonore du redoublement visuel. 25. Ibid., 94. 26. « Vanessa Bell by Virginia Woolf », S. P. Rosenbaum, The Bloomsbury Group, op. cit., p 169-173 ; reproduit de « Recent Paintings by Vanessa Bell » with a Foreword by Virginia Woolf, The London Artists’ Association, 1930. 27. Agnès Minazzoli, op.cit. 13. 28. Victor Stoichita, Brève histoire de l’ombre, Genève, Droz, 2000,115-116. 29. Ibid., 94. 30. Jean-Luc Nancy, Au fond des images, Paris, Galilée, 2003, 46-47. 31. Ibid., 46. 32. Ibid., 155.

RÉSUMÉS

In this paper I propose to prolong the series of questions I addressed concerning reflection, in both senses of the term, in the mirror. I offer a slight variation in concentrating on the reflecting powers of a water mirror and the reflections it sends back to a receptive subject. Thus, I can explore the possible links between the visual and the short story, examining the existence of a

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structural link between the two as posited by Valerie Shaw. By so doing, the word/image relationship (the image as generator of fiction… or silence) is viewed from a new angle. The questions being: what type of discourse is thus activated? To what extent does the short story, particularly one of Virginia Woolf's stories –“The Fascination of the Pool“– offer another approach to the word/image relationship?

AUTEURS

LILIANE LOUVEL Université de Poitiers

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The short story according to Woolf

Christine Reynier

1 Although she is better known as a novelist, Virginia Woolf wrote numerous short stories ranging from animal fables and philosophical tales to sketches and prose poems. The number and variety of texts seem to preclude any overall reading that would lead to the definition of the Woolfian short story as a specific literary genre. And indeed, except for Dean R. Baldwin who published Virginia Woolf. A Study of the Short Fiction,1 critics have analyzed Woolf's short stories separately in a comparatively limited number of papers. The conditions in which the short stories were published may account for this relative neglect. Only eighteen out of the forty-six short stories Woolf wrote from 1906 to 1941 were published during her lifetime in various reviews such as Forum, Criterion, The Athenaeum, or in collections published by the Hogarth Press (Two Stories, Kew Gardens, Monday or Tuesday).2 After Woolf's death, Leonard Woolf tried to make these texts available to a wider public by publishing A Haunted House and Other Stories in 1944, 3 Stella McNichol published Mrs Dalloway's Party4 in 1973 and in 1985 Susan Dick edited Virginia Woolf. The Complete Shorter Fiction, a collection of texts which can be classified neither as novels nor as non-fiction, seventeen of which were published for the first time.

2 My aim here is not to draw up the list of these different publications but to underline the fact that, except for Mrs Dalloway's Party, none of these collections has been arranged thematically. Their titles tend to select one short story in order to announce a series, as in Monday or Tuesday or A Haunted House and Other Stories. What they call attention to is the heterogeneity of the collected texts, something which may also be ascribed to the fact that the texts were, as the writer herself averred, written in between two novels and conceived of as a pause, a form of entertainment, or even as a way of making some money. In any case, they do not seem to be the outcome of an overall project.

3 In that case, what sort of reading of the short stories should be favoured? Should we be satisfied with micro-readings which, even if rewarding, will only highlight the lack of homogeneity of the whole? Should the texts be read in a chronological order as Susan Dick's choice in her edition suggests? Should we adopt “a chronological and biographical approach” that would also take into account "Virginia Woolf’s restless

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experimentation in short story form and technique,” (A Study of the Short Fiction 6) as Baldwin does? Even if such approaches have their merits, they do not seem to render full justice to Woolf's texts. The underlying a priori of most criticism on Woolf's short stories is that the latter are experimental, i.e. laboratories leading to the writing of novels. As Baldwin characteristically writes: “Her place in literary history will ultimately depend almost entirely on the novels, with the stories providing interesting sidelights” (A Study of the Short Fiction XII). Such an approach implicitly reduces the short story to a minor literary genre without any value of its own. The issue I want to address here is whether Woolf herself considered the short story as a minor genre, and whether she had any sort of theory of the genre. Baldwin bluntly asserts that: Unfortunately, she left few direct statements about her theory of the short story; there are no manifestos like “Modern Fiction” or “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” regarding the short story. Comments about her experiments in short fiction, therefore, must be related to her pronouncements about the novel and to what can be inferred from the stories themselves. (A Study of the Short Fiction XII)

4 And if we thumb through Woolf's diary, we must grant him that while she refers to the writing of her short stories, to their publication and reception, she does not say a word about the genre itself. Similarly, the index of her essays edited by Andrew McNeillie has entries about essays, letters, novels, poetry and prose, but none about the short stories.

5 Yet the reading of some of these essays proves more fruitful; even if the word "short story" does not appear in their titles, essays such as “On Re-Reading Novels,”5 “The Russian Point of View"6 and “An Essay in Criticism”7 offer interesting viewpoints on the genre and show that far from regarding it as a minor one, utterly dependent on the novel, Woolf regarded it as a genre per se. While referring to Maupassant, Flaubert, Tchehov or Mansfield, she tries to define this new genre which has not yet found a name of its own, the old term “short story” emphasizing, as she points out in “Modern fiction,”8 the story-telling _ something which may no longer be adequate when dealing with Modernist texts. She also attempts to define the reading contract upon which this new genre is based. As she writes about Tchehov's stories: But it is impossible to say ‘this is comic’, or ‘this is tragic’, nor are we certain, since short stories, we have been taught, should be brief and conclusive, whether this, which is vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at all. (“Modern Fiction," C. E. 2 109 )

The short story in Woolf's essays

6 In these essays, the short story is presented as an art of brevity and honesty. In “On Re- Reading Novels,” Woolf chooses to illustrate her point by the analysis of a short story for the following reason: “and, not to strain our space, let us choose a short story, Un Cœur Simple (sic)” (C. E. 2: 125). Gustave Flaubert's short story is chosen as an example only because it saves space; in other words, Woolf does not seem to make any difference here between novels and short stories except in terms of length. However she elaborates on this in “An Essay in Criticism” where she voices a harsh criticism of Hemingway's short stories that devote too much space to dialogue: And probably it is this superfluity of dialogue which leads to that other fault which is always lying in wait for the writer of short stories: the lack of proportion. A paragraph in excess will make these little crafts lopsided and will bring about that blurred effect which, when one is out for clarity and point, so baffles the reader. (Essays 455)

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7 Indirectly the short story is here defined as an art of proportion and perfection. Secondly, the other defining characteristic of the short story according to Woolf is honesty. In “A Russian Point of View,” she repeatedly comes back to Tchehov's honesty. This notion also appears in essays about the novel and we shall refer to them now and again in order to get a clearer picture of what is meant. Honesty is defined in relation with writing in very personal terms and is said to derive from three other notions, inconclusiveness, freedom and intensity.

8 In order to be honest, a short story must first of all be “inconclusive” (Essays 184), open and ask more questions than it can provide answers for. Such are Anton Tchehov's short stories and that is why they are so puzzling for a reader who, because he is used to Victorian fiction where every question finds an answer and every plot a clear-cut ending, cannot understand why these narratives start with nondescript situations and end with a question mark. It is only after he has learnt to get rid of his reading habits that the reader will come to like such stories. Then and then only, will he be able to perceive the underlying pattern of the story and understand that the simplicity of the narrative's starting-point results from the writer's concern, not with human relationships any more, but with “the mind” or “the soul.” And the reader will eventually come to understand that if the story is inconclusive, it is because of the writer's fundamental honesty: the method which at first seemed so casual, inconclusive, and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match save among the Russians themselves. (Essays 185)

9 Selection, rather than manipulation, leads not to artifice but to a new form of “truth to life,” as she explains in “Modern Fiction”: “It is the sense that there is no answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over” (“Modern Fiction,” C. E. 2 109).

10 The choice of inconclusiveness is therefore intimately linked with a newly found freedom, both formal and thematic, since the inconclusive short story can escape the generic constraints of a closed form as well as broach any topic, however banal: “‘The proper stuff of fiction’ does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought” (“Modern Fiction,” C. E. 2 110). The prerequisite conditions for such freedom is that the writer should give up Victorian literary conventions which may be proper but also and above all dishonest since they transmit a “perfunctory” truth: “nothing - no ‘method’, no experiment, even of the wildest - is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence” (“Modern Fiction” C. E. 2 110). Such freedom necessarily enlarges the reader's freedom: “as we read these little stories about nothing at all, the horizon widens” (“The Russian Point of View”, Essays 185). The reading contract is therefore redefined in a short story which is now not only open-ended but also open in the sense that it lets the reader enter the text and go on with the writing process.9

11 Finally the third component of honesty is “emotional intensity,” a notion clearly defined in “On Re-Reading Novels.” The beginning of this essay is devoted to Percy Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction and his use of the term “form,” borrowed from the visual arts; according to Lubbock, form is paramount and constitutes the essence of a book: Here we have Mr. Lubbock telling us that the book itself is equivalent to its form, and seeking with admirable subtlety and lucidity to trace out those methods by which novelists build up the final and enduring structure of their books. (C. E. 2 125)

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12 These methods, Woolf goes on to explain, have to do with the different points of view used by the novelists. It is clear that Woolf presents Lubbock as a formalist who reduces a text to its structure and she criticizes Lubbock's use of the term “form.” For her, “’the ‘book itself’ is not form which you see, but emotion which you feel” (C. E. 2 126); it is through emotion that one gets at the core of a work of art. Sometimes Woolf uses the term “form,” sometimes she prefers “method” or “art,” and to finish with she proffers a new definition: “when we speak of form we mean that certain emotions have been placed in the right relations to each other” (C. E. 2 129). In other words, with good writing, the emotion and the form cannot be dissociated. In this essay, Woolf criticises Lubbock the formalist and voices an opinion close to that of Roger Fry who writes: “I conceived the form and the emotion which it (the work of art) conveyed as being inextricably bound together in the aesthetic whole.”10 And to make her point clear, she comments upon Flaubert's short story, “Un Cœur simple.” This text is far from being explicit and the key to the narrative is only given through “a sudden intensity of phrase”: “the mistress & the maid are turning over the dead child’s clothes.” (C. E. 2 125) This narrative intensity “startles us into a flash of understanding.” (C. E. 2 125) From that “moment of understanding” which is also a moment of emotion and intensity for the reader, the puzzle of the text begins to make sense. And this is to be linked with the intensity the writer has transmitted in his writing: “the more intense the writer’s feeling the more exact without slip or chink its expression in words.” (C. E. 2 126) This three-fold intensity, which concerns the text, the writer and the reader, is only made possible when the emotion is “deep and genuine.” (Phases of Fiction”, C. E. 2 71) Therefore intensity, according to Woolf, derives from sincerity and exactitude.

Analysis of Woolf's definition of the short story

13 Through these various pronouncements upon the short story, Woolf elaborates a theory of the genre which deserves to be analysed in detail. In her essay “On Re- reading Novels,” brevity is retained as the first defining trait of the short story, just as it was by Woolf's ancestor E. A. Poe who claimed that a short story should be read "at one sitting."11 However clear and simple, this trait is not specific enough and tends above all to reduce the short story to a genre that can only be appraised in comparison with the novel and its length. Yet in “An Essay in Criticism,” Woolf comes back to the notion of brevity and far from defining the short story as a novel in miniature she grants brevity a value of its own which makes it synonymous with formal purity and perfection, much as writers like Alberto Moravia or Julio Cortazar have more recently defined the short story as a “pure genre”12 and a "perfect form."13

14 The second defining characteristic of the short story in Woolf's essays is, as we have seen, honesty. Woolf borrows from ethics this term which has long been associated with realist writing. She therefore retains the ethical position of the realist writer who prizes honesty. She also retains the binary system where what is “honest, genuine, deep, natural” is pitted against what is “alien, false, perfunctory,” where “the truth of imagination” is opposed to “the truth of the psychoanalyst” and “right” to “wrong;” yet, within this system, she turns things topsy-turvy, denouncing what was regarded as honest as being dishonest, thus modifying fundamentally the definition of honesty. Indeed, if honest writing must be true to reality, it cannot do so any longer through true-to-life details and the creation of “the illusion of reality.”14 Woolf deems all

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attempts at a mimetic representation of reality dishonest since they are faithful to the impurity of reality.15 To Victorian honesty and its referential impulse, Woolf substitutes a new form of honesty. Its first components, inconclusiveness and freedom, exemplify the rejection of literary conventions in favour of a process of selection and elimination as well as a shift of the narrative from human relations to “the mind,” “the soul,” as Woolf says, i. e. a shift from outer to inner life. Honesty is thus conceived first and foremost as synonymous with the transgression of conventions, and the elimination of the impurities of fiction. In other words, honesty comes to designate the joint process of liberation and purification.

15 The third component, emotional intensity, presents honesty in a more positive light. According to “On Re-Reading Novels,” emotional intensity directly derives from the brevity of the short story and makes it into a meaningful whole. By selecting this criterion, Woolf points to the short story as a moment of emotional intensity, a “moment of being;” the “moment of being” is then both the one evoked by the narrative and the narrative itself (a perfect form transmitting a perfect moment), which in turn creates an intense emotion in the reader. One could therefore say of the short story writer that, like the poet's, “his power (is) to make us at once actors and spectators” (“How Should One Read a Book?”, C.E. 2 8). The intensity of the text produces an intense emotion in the reader very much like the violent shock produced by a personal emotion (“Our being for the moment is centred and constricted, as in any violent shock of personal emotion.” C. E. 2 7), and this comes before any sort of understanding does (“Afterwards, it is true, the sensation begins to spread in wider rings through our minds; remoter senses are reached; these begin to sound and to comment and we are aware of echoes and reflections.” C. E. 2 7); and Woolf concludes: “we learn through feeling.” (C. E. 2 9) In this evocation of the different phases of the creative process, from conception to reception, Woolf gives a central place to feeling, in the wake of the Romantics16 and also of G. E. Moore who associated feeling or emotion with the cognitive element in aesthetic appreciation: “It is plain that in those instances of aesthetic appreciation... there is a bare cognition of what is beautiful in the object, but also some kind of feeling or emotion.”17 Emotional intensity is also linked through the words “a flash” and “sudden intensity,” with speed and rhythm and Woolf comes back to this even more explicitly in “How Should One Read a Book?”: Thus the desire grows upon us to have done with half-statements and approximations; to cease from searching out the minute shades of human character, to enjoy the greater abstractness, the purer truth of fiction. Thus we create the mood, intense and generalised, unaware of detail, but stressed by some regular, recurrent beat, whose natural expression is poetry; ... The intensity of poetry covers an immense range of emotion. (C. E. 2 6-7)

16 Here intensity is linked both with abstraction (in the phrase “intense and generalised”) and with rhythm ("stressed by some regular, recurrent beat"). Through semantic or structural repetitions, variations and echoes,18 rhythm, born from the conjunction of brevity and intensity, structures the text and brings about the climactic emotional shock. Rhythm for Woolf, just as it is for E. M. Forster, is the basis of all true feeling in writing. As for abstraction, it is defined here in pictorial terms as the non-figurative, the non-representational and as synonymous with impersonality: So drastic is the process of selection that in its final state we can often find no trace of the actual scene upon which the chapter was based... Life is subjected to a thousand disciplines and exercises. It is curbed; it is killed... There emerges from the mist something stark, something formidable and enduring, the bone and

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substance upon which our rush of indiscriminating emotion was founded. (“Life and the Novelist,” Essays 401).

17 The process of selection and elimination allows the transcription of the intensity of affects while turning the text into “a sort of impersonal miracle.” (“Life and the Novelist,” Essays 404).

18 By highlighting the purity of the creator's intention as well as that of the effect produced on the reader, emotional intensity makes honesty quasi-synonymous with purity; above all, it turns the short story into a “purified” text. And it is thanks to this emotional intensity that the paradoxical nature of Woolf's aesthetics, with its combination of two apprently incompatible notions: abstraction and emotion, resulting from two contradictory impulses: elimination and saturation,19 can be perceived. Finally, this definition of emotional intensity shows that the short story is much closer to poetry than to the novel with which it was initially compared in the same essay, “On Re-Reading Novels.” And Woolf confirms this in “Notes on an Elizabethan Play”: “The extremes of passion are not for the novelist” (Essays 66); they are characteristic of drama and poetry and she adds, about Elizabethan drama: “the emotion (is) concentrated, generalised, heightened in the play. What moments of intensity, what phrases of astonishing beauty the play shot at us” (Essays 66). Owing to this intensity, “the play is poetry” (Essays 66). Intensity, in the end, is a characteristic of poetry, the supreme form of writing.

19 The concept of honesty that Woolf borrows from ethics, thus comes to define Woolf's aesthetics. The signifier “honesty” is disconnected from its traditional signified, a process heralding a change of perspective, an epistemological break. The referent which was, in Victorian writing, both the starting-point and the aim, is only used here as a stepping-stone towards an abstract and purified vision from which it will be almost eradicated. At the same time, by choosing the term “honesty” to define the short story, Woolf places it somewhere between ethics and aesthetics, in a new space which is neither that of Victorian aesthetics nor of pure aestheticism, of art for art's sake, since it is linked nevertheless with ethics. Moreover, through her pluralist definition of the term, Woolf underlines the purity of the short story, presenting it as deriving from a purifying impulse. She also points to the generic hybridity of the short story which she conceives as being closer to poetry and drama than to the novel, very much like the “play-poem” her later work The Waves is meant to be. Aesthetic purity is thus closely linked by Woolf to generic hybridity. In other words, for her hybridity and cross- fertilization become the necessary conditions of beauty and purity. Woolf thus goes against the grain and deprives hybridity of all derogatory connotations (just as she does in “Walter Sickert” where “the hybrids, the raiders” (Essays 243) are praised or in Flush where Flush is shown to be much happier among the Italian mongrels than the English pure-breds) in a move which is not without ideological implications.20

20 The definition Woolf gives of the short story through the joint concepts of brevity and honesty can be compared with the definition some critics or writers have given more recently. For some, like John Wain and much like the first theoretician of the short story, E.A. Poe, ”the literary form that the short story most resembles is poetry.”21 Others, like Jean-Marie Schaeffer, draw a list of generic characteristics that do not allow a distinction between the short story and the novel. Only the five characteristics selected by Eileen Baldeshwiler (chronological disruptions, the use of images, the emphasis laid on inner life, open endings and meaning, a greater emotional intensity)22

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seem to match Woolf's definition, yet they do not take into account the dialectical relation Woolf establishes between the new type of short story and the realist one. In the end, John Gerlach and Pierre Tibi's definitions seem more adequate; Gerlach writes: “The short story blends the brevity and intensity of the lyric poem with the narrative traits (plot, character and theme) of the novel”23 and Tibi adds: “the short story seems to be the space of a confrontation between poetry and narrativity.”24 Yet for Woolf, it is not so much narrativity which is at stake as its erasure; and where Tibi chooses to talk about “a confrontation” between genres within the short story, Woolf prefers to think in terms of cross-fertilization. And eventually, none of these definitions mentions the other genre with which short stories converse, i. e. drama. In the end Woolf's theory of the short story differs from them all while combining them in a theory of her own.

21 By defining the short story as brief and honest, Woolf defines the ideal she is aiming at: a spatial moment of cross-fertilization between form and emotion, prose, poetry and drama. Such a definition, in all its nuances and complexities, places the short story at the very centre of her own aesthetic quest, thus presenting it neither as simple entertainment nor as standing in any sort of hierarchical relation with another genre, but as participating fully in the creative process. In the end, Woolf's own ill-named short stories, that all existing theories fail to describe accurately, are best defined by her own essays and could be called “short honest fiction.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baldeshwiler, Eileen. “The Grave as Lyrical Short Story,” Studies in Short Fiction I, 216-221.

Baldwin, Dean R.Virginia Woolf. A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne’s studies in short fiction,1989.

Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970.

Bell, Clive. Art. 1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Bradshaw, David, ed.The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Cortazar, Julio.Entretiens avec Omar Prego. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.

Dick, Susan, ed. Virginia Woolf. The Complete Shorter Fiction. London: The Hogarth Press, 1985. London: Triad Grafton Books, 1991.

Eco, Umberto. L'Œuvre ouverte. Paris: Seuil, 1965.

Fry, Roger.Vision and Design. 1920.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Gerlach, John: Towards the End, Closure and Structure in the American Short Story . Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1985.

Godenne, René. La Nouvelle française. Paris: P.U.F., 1974.

Grojnowski, Daniel. Lire la nouvelle. Paris: Dunod, 1993.

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Louvel, Liliane, and Claudine Verley. Introduction à l’étude de la nouvelle. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1993.

McNeillie, Andrew, ed. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Vol.4: 1925 to 1928. London: The Hogarth Press, 1994.

McNichol, Stella, ed. Mrs Dalloway's Party. A Short Story Sequence by Virginia Woolf. London: The Hogarth Press, 1973.

Meschonnic, Henri. Critique du rythme. Paris: Verdier, 1982.

Moore, G.E. Principia Ethica. 1903. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Moravia, Alberto. “The Short Story and the Novel.” Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976, 147-151.

Ozwald, Thierry. La Nouvelle. Paris: Hachette, 1996.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Writings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979.

Regard, Frédéric. “Penser, sentir, écrire. Quelques réflexions sur la notion de feeling dans l’histoire de l’esthétique britannique.” Etudes britanniques contemporaines 9 (juin 1996): 65-78.

Reynier, Christine. "The Impure art of Biography: Virginia Woolf'sFlush," Mapping the Self: Space, Identity, Discourse in British Auto/Biography.Ed. Frédéric Regard, St Etienne: Publications de l’Université de St Etienne, 2003,187-202.

Tibi, Pierre. "La nouvelle: essai de définitin d'un genre,"Cahiers de L'Université de Perpignan 4 (Spring 1988) 7-62.

Wain, John: "Remarks on the Short Story," Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle 2 (January 1984): 49-66.

Woolf, Virginia. A Haunted House and Other Stories. Ed. Leonard Woolf. London: The Hogarth Press, 1944.

Mrs Dalloway’s Party. A Short Story Sequence by Virginia Woolf. Ed. Stella McNichol, London: The Hogarth Press, 1973.

The Complete Shorter Fiction. Ed. Susan Dick, London: The Hogarth Press, 1985. London: Triad Grafton Books, 1991.

The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction . Ed. David Bradshaw, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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NOTES

1. Dean R. Baldwin, Virginia Woolf. A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston: Twayne’s studies in short fiction,1989). 2. For a detailed account of the publication of the short stories, see Susan Dick's introduction and notes inVirginia Woolf. The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985; London: Triad Grafton Books, 1991).

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3. Leonard Woolf ed. A Haunted House and Other Stories(London:The Hogarth Press, 1944). A slightly different selection has been published recently by David Bradshaw: The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 4. Stella McNichol ed. Mrs Dalloway's Party. A Short Story Sequence by Virginia Woolf. (London: The Hogarth Press, 1973). 5. Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays, vol.2. (London: The Hogarth Press, 1972) 122-130.From then on abbreviated as C.E.2. 6. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Vol.4: 1925 to 1928. Ed by Andrew McNeillie (London: The Hogarth Press, 1994) 181-189. From then on abbreviated as Essays. 7. Essays 449-456. 8. C. E. 2, 109. 9. footnote* That is open in the sense Umberto Eco gives the word in L'Œuvre ouverte (1962; Paris: Seuil, 1965); the open text is here also synonymous with the writerly text Roland Barhes opposes to the readerly" text in S/Z (Paris: Seuil, 1970). 10. Vision and Design (1920; Oxford: OUP 1981) 206. 11. Edgar Allan Poe, “Twice-told Tales,” Selected Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979) 446. 12. Alberto Moravia, “The Short Story and the Novel” in Short Story Theories (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976) 147-151. 13. Julio Cortazar, Entretiens avec Omar Prego. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984) 81, quoted by Louvel 14. 14. “Life and the Novelist,” Essays 405. This is also what Virginia Woolf reproaches the ill-named “truth-tellers” like Maupassant with in “Phases of Fiction” or “Modern Fiction.” 15. “she (life) is grossly impure” (“Life and the Novelist”, Essays 404). 16. footnote*On this subject, see Frédéric Regard: “Penser, sentir, écrire. Quelques réflexions sur la notion de feeling dans l’histoire de l’esthétique britanique,” Etudes britanniques contemporaines 9 (juin 1996): 69. Yet it should be noted that Woolf departs from the Romantics in her definition of the self: “It is apparently easier to write a poem about oneself than about any other subject. But what does one mean by ‘oneself’? Not the self that Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley have described - not the self that loves a woman, or that hates a tyrant, or that broods over the mystery of the world. No, the self that you are engaged in describing is shut out from all that. It is a self that sits alone in the room at night with the blinds drawn. In other words the poet is much less interested in what we have in common than in what he has apart.” (“A Letter to a Young Poet,” C.E.2 189) 17. G.E. Moore,Principia Ethica (1903; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 238. 18. We follow here Henri Meschonnic who, in Critique du rythme (Paris: Verdier, 1982) considers that all these echoes go into the making of rhythm. 19. ”The idea has come to me that what I want now to do is to saturate every atom. I mean to eliminate all waste, deadness, superfluity: to give the moment whole; whatever it includes.” The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 1-5. Anne Olivier Bell ed. (London: The Hogarth Press, 1977-1984)28 novembre 1928. 20. On this subject, see Christine Reynier: “The Impure art of Biography: Virginia Woolf'sFlush,” Mapping the Self: Space, Identity, Discourse in British Auto/Biography.Frédéric Regard ed. (St Etienne: Publications de l’Université de St Etienne, 2003) 187-202. 21. John Wain: "Remarks on the Short Story," Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle 2 (1984) : 49-66, quoted by Liliane Louvel et Claudine Verley: Introduction à l’étude de la nouvelle (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1993)12. 22. footnote* “The Grave as Lyrical Short Story”, Studies in Short Fiction I, 216-221. 23. John Gerlach: Towards the End, Closure and Structure in the American Short Story (Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1985) 7.

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24. My translation. Pierre Tibi writes: “la nouvelle semble être le lieu et l’enjeu d’une rivalité entre le poétique et le narratif” in “La nouvelle : essai de définitin d'un genre,” Cahiers de L'Université de Perpignan 4 (Spring 1988) 7-62.

ABSTRACTS

Cet article se propose de mettre en lumière la théoricienne de la nouvelle que fut Virginia Woolf, davantage connue pour sa fiction, que ce soient ses romans ou ses nouvelles. A partir de trois de ses essais - "An Essay in Criticism", "On Re-Reading Novels" et "The Russian Point of View " - nous montrerons que, de manière indirecte, à travers ses réflexions sur les nouvellistes que furent Anton Tchekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Gustave Flaubert, Katherine Mansfield ou Ernest Hemingway, Woolf définit le genre de la nouvelle comme un art de la proportion et de la perfection ainsi qu'un art de l'honnêteté. Loin d'impliquer uniquement un jugement moral, ce terme qui recouvre les notions d'ouverture, liberté et intensité que Virginia Woolf emploie dans un sens bien particulier, est doté par l'auteur d'une portée esthétique. Virginia Woolf élabore ainsi une théorie de la nouvelle originale qui présente ce genre comme une "fiction brève honnête" - ce qui sera ensuite confronté aux théories contemporaines de la nouvelle.

AUTHORS

CHRISTINE REYNIER Christine Reynier is Professor of contemporary British literature at the University of Montpellier, France. She has edited books on Virginia Woolf, published a critical analysis of The Waves, in collaboration, and written essays on Woolf’s short stories. She is currently writing a book on Jeanette Winterson.

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Kipling and semiotics in “How the Alphabet Was Made”

Laurent Lepaludier

1 The story “How the Alphabet Was Made” was published in Just So Stories in 1902. The tales, most of which are about animals (“How the Whale got his Throat”, “How the Camel got his Hump”, “How the Rhinoceros got his Skin”, etc.), are famous for exemplifying humorously their mythical origins set in the “High and Far-Off Times.” Only two stories do not concern animals: they are “How the First Letter was Written” and “How the Alphabet was made.” The former deals with the mythical origins of letter-writing and illustrates the invention of “picture-letters” (pictograms or ideograms). Although the Head Chief of the Tribe of Tegumai declares that Taffy has “hit upon a great invention”1, the story emphasises the shortcomings of ideograms: “’pictures are not always properly understood’” and the Chief prophesies “But a time will come, O Babe of Tegumai, when we shall make letters –all twenty-six of ‘em,– and when we shall be able to read as well as to write, and then we shall say exactly what we mean without any mistakes.” The beginning of “How the Alphabet was made” explicitly refers to “How the First Letter was Written”, setting the action the week after and mentioning the circumstances and consequences of the previous invention. Obviously the two tales are concerned with the semiotics of language. Because they are tales for children – the narrative voice addresses a “Best Beloved”–, their insights are expressed in simple, concrete words and through a narrative. However, underlying the pleasant and humorous surface are abstract concerns which centre on the question of sign systems. “How the First Letter was Written” sets language in the context of communication and it is in the light of the pragmatics of language that Kipling’s conceptions find their illustration. The focus of this paper will be put on “How the Alphabet was Made” because it is clearly presented as the ideal semiotic system of communication by Kipling. The plot implies that the Tribe of Tegumai can speak their language but cannot write it. So the story deals with the invention of an alphabetical code corresponding to sounds (“sound-pictures”, as opposed to the “picture-letters” of the previous story). In other words, it concerns the invention of a system of visual signs corresponding with an already established oral system. The alphabet should naturally

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interest children as prospective or actual readers. In addition, the cultural and biographical context of the publication certainly contributed to raising a theoretical interest in semiotics. Morse had already invented his alphabet. There was an increased interest in languages (Amerindian, Indian or other). Kipling had probably heard of Charles Peirce – the founder of “semeiotics” in 18672– through Henry James who had made friends with Peirce in Paris in 1875-1876 and later with Kipling in 1889-1891. What insights about the semiotics of language are precisely conveyed through the story? Do they correspond to what linguists and semioticians have identified or debated? Is it possible to define an implicit philosophy of language? These are the main questions I would like to answer, considering first the metalinguistic and didactic orientation of the tale, then what the tale suggests about such issues debated by linguists as the arbitrariness of the sign, its nature, its differential nature or the place of affect. The role of humour and fun as a didactic component will also be examined and finally this paper will study what the tale suggests about the ambivalences of language.

A metalinguistic tale

2 “How the Alphabet Was Made” deals with language and its minimal components, the written alphabet, which it places clearly as the focus of the story in the title. Thus fiction is meant to illustrate what language is made of in a didactic fashion. With a diachronic fantasy – the invention follows the linear development of a story which develops according to various stages in the establishment of the code- it illustrates the synchronic alphabetic system –the timeless and present code. As the plot unravels, certain characteristics of language are suggested. A triadic structure of written language is exemplified: a visual sign (the letter) corresponds to a phonetic sign (the sound) according to a conventional choice. This is very close to Charles Peirce’s conception of the sign. For Charles Peirce, the significant aspect of the sign or representamen (whether visual or oral) is related to an object beyond it for which it stands according to an interpretation or interpretant. Kipling uses a similar triadic structure but displaces it: the visual representamen is related to a sound (its object) according to an interpretant or explanation. The invention of the first letter (A) illustrates the triadic nature of language: the shape of the letter (the carp-fish’s mouth) means the sound ‘ah’. The interpretant is “You just look like a carp-fish with its mouth open.” (108) Thus the system of written language is the representamen of the sound system of language (its object) according to conventional interpretants given in the story.

3 The tale also illustrates certain characteristics of written language. The first one mentioned is selection. A visual form is chosen to correspond with the sound. It is taken here from the expression on Tegumai’s face (following Peirce’s idea that the choice takes place within a real-world context. It escapes the evanescence of the moment in memory: “When I draw a carp-fish with its mouth open (…) it will remind you of that ah-noise.”(108) Simplification is another characteristic: a sign should not be too difficult to draw: “‘I can’t draw all of a carp-fish, but I can draw something that means a carp-fish’s mouth.’”(108) Practical reasons account for this simplification in the pragmatic context of communication. The visual sign is abstracted from the concrete along conventionally-established lines: “‘Well, here’s a pretence carp-fish (we

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can play that the rest of him is drawn.)’”(108) The following dialogue between father and daughter exemplifies the discriminative aspect of the sign system: a sign must be clearly understood for what it means and no useless details should be kept. To identify a carp, a feeler is needed as it characterises the carp and differentiates it from other fish: “‘You needn’t draw anything of him except just the opening of the mouth and the feeler across. Then we’ll know he’s a carp-fish, ‘cause the perches and trouts haven’t got feelers.’”(108) The sign should also be used by others for adequate communication and similar effects, the two sides of communication (encoding and decoding) being reversible: ‘Now I’ll copy it,’ said Taffy. Will you understand it when you see it? And she drew this.’ ‘Perfectly,’ said her Daddy. ‘And I’ll be quite as s’prised when I see it anywhere, as if you had jumped out from behind a tree and said “Ah!”.’ (109)

4 The next sound – Yah! – is identified as a “mixy” noise. The principle of phonetic discrimination allows the participants to identify the yer-noise and the ah-noise and draw the corresponding letters. In a didactic manner, Kipling repeats the same characteristics (the practical, communicative, or abstract dimensions of a letter for instance) when presenting the other letters of the alphabet.

5 The associative capacity of letters to form words is an important step in the invention of language, and with it, the functional aspect of written language is underlined. Written language allows distant and time-free communication. The sign Yo --swamp- water-- written by the side of a pool would be a useful warning: ‘Course I wouldn’t drink that water because I’d know you said it was bad.’ ‘But I needn’t be near the water at all. I might be miles away, hunting, and still- ‘And still it would be just the same as if you stood there and said ‘G’way, Taffy or you’ll get fever.’ All that in a carp-fish-tail and a round egg!’ (111)

6 The associative capacity of letters to form words such as so (food cooked on the fire), sho (drying poles), shi (spear), shu (sky) or compound words such as shuya (sky-water or rain), spaces between words, and sentences such as shu-ya-las, ya maru (Sky-water ending, river come to) is further established as well as the syntagmatic order of written language which follows the oral one. The fanciful story about the origins of the alphabet also serves as an illustration of fundamental issues about the semiotic system of language.

Issues about the language system

7 “How the Alphabet Was Made” leaves no doubt about the conventional nature of the sign – which must be distinguished from its arbitrariness. Indeed the sign is the result of an agreement – even a cooperation in the form of dialogue between Taffy and Tegumai with questions, contributions, imperatives (“let’s…”), correctives, etc. It is their common invention and becomes their common knowledge, their “secret s’prise”, a notion which implies a shared knowledge indeed. The two characters negotiate to decide about an acceptable convention which is discussed and tested both ways. This conventional agreement is based on “pretence” (“’Here’s a pretence carp-fish’”(108); “’Then s’pose we draw a thin roung egg, and pretend it’s a frog that hasn’t eaten anything for years.’”(112)) or “play” (“’Then we can play it was me jumped out of the dark’”(108); “(…) we’ll play that the plain snake only hisses ssss’” (111)). The notion of

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game (“this game of ours” (114)) --which implies an agreement on rules-- is central to the setting up of the conventions of the code.

8 The story also tackles the question of the arbitrariness of language. Saussure argued that “the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.”3 Emile Benveniste has challenged Saussure arguing that “the signifier and the signified, the mental representation and the sound image are (…) in reality the two aspects of a single notion.”4 For Kipling is the relation between the written signifier and the phonetic one arbitrary? Is the convention inspired by the world? The form of the letter A is derived from a facial expression (indirectly connected with the phonetic production) which is compared with an object of the world (a carp-fish with its mouth open). The logic that applies to the invention of Y follows the association with the same animal: Y takes the form of the carp-fish’s tail. For O, the two protagonists follow the same logic as for A: “’You make your mouth all round like an egg or a stone.’”(109) Does it mean that a triadic connection links the written signifier with a facial expression (a bodily form producing a phonetic sign) and an element of the world? The invention of S --and the illustration showing S as a snake-- suggests a connection between the sound produced by the snake and the sound imitated by man. H connects the shape of “the horrid, high drying poles”(111) with the alliterative sounds. No human expression or animal production is implied here. What replaces them is an alliterative sound and an object of the world. So far the written symbol has been connected with an object of the world. But U only comes from the alteration of the O sound: “’We’ll open a little hole at the end of the round egg to show how the noise runs out all thin, ooo –oo-oo.’”(112) The convention is also based on the fact that several Os sound like U [u:]in English. M is associated with the word mum --which means quiet-- and the shape of a shut mouth: this time a facial expression and a word (not an object of the world) are implicated. What the various examples boil down to is that the protagonists agree on associations between written signifiers and shapes derived either from facial expressions, elements of the world or words or a combination of these elements. However all references to images or sounds are given up with the letter E, which is a pure convention disconnected from all associations: “They just made a twiddle for E, because it came into the pictures so often.”(116) There appears to be no absolute principle. However what the story could playfully suggest is that if the conventions bringing together visual signifiers, oral signifiers and their objects are arbitrarily chosen, there might be some kind of logic in the system, a secret surprise revealed by imagination and poetry.

9 Saussure held that linguistic signs signify because of their differences: we distinguish signs and meanings because they are different from one another. One might think that Kipling’s story suggests that signs refer to the world more than to one another. However what distinguishes Y from A is the arbitrary choice of difference symbolised by the tail and the head of the same animal (a first elementary binary system). One might even see there a secret pun since what matters is “to make head or tail of it.” Leaving the image of the carp as a transitional ground for the identification of difference, the story moves on to identify the difference between O and U (a second elementary binary system) as a phonetic difference which blurs the original image of the egg. What matters is also to be able to distinguish S from Sh, another binary system. Z is also related to S: “They turned the hissy-snake the other way round for the Z- sound, to show it was hissing backwards in a soft and gentle way.”(116) Eventually, the alphabet is based on a variety of principles or conventions: the letters are all different

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from one another; some are contrasted or related in binary systems; some are related to an image or a sound; others are not. The semiotic system is playfully identified as developed for motivated, arbitrary, funny and pragmatic reasons: in a word it is a game, a pleasant and useful one.

10 The story also playfully questions Peirce’s distinctions between the three types of signs: the icon --related to its object with qualitative resemblance--, the index --related through forceful interaction--, and the symbol --related through general rule followed by all its interpretants. What the story tells is the myth of the origins of the symbolic system of letters (the alphabetic code) which playfully shared some qualitative resemblance with the sounds of language --and so were once icons-- and were used for action, warnings or orders –and were then indexes.

11 What also appears in the elaboration of the alphabetic code is the place of affect, usually denied in codes for reasons of objectivity. H, the letter derived from drying poles, is dysphorically connoted with an extremely unpleasant chore (hanging hides on them). The alliterations in [h ] set up a network of signifiers which forms the affective background for H: “’Horrid old drying-poles!’ said Taffy. ‘I hate helping to hang heavy, hot hairy hides on them.’”(111). A similar technique applies to the letter N (“it was a nasty, nosy noise”). Affect is not discarded from the code, which might be objectionable because personal affect may not be a sound basis for general understanding. In fact, it does not interfere with the reliability of the sign because, in this case, it is part of a shared knowledge in dialogue. The question remains however whether all these insights into the semiotic system of language should be taken seriously.

12 No more --and no less-- than the other stories in the collection. The reader knows very well that the leopard’s spots, the camel’s hump or the whale’s throat did not appear in the way the narrative voice tells the Best Beloved. The humorous tone distances the reader from the narrative. However, if the story proves unreliable if one expects a general, abstract and integrated explanation about the semiotics of language, it is nevertheless enlightening because of the issues, questions and insights it suggests through narrative, myth and humour.

The pleasures of language

13 Humour has a role to play as a corrective in the didactic dimension of the tale. Indeed what the protagonists say or what the narrative voice tells should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is the function of humour to distance the reader from a naive interpretation. Taffy and Tegumai’s invention proves to be private, affective, local. However, humour does not completely discard their experience as unbelievable. The gentle tone encourages the reader to engage in a dialogue with the story using his/her own encyclopaedia (in the sense given by Umberto Eco). In fact, the reader --the young child who cannot read and is told the story is a different matter-- knows the alphabetic code and can use it. He/she may also be familiar with the linguistic debates about the sign and confront what he/she knows with what the tale suggests. Humour plays a part in the shared knowledge it establishes between author and reader in that it is instrumental in the building up of the truth of the text.

14 Language is fun. The invention of the alphabetic code is presented like a game. In a playful spirit, father and daughter indulge in a creative activity from which they derive much fun. For them, part of the pleasure of encoding is cognitive: it satisfies the

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demands of a certain logic. Part of it is imaginative: it allows the creative imagination to build a system. Part of it is affective as we shall later see. The reader vicariously shares the protagonists’ pleasures through processes of identification with them and with their situation. He/she discovers with them what they are inventing. He/she experiences the pleasure of recognition since he/she knows about the alphabetic code, but also the delights of discovery and surprise when faced with the playful associations made by the protagonists. Thus his/her reading turns into a language-game. Free play is given to the imagination in the building of the code. It also takes place in the narrative itself: words like “surprise” and “excited” appear in a distorted way --as “s’prise”, incited, incitement or ‘citement-- which never disturbs communication and contributes to a feeling of complicity in childish companionship. What appeared to be a didactic and metalinguistic story turns out to be fun. Indeed instead of fiction directed towards the codes of language, the story can also be seen as a game with the codes of language for a fictional purpose. In other words, the story carnivalises the semiotic code, injecting fun and play into its system and its origins. The ending of the story escapes utilitarian and didactic demands for after the first conclusion --“(…) the fine old easy, understandable Alphabet –A, B, C, D, E, and the rest of ‘em– got back into its proper shape again for all Best Beloveds to learn when they are old enough.”(117)-- is followed by a coda in which we are told that “one of the first things that Tegumai Bopsulai did after Taffy and he had made the Alphabet was to make a magic Alphabet necklace of all the letters, so that it could be put in the Temple of Tegumai and kept for ever and ever.”(119) The necklace symbolises, among other things, the aesthetic purpose of the alphabet. What follows is a description of the necklace as a precious jewel, which suggests that the value of the Alphabet goes beyond its usefulness: A is scratched on a tooth- an elk-tush, I think B is the Sacred Beaver of Tegumai on a bit of old ivory. C is a pearly oyster-shell – inside front. (…) (119)

15 It is a colourful jewel made of precious stones and metals: silver, mother-of-pearl, porphyry, ivory, etc.

16 Fun is also placed in a remote past, a mythical past when there was a harmony between audible signs, visible ones and the world. What I explained about the symbol being an index and an icon applies to those bygone days in illo tempore, the times of myth to which Kipling nostalgically returns, and not to the present. The humour of the text prevents us from believing in the validity of a transparent language. Language has lost its magic like the beads of the necklace, as the use of the perfect and the epistemic modality suggest in “they must have been magic because thy look very common.”(121) This would imply a fall from an ideal stage in language, a break-up of the original harmony in a world estranged from myth and magic…unless childhood represents the ideal state of myth, magic and the origins.

The ambivalences of language

17 Childhood is certainly considered as a creative age in the two stories “How the First Letter was Written” and “How the Alphabet was Made.” The part played by the child Taffy in the two stories is central. In the first tale, she is the one who decides to use pictures on a birch bark: “’Of course I can’t write, but I can draw pictures if I’ve anything sharp to scratch with.’”(93) In the second one, even though the invention of

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the alphabet results from a cooperation between father and daughter, it is due to Taffy’s initiative: “‘Daddy, I’ve thinked of a secret surprise. You make a noise – any sort of noise.’”(108) Childhood is an idealised state, an age of creativity and invention, and a rich source of improvements. Adults share in the euphoric values of creativity as far as they share in the spirit of childhood. To a certain extent, Taffy’s father behaves like a child: his spontaneity, his willingness to play, his enthusiasm and his engrossment in the game characterise him as a sort of grown-up child. The two protagonists share the same secret as children would.

18 In fact, father and daughter are particularly close to each other. Examining the family structure presented in the tale, one will notice that father and daughter constitute a very close and intimate pair distanced from the mother, a situation which forms an oedipal triangle manifested by action, invention, games and dialogue. The father- daughter relationship is reinforced by the creation of the alphabetic code. Their linguistic community is a secret surprise which first excludes others – even the mother for a while. Their elementary linguistic community is not simply based on a cognitive sharing (the logical interpretant) but also on energetic one (related to action) and an emotional one (related to affect), to use the words of Charles Peirce.5 It implies a sort of gnostic initiation. The temporary estrangement of the mother in “How the Alphabet was Made” confirms her rather negative portrait in “How the First Letter was Written”. Teshumai is indeed characterised by misunderstanding and hysterical violence, traits applied to all the women of the tribe: “As soon as Teshumai saw the picture she screamed like anything and flew at the Stranger-man. The other Neolithic ladies at once knocked him down and sat on him in a long line of six, while Teshumai pulled his hair”.(96) The episode is recalled at the beginning of “How the Alphabet was Made”. In addition the mother is associated with repressive forces opposed to play, adventure, fun and creativity. She tries to impose domestic chores on Taffy who prefers going out to fish: “Her Mummy wanted her to stay at home and help hang up hides to dry on the big drying-poles outside their Neolithic Cave, but Taffy slipped away down to her Daddy quite early, and they fished.”(107) The drying-poles, metonymically associated with the mother, are subsequently introduced into the alphabet as H with a very dysphoric connotation. Father and daughter share the same game, the same fun, in the same location, while Teshumai’s speech tends to reduce her husband to the role of a child in the family structure: “So they went home, and all that evening Tegumai sat on one side of the fire and Taffy on the other, drawing ya’s and yo’s, and shu’s and shi’s in the smoke on the wall and giggling together till her Mummy said, ‘Really, Tegumai, you’re worse than my Taffy.’”(115) The concluding poem – which does not even mention Teshumai– leaves no doubt about Tegumai’s exclusive love for his daughter: For far – oh, very far behind, So far she cannot call to him, Comes Tegumai alone to find The daughter that was all to him. (123)

19 Taffy’s ambivalent attitude toward her mother produces words of endearment but also delays the sharing of the secret until the code is completed, thus excluding her mother from the building of written language: “’Please don’t mind,’ said Taffy. ‘It’s only our secret s’prise, Mummy dear, and we’ll tell you all about it the very minute it’s done; but please don’t ask me what it is now, or else I’ll have to tell.’”(115)

20 The role of the father is not limited to the sharing of complicity in the creative process, it is also that of an authority stating the importance of the new invention:

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‘And there’s more in this game than you think. Taffy dear, I’ve a notion that your Daddy’s daughter has hit upon the finest thing that there ever was since the Tribe of Tegumai took to using shark’s teeth instead of flints for their spear-heads. I believe we’ve found out the big secret of the world.’(110)

21 If Tegumai’s possessive attitude --“’your Daddy’s daughter’”-- cannot be denied, the invention of written language is meant to be spread beyond the circle of the pair to the Tribe and to the world. The Bopsulai family is further inscribed as T in the alphabet: “When they came to T, [a possible pun on “came to tea”, the English family ritual], Taffy said that as her name, and her Daddy’s, and her Mummy’s all began with that sound, they should draw a sort of family group of themselves holding hands.”(115) Beyond the family, the social benefit had already been prophesied in “How the First Letter was Written” by the Head Chief. This reflects an Imperial conception of individual action benefiting the nation and the world based on utilitarianism and liberalism. The magic Alphabet-necklace becomes the revered property of the tribe. It is sacralised and immortalised: “(..) it could be put in the Temple of Tegumai and kept for ever and ever.”(119) All the members of the Tribe contribute to its making in bringing “their most precious beads and beautiful things.”(115) Furthermore, written language is seen as a protection from violence and misunderstanding: the Tewara Stranger-man -an image of the other- would not have been hurt if communication had been transparent thanks to written language.

22 This story about the invention of the alphabet also implies ideological tensions and ambivalences. Although it celebrates the fictional and mythical contribution of a primitive tribe to mankind and seems to regret an idealised period of time, its primitivism is marred by an ethnocentric conception of progress. The Western alphabet is presented as an improvement from the ideogram, which is an obviously prejudiced opinion. It is also placed within an evolutionary process and is presented as an improvement from all other semiotic systems: And after thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and after Hieroglyphics, and Demotics, and Nilotics, and Cryptics, and Cufics, and Runics, and Dorics, and Ionics, and all sorts of other ricks and tricks (because the Woons, and the Neguses, and the Akhoonds, and the Repositories of tradition would never leave a good thing alone when they saw it), the fine old easy, understandable Alphabet – A, B, C, D, E and the rest of ‘em- got back into its proper shape again for all Best Beloveds to learn when they are old enough.(117)

23 Other systems are marked with the signs of otherness --the rather derogatory phrase “and all sorts of other ricks and tricks” testifies to it-- whereas the Western alphabet is given the attributes of beauty, good, easiness, familiarity and understanding –an obviously ethnocentric attitude. The statement about the “understandable” nature of this alphabet also contradicts its arbitrariness suggested by the story. Its primitive character --another sign of otherness-- tends to be eroded by time: three stone beads are “very badly worn” and two soft iron-heads have “rust-holes at the edges.”(121) It seems that the magic power of myth traditionally sustained by rites is tainted with the signs of reification. Written language eventually bears the signs of reification as well as transcendence.

24 The image of woman the story conveys is marked by negativity and ambivalence. If the little girl is idealised, the mature woman is excluded from the creative process. Her sharing in the common knowledge is delayed as much as possible. Taffy’s mother resembles all the “Neolithic ladies” who behave like shrews. As shown above, women

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tend to be associated with repressive social forces and limited understanding. Their image is rather negatively inscribed in language. Kipling may not have been aware of the ambivalent nature of language implied in the tale but undeniably, language proves to be neither an innocent system nor a purely objective one. It is fraught with affect, ideological tensions and ambivalences.

25 “How the Alphabet was Made” implies a certain philosophy of language due to its metalinguistic and didactic orientation and to the semiotic issues it tackles even though conceptual abstraction is kept to a minimum. Kipling does not propound any semiotic theory of language but the tale shows a sensitivity to signs and their systems, and a sophisticated knowledge of the fundamental issues of semiotics: it addresses -- albeit concretely and through narration-- central questions debated by linguists such as the arbitrariness of the sign, its nature, its differential nature or the place of affect. For Kipling, language is fun but humour, which plays a didactic role in knowledge, keeps a sophisticated distance from the involvement in language games. Kipling’s tale reflects a certain awareness of the ambivalences of language while also revealing the author’s ideological bias as regards childhood, family, society, race and gender. All the ABC books societies have produced --from the first horn-books strongly influenced by religion to the most recent ones-- have forcefully or unwilling transmitted a certain conception of language imbibed with religious, social and educational issues. Kipling’s tale makes no exception. Its originality lies in the imaginative power of myth-making and its apparently unsophisticated tone.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benveniste, Emile. Problems in General Linguistics. Trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables: U. of Miami, 1971.

Fisch, Max H., et al. eds. Writings of Charles S. Pierce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 2. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.

Kipling, Rudyard. “How the First Letter was Written.” Just So Stories. 1902. Harmondsworth: Penguin, Puffin Classics, 1987, 91-106.

Kipling, Rudyard. “How the Alphabet was Made.” Just So Stories. 1902. Harmondsworth: Penguin, Puffin Classics, 1987, 107-124.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye with Albert Riedlinger. Trans. Wade Baskin, New-York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

NOTES

1. Rudyard Kipling, “How the First Letter was Written.” Just So Stories. (1902, Harmondsworth: Penguin, Puffin Classics, 1987) 99.

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2. See Max H. Fisch, et al. Eds. Writings of Charles S. Pierce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 2. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982). 3. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, Ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye with Albert Riedlinger, trans. Wade Baskin (New-York: McGraw-Hill, 1959) 67. 4. Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables: U. of Miami, 1971) 45. 5. Charles S. Peirce, “On a New List of Categories”, Writings, op. cit., 2: 49-59.

ABSTRACTS

Les contes de Kipling “How the First Letter was Written” et “How the Alphabet was Made” furent publiés dans le recueil Just So Stories en 1902. Le premier traite des origines mythiques de la correspondance et illustre l’invention des « lettres-images » (pictogrammes ou idéogrammes). Le début de “How the Alphabet was Made” se réfère explicitement au conte précédent, situant l’action la semaine suivante et mentionnant les circonstances et les conséquences de l’invention des « lettres-images ». Il va de soi que les deux contes abordent la sémiotique du langage. “How the Alphabet was Made” présente l’invention d’un code alphabétique correspondant à des sons (des « images-sons » qui diffèrent des « lettres-images » du conte précédent). En d’autres termes, il s’agit de l’invention d’un système de signes visuels traduisant un système oral déjà établi. Le contexte culturel et biographique de la publication de ces contes contribua certainement à la création d’un intérêt théorique pour la sémiotique. Morse avait déjà inventé son alphabet. On s’intéressait de plus en plus aux langues (Amérindiennes, Indiennes ou autres). Kipling avait probablement entendu parler de Charles Peirce --le fondateur de la sémiotique en 1867-- grâce à Henry James qui s’était lié d’amitié d’abord avec Peirce à Paris en 1875-1876 puis avec Kipling en 1889-1891. Quelles intuitions sur la sémiotique du langage ce conte exprime-t-il précisément ? Correspondent-elles à ce que les linguistes et sémioticiens ont identifié et discuté ? Peut-on définir une philosophie implicite du langage dans ce conte ? Telles sont les principales questions que je voudrais aborder, tout d’abord en examinant l’orientation métalinguistique et didactique de ce récit, puis ce qu’il apporte dans le débat des linguistes sur des questions telles que l’arbitraire du signe, sa nature, sa « différence » ou la place de l’affect. Le rôle de l’humour et du plaisir comme dimension didactique sera aussi étudié et enfin on verra ce que ce conte suggère sur les ambivalences du langage.

AUTHORS

LAURENT LEPALUDIER Laurent Lepaludier, agrégation and Doctorat d’Etat, teaches English literature and critical theory at the University of Angers. He has written a thesis on Joseph Conrad and published various articles on Victorian, Edwardian novelists and short-story writers. Head of the CRILA research centre of Angers, and in charge of the research on the short story, he is also head of the English section of the CERPECA (Canadian studies research centre of Angers). He has published several articles on contemporary short fiction and will soon publish a book on objects in fiction. His research currently focuses on fiction and knowledge.

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“The fiction that makes us real”: Playful Accreditation in David Arnason's “The Sunfish”

Héliane Ventura

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The title to this essay is borrowed from Robert Kroetsch’s discussion of Canadian fiction (Kroetsch 63).

1 At the beginning of the sixties, speaking about the differences between Canada and the United States, Northrop Frye suggested this often quoted simile: “The United States is a symmetrical country: it presents a straight Atlantic coastline and its culture was up to about 1900, a culture of the Atlantic seaboard, with a North/South frontier that moved westward until it reached the Pacific. Canada has almost no Atlantic seaboard and a ship coming here from Europe moves like a tiny Jonah entering an enormous whale into the Gulf of St Lawrence, where it is surrounded by five Canadian provinces, all out of sight and then drifts up a vast waterway that reaches back past Edmonton.” (Frye 97) Relying on the motif of death and resurrection, and the metaphor of disempowerment and re-empowerment, David Arnason's short story “The Sunfish” published in 1982 seems to invite us to this apparently specific Canadian voyage of initiation through the Gulf of St Lawrence, up this vast waterway, in the wake of an immigrants’ boat that leads a beautiful young heroine from Iceland to the shore of Lake Winnipeg, under the guidance of a marvellous talking fish. His story is a regional break-away from the foundational narrative which taps the plots of myths, fairy-tale, and romance while re- envisioning the contents apparently to provide the Icelandic community around Gimli with its myth of origins. But this tongue-in-cheek “invention of tradition” is a collage, and a bricolage, the function of which is not to provide an essentialist definition of the Icelando-Canadian ab ovo but rather to challenge and dissolve it, through a multi- layered discourse which self-consciously borrows and annexates and recycles the

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material from what Edward Said has called “nationalism’s heroic narratives” only to demonstrate the impossibility of a tale of origins. The experience of the New Republic of Iceland is mediated in a tale through the recuperation of other tales, and it participates, if playfully, in the foundational aesthetics but it simultaneously points in the direction of a questioning of accreditation: it is rather the experience of a tale pondering the enabling codes of fiction, even perhaps a tale purposefully coming up against what is inaccessible to fiction.

2 Consider the story: One morning, in 1878, on Lake Winnipeg, a fisherman called Gusti Oddson hauls a sunfish into his boat to hear it talk to him. And what does the sunfish tell the fisherman? He announces the end of the world while reluctantly accepting to grant the man his only wish: to see his dead wife return to life. Indeed, in compliance with the promise made, one month after the fisherman's encounter with the talking fish, there arrives in his community, after a miraculous voyage, a beautiful young woman from Iceland who bears a great likeness to his deceased wife and claims kinship to her. During her first winter in Canada, she stays in Gusti's house until springtime when she is chosen to be the protector of the god in the waggon and required to select the man she wants to marry. Several endings are then proposed. In one ending, Freya does marry Gusti and has thirteen children, in another she marries a younger man and Gusti has thirteen children with an older woman. In still another, Freya lives and has 13 children with both men. She is also said to move away to Sakatchewan with a marvellous stranger. Eventually, in the last ending proposed, she first marries Gusti, then is rejected by him on account of her bad temper. She finally marries the younger man while Gusti marries the older woman. They each have thirteen children and Gusti feeds the sunfish who predicted doomsday to his own children. In all cases the present inhabitants of the fishermen's villages around Lake Winnipeg are all descended from these children.

3 A talking fish endowed with the possibility of granting a fisherman's wishes. A miraculous journey with a silver fish which keeps the boat from foundering on the rocks on the coast of Scotland, a silver fish which appears to the captain in a dream to prevent the boat from crashing into another one coming up the St Lawrence. A school of silver fishes which bump into the boat to help it float free after it has run aground in the Red River delta. All these elements constitute easily recognizable fairy-tale motifs. We are made to enter the world of magic, a world in which wondrous impossibilities are presented as normal occurences. It is characterized by its far-away, exotic quality, clearly separated from our everyday experience. For instance the narrator resorts to the Icelandic language to name the endless supply of food which is consumed during the great rejoicings of the spring festival: “ponnukokur”, “Hangikjot”, “rullupylsa”, “lifrapylsa” and “slatur”, “vinaterta”, “kleinur”, “astarbolur” (Arnason 72). The use of the vernacular creates the conditions for otherness by defamiliarizing what is familiar and performs a re-enchantment of the ordinary.

4 Arnason’s use of fairy-tale motifs is not limited to plot, or diction, it is extended to characterisation which is marked by a lack of psychological complexity in its delineation. Take Freya, for example: she is the heroine with blond hair that hangs down to her waist and “eyes so blue that no one in New Iceland called anything blue without explaining that it was not as blue as Freya's eyes.” (Arnason 68) By setting the standard for blueness or embodying the essence of blueness, she is marked out as the archetypal heroine of wondrous beauty. Yet her psychological traiting is far more

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limited. She is presented as a compulsive cleaner, whose interest in dust is not metaphysical but fastidious: she sweeps the cleanest floor in new Iceland. She is also endowed with the worst of tempers and she is not likely to change. Gusti is the only one who is presented as undergoing a metamorphosis. At the beginning of the story, before Freya's arrival, he is called Gusti foulfart because of the foul smell which emanates from him. At the end of the story he is called Gusti Carpenter because he stopped drinking and chewing tobacco, he shaved off his beard, clipped his nails and turned into an exemplary suitor. Nevertheless such metamorphosis is no evidence of the character being well-rounded. Both Gusti and Freya remain essentially flat and monolithic as befits their status as fairy tale characters. Of these fairy tale types, Todorov has said they exemplified the absence of psychology in character construction: “We are neither confronted with another psychology nor with anti-psychology: we are faced with a-psychologism” (Todorov 36. My translation)

5 Lastly, the distinguishing mark of the fairy-tale can be said to lie in its happy ending. The young heroine marries the Prince, they have many children and live happily ever after. If Arnason abides by the rule of the happy ending, he nevertheless alters the familiar script in a radical way. The very inscription of several endings is at cross- purposes with such a mode as the marvellous. In marvellous tales, the narrative “voice is positioned with absolute confidence and certainty towards events. It has complete knowledge of completed events, its version of history is not questioned and the tale seems to deny the process of its own telling-it is merely reproducing established ‘true versions’ of what happened.” (Jackson 33). By juxtaposing clashing versions of Gusti and Freya's life stories, Arnason destabilizes the authority of the marvellous tale in such a way that it leads us to reconsider the nature of the story. All the more so as the contents of the multiple endings are in no way acceptable by fairy-tale or even romance standards. A blue-eyed heroine getting 13 children with two men is thoroughly extraneous to the mode. The erotics embedded in this tale subvert the construction of social coherence which should be based, as Doris Sommer argues for the foundational fiction of Latin America, on “desire in young, chaste heroes for equally young and chaste heroines in order to establish conjugal and productive unions which represent national unification.” (Sommer 82) The multiple endings which create rival versions of the story together with the multiple fathers which make a generative claim of uncertain origin dissolve the harmonious and enchanting aspect of the fairy-tale to usher in another more disquieting dimension.

6 Let us think of Roger Caillois’ celebrated distinction between the unicorn and the narwhal. According to his theory, the former embodies the charming and decorative aspect of the marvellous, the latter by contrast emblematises cosmic dissymmetry and the enigma of the fundamental forces afloat in the universe as investigated in fantastic literature. (Le Monde, 24 décembre 1976, p.11. My translation) With its reliance on multiplicity, heterogeneity, hybridity, destabilizing authorial control and creating anxieties of fatherhood simultaneously at the level of utterance and enunciation, Arnason’s story draws away from the marvellous to approach the fantastic. It creates a particularly unsettling polyphony which plays off a laconic fisherman speaking in the voice of the nineteenth century against a fish announcing doomsday in the cartoon voice of the twentieth century. To reinforce the uncanny effect, the prophecies uttered by the sunfish simultaneously evoke the themes of the zealots and the diction of the streetwise heroes from late twentieth century popular culture. The result is a double accent, a double style which falls in the category of the open dialogical structure,

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conflictual and hybridized as theorized by Bakhtine: “What is hybridization? It is a mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousness, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation or by some other factor” (Bakhtine quoted by Young, 20)

7 In typically postmodern fashion, the story suggests the marvellous only to dissolve it through the superimposition of conflicting codes and similarly it proposes an explanation for the origin of a community only to destabilize and reinforce it through the multiplication of endings. To provide an explanation as to origins is one of the functions generally ascribed to myths. And in the same way we recognize fairy-tale motifs, we can trace a number of mythemes in Arnason’s story, one of those being the founding of a nation in a new country after a long sea-voyage. Let us only think of Pious Aeneus leaving the burning city of Troy with his father Anchises on his shoulders to sail across the Mediterranean and up the Tiber estuary to found the city of Lavinium from which the city of Rome was born. With Freya's journey from Iceland to Lake Winnipeg, Arnason's story offers a parodic reiteration of the nostos set in the northern silver seas, with a Norse goddess replacing the Trojan hero.

8 Another major mytheme inscribed in the story is the resurrection from the dead. Gusti's first wife died of a smallpox epidemics and she is allowed to be reborn under the guise of a young relative called Freya. The name she is given further points in the direction of mythopoeia. In Norse mythology, Freya is the goddess of love and beauty but she is also in charge of half of those who are slain in battle, so that she is often regarded as the goddess of love and death. By naming the reborn wife Freya, Arnason taps the resources of Northern mythology in a simultaneously facetious and literal manner, for indeed Freya is allowed to return from the dead through the power of love. Moreover, by giving his Icelandic character a name so directly taken from mythology, Arnason also encourages us to link his short story to the saga literature of Iceland. He creates a genealogy of mythic origins for the Icelando-Canadians of lake Winnipeg. He prods us into equating the story of the beginnings of New Iceland to the heroic achievements related in the Elder Edda.

9 We can even go as far as saying that he does not only invite comparison with the Elder Edda but also with the Younger Edda. Indeed the Younger Edda does contain prehistoric mythological material but it mainly consists in a technical treatise on how to write poetry and it is regarded as an ars poetica. Arnason's story strikes us as foregrounding its own fictionality in such a way that it leads us to ponder the enabling codes and processes of fiction. Just consider the first two sentences of the text: "Dawn was just spreading its red glow across Lake Winnipeg when Gusti Oddson reached for the buoy to pull in the first of his seven nets. And what was he thinking, that second cousin once removed of my great grandmother, on a June morning in 1878?" (Arnason 61) These two sentences give evidence of clashing codes. The first one posits an omniscient narrator with an impersonal voice and a minimum emotional involvement in the tale while the second one inscribes an involved subject, who ironically brags about his family connection with the protagonist, and shows no ability to know the past with any certainty.

10 If the simultaneous inscription of self-defeating codes marks the story off as postmodern, it more specifically investigates the nature of the reconstruction of past events. From the very first paragraph of the story, the narrator alludes to the existence

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of scattered diaries which he took pains to collect and to recompose. He even includes whole entries into the story: “Thursday, January 11. More snow, the weather very cold. Freya is cleaning again. Worked all day repairing Helgi's roof. I may no more chew tobacco.” (Arnason 69) He incorporates pieces of evidence supposedly taken from a verifiable past to ensure the accreditation of his reconstruction; he attempts to keep up the pretence that he is producing a representation of the past unmediated by his own subjectivity, a representation of events “as they actually happened”. Yet at the same time as he takes pains to establish the truth value of his narration, he undermines its authority through an intense self-consciousness about the way this is done. For instance he interrupts the supposedly trustworthy reconstruction of the past to speak in his own voice: “Here you must bear with me, because the diaries end, and so I have had to reconstruct what actually happened.” (Arnason 74) The claim to the actuality of what happened and the mediation through which it is reconstructed are simultaneously foregrounded. Not only does he intrude into the text with his own commentaries on the action but he also supplies multiple points of view on the same event so as to problematize the understanding of the past.

11 The ending of the story is a case in point. Instead of offering one authoritative version, the narrator supplies all the variants he has been able to collect. By doing so, he seems to remove the story from the domain of biography and to root it into that of legend, while at the same time he reinforces the authenticity of the biography through an array of possible truths. This tongue-in-cheek show of investigative equity has far- reaching consequences. As suggested by Homi Bhabha, we can regard the multiple endings as being simultaneously “acts of affiliation and establishment as they are moments of disavowal, displacement, exclusion, and cultural contestation.” (Bhabha 5) What Arnason suggests here is the instability of knowledge and the effacement of frontiers or the crossing of thresholds of meaning which establish “a chiasmatic figure of cultural difference” (Bhabha 4) , one in which personal history, the history of a people and the history of a nation, gain accreditation by reversing back and forth into legends and fairy-tales as well as myths. By juxtaposing traditional fairy-tale motifs, time-honoured mythemes and fake real life diaries, Arnason does not simply collapse the difference between the historian and the teller of fictitious or mendacious stories, he does not simply create a historiographic metafiction which confronts history and fiction only to erase their differences. “The Sunfish” self-consciously creates a myth of origins for the Canadians of Icelandic descent and claims empirical validation for the story it narrates by offering it to the readers for them to ratify according to the principle that if history is fiction, so fiction is history because, as Robert Kroetsch puts it, it is “fiction that makes us real.” (Kroetsch 63)

12 The creation of a “chiasmatic figure” which enables history and fiction to reverse into each other is accompanied by a similar effacement of boundaries between beginnings and endings. If “The Sunfish” as a story is a fable about the beginnings of the Icelandic settlement in Canada, the sunfish as a participant in the story is a messenger of ill- tidings. He has come to talk to Gusti about the end of the World, what is called in Norse Mythology "Ragnarok". Yet the sunfish does not use either a prophetic tone or an inflamed rhetoric to foretell the last combat: “It's over, the fish told him. Done. Finished. Kaput. They're closing down the whole show, moving on to bigger and better things. Cutting their losses.” (Arnason 65) The language of the sunfish belongs in the satirical pastiche as if better to suggest the contemporaneity of the prophecy. Dissolution is in the offing, not only the dissolution of the world but also the

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dissolution of the word, for the story is drawing to the end with the sunfish being eaten by Gusti's children. The death of the eponymous hero is what brings the tale to its end, or rather it is what prevents any further reconstruction of the past. Derrida calls this thwarted attempt at reconstruction “le mal d’archive”, the impossibility of carrying the archival process to completion: “to keep interminably looking for the archive where it slips away” (Derrida 142. My translation)

13 According to the principle of reflexivity which dominate “narcissistic narratives”, not only is the Sunfish as a participant in the story swallowed by the characters’ children, the readers have also consumed the tale entitled “The Sunfish”. They have swallowed it, which points in the direction of the accreditation of a literary hoax. The consumption of the tale can be regarded as an act of acquiesence: the readers have partaken in the wafer. Each new reading will be a new celebration and with each new celebration, “The Sunfish” will be made alive again and, along with it, the foundational myth of the Icelandic community around Lake Winnipeg in Canada. But to consume the fish is also to eliminate it. Whether, like Christ, it will be ressurected or whether, like Jonah, it will resurface again is an act of faith which is entirely dependent on the reading subject and his capacity to convince others of the validity of the claims made by fiction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David Arnason, 50 Stories and a Piece of Advice, Winnipeg: Turnstone, 1982.

Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, 1990.

Roger Caillois, « De la licorne au narval », Le Monde, 24 décembre 1976, p. 11.

Jacques Derrida, Mal d’Archive: une impression freudienne. Incises. Paris: Galilée, 1995.

Northrop Frye, "Letters in Canada: Poetry 1952-1960" in Masks of Poetry, A.J.M.Smith ed., Toronto:

Roger Lancelyn Green, Myths of the Norsemen, Philadelphia: Dufour, 1960.

Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion, London: Methuen, 1981.

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, London: Heinemann, 1964. [1916]

Robert Kroetsch, with James Bacque and Pierre Gravel, Creation, Toronto: New, 1970.

Doris Sommer, “Irresistible Romance: The foundational fictions of Latin America” in

Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, 1990.

Tzvetan Todorov, Poétique de la Prose, Paris: Seuil, 1971.

Jean Young, The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1954.

Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hibridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge, 1996.

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ABSTRACTS

Cet article entend démontrer que la nouvelle de David Arnason intitulée “The Sunfish” est une variante régionale du récit fondateur de la nation et qu’elle suit les grandes lignes des mythes, des contes de fées et des histoires d’amour mais en modifie le contenu dans le but apparent de fournir à la population islandaise de la région de Gimli son mythe d’origine. Mais cette facétieuse “invention de la tradition“ est de l’ordre du collage et du bricolage et n’est pas destinée à remonter à l’essence de l’identité islando-canadienne. Elle se situe plutôt du côté d’un défi ludique qui, à travers un discours aux ramifications multiples, dissout cette conception identitaire pour finalement démontrer l’impossibilité d’une histoire qui remonte aux origines.

AUTHORS

HÉLIANE VENTURA Héliane Ventura is a Professor at the University of Orléans. She has organised various conferences on Canadian authors (Robert Kroetsch and Alice Munro) and on the relationship between Word and Image in the Canadian Short Story. She has published a book on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and co-edited proceedings from conferences, the last one on L’écriture du secret/Writing Secrets in Alice Munro’s Short Stories is due for publication in 2004.

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Fathers in Alice Munro’s ‘Fathers’

Mary Condé

1 ‘Fathers’ is an as yet uncollected short story by Alice Munro published in The New Yorker, in August 2002. Set in the nineteen-forties, it uses the background of the second world war both implicitly and explicitly to plot the growth of the narrator.

2 It opens abruptly with an italicised paragraph: On Friday morning last, Harvey Ryan Newcombe, a well-known farmer of Shelby Township, lost his life due to electrocution. The funeral was held Monday afternoon from Reavie Brothers Funeral Home and interment was in Bethel Cemetery. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest (64).

3 This paragraph, presumably either from a local newspaper or a parish magazine (given the closing text), gives no indication of date, although we know the death was very recent. This, with the awkwardness of ‘lost his life due to electrocution’, and the specifying of the funeral home, even though as the funeral is already over it has no practical purpose, suggests the local and the obscure.

4 The absence of any comment on Newcombe except that he was ‘a well-known farmer of Shelby Township’ indicates both that he had no social existence outside his occupation and that there is absolutely nothing creditable that can be recorded about him; the latter is confirmed by the text from St. Matthew, 11.28, since Christ’s words refer to those who follow his teaching, not those who die. Dying, perhaps, is the best thing Newcombe ever did.

5 The opening of the second paragraph, ‘Dahlia Newcombe could not possibly have had anything to do with her father’s accident’ (64), not only identifies Newcombe as the first of the fathers of the story, but is startling in its matter-of-fact allusion to the possibility of patricide, only explained later in the story, as it is explained to the narrator herself, by Dahlia’s ambitions to kill her brutal father.

6 The narrative, except for its conclusion, runs backward from the beginning, and a consciousness of time is crucial to it, even to these ambitions. Watching her father come out of a stable carrying a pitchfork (suitable for his devilish nature), Dahlia remarks that if she had a gun she could kill him now: ‘ “…I should do it while I’m still

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young enough. Then I don’t get hung” ’ (66). The narrator, mulling over this, comes to an opposite conclusion: I had a strange idea that she was too young to do it – as if killing somebody were like driving a car or voting or getting married (67).

7 On the other hand, she tersely attributes the improvement of her relationship with her own father, among other things, to the fact that ‘I grew older’ (71).

8 The ending of the story is a reflection on the ‘horrid invasions’ of fathers and of the ultimate effect on her: And, as the saying goes, about this matter of what molds or warps us, if it’s not one thing it will be another. At least that was a saying of my elders in those days. Mysterious, uncomforting, unaccusing (71).

9 The term ‘invasions’, as a military image, recalls the pervasive background of the second world war, first mentioned in the third paragraph of the story. The narrator speculates that the sound of farmers calling to their plough-horses, heard all over the countryside the spring that Newcombe died, but soon to disappear altogether, was a sound caused by the war, since farmers could not find tractors to buy or else could not find the fuel to run them. This sound, about to cease both because of cyclical and linear time, is presented neutrally and without a deciphering nostalgia. It was as enigmatic, we are told, as the conversations of seagulls or the arguments of crows, except that the tone of voice ‘probably’ told you when the farmers were swearing. The war, then, as a transient entity, is neither shown as having liberated a pleasant bucolic tradition nor as having imparted a specific meaning to the lives of Shelby Township. Nevertheless, it is explicitly part of the narrator’s thinking when she contemplates betrayal – the true subject of the story. She reflects that Dahlia would be ‘crazy’ to tell her about her plans to kill her father if she were really serious about them, since, she reasons, I might betray her. I would not intend to, but somebody might get it out of me. Because of the war that was just ending that spring, I often thought about what it would be like to be tortured. How much would I be able to stand? At the dentist’s, when he hit a nerve, I had asked myself, If a pain like that went on and on unless I betrayed where my father was hiding with the Resistance, what would I do? (66)

10 The war, with its history of persecutions and ostracisms, is also implicit in the narrator’s account of her relationship with Frances Wainwright, some four or five years before she met Dahlia Newcombe. With both of these girls she walks to and from school, but whereas walking with the sturdy, handsome Dahlia, once she has become the best player on the school basketball team, gives the narrator ‘a feeling of distinction’ (p.65), she had previously disowned the small, thin, asthmatic Frances as soon as they got to school. She guiltily hides from Frances with her friend Wanda Louise when Frances comes looking for them so that they can eat their lunch together, and, shamefully, joins in the jeering at Frances, who is marked as an outsider because she comes from Chicago. In retrospect, the narrator is uncertain about exactly how shameful her behaviour has been, confessing that, I would like to think that it was Wanda Louise who pointed her out to our classmates, when we stood in line ready to march into the schoolroom, as the girl we were always trying to avoid. But I could have been the one that did that, and certainly I went along with the joke, and was glad to be on the side of those doing the giggling and excluding (68).

11 While she is ‘ready to march’ with her comrades, she does not have the courage to defend what might be worth marching for.

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12 Frances does, in fact, begin to function as a kind of parody of a civilization worth marching for when the narrator realizes that Frances, coming from the much-mocked Chicago, where she could see movies every afternoon, is a rich source of information about movie stars – the narrator’s own passion. They discuss Ziegfeld girls, Frances (appropriately, given her first name) preferring Judy Garland and the narrator Hedy Lamarr. The narrator chooses Hedy Lamarr for her beauty and Frances Judy Garland because she could sing, a choice clearly connected with her parents, who both used to sing in the Light Opera Society, and to whom she is very attached. When the narrator visits their house for a farewell supper just before Christmas, Frances is dressed exactly like her mother, in an outfit which could have come out of a movie magazine, and has her hair done exactly the same way as her mother – a symptom of what the narrator finds a disquieting intimacy in the family.

13 In many ways the farewell supper is a magical one. The Christmas tree, ‘smothered in tinsel, gold and silver beads, and beautiful intricate ornaments’ (p.69), is a ‘fairy-tale tree’ (p.70), and the narrator is served rich, delicious, unfamiliar food, which casts a kind of spell on her: …I seemed to have entered a dream, in which everything I saw was both potent and benign (70).

14 But the fairy-tale element is introduced only to be negated. Years later, although previously in the story, Dahlia’s ‘fanciful’ and ‘lovely’ name had held out the promise of the beautiful daughter of an ogre in a fairy tale, but she had disappointed expectations by not having ‘rippling yellow hair and a sweetly pining expression’ (64), in the narrator’s view incorrectly, since this meant she was ‘not my idea of an ogre’s daughter’. Frances Wainwright’s potentially magical party is contaminated by another failure to live up to expectations, by what the narrator perceives as the ‘charade’ of Frances’ father acting as waiter. This father behaves incorrectly on all sorts of levels. First of all, he should have stayed in the kitchen and left the girls to enjoy the delicious food in peace. Secondly, he does not sound or smell as a father should: his eager breathing sounds like a dog’s and his smell of talcum and lotion makes the narrator think of a baby’s fresh diapers. Thirdly, to her alarm, he pretends that the lemonade he is serving is champagne: ‘We never had such drinks in our house, and neither did anybody I knew’ (69). Fourthly, he pretends to think that they are beautiful young ladies. All these elements offend the narrator’s sense of decorum, and emphasize the Wainwrights’ status as outsiders.

15 But far worse than all this is the behaviour of Frances’ mother and father after a near- disaster with the fire: they kiss each other openly, and fondle each other’s behinds. The ‘creepy menace’ of this is compounded by their assumption that the narrator has really been a friend to Frances, as she knew she had been asked to be. The consciousness of her own treachery, and her recognition that she is at their house under false pretences, spoils the occasion in any case, but she feels that they are to blame, ‘corralling me into playing the role of little friend’, and humiliating her, ‘almost as if somebody had taken a peep into my pants’ (70).

16 This is why the chronology of the story is disrupted, so that Frances’ father and the narrator’s father can be adjacent in her telling, with the reiterated story of Dahlia’s father forming a kind of bridge. Although every aspect of the narrator’s father’s behaviour is completely different from that of Frances’ father, the common denominator is humiliation:

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Shame. The shame of being beaten, and the shame of cringing from the beating. Perpetual shame. Exposure. And something connects this, as I feel it now, with the shame, the queasiness that crept up on me when I heard the padding of Mr. Wainwright’s slippered feet and his breathing. There were demands that fathers made that seemed indecent, there were horrid invasions, both sneaky and straightforward (71).

17 The reiterated story of Dahlia’s father forms a kind of bridge in that it is discussed by the narrator’s family, to her retrospective perplexity, as if no kind of animus had ever existed between herself and her father, as if he had never beaten her, as Dahlia had complained that her father did. The narrator’s family is secure in their perception of themselves as ‘decent people’ (71), in no way to be compared with the brutality and vulgarity of the Newcombes, just as they take a superior attitude to the Wainwrights’ inappropriate ambition to set up a local wallpapering business. (Both families’ names are of course very apt.)

18 The narrator, who retails to her family the melodramatic story of Dahlia’s spying on her father (an activity in which she herself had joined), and Dahlia’s threats to murder her father, does not ever describe to them the farewell party at the Wainwrights’, and the significance of this is that she subsequently learned how to cope with her family precisely by being a narrator.1 It becomes the way in which she, so to speak, earns her keep, at the same time safeguarding herself by her particular narrative manner: I had mastered a deadpan, almost demure style that could make people laugh even when they thought they shouldn’t and which made it hard to tell whether I was innocent or malicious (71).

19 She cannot transmit the story of the Wainwrights because she has not yet achieved this mastery, and because it makes her feel ‘off balance’. The story of Dahlia and her father, although disturbing, as a story of espionage and projected murder, is not only eminently suitable for wartime, but perfectly fits the stereotypes they have become in the popular imagination. As the narrator puts it, The undeviating style of Bunt Newcombe’s behavior had made him – and his wife – into such caricatures that a story ought to confirm, to everybody’s satisfaction, just how thoroughly and faithfully they played their roles (71).

20 The story of a real-life ogre has its own rigid protocol, just as a fairy tale has. There now (as Munro’s story nears its end) appears to be a particularly appropriate sense of closure in the opening paragraph which begins Munro’s story and ends Bunt Newcombe’s. He has been electrocuted, like a criminal brought to justice, and the text Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest can now be seen to refer not to Bunt, but to his family, who can now relax and rejoice in his permanent absence. But, although we may in retrospect read the opening paragraph slightly differently, we do not at any point have to revise our idea of Bunt Newcombe, any more than the narrator’s local community has to. (Our, and their, idea of him is made the more inflexible in that we, and they, are never given any insight into the causes of his characteristic domineering irascibility.) Our attention is specifically drawn to the fact that he and his mistreated wife might ‘nowadays’ be regarded differently: Nowadays, Mrs. Newcombe might be seen as a serious case, terminally depressed, and her husband, with his brutish ways, might be looked on with concern and compassion as someone who needed help. In those days, they were just taken as they were and allowed to live out their lives without a thought of intervention – regarded, in fact, as a source of interest and entertainment (64).

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21 But, as readers who do not intervene and who are being interested and entertained, we are in the nineteen-forties and not ‘nowadays’. Bunt, then, although disturbing in his power and his cruelty, is the least unsettling of the three fathers, and the most straightforward in terms of the explanation of the second world war. The older generation oppresses because it can, and will continue to do so until brought to some kind of justice. No precise date can be assigned to this justice, and it may be perceived as arbitrary and accidental.

22 The two other fathers are unsettling because they both provoke a feeling of guilt and complicity in the younger generation, as represented by the narrator. She remarks quite casually of Frances’ movie magazines that if she had taken it into her head to remove them I would have been more grief- stricken than when my father drowned the kittens I had found in the barn (69).

23 Of course, this reference to her father’s (probably pragmatic) unkindness is far from casual, as establishing a benchmark for the usual behaviour of fathers as far as she is concerned, in the context of a world of glamorous, powerful heroines to which he stands utterly opposed; almost immediately after the reference to the kittens we are told of a lamp with a lampshade like a lady’s skirt, which Frances explains represents Scarlett O’Hara, a present from her father and herself to her mother. The juxtaposition of something given with something taken away balances the juxtaposition of Frances’ father, who is ignorant of the narrator’s true nature, with her own father, who understands it all too well. As she says of his beatings of her, …I saw what he hated in me. A shaky arrogance in my nature, something brazen yet cowardly, was what awoke in him this fury (71).

24 The guilt and shame which this ignorance and this understanding both arouse in the narrator suggest a darkness of the human heart already demonstrated and a darkness yet to be exposed, which not only account for the second world war, but identify war as a constantly recurring phenomenon.

25 The three daughters represent three attitudes to fathers: Frances seems uncomplicatedly to love and admire her father, the narrator is ambivalent about hers, and Dahlia explicitly wants to murder Bunt Newcombe. Indeed, it is the very explicitness of Dahlia’s desire that makes the narrator doubt it – significantly, since she immediately goes on to speculate about whether she might betray her own father under torture, which is obviously, and yet not explicitly, a wish-fulfilment fantasy.

26 As a meditation set against the background of war, ‘Fathers’ might at first sight seem oddly to choose daughters rather than sons to set against the fathers who have set the war in progress – even though none is shown as actually fighting in it.2 But Munro is here particularly interested in the sexual implications of father-daughter relationships. The narrator wonders of Raymond, Dahlia’s younger brother, who seems not to be at risk from his father: ‘Perhaps a son was abhorred less than daughters?’ (66) There is clearly a sexual tension between the narrator and her father, and, as already mentioned, Frances’ father’s ‘slopping-over of attention’ makes her feel ‘almost as if somebody had taken a peep into my pants’. (This aspect of Munro’s story is illustrated in The New Yorker by an accompanying photograph of two little girls laughing together, in which one of the little girls is quite unconsciously displaying her knickers.)

27 The incestuous elements in the story represent the ultimate intrusion of an older generation, the ‘Fathers’, on the younger. The intrusion on and betrayal of a younger

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generation on a global scale is also demonstrated by the backdrop of the war, ‘just ending that spring’, to the local and obscure action of the narrative. We always feel the presence of this larger story looming behind the smaller one.

28 We are also constantly made aware of the significance of audience, from the opening news paragraph about the first father, which suggests a certain complicity with its readership, to the shameless behaviour of the second father in front of his daughter and her guest, to the management of the third father through storytelling. The narrator recognizes that Dahlia needed an audience for her feelings about her father – ‘she had just wanted someone to see her hating’ (67) – and she, in telling the story ‘Fathers’, feels compelled to consider her father himself as her audience, and concede that ‘If he were alive now, I am sure my father would say that I exaggerate’ (71). She sees that she cannot with a clear conscience blame him (and fathers in general) as much as she would like to do, so that this somewhat enigmatic story is itself described in its closing sentence: ‘Mysterious, uncomforting, unaccusing.’

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heble, Ajay. The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence (Toronto, Buffalo, London: U of Toronto P, 1994).

Howells, Coral Ann. Alice Munro (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1998).

Munro, Alice. ‘Fathers’. The New Yorker, 5 August 2002, pp.64-71.

Redekop, Magdalene. Mothers and Other Clowns: The Stories of Alice Munro (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).

Smythe, Karen E. Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy (Montreal and Kingston, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1992).

NOTES

1. The importance of storytelling within the stories is a commonplace of Munro criticism: see e.g. Karen E. Smythe, Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy (Montreal and Kingston, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queens UP, 1992) p.129; Ajay Heble, The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence (Toronto, Buffalo, London: U of Toronto P, 1994), p.6; Coral Ann Howells, Alice Munro (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1998), p.4. 2. Munro is also more usually thought to be fascinated by mothers. See e.g. Magdalene Redekop, Mothers and Other Clowns: The Stories of Alice Munro (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).

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ABSTRACTS

Publié au New Yorker en août 2002, “Fathers“ se déroule dans le contexte de l'après guerre alors qu'aucun de ses personnages n'a pris part active à la guerre. La nouvelle présente une réflexion sur nombre de variantes de tyrannie patriarcale qu'elle refuse cependant d'incriminer. Les termes qui lui servent de clôture : “mysterious, uncomforting, unaccusing“ résument l'histoire dans ce qu'elle présente de plus énigmatique : son refus de prendre parti.

AUTHORS

MARY CONDÉ Mary Conde teaches at Queen Mary, University of London. She is co-editor with Thorunn Lonsdale, of Caribbean Women Writers: Fiction in English (Macmillan, 1999).

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Sequences, Anti-Sequences, Cycles, and Composite Novels: The Short Story in Genre Criticism

Suzanne Ferguson

1 Several recent books and collections of criticism focusing on short story cycles or sequences suggest that there may be a renewed interest in this hybrid genre—in some sense oxymoronic, since the brevity and concentration of the short story are contravened by their assembly in a larger fictional entity. Although stories have historically been published in gatherings, in earlier centuries often with framing stories (the Canterbury Tales, the Decameron), the idea of a short story sequence or cycle as we currently think of it is basically a modernist (i.e., early 20th century) invention: Joyce called his Dubliners (finished 1907, published 1914) “a series of epicleti” that composed “a chapter of the moral history of [his] country” (Dubliners 259, 269), though George Moore may have beaten him to the punch in The Untilled Field (1903); Sherwood Anderson and Faulkner wrote “classic” ones in Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Go Down, Moses (1941) and The Unvanquished (1938); Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923) is meant to be read as one (though it’s not even all prose stories), as is Welty’s The Golden Apples (1947). Hemingway’s In Our Time (1925, 1930, 1955) is more complicated, as Michael Reynolds has shown (see Kennedy, 35-51): although Hemingway spoke and wrote of it as a single entity, the interchapters relate to the stories by a perceptibly arbitrary association, and the stories themselves yield a pattern only with much good will and/or agility on the part of the reader. Yet even at the margins, these are all examples we would likely agree about: we know ‘em when we see’ em.

2 What formal characteristics, if any, make them sequences or cycles? Forrest Ingram’s 1971 definition of a cycle is still widely used, still appropriate: “a short story cycle [is] a book of short stories so linked to each other by their author that the reader’s successive experience on various levels of the pattern of the whole significantly modifies his experience of each of its component parts” (19; my italics). Robert M. Luscher, in an important 1989 article, defines the sequence: “A volume of stories, collected and organized by their author, in which the reader successively realizes underlying patterns

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of coherence by continual modifications of his perceptions of pattern and theme.” He continues, “Within the context of the sequence, each short story is thus not a completely closed formal experience... The volume as a whole becomes an open book, inviting the reader to construct a network of associations that binds the stories together and lends them cumulative thematic impact” (148; my italics). I will come back to some telling points in these definitions, notably that the author does the original linking and that the reader participates in the creation of the sequence or cycle.

3 Which is it? A cycle by its name should “go around” something—in time, in the consideration of a theme (returning to its point of origin?); a sequence should be linked by development (going from one place to another), whether in time or theme. The only reason for caring about whether a particular group of stories is a sequence or cycle is the same reason as for caring what genre anything is: so that the reader can bring to bear appropriate strategies for understanding the work, for “getting the most out of it.” To illustrate some of the pitfalls in picking a term we might consider Kipling, a niche short story writer today, who was fond of using the same characters and settings, playing variations on his themes, in books like Stalky & Co. (1919) or Puck of Pook’s Hill (1923). Indeed, one usually has to read several of these stories before they start to make sense, individually or as a group. Earlier, Kipling wrote more loosely grouped stories on such themes as work—working men and machines—in The Day’s Work (1898), or the life of the English foot soldier in India, in Soldier’s Three (1895, with other miscellaneous stories in the volume) almost as a heuristic to generate related stories. Some of the groups have a “forward” progress, others don’t. In almost all his later volumes, Kipling gathers his stories under titles that suggest at the very least thematic juxtapositions: Actions and Reactions (1909), Traffics and Discoveries (1913), Debits and Credits (1926), Limits and Renewals (1932). (The title of A Diversity of Creatures [1917], on the other hand, foretells its miscellaneousness.) I bring them up because we don’t often think of Kipling’s books with the other modernist cycles, yet we need the tools of cycle reading to properly appreciate Kipling’s art and understand his project.

4 On the other hand, Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories with their repeating characters and themes (and plot formulae) not as sequences or cycles with an accretive structure (though the quest to kill off Holmes might be thought to generate a sequence in the Moriarty stories). With the Holmes stories, a group is not one “work,” as many of the Kipling books are, but a convenient publishing unit, gathering individual stories previously published in magazines.

5 So why the current interest in sequences and cycles? And to what end? After Ingram, it was nearly two decades before the publication of Susan Garland Mann’s The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide (1989), much of which is an annotated bibliography. J. Gerald Kennedy, following up his 1988 theoretical article, “Toward a Poetics of the Short Story Cycle,” edited a collection of essays by himself and ten other critics, Modern American Short Story Sequences (1995), in which he switches terms (persuaded, he says, by Rob Luscher) from cycle to sequence. Maggie Dunn and Ann Morris’s The Composite Novel: The Short Story Cycle in Transition appeared the same year, aiming to supersede the cycle/sequence issue altogether.

6 Two big votes for “cycle” came in 2001 with Gerald Lynch’s The One and the Many: English-Canadian Short Story Cycles and James Nagel’s The Contemporary American Short Story Cycle: the Ethnic Resonance of Genre. Lynch, sticking close to a mainstream position, adopts Forrest Ingram’s basic definition and adds the useful

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proposition that “In addition to providing opportunities for a conventional exploration of place and character, the story cycle also offers formal possibilities that allow its practitioners the opportunity to challenge . . . the totalizing impression of the traditional novel of social and psychological realism” (17). Nagel likes “cycle” as a historical term going back to the Greek “Cyclic Poets” and the medieval English “cycle” plays (2; although it’s not clear from his discussion who first applied the term “cycle” to those dramas). Rejecting the nods to author and reader of Ingram and Luscher, Nagel’s rather retro formalist definition provides “that each contributing unit of the work be an independent narrative episode, and that there be some principle of unification that gives structure, movement, and thematic development to the whole” (2). Compare, however, Dunn and Morris’s definition of the “composite novel”: “a literary work composed of shorter texts that—though individually complete and autonomous—are interrelated in a coherent whole according to one or more organizing principles” which they go on to extrapolate (2, in italics in the original). As far as a critically useful terminology is concerned, I want to suggest that these Nagel and the Dunn and Morris definitions represent a step backward from Ingram and Luscher.

7 The key word differentiating “cycle” from “novel” in Nagel is “independent,” but I find it problematic in itself, since in a narratological sense, any episode that is a complete narrative (i.e., has a beginning, a middle, and an end) could be considered “independent,” and there are countelss such episodes in novels. Dunn and Morris, who would claim many of the other critics’ cycles and sequences as novels, also invoke the impressionistic “complete and autonomous” to describe the component internal narratives incorporated into their “composites.” These definitions, in order to encompass all the works the critics want to write about, remain capacious and relatively vague. As one reads into these recent volumes, a disquieting sense arises that the idea of “sequence” or “cycle” or “composite novel” has been so broadly applied as to cover nearly any collection of stories (since after all, writers do work out their themes and vision from one story to another) or even works more usually or productively read as novels. In the case of Dunn and Morris, it also includes memoirs and other non-fiction or collections of fictions with essays, poems, polemics (Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, W.E.B. Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller, for examples). The categorization depends primarily not on what the author did but what the critic wants to do.

8 Is there not something alarming happening when genre criticism seemingly seeks to blur distinctions rather than to find them? A caveat that Dunn and Morris should have taken more seriously is their epigraph, from Aristotle’s Rhetoric: “When you coin a term, it ought to mark a real species, and a specific difference” (qtd. in Dunn and Morris, xi). We need to think harder about the usefulness of generic distinctions for reading in the area of stories that may be related in very different ways from book to book. To begin, let us reconsider some of the sequences we know: what makes Dubliners one? Possibly only Joyce’s cryptic descriptions to his brother and his publishers, noted above; but he also indicated there were stories of childhood, youth, adulthood, and public life. He wrote additional stories to fill in the gaps to make the groups symmetrical. He used a long story to culminate all his themes and bring the sequence to its conclusion in "The Dead." And when challenged by his publisher, he refused to delete “objectionable” stories, so that one printer notoriously melted down the type for the volume, and its appearance was delayed for seven years.

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9 In Winesburg, Ohio, surely influenced by Dubliners, Anderson uses a recurrent principal character, George Willard, who is not in all the stories but whose development is a thread throughout, and whose departure from Winesburg is the culminating moment, the “way out” of the book. Yet George’s presence is sketchy enough that no reader would mistake him for the protagonist of a novel. The other story protagonists of the volume share themes, and often are related in one way or another to each other and to George. Anderson’s prologue, “The Book of the Grotesque,” makes explicit the overall principle of organization, and sets the book off from other of his stories that could be easily considered to share the theme, “Death in the Woods,” for example. It’s rare for any of the Winesburg stories except “Hands” to be published apart from the volume (unlike several of the Joyce stories), because they do not stand very firmly on their own, even though they function well in the sequence and are recognizably “complete” in themselves.

10 Characters, familial and locale relations are strong in Go Down, Moses, showing development of the themes over several generations, and from several perspectives. The Golden Apples uses and reuses characters over two generations, yoking the book together despite shifts in style and even locale among the characters. Both Faulkner and Welty designed these sequences, and readers have over the years found pleasure in teasing out the connections among the stories. Yet all the stories have the structural features that make them seem to a reader independent and meaningful without the others: however—and the distinction is crucial—separately they mean something different from what they mean when read in the sequence where their authors published them..

11 If these are the touchstone modernist prototypes, then what are the new sequences? Perhaps the classic post-modern sequence/cycle is Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse (1969), whose subtitle—“Music for Print, Tape, and Live Voice”—signals its playful generic teasing. Although it appears at first as though there is no connection among the fables and realistic stories of the book, eventually it does become clear that all the stories are “about” the same character, at different life stages (starting “pre-conception”) and seen through different technical perspectives. More recently, we might single out Robert Olen Butler’s extraordinary act of imagination, social critique, and humane wisdom, Tabloid Dreams (1996).

12 But is it meaningful or fruitful to call some of these other books cycles or sequences when they behave in different ways? And we read them very differently from one to the next? Nagel challenges the usual designation of a number of books as “novels,” including Djuna Barnes’ avant garde Nightwood (1937) and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street (1989). While Nightwood was originally published in separate sections, I know no precedent for trying to see its parts as “independent episodes”: indeed, it’s usually viewed and taught as a primary example of the modernist “montage” novel, one of Joseph Frank’s touchstones of “spatial form” (see The Widening Gyre, 25-49). Cisneros’ book presents a more ambiguous test for genre identification, since its forty- four vignettes all have individual titles in the table of contents and on the spacious opening page of each one. Yet it seems equally if not more appropriate to Cisneros’ gathering (“I collected those stories”) to see the group as Maria Elena Valdés has, “lyrical reflections” (qtd. in Nagel, 108) that form a semi-autobiographical fictional “memoir” of the protagonist, Esperanza. What is gained by viewing them as a cycle? Granted, one can read individual chapters as independent wholes, and some of them

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are effective short stories, or narrative prose poems, if you will. The kind of concentration on the individual piece that readers bring to bear on the more substantial stories of, for example, Go Down Moses or The Golden Apples (seven stories each) would be not just wasted but counterproductive with The House on Mango Street, whose many discrete pictures combine in a kind of narrative mural, the individual elements of which can be appreciated as separate but only interpreted in the aggregate. (Dunn and Morris correctly include the book as a composite novel unified by the voice of the narrator [49-50].)

13 Hertha Wong (in the Kennedy volume, 170-93) and James Nagel both have chosen to see Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984) as a cycle, basing their arguments in the original magazine publication of ten of the fourteen original chapters. (Dunn and Morris see all Erdrich’s books as “composite novels,” though the distinction intended seems unnecessary.) In “The Short Stories of Erdrich’s Novels” I demonstrated the differences in the way Erdrich presented some of her short stories in magazines from the ways she integrated them into her novels, Love Medicine and Tracks (1988). Her later novels dealing with the same characters that populate those books (and for that matter the novel that came between Love Medicine and Tracks, The Beet Queen [1986]) have also employed “stories” as chapters. Tales of Burning Love (1996) is a kind of post-modern Decameron in which the four wives of Jack Mauser, whose funeral they have just attended (though he is not really dead), tell their stories of him to keep awake and alive in a snowbound SUV. Although she doesn’t publish every section of her novels separately any more, and although there is less shifting among narrators in some of the novels than others, virtually every Erdrich chapter could be read as a short story, with very little adaptation. However, I would contend that Erdrich’s stories have become definite chapters, that is, integral parts of books that we read as novels, and moreover, parts of a vast, still unfolding saga that rivals Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels and stories, and that it’s not only fairly pointless to try to read them as stories in a sequence, it’s counterproductive, since what Erdrich is aiming for is the sweep of a panoramic vision of interconnected characters and intergenerational stories, where, as in Faulkner, “the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.”

14 On the other side of the scale, books with only some related stories have been critiqued as sequences or cycles. Sherman Alexie, another Native American writer, presents a problematic collection in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), which Rob Luscher analyzed as a sequence at the ALA Symposium on Native American Literature in November 1999. Among the twenty-two separate stories (some of which might better be called sketches or parables) of the book are nine or ten at most that narrate the youth of a figure Alexie calls “Victor Joseph,” a contemporary Spokane Indian with two friends, Junior Polatkin and Thomas Builds-the-Fire. These same three characters, at a later point in their lives, are the main male characters in a novel, Reservation Blues (1994), where Thomas rather than Victor is the protagonist and primary focus of narration, and some of the chapters could easily be read as short stories. One of the longer stories of Victor in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is “This is what it means to say, Phoenix, Arizona,” the basis of the screenplay of the movie “Smoke Signals” (1998) which adds to that story a love interest for the runaway father who has died in Phoenix, and works in some characters and episodes from other stories and from Reservation Blues, to create a fairly conventional “buddy” road picture with a full- fledged though slender plot, a film made by and with Indians. But the remaining dozen or so stories in the collection, although they take place on the “rez,” explore other

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issues and voices, and I, at least, can’t see how one can read them as a sequence leading to some final “cumulative” but coherent “impact,” other than the pervasive angry but compassionate irony with which Alexie treats his subjects, the down-and-outs of his reservation. (To be fair, Luscher doesn’t say it has to be “coherent” –but if the “cumulative impact” is just a generalized emotion, nearly any collection of short stories by a single writer is going to be a “sequence.”1 )

15 I would like to consider here briefly the possibility that there are collections or groups of stories that might usefully be considered anti-sequences: where there are stories that obviously do fit together, or could fit together in a sequential pattern, but whose authors have refused to put them together or allow them to be put together: Grace Paley’s stories of Faith Darwin and her family are the most striking of these. Threaded throughout her three collections, from the late fifties through 1985, with a couple of separately published later pieces, these stories trace Faith’s development from a relatively young, recently-divorced single mother of two boys, the daughter of Jewish immigrants to New York, through her late middle age, political activism, love affairs, trips to China and Puerto Rico, and the growing up of her sons. But Paley has revealed in interviews and conversations that when her publisher asked her to put them all together in a sequence, she adamantly refused! She was offended.2 In her view, they are individual short stories, to be read basically independently and at random. She uses the continuing characters as a way to bring her customary readers quickly “up to speed.” She knows Faith, and we know Faith. She can, as she has said, “employ” Faith for missions to stand in for the author herself (Just as I Thought, 125). Each story provides its own insights; one does not “depend” on any others, although sometimes the links are amusing, especially when lovers get exchanged sometime in “between” stories.

16 As I have written elsewhere, while she clearly has in the Faith stories the materials for a novel—or at least a sequence like Updike’s Olinger Stories (1964) or Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are (1978)3—Paley equally clearly rejects the concept as falsifying the issues that move her in contemporary life. As a feminist Jewish writer, Paley is an outsider with a special perspective on the dominant culture in which she lives, a culture crumbling from its own inconsistencies and inattention, a culture vulnerable to the guerrilla "warfare" of the Faith stories. Like other writers of these strangely hybrid, marginal works--stories interrelated but not physically linked in a "book"--, Paley senses herself to be in a position from which she can only tell the truth through a kind of deceptive acquiescence to the norms--of society and of writing. Indeed, in the Faith stories Paley appears to be trying to conceal herself in conventions of storytelling that she flouts at every turn, still refusing the temptation to create a sequence or a novel.

17 Similarly, I would say that Alexie resisted rather than succumbed to sequencing in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. After the nine stories of Victor Joseph, the constant shifting of perspectives over the last two-thirds of the volume buffets the reader with so many visions of painful confrontations between Indians, between whites and Indians, between the Indians and the culture both of the reservation and the “Union,” that the ultimate effect or impact of reading it sequentially is potentially bewilderment, a sense of being pushed and pulled, beaten back and drawn into, these lives, with their multiplication or modification of anger through imagination into “survival,” as Alexie gives the equation in “Imagining the Reservation”(149-53). As a collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a crazy quilt of stories, stories within stories, framed vignettes, exempla, dream visions and, in the one titled

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“Distances,” futurist fabulation. One story “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor,” has a protagonist–narrator, Jimmy Many Horses (also called One Horse) who has cancer and a wife named Norma. Norma’s youth, in the story, “Somebody Kept Saying Powow,” is described by a narrator named Junior Polatkin. Junior always thought Norma would marry Victor, but he was too much of a bully (203). The stories share recurrent themes of betrayal, oppression, struggle for psychic survival and love, of alcoholism and other diseases, and often use basketball as a trope of power, stringing the volume together even as the fragmentary forms of the individual stories, and the montage-like conflicts of their juxtapositions, work to keep the reader from any comfortable sense of unity or resolution. 4

18 I have suggested in papers on Paley and Alexie that their social situation, as “outsiders” by gender, ethnicity, or politics, encourages them to see the world, and their task as writers, as opposing closure. In his subtitle, “The Ethnic Resonance of Genre,” James Nagel points to the related but different perspective he takes to some of the same issues: for him, the traces of oral tradition in American ethnic writers predispose them to write cycles instead of novels (255). Aren’t there traces, though, of “oral” storytelling in virtually all fiction? And, on the other hand, have these writers not grown up in a tradition in which, as Bakhtin contends, the novel is the norm, attracting everything into its vortex?5 Nagel’s examples—besides Love Medicine and The House on Mango Street, they include Kincaid’s Annie John, Alvarez’ How the García Girls Lost their Accents, and Tan’s The Joy Luck Club6—are chosen precisely to challenge the designation of novel that has been assigned them. But these, and Nagel’s others,—and two recent ones I’ve run across, Ivonne Lamazares’ striking novel (it says so on the cover) of growing up in and escaping from Cuba, The Sugar Island (2000), and Fran Zell’s The Marcy Stories (2001, which says stories in the title but seems very like an autobiographical novel)—depend for their “genre” on conditions that ultimately cannot be shown to be formal, but rather intentional (the author’s) and responsive (the reader’s “genre memory”). I would like to note here also the “other stories” of Vijay Lakshmi’s (recently published) Pomegranate Dreamsand Other Stories, which presents characters whose names and situations recur tantalizingly, while the volume as a whole remains a collection rather than a sequence or cycle.

19 There are two nodes of attention that keep surfacing as one reads the recent criticism of sequence and cycle (and “composite novel”): what authors have “intended” for the structures of their works, and what readers do, how in reading they “frame” works to better construct the relations of parts to wholes. I think, for our part, we critics had better give some deference to the authors, and plenty of leeway to readers. It’s fine to see things from different perspectives, and judge what new insights shifting frames gives us—after all, academic careers depend on it—but let’s keep a little humility and admit that’s what we’re doing. It’s very possible to read A Portrait of the Artistas a Young Man and even Ulysses as short story cycles, just as it’s possible to read miscellaneous volumes of stories—as Susan Donaldson reads Welty’s The Wide Net, or Susan Garland Mann reads O’Connor’s Everything that Rises Must Converge, or Robert Luscher reads The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven—as cycles or sequences. But let’s be clear that these are heuristics for generating new interpretations, not “realities” that need to be proven and believed.

20 Gerald Lynch’s book, The One and the Many, does generally respect boundaries: by dealing only with books sanctioned by their authors as cycles or sequences (whether

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expressly or tacitly) he can more reliably demonstrate the development of the cycle in English Canada, and show its peculiar, attractive qualities as a modern (and post- modern) hybrid genre. On the other hand, the Dunn and Morris volume, The Composite Novel, in attempting to gather in such works as Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain or Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, the former of which is only a novel by dint of ignoring virtually every canonical feature of “novel,” and the latter of which is recognizably a novel with recipes, proves counterproductive. While they have useful things to say about “collective protagonists” (chapter 5, 59-73) and about different kinds of metaphoric patterning (chapter 6, 74-87), their wide net does not allow them to make meaningful discriminations between “real” novels and short story sequences. In almost every case, their individual analyses could be deepened and enriched by attention to differences between works composed of genuine short stories, arranged for sequence, and episodic, fragmentary novels with multiple “stories” within them. For them, for example, there is no generic difference among Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives, H.D.’s Palimpsest, and Michael Dorris’s A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, all of which happen to be (independent) narratives about three women: but Dorris’s book is a novel and the other two aren’t, and we read them, consequently, in very different ways. Or we should.

21 Trying to assimilate short story sequences (or earlier collections that have some cycle- like characteristics such as Mary Russell Mitford’s Our Village or Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs) into “novels” seems to me to be almost perverse, since it opens the term “novel” to encompass virtually any fiction between its own hard (or soft) covers,7 and thus cancels any assistance the generic categorization can give to the reader as an interpreter. Readers come to novels with very different expectations of the reading experience than they bring to short stories or non-fiction, and calling the latter “novel” could hardly be helpful. This is Bakhtin’s notion that the novel draws everything into itself as self-fulfilling prophecy!

22 But perhaps the critical activity points to another phenomenon we are striving to come to grips with, a perception that the novel itself has so fully assimilated the principle of “epiphany”—so central to the modernist short story—that many, perhaps even most novels, could now be seen to be in some sense assemblages of short stories: Woolf’s “matches struck in the dark.” That so many post-modern novels find their way into Dunn and Morris’s bibliography would suggest such a development. Similarly, Nagel’s wish to read as short story cycles a number of books that others would see as post- modern novels also suggests (and with greater interpretive possibility) that might be the case. In fact, it might be instructive to make a list of recent novels that aren’t made up of stories, and figure out what they have in common structurally.

23 In the case of short story collections that are critiqued as cycles or sequences, as Luscher would read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, we are seeing the other side of the coin: the tendency to accretion within the work of a writer, as the writer struggles with his or her “material,” so often individual life experiences. Having devoted nearly forty years to thinking about the short story and what makes a short story a special kind of artistic event, I would like to plead for resistance to all three tendencies, or at least that they be bracketed as special readings “against the grain” for the purpose of seeing new elements in the works. Before we get into mis-categorizing works containing short stories, I would like to see more attention rather than less to the special aspects of the short stories as stories, respecting the intentions of the authors (where evident), and helping readers rather than getting in their way. What does it

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take to have enough continuity, coherence, or development for a narrative to be read as a story or novel, and what differences in reading experience or interpretation do we register with sequences or cycles? Why do some writers avoid sequencing their related stories, and why do readers apparently like to make them into sequences regardless? These and other related questions need to be addressed as we pursue the elusive issues of genre in books of short stories, not because we need convenient pigeonholes but because we need to understand how formal concerns influence interpretation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dunn, Maggie, and Ann Morris. The Composite Novel: The Short Story Cycle in Transition. New York: Twayne, 1995.

Ferguson, Suzanne. “Resisting the Pull of Plot: Paley’s Anti-Sequence in the ‘Faith’ Stories.” Journal of the Short Story in English 32 (Spring 1999): 95-104.

---. “The Short Stories of Louise Erdrich’s Novels.” Studies in Short Fiction 33 (1996): 541-55.

Ingram, Forrest L. Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century. The Hague: Mouton, 1971.

Joyce, James. Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: Viking P, 1969.

Kennedy, J. Gerald, ed. Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Luscher, Robert. “The Short Story Sequence: An Open Book.” Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Edited by Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey. Baton Rouge: LSU P, 1989.

---. “Sherman Alexie’s Narrative Poetics: Two Lone Rangers in Smoke Signals/Puffs of Smoke in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” ALA Symposium on Native American Literature. Intercontinental Hotel, Puerto Vallarta. 14 November 1999.

Lynch, Gerald. The One and the Many: English-Canadian Short Story Cycles. Toronto, Buffalo, London: Univ. of Toronto P, 2001.

Mann, Susan Garland. The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide. Westport: Greenwood P, 1989.

Nagel, James. The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle: The Ethnic Resonance of Genre. Baton Rouge: LSU P, 2001.

Paley, Grace. Just as I Thought. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988.

NOTES

1. Alexie’s recent collection, To ghest Indian in the World (2000) also seems to me “just” a collection, with some fine stories that are close to those in The Lone Ranger... and others that seem

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simply calculated or intended to be shocking and open the issue of “gay” or “queer” Indian or white/Indian relations, stories that are too often just heavy handed, in-your-face didactic. 2. Conversation with the a thor, March 27, 1999, Angers, France. 3. The former arranged by the a thor after prior separate publication, the latter rearranged and edited while the book was already in galleys! 4. Looking backward for earlier examples of resistant (or recalcitrant) collections, we might consider one early group of stories that may or may not be a sequence: Katherine Mansfield’s group of stories about her family that includes “Prelude” and “At the Bay“ (1918, 1921) but also “The Doll House” (1922) and several others. There is a good deal of evidence in letters that Mansfield wanted to write a novel using this material, but that, due to her health or her “vision” of the world—like Paley’s and Alexie’s—the “plot” was irretrievably ruptured and fragmented, and that novel or even “sequence” was far too comforting an illusion for her to impose on her readers. 5. This Bakhtininan notion is developed in The Dialogic Imagination, as Lynch points out in his introduction (14). 6. Not surprisingly, every one of Nagel’s titles appears in Dunn and Morris’s annotated bibliography of “composite novels.” 7. The works that are not fiction, or only partly fiction, such as The Souls of Black Folk, I think we can summarily rule out.

ABSTRACTS

Le terme short story cycle s’applique à un recueil de nouvelles qui tient aussi du roman. Dans cet article, nombre d’ouvrages critiques récents consacrés à ce genre y sont discutés. Selon Forrest Ingram, l’élément essentiel du short story cycle est l’intentionnalité de son auteur. Selon Robert Lucher (qui, lui, préfère le terme de « séquences ») ce genre se définit par l’« impression d’effets cumulatifs » qu’il produit chez le lecteur. Appliquées aux ouvrages récents de James Nagel – Contemporary American Short Story Cycle: the Ethnic Resonance (2001)– et de Maggie Dunn et Ann Morris –The Composite Novel: the Short Story Cycle in Transition (1995)–, ces considérations plus anciennes montrent que notre compréhension du short story cycle n’a pas beaucoup évolué depuis. Loin d’affiner la définition du short story cycle, ces ouvrages rendent les lignes de partage entre roman, short story cycle et recueil moins nettes qu’elles ne l’avaient été jusqu’alors. Considérer des romans comme Nightwood de Djuna Barnes ou The House on Mango Street de Sandra Cisneros, ainsi que le propose Nagel, comme des short story cycles, rendrait leur interprétation plus difficile. Il en est de même pour The Way to the Rainy Mountain de N. Scott Momaday et de Country of the Pointed Firs de Sarah Orne Jewett que Dunn et Morris définissent comme des « romans composites ». Bref, il serait regrettable, pense l’auteur, à ce que l’on tente à tout prix de voir un short story cycle derrière tout recueil de nouvelles. Finalement, l’auteur propose le terme d’« anti-sequences » pour définir une autre catégorie de nouvelles, et l’illustre en s’appuyant sur l’œuvre de Grace Paley. C’est l’intentionnalité de l’auteur, l’impression d’effets cumulatifs et la relation d’interdépendance entre nouvelles du même recueil que l’on devrait encore étudier pour mieux cerner les enjeux du short story cycle.

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AUTHORS

SUZANNE FERGUSON Suzanne Ferguson has retired from teaching at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of numerous articles on the history and theory of the short story. Her recent work has concentrated on groups of inter-related stories, some of which she finds to be "anti-sequences". She also publishes on the American poet, Randall Jarrell, and is the editor of the recently published Jarrell, Bishop, Lowell & Co.: Middle-Generation Poets in Context (University of Tennessee Press, 2003).

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

IRELAND

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John McGahern - b. 1934

Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interview organized by Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis for the JSSE 20th, anniversary celebration, May 24, 2003

John McGahern’s work has dominated the Irish literary landscape for almost forty years. First rendered famous by his first novel The Barracks, the writer then underwent the painful process of censorship and self-imposed exile after the banning of The Dark. If the following novels, The Leavetaking, The Pornographer and Amongst Women have aroused increasing interest in his work and attracted praise and controversy, the three collections of short stories, Nightlines (1970), Getting Through (1978) and HighGround (1985), together with the stories published separately, have definitely ensured McGahern’s place as a master of the genre, a stylist and a poet. The shape of the short story has enabled the writer to build up patiently a microcosm through a microcosmic form and to refine his manner “increasingly experimental and conscious of its own patterns as poetic fiction” to quote Denis Sampson.Liliane Louvel, JSSE n°34

The early years as a reader/writer.

Liliane LOUVEL: John, we’d like to know how you started to think of yourself as a writer. Did you, as a young boy, start inventing stories or writing stories? When did it all start? What were the ﬁrst stories you wrote? John MCGAHERN: I don’t think that you can be a writer without being a reader first. At first, I read for nothing but pleasure. And I still think pleasure is the best guide to what is good in literature. There were few books in our house, a few that belonged to my mother when she was training as a teacher and a few nationalistic books that belonged to my father. When I was ten or eleven, I was given the run of a library. The library was in a Protestant house, and was mostly a 19th century library. For about five or six years, maybe more than that, I would have come on my bicycle with an oilcoth shopping bag, returning five or six books and picking new books from the

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shelves to take away. Nobody gave me direction or advice. There was a ladder for getting to the books on the high shelves. I gave a public interview before a large crowd when That They May Face the Rising Sun appeared. The Moroneys turned up, mother and son, and presented me with a book from the library. They had heard me praise the family and acknowledged my debt, to them and the library. A lot of life is luck. There were all sorts of books. There were classics: Shakespeare, Webster, Ford, Dickens, a lot of Scott, books from the 19th century Lending Libraries, and cowboy books, lots of Zane Grey, and many books about the Rocky Mountains. And then side by side with those books, I used to read the weekly comics like The Rover, The Hotspur, The Wizard, The Champion. We were addicted to them at school. They were swapped and passed around. There was no television, few radios, and there was no cinema. One day I was reading in the barracks with my back to the window on the river and my sisters were very amused that I was lost in the book. They removed my shoes and put a straw hat on my head, they did all sorts of things with me and I didn't notice until they moved the chair, and I suddenly woke into their amusement and the day. I think that the way you read changes very gradually. I don’t like the word - but I can’t find any other - a certain consciousness happens. A child thinks it is going to live forever. Then, gradually, we know that we are going to die, and that everybody dies, and nobody lives forever. We realize that all stories are more or less the same story, and that the quality of the writing and the way the material is seen through a personality becomes more important than the actual story or the pattern out of which the material is shaped. My first publications were the essays I wrote at school. Sometimes they were read out by the teacher as examples, and that doesn’t increase one’s popularity. Words had a physical presence for me, and when I began to write it was with no thought of publication. It always has fascinated me that if you change a single word in a sentence all the other words demand to be rearranged. All words have a weight or lightness, a physical weight. At first, I was playing with words to see what shapes would come. Each of us inhabits a private world which others cannot see, and it is with this world that we read. What I was trying to do while playing with words was to see if I could dramatize and bring to life that private world which first found its expression through reading. I wrote a first novel with a pretentious title, The End or Beginning of Love. A friend was interested in it, Jimmy Swift, who was also responsible for getting Patrick Kavanagh into print at the time, liked it and sent it to his brother, Patrick Swift, who was editing a magazine called X in London with the poet David Wright. They liked it and published an extract. That was my first time in print. The magazine was influential, though, like most magazines of the kind, it was short lived. Many painters, like Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, wrote for the magazine. I met these people when the magazine invited me to London. I was in my early twenties. I had very little experience of the world and found the bohemian lives around Soho fairly alarming. The extract in X attracted interest from a number of publishers. Fabers, among other publishers, wrote to me. T. S. Eliot was working at the firm then. They invited me to 24 Russell Square for an interview. By that time I had decided that I didn’t want to publish the novel. I didn’t think it was good enough. They wanted to see the novel,

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but I told them I wasn’t prepared to publish it but that I would write them another novel if they would give me a contract. Peter de Sautoy was the director who saw me. He became a friend. Charles Monteith, who became my editor, was on holiday. Peter said “Why do you want a contract?” I must have laughed. “By the time I finish the novel, if I have no contract and you lose interest in me, I’ll be as badly off as I am now.” They gave me a contract: Seventy-five pounds on signature and another seventy-five pounds on delivery of the manuscript. Peter asked me “what is the novel about,” and I said “boredom in a police barracks.” “Most novels about boredom have the habit of being boring themselves,” Peter replied, and I assured him, with the foolish confidence of youth, that it all depended on who wrote them. Charles Monteith was a big man, an impressive editor, and a friend of Philip Larkin’s and many writers. He had the reputation of having rewritten William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. He demanded that I enter The Barracks for the A.E. Memorial Award, which was the most prestigious award in Ireland at that time. It was given to writers under 35 for the best work in the previous five years. The award was named after the writer and mystic, A.E. Patrick Kavanagh was the first winner, and it had always been given to poets. I didn’t want to enter because I didn’t think I stood a chance, and I would have to submit five copies. Typing them was expensive. Montheith insisted that I enter. He said that he would pay for the typing if I didn’t get the award and I would pay for all the expenses if I won. I entered, and, to my amazement, won, and most of the award went on the typing, but I was very happy. There was a very popular writer in Ireland at the time called John D. Sheridan, who wrote for the Irish Independent, which was the most popular newspaper. My father was always suspicious of my writing and he was always saying – because John D. Sheridan was a humorist – you should write like John D. Sheridan. My father didn't read or didn't approve of writing, but he liked giving advice, and John D. Sheridan was his god. What he didn’t know was that Sheridan was a serious man who had written textbooks on Shakespeare. And it must have been a disastrous day for my father when he opened his favourite newspaper. Across the top of the book page he saw “Classical tragedy comes to The Barracks.” John D. Sheridan was the reviewer. John D. Sheridan was never referred to again in the house. I sent my father a copy of The Barracks (the character in The Barracks isn't my father at all, and in fact Elizabeth is completely imagined. The man in The Barracks is a nicer man than my father, but he was a police sergeant like my father) and I got this reply: “An old police sergeant is sitting here in the dark and waiting until the lamp flickers or at least shows light. Love, Daddy.” That was the response. The Barracks was never mentioned again.

Ben FORKNER: When did you leave home? J.McG.: I left home at eighteen. I had university scholarships, and I got a call to the teachers’ training college. Some of the best brains in the country went to the training college at that time because the State paid for your education for the two years and promised you a fairly secure job at a time when jobs were like gold dust. If I’d gone to university, I would have had to get first place in my class every year to keep one of the scholarships, as otherwise I couldn’t afford to stay there, and I knew I wouldn’t have been able to take that kind of strain. I also had a vague idea that I wanted to be a writer, and the short school hours were an attraction. We did no work in the training

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college. We needed eighty or ninety per cent to get into the college and only forty per cent to get out.

B.F.: So you were writing even at that time? J.McG.: No, I wasn’t writing then. It may have been there as an impossible dream. The training college was a strange place. Any education I picked up there was from other students. There wasn't a literary society, there wasn't a debating society, there wasn't a drama society, but there were a number of religious societies. We had to attend Mass every morning and Devotions every evening. We were being trained as non-commissioned officers to the priests in running the different parishes throughout Ireland, secondary to the priest in all things, including education. The Catholic Church had total power in Ireland at the time. Non-attendance at Mass or any character deviation meant immediate expulsion from the college. They weren’t interested in education. What was under inspection at all times was our characters. They wanted us to be obedient and conformist – cogs in a wheel of power.

B.F.: Did the priests supervise your reading too? J.McG.: No. They weren’t interested in books or reading. They thought you read only for exams. I became friendly with a brilliant classmate, Eanna O hEithir, who was from the Aran Islands. He was a nephew of the writer Liam O Flaherty. He gave me Eliot and Joyce to read. Joyce was never banned, contrary to popular belief, but the books weren’t displayed in bookshops. The copy of Ulysses I bought at the time was produced from under the counter and wrapped in brown paper before it was handed to me. I asked why it wasn’t displayed on the shelves, and was told that it would offend the priests from the university, who were the bookshop’s best customers. Early Yeats was well known and in the school books, but not the great later poems. The writers that were recommended were those approved of by the Catholic Church, like Canon Sheehan. Also, a few French writers like Mauriac and Bloy and, strangely enough, Stendhal. They were indulgent to French writers in translation because of the Catholic tradition there. I don’t think they knew very much about it.

L.L.: Is that when you started reading Flaubert and Proust and…? J.McG.: It would be more Stendhal, Balzac and Rousseau, and then, later, people like Céline and Camus. Proust was much later, as was Flaubert and many others.

B.F.: The training college lasted during what we would call the academic year, but what did you do in summer? J.McG.: I didn't want to go home. I really was fed up of home – I didn't want to see the barracks again. When I was well known, about fifteen years ago, a deputation came from Cootehall village, wanting me to buy the barracks and set myself up as some kind of a monument there. I told them that I had spent almost twenty years trying to get out of the place, and that I had no intention of buying my way back in.

B.F.: So you just took odd jobs in the summer or…? J.McG.: That first summer I went to England, to London, and I worked as a labourer on the buildings. The story “Hearts of Oak” came partly out of that experience. I was absolutely amazed to set foot in England for the first time because to me this was the land of Shakespeare and Wordsworth. I would have read many English classics, and for me it was like stepping on sacred soil. Then I took the train from Holyhead to London. I was met on the platform by people from a Catholic organization. They were watching out for young Irish boys like myself who might go wrong if let loose in

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London. They took me back to a Catholic hostel. I was very glad to find a place, and I stayed there for the whole of the summer. The hostel was in Whitechapel, close to Brick Lane and Algate and the London Hospital. It was run by priests and doubled as a school during the day. There was also a church on the grounds and a respectable dancehall. Each morning, before I left for the buildings, I used to have to help the other men put away the bunk beds and replace them with school desks. When we came back in the evening, we were given a big meal. This was cooked by young Irish girls who came from Cork and Kerry mostly. Any sexual play or interference with these girls meant immediate expulsion. I met a man who worked in a bookshop there who told me about current books and a very refined Englishman – looking back, I think he had a crush on me – and he gave me books on philosophy and religion, which we read and discussed on weekends. I was so tired after the work on the buildings that in the evenings I just wanted to watch television, which was new to me, and he used to get annoyed at this. When I was qualified as a teacher I didn't get a job immediately.O hEither and I were very excited by Waiting for Godot, which was playing in the little Pike Theatre in Dublin when we were in the training college. For some strange reason, the dean allowed us to put on sketches on Saturday nights, and O hEither and I did a short sketch about the training college, loosely based on Godot. We had a full house. The only competition we had were prayers in the college chapel. The dean stormed out of the audience in a rage and stopped the show. Looking back, it was probably harmless fun, but no doubt with some pretension, but I think O hEither and I came within a whisker of being expelled. The dean was an extraordinary figure. I used him slightly in a completely different context in That They May Face the Rising Sun. His nickname was ‘the bat’. He was certainly a creature of the night. We were waited on at table in the college by very young boys in their early teens from a Catholic orphanage. They were badly treated. They had crewcuts and looked like young convicts. They wore little white tunics. We were like aristocrats by comparison. De Valera had wanted to make Irish the official language, and it was easy for native Irish speakers. When I was a teacher in Clontarf, Dublin, I totted up the teaching hours, and found, to my amazement, that slightly more than half the day went on the teaching of Irish and religious instruction. I didn’t take a job immediately after I qualified, and went to London for a number of months.

B.F.: So you spent the whole summer in England. Was it rough? J.McG.: Oh yes. In “Hearts of Oak” there is a fairly accurate description of the working conditions on the buildings. When I began teaching I got a school in Athboy, a town in the midlands. Two of the stories are set there, “A Ballad” and “Crossing the Line”. An old man who was a teacher there, and appears in “Crossing the Line”, came to see me recently. He was in his nineties. I looked at this story again and what interested me was how little of it was based on fact. The man that was the prototype is not like the man in the story at all. So life is of very little use to fiction; it has to be re-imagined or changed or altered in some way. The way things happen somehow is no use in fiction.

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Dublin: a rich cultural experience.

J.McG.: And then I taught in a big town, Drogheda, thirty miles north of Dublin for a year. For a while I commuted between Dublin and Drogheda. Eventually I got a school in Clontarf, near the sea. It was a middle-class area. I was there for about seven years, until I got sacked. Dublin at that time was an exciting place to be young in. There were many good small theater groups. I saw a lot of Pirandello and Tennessee Williams and Chekov, Eugene O’Neill, and people like that. Books were discussed in dance halls and bars as well as in rooms and there was a very good cinema on the quays where you saw films like Casque d’or and The Rules of the Game and The Cranes are Flying. People read a lot. There were very good second-hand book barrows. There was a man called Kelly who had a barrow on Henry Street and could find any book you wanted for half price. I'm sure he stole them all! He'd also have first editions of Beckett and people like that at not a great deal more than the price of new books. The two Irish writers that most excited us were Kavanagh and Beckett.

B.F.: He was a presence in the town. J.McG.: Oh, he was an extraordinary presence, and in fact, there is a description of him in “Parachutes”.

Jacques SOHIER: Why do you like Beckett? J.McG.: I think Beckett is a great writer. What was very exciting is that you could open magazines, and new work was appearing by these great writers. Somehow when it's in magazines it's much fresher than a book that you're picking up for the first time. Kavanagh had twenty poems and it was some of his best work. I'll never forget the excitement of reading his poem Prelude: “Ignore power’s schismatic sect/ Lovers alone, lovers protect.”

L.L.: But Kavanagh was very much in Dublin, wasn't he? You met him? B.F.: Had he become an institution in Dublin by that time? J.McG.: Yes, I would have read his collected poems in manuscripts first. Kavanagh had no reputation much and of course he was very alcoholic, and a friend of mine called Jimmy Swift – The Barracks is dedicated to him – gathered up Kavangh’s poems in manuscript, and had them typed. Kavanagh had written very well in the 40s, but there was a long period when he didn't write at all, or was engaged in various wars with people. Then he got cancer of the lung and he had to go into hospital. When he recovered, he wrote all those extraordinary Canal Bank poems. He changed, in a small way, like Beckett in a different way, the course of Irish writing. That’s considered a famous poem now: “A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward of a chest hospital.” He was an alarming presence, but if you met him early in the morning he could be very good company.

B.F.: The story “Bank Holiday” was written after his death? J.McG.: Yes, it would have been after his death.

B.F.: Was he recognized as the poet? J.McG.: Patrick McDonough is a completely fictional character in “Bank Holiday”. There is one scene there based on a real incident. I was having a drink in Mooney’s with two brothers and a girlfriend of mine. Unusually, Kavanagh was in the bar, as he always drank across the road in McDaid’s. He recognized me and came over and

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asked me to cross the road to McDaid’s to get him a packet of twenty Gitanes. I got round it, as I didn’t want to be dancing to his tune, in very much the same way as Patrick McDonough gets round it in “Bank Holiday”. Kavangh wasn’t very pleased, though he did get his cigarettes, and abused me in very much the same way as he abused McDonough in the story. I didn’t mind. It would have been easier to have gone across and got him the cigarettes, and his vanity would have been salved; but I was young then.

B.F.: During these nine years as a teacher, did you write during the year or during the summertime? There was no teaching in the summer, was there? J.McG.: No. I had a very good job for a writer because I taught seven and eight year- olds, which meant I had no teaching preparation and no corrections and taught for five days and was finished at two-fifteen. I'd walk back to my room, get my lunch, and walk into the city, which was an half-hour away. I’d stroll around the streets, maybe see what was on in the cinemas, buy a book, if I found something that interested me, and walk home. I’d then write for two or three hours a day. I’ve never written much longer than that, even when I had the whole day to myself. When I was finishing The Barracks, I remember just staying in the digs in Dublin. I had a room and worked right through the summer holidays.

Childhood years.

B.F.: So all the jobs, and the description of these jobs in the early stories such as catching the eels, those were earlier on in your life? J.McG.: That’s right. There was a family that went to school with me called the McMorrough. They were the last to fish the Boyle and the Shannon for a living. I never worked with them but actually knew how to fish for eel. I used to set eel lines myself. It was the sort of thing everybody did. I had a boat that belonged to the police barracks, and it was a way of escaping from the house, and I enjoyed fishing. We had a very strange upbringing. For most of the year we lived with our mother in various houses close to the schools where she taught and spent the school holidays with my father in the barracks. Shortly before she died we bought a farm and lived on the farm, which was close to my mothers school. I think we bought the farm because it was easier to find a farmhouse with land than to buy a house on its own.

L.L.: Then afterwards you had to go to the barracks to live? J.McG.: When she died the farm was sold and we went to the barracks to live with my father. I've been reading my mother's letters recently, and it was brought home to me what an uncertain place the mind is. I remembered almost everything, but time was telescoped and events didn’t happen at all in the way I remember them. For instance, the animals we owned were bought over a long period, while they seemed to me to have come with the farm. Likewise, with my mother’s final illness. In my memory it took place over the long course of the year, while in fact it was for no more than six weeks in early summer. It was a very hard time, and I’ve never been happy about the way I wrote about the experience in The Leavetaking. Catholicism dominated everything. Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and Limbo were to us real places; the Church was the story that gave meaning to our lives over the whole course of the year – Christmas to Easter to Advent. I always admired that description

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of the Gothic churches: “Before the printed word, the churches were the Bibles of the poor,” and the Catholic Church was our first book. The priests had incredible authority, some of them were very frightening; and then, there were good priests. Nothing in human nature is simple. They had very hard lives as well, in that they were cut off and isolated from the lives of other people they served. And then there was celibacy.

J.S.: John, do you think it is religion that makes men violent? J.McG.: No. Ireland was always a very violent society, and, like most things there, it was very hidden there as well. There was also much sexual frustration. The authority was paternalistic. God the Father in Heaven, the Pope in Rome, the father who said the Rosary each night in the house.

J.S.: Too many Fathers then. J.McG.: Probably. All authority was unquestioned. Men and women lived mostly separate lives. Men dominated the outside and the women dominated the houses, if they were not cowed by violence. Many of my father’s generation would have fought through the War of Independence and the Civil War, and were steeped in violence.

The artistic process I: moulding reality.

Emmanuel VERNADAKIS: You said in several interviews that the artist may be in conflict with himself while the rhetorician is in conflict with society. Do you feel that, as an artist, you’re in conflict with yourself and if so, do you think that this has to do with your religious education or with Christianity in general? J.McG.: That goes back to something Yeats said, with which I agree: “Out of the quarrel with oneself comes poetry; out of the quarrel with others rhetoric comes.” In a very different way, Rilke said much the same thing. If I had a rule for writing, it would be, “above all, no self-expression.” The simple base of writing is the image, to be able to pick out of the welter of experience the image that illuminates. The rhythm is the emotional binding that links the images. I’ve made all my serious writing mistakes when I actually stuck close to the facts. For some reason or other, they have to be re-imagined, reinvented, reshaped. They have to conform to an idea but not an idea of oneself. Then you start to work with the words. Flaubert got everything right when he said in his letters to George Sand, “In order to write well, you have to feel deeply and think clearly in order to find the right words.” Nothing has changed.

L.L.: Yes, it is like moulding a matter in something, making something out of it. J.McG.: Yes. By the time it is finished, it should reflect the original idea, but it has often very little to do with the first draft. The story “Bank Holiday” went through many drafts, and began as a completely different story. The original idea was based on a man who was very attractive to women and had many affairs. One of the women he seduced and rejected set out in turn to seduce him, and succeeded. They married. On their wedding night he was warned by some instinct, and pulled back the bedclothes to find her waiting for him with an open razor. In the various workings, all that was lost, and the story became “Bank Holiday.”

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L.L.: That’s what you said before when you spoke of dislocation, dislocated? J.McG.: That’s right. All material has to be dramatized, and to do that it nearly always has to be dislocated. I never write anything unless it is in my head for a long time. And then I really am compelled to write it down to see what’s there. How can I know what I think until I see what I say? You learn from the words, and, after many workings, the words become alive and speak back. Sometimes when an idea is written down it disappears in the working. There was never anything interesting there in the first place; but it is only through work that these things are discovered.

L.L.: Would you say that it is the same with the voices, because when we read your short stories or That They May Face the Rising Sun, the voices of people are very important and they come... Do you hear the people? J.McG.: Oh yes. That They May Face the Rising Sun was much longer when it was finished. A lot of the material was cut out. By the end of a novel you know so much about the characters that you could put them into any situation and know exactly how they will behave. Only a little of what you know gets into the final pages. Sometimes I think all bad writing is statement and all good writing suggestion. The readers take up the suggestion and complete the book in their imaginations. I believe there are as many versions of a book as the true readers it may find.

B.F.: Do stories begin more in your mind with an image or with a dramatic situation, or…? J.McG.: Often with a scene or a rhythm or a piece of dialogue or an image. There is an enormous difference between a novel and a story. The novel is closely connected with society, with an idea of manners and society and is a whole world, while the short story is a fragment. A short story has a different rhythm than a novel. It makes one point and one point only. Everything in a short story goes to a certain point and leads away from that point. If you had the same intensity over the whole length of a novel, it would become tiresome. I think that the short story is much more connected with drama or the poem than the novel. A short story is like a flash that illuminates one point. What happened before that point and what happened afterwards can only be imagined.

B.F.: Have you ever started writing a novel that had to be broken up into two or three short stories? I was thinking of “Eddie Mac” and “The Conversion of William Kirkwood”? J.McG.: No. They are close to a form I admire, the novella. The “Country Funeral” is a novella. In contrast, “Korea” is a classic short story. I don’t mean classic in the sense of good but classic in the sense of brevity and rhythm and intensity. So is “Why we’re here”; “Gold Watch” and those longer stories are closer to the novella. I love Turgenev’s work and I think Turgenev’s novels are closer to the novella than to long, traditional novels like War and Peace.

The barracks.

L.L.: Are there some of the short stories which are some of your favourites or some you dislike among those you wrote? I remember that you said once that “The Stoat” was not one of your favourite short stories. J.McG.: No. I think “The Key” or “Bomb Box” suffer because they are too close to life, the way things happened and weren’t dislocated enough. “The Key” is based on an

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actual incident. My father decided that he was not getting enough attention and that he was going to die. He left instructions for his funeral, and set off for the Garda Hospital in Dublin. There was nothing wrong with him, and they kicked him out after a week. He had to come home, and he was in a rage. My aunt was a lovely woman and she disliked my father. She used to ask him in a sweet voice: “Well Frank, may I inquire where is the pain located today?” I gave her a copy of The Barracks. I doubt if she read it, as she was dying of cancer herself at the time and the story would have disturbed her. She probably thumbed through it. My father used to sow onions, and he dried the onions on the roof of a urinal that belonged to the guards. She spotted this detail in the novel, and was in stitches laughing, and she said “John, I thought I would never see the day when I’d see shitey arse’s onions drying up on the roof of a lavatory in a book!” She had a little shop beside the railway station. A priest who was a customer removed The Barracks from the library because he had some objection to the material or language. She accosted him: “Father, I hear you took John’s book out of the library;” and when he admitted that he had, she told him “You can buy your cigarettes elsewhere until you put that book back into the library.” It was a very strange upbringing I had. I suppose all upbringings are strange. I had no background in writing. Recently, my sisters told me that they would have been ashamed to tell people they met socially that their brother was a writer.

B.F.: There were images of revolt, though, of your father holding the priest by the ear and your aunt telling the priest to get out of the shop! J.McG.: That’s right. My father was violent. He went into the guards straight after fighting in the I.R.A. in the War of Independence. He was instantly promoted because of his rank in the guerrilla company to which he had belonged. He would have entered the army as an officer, and probably would have been promoted further or killed in civil war. He expected promotion in the police, and was bitter when he didn’t get it. My guess is that once the peace was established he was seen as far too difficult and dangerous for promotion, and they kept him where he was. I was on television a couple of years ago and the curator of Garda Museum saw me and sent me my father’s police file. It was interesting. On his application form in 1920, both his sponsers were parish priests, which showed how closely the priests ran everything. There was a question. “Previous work experience?” and the answer was “Three years in IRA!” There was a gang called Dohertys that raided banks in Leitrim. My father was the sergeant in charge of the town when they raided the bank in Ballinamore. He always complained about the Irish police not being allowed to carry arms. He said if he was armed on the day of the bank robbery in Ballinamore, that not one of the Dohertys would have left the town alive. I believed him. He would have seen a lot of violence, but he never spoke about it. My sister was telling me recently that she was walking with him in Dublin shortly before he died and he pointed out a little place near Dublin Castle, and he said “I was lying there three nights, covering an escape route from Dublin Castle.” None of these people ever talked about the war.

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L.L.: Talking about the title, we were talking about “The Key” and about “The Bomb Box”. How do you choose the title? J.McG.: A short story generally chooses its own title. This is because it is dramatic and usually makes only one point, which gives the title. I always find it difficult to find titles for novels. I think this is because the novel reflects many more varieties of experience and is more closely connected to the whole of society. The short story is a fragment.

Linda COLLINGE: Some of your titles seem to be rather obscure and not obviously linked to the main theme of the story. They seem to be secondary, say something like “Sierra Leone”, which is not in fact about Sierra Leone, or “Swallows”. J.McG.: They were not meant to be obscure. Sierra Leone is elsewhere, and the point is that it is always much easier to deal with something that is elsewhere than in the life that’s around you.

L.C.: And with a story like “Swallows”? J.McG.: That’s probably a pun. The swallows come like the surveyor, and then disappear. The sergeant swallows a lot of whiskey in order to get through the day. A story like “Swallows” would be set in the barracks but it is completely invented. There is one thing that might be interesting about the barracks. Because of the long history of oppression in Ireland, law was associated with the British. Until very recently, the people never thought that the police force belonged to them. It was seen as an alien force, a hostile force. Children like ourselves who came from the barracks were seen by other children as coming from a hostile place. We were slightly cut off from the other children and the community at large.

B.F.: Was there a housekeeper in the barracks? In “Swallows” there is the deaf… J.McG.: My father never could cook, so he always had housekeepers, even when he was a single man. Then after a while my sisters became the housekeepers but we had housekeepers until quite late. And nearly all kind of disturbed, eccentric people. My father was very handsome, so some of them used to think that he would marry them. There was a parson’s daughter that quoted Shakespeare and she was intent to marry him. My father was very brutal and I remember the answer that he gave her: “So you think you are the man for the job?” The guards at the barracks had to cycle in good weather and bad, along roads where nothing happened, and then had to write reports. I used to help them sometimes. We would invent reports. These books were inspected by the Superintendent who would come once a month. The thing they dreaded was having to take mentally disturbed people to the asylum in Ballinasloe. The petty offences they had to deal with, people cycling at night without lights on their bicycles. My father was fond of scolding people. He caught a man without a light on his bicycle once and lectured him for fifteen or twenty minutes. The man said “For Christ's Sake, Sergeant, lay off the sermon. Either let me off or give me a summons!” My father had no sense of humour and gave him a summons. There was a very good school in Carrick-on-Shannon run by the Presentation Brothers. I got a scholarship there when I was thirteen, and I cycled the seven miles to Carrick-on-Shannon. Those were some of the five best years of my life. My father used to keep me at home for work, cutting turf or digging potatoes and things like that. The principal of the school came out and told my father that I was one of the

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best students he had ever had, and I could go anywhere but not if I was kept at home for six or ten weeks every year. This was a surprise to my father, but after that I wasn’t kept at home to work. I had a good memory, and often to entertain myself I’d recite poems, pieces from Shakespeare or Wordsworth or Tennyson as I cycled along.

B.F.: So the bicycle was an education too... J.McG.: Everybody cycled because there were hardly any cars and the roads were very bad. During the break in school, we would have a little milk and bread. A tomato was a luxury. Many of us would spend our lunchtimes fixing punctures on our bicycles. The teachers were very good and I have nothing but gratitude for them. I went from Carrick-on-Shannon to the teaching college in Dublin.

The artistic process II: “areas of experience”.

John Paine: You began by saying that a writer needs to be a reader ﬁrst. J.McG.: Yes. I could not imagine anybody being a writer unless they were a reader first. I read for nothing but pleasure.

J.P.: This is obviously amazingly alive for you even today. In the last couple of days when I have been around you, the poetry, the lines from various things that you’ve been able to summon. J.McG.: They become part of your lives.

J.P.: What role do you see that playing in your own creative process? J.McG.: Not much. I think that they are two completely different things. I did refer to it in the introduction to Alistair MacLeod’s stories. I think that every serious writer has a limited area of experience. You see that most clearly in Scott Fitzgerald. I think that The Great Gatsby is a great novel and stories like “May Day” or “The Rich Boy”. Once Fitzgerald moves outside that area of experience, his work, though it is always carefully crafted, becomes less exciting. The serious writer always has to discover for himself that limited area of experience. I don’t think you should write unless you need to, and the whole machinery of publishing is against this. There is an enormous pressure to turn out a book every two years. The only way you can do this is to go on repeating yourself, when every book should be a new beginning, and that means that a whole new set of aesthetic problems have to be solved each time.

L.L.: That is what we ﬁnd in That They May Face the Rising Sun because we have got the same ingredients as in the short stories of before – the people, the area – and it is totally different; you found a new shape out of some material which is there. J.McG.: Yes. Also the experience has changed. It has become gentler.

L.L.: Yes, more reconciled. J.McG.: I think it is much more a real novel than any of my other novels.

L.L.: In what sense? J.McG.: I think it’s a whole world to itself.

B.F.: There are chapters in Amongst Women. It’s almost as if you are reading a short story. J.McG.: It’s probably as pared down as a novel can be without becoming a short story, and the opening is very like the opening of a short story. As he grew older he became

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afraid of his daughters… I get a lot of letters about Amongst Women. Moran seems to have been a very common type and was present everywhere in the country, and the whole of Ireland seems to function like a very large family. Ireland isn’t a very organized society, like France or Britain. There isn’t any recognized system of manners. The manners and the mentalities change very quickly from locality to localitiy. Everybody within a family is an astute psychologist of the other people within the family. If you hear somebody say “Well, you know she is not going to change now” or “There is no use talking to him” you know that it’s spoken out of a great deal of psychological knowledge. Whereas, in fact, it is a kind of nonsense in the sense of formal manners. I see the family as a strange halfway-house between the individual and a more developed sense of manners. Certain things are tolerated within families that won’t be tolerated in a larger society. It has been well proved psychologically that if there is a stronger psychological person within a family, even though he or she is quite stupid, he, by his force, will actually dominate the more intelligent people within the family.

J.S.: Is there some kind of violence in women too? I am thinking of the novel Amongst Women. J.McG.: I think that Amongst Women is really a novel about power. The power comes to the women in a circuitous way. In fact, at the very end of the novel, the power is transferred to the women. What they will do with it we do not know.

J.S.: You mentioned yesterday that the short story is closer to poetry (Yes). And in poetry the syntax is more disjointed than in a complete sentence. Do you write sentences more than words? J.McG.: You always write sentences because you hope they make sense. I would argue that prose has invaded certain areas that used to belong to verse. Nobody is going to tell me that The Great Gatsby is an inferior poem to some bad poet who writes in verse. And there is no doubt that certain temperaments – which has got to do with the personality of the writer – work better in verse than in prose. For instance Philip Larkin, who is a great poet, wrote a couple of poor novels. Yeats, in my opinion, doesn’t write well in prose. The amazing thing about Hardy is that he could write well in both verse and prose. He is a great poet and he is also an important novelist. But that’s very rare.

L.C.: In the closures of your short stories, there is often a sort of dispersion rather than a rounding off. They seem very open towards something, not really an ending. J.McG.: I don’t think a short story is ever ended. I think a short story is like an explosion, and that the energy that it attracts throws light back to things that happened before the story began and after it ends.

L.L.: Is it difficult sometimes to find the final words? J.McG.: Yes. Often the last thing that you write is either the beginning or the end. Sometimes I leave a short story unfinished for two or three months because I can’t get a satisfactory ending. Then, somehow, it comes.

B.F.: Is that why you may not be completely satisﬁed with “The Stoat”, because the ending is the same as the beginning? J.McG.: I don’t know. I rather like the idea of a short story, or anything else, ending as it began: “In my end is my beginning.”

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L.L.: It is more finding the proper ending or the proper words, not even finding how it is going to finish but the way it is going to be put into words. J.McG.: And it must resonate backwards into the story and also take the story outwards as well.

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Benedict Kiely - b. 1919

Franck Kersnowski

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Franck Kersnowski, August 15, 1991, First published in JSSE n°21, 1993

1 Ben Kiely grew up in County Tyrone, one of the northern counties of Ireland then, as now, occupied by the British Army. Though his ties to the North remain strong, he found his way to the cosmopolitan life of Dublin as a Jesuit novice and then discovered his true calling as a storyteller. That he has lectured, written criticism, and worked as a journalist never interfered with the writer of fiction; everything he wrote was a narrative, from Land Without Stars: A Novel (1946) to Drink To The Bird (1992), the first volume of his memoirs. That he is recognized as Ireland's finest storyteller speaks to the efficacy of his career and the sureness of his genius.

2 Ben Kiely is of the Ireland of the Republic, a new country with an ancient literature. With the poet Patrick Kavanagh, Brian O'Nolan (aka Flann O'Brien) a writer of fiction and newspaper columns, and the gunman and writer Brendan Behan, Kiely came of age as a writer. Their generation followed the triumphs of Yeats and Joyce. Like Joyce, the writers of this generation were Catholics who remembered the old stories and sagas, but lived in a world rapidly becoming urban. Yet they never lost their memories of the internecine life of the clan. Read as a chronicle of the very democratic literary world of Dublin from the forties on, the writings of Ben Kiely are invaluable. As did Joyce, he lived in a world of literary people and chancers, great souls and bog men who “would use their feet on you”. Read as fiction, Ben's writings bring the smell of the country and the smell of the pub into delicate proximity. Though he is drawn back to his native Tyrone, Ben is a Dubliner, honored in his city and in his local pub, the Donnybrook Madigan's. Ben Kiely never neglects his two homes and never fails to remind his readers that human courage and character must outweigh the demands of politics if great stories and great storytellers are to continue and if their readers are to understand the significance of their own humanity.

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3 This interview began in 1984 when Ben and I sat down with a pot of tea and a tape recorder two mornings before I was to leave Dublin We talked about the collection A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterny. A Dozen Stories (1973). That interview caused me to want to do this one: a general interview. Again with a pot of tea (and smoked salmon on soda bread) and a tape recorder, Ben and I sat down on August 15, 1991. Exchanges of letters concerning spellings and reference came to an end in October of 1992. And this was printed in August of 1993. Frank KERSNOWSKI.: What was the ﬁrst piece you published? Ben KIELY: Oh, the first piece I published. That's a bit ridiculous. I was in high school (as you'd say) with some friends. One of them is still living. He was here the other day. Leo Loughran, a very famous character from the North, Cookstown; there's a lot of history in that man. The other were Frank Fox and Thomas Tummin. It was a great joke: Lawrence Leo Loughran, L cubed; Frank Fox, F squared. He’s dead, was a lovely man. TT, T squared. And while we were secondary school, Tom got peritonitis and died. We went off to his funeral at Tempo, County Fermangh. An old country parish priest preached a sermon over this young boy. Loughran and Fox were satisfied with the sermon, so when we got back to Omagh town, then said you'll do a write‑up (I being the writer of the group) of the funeral. So I wrote up the funeral and put in a flowery passage that the poor priest never preached at all. It appeared in The Ulster Herald and The Fermangh Herald. And I was often wondering, did the poor man read it, you know, wondering if he'd gone mad in the head. There was something in it about the guerdon of eternal life, which misprinted as guerdon, which is a very good word too. It was my first experience with being printed. And I remember thinking of Thackery's Bacon and Bungay and bumfy, wee literary boy, etc. I went to looking for Mr. Anthony Mulvey, M.P., editor of The UlsterHerald, The Fermanagh Herald, the Nationalist newspapers. I was told: “Mr Mulvey isn't here. He's down at Mr. Parks,” who was editor of The Tyrone Constitution, the Unionist paper. So I went down and found Parks and Mulvey (dear friends and political opponents) having tea and drank tea with them and presented my copy. That was the first thing of mine that was ever printed. I can't even remember what after that. I think it might have been in Father Senan's time as publisher. I must show you a gallery of pictures I have from Senan's time. This is one of the many periodicals he produced. He was a very extraordinary man; he died out in Australia in '84. I have one of the last letters he wrote to a human being. I was in Oregon, and he was in Australia when he wrote. But I was in hospital at the time of my first contact with Senan, about 1939. At that time, I wrote to The Weekly Standard about partition. I remember that was printed. Afterwards, I worked for The Standard under Peter O' Curry . But I sent stuff in to Father Senan, and he printed it. In fact, one of them was, “Good God,” a long poem in blank verse about 1916, about which the less said the better. But Pearse Hutchinson liked it actually.

F.K.: Pearse is a good poet. B.K.: Yes, Pearse is a good poet. And then when I came out of hospital, I was living up North. I wearing a back splint. I called in to see Senan. He’d been in to see me in hospital. He said: Can you cycle? I said: Of course, I can cycle; I'm only wearing a back splint. The only men I ever met who wore back splints were John Kennedy, the President, and Mr. Cadwalleder, the harbour master of Holyhead, a great friend of mine. I met Kennedy at the New Ross party when he was over here. I was on The Irish Press at the time. Senan said: Take some time and cycle across Tyrone and write an

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article on Tyrone. So I took my bicycle and took the train up to Dungannon; and I cycled to the Lough Shore and then cycled right across County Tyrone and wrote an article about that. I think that was the first longish piece I ever printed. I called it “Long After O'Neill,” pinching the title from Michael J. Murphy who had written for The Bell a very good piece called “Long After Carleton.” That would have been sometime about 1940. I've got a copy of it somewhere still because Larry Loughran appears in it. He was teaching school at the time near Cookstown, and he introduced me to one of the last of the Tyrone native speakers. There were about fifteen old people still speaking native Irish up on Glen Lark, where Hugh O'Neill trained his pikemen. It's a very curious instance. He spoke Irish; his wife and daughters understood Irish but didn't speak it. The daughters, there were four of them, could sit on a long bench and sing macaronic songs, a line in Irish and a line in English. It was a curious example of the way a language dies, you know. They spoke the beautiful, Tyrone Irish. It's very similar to the Donegal Irish, except for a slight difference in vowels.

F.K.: What was the ﬁrst piece of ﬁction you published? B.K.: The first piece of fiction, oh dear. I think it might have been in one of Senan's periodicals, too. It was, I think. As a matter of fact I did a little radio piece about this. I decided I would write me a novel. There was a park near Omagh called the Lovers' Retreat. It was a beautiful place you know on the Camowen River, a sort of mountain stream ran along. So some decent city father christened it the Lovers' Retreat. To soldiers in the army it was known as the Bugger's Den, actually. It was a garrison town. But I met this young soldier in the place. I got friendly with him. I was walking along the town one day when I met the young fellow between two policemen. He had deserted from the army and made a run for the border at Strabane. But in the process, he had lifted a few things that didn’t belong to him like a bicycle, a suit of civilian clothes and so on. So he was caught by the coppers. In those days, you could stop them. I knew one of them and said: “What's all this about, between us all.” So I heard the tale then. He seemed quite cheery, and off he went with the two policemen. I never saw him again. But I decided I would write a novel called King's Shilling about the runaway soldier. What I wanted to do was describe the Strule Valley and the hay‑cutting season. It's lovely country in that season, and he would be running through the countryside. So I wrote this thing, and it came to 43,000 words. I offered it to the Talbot Press. They had a decent reader, a nice quiet civil man; and he said he didn’t think I could make a hero out of someone running away from his duty. I think he was just being polite to me, but I didn't consider as duty what an unfortunate bloody private soldier did for about a shilling a day with what they had to go through in the barrack’s square. I could go in and out of the barracks then. In fact, we did our gym training for the school team in the barracks under a Seargeant Major Weare, a Londoner, a Seargeant Mitchell and another man called Corporal Wheeler. I remember them; they were good chaps. Anyway the thing gathered dust for a bit, and I showed it to Francis McManus. who was becoming a great friend at the time, and Francis said: “It's a long short story, 18,000 words.” I was a bit miffed, you see. J.J. Campbell was editing The Irish Bookman for Father Sinnott; he was a good Belfast figure, and he said: “My God, l'm very hard

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up for copy. I could do with 18,000 words to fill out the forthcoming issue.” So I looked at my novel, and I swear to God it came down automatically to 18,000 words, and it filled out The Bookman. And it was printed. But what happened to the other words? Oh yes, 1947 it was in The Bookman. But by that time, I had done a book about partition, Counties of Contention. And my first novel was in 1946, Land Without Stars. They're reprinting that now.

F.K.: So you started out writing novels, rather than short stories? B.K.: Yes. And that was an effort, to write a novel. That novel Land Without Stars was published in London by Christopher Johnson.

F.K.: That's unusual isn't it, to start off with a novel. Even Joyce started with short stories. B.K.: I must have been very ambitious.

F.K.: What idea did you have about yourself as a writer then? B.K.: It'd be hard to say that now. It was just to get down what you felt, what you knew, what you saw.

F.K.: Were you reading a lot of other writers then? writers who were important to you? B.K.: Oh yes, along about college time it would have been William Saroyan and Graham Greene, a curious pair indeed. I was the sort of college propagator of Graham Greene in my time. In fact, I read a paper to the English lit. on him. I can't remember if that was printed or not. I did one on Saroyan that was in, of all places, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record and one on Carlyle, of all people, and one on G.K. Chesterton.

F.K.: One of my colleagues, Norman Sherry, is Greene's biographer. You liked Greene a great deal, then? B.K.: Very much, yes, it was his technique. It was quite new the way he told it. Some of it, I suppose, came from Conrad. A little bit of the early Greene, A Rumor at Nightfall, you'll notice the Conrad thing there. But when he cleared out of that, the technique in a novel like England Made Me or Brighton Rock was superb. It was just the sheer way that he could get his story across. There would have been others over the years.

F.K.: It seems to me, and to others, that you have more in common with the storyteller than with someone like Greene, with your strong sense of place and the oral tradition. B.K.: Yes.

F.K.: Did you grow up hearing stories told? B.K.: Well, people told stories. That Cards of the Gambler was from old Johnny Sheamuiseen, who was a seanachie, a very formidable old man. He had the story of the gambler. It was a sort of Faustian story; God and Devil and all that were in it. I used some of it in The Cards of the Gambler, translated it and used little bits of it. It came to my attention actually that I'd heard the old man tell stories, but it was only in the Ulster accounts of the Gaelic League; my friend Loughran, again, edited the collection of stories of Johnny Sheamuiseen. It struck me that you could just use it and turn it into a novel about modern living.

F.K.: It's interesting that you mentioned The Cards of the Gambler because my next question is about it. Even though it comes close to allegory, there is a strong voice; and the people are greater than the allegory. B.K.: That's what I was hoping to do, to use the thread of the allegory and still make it a novel about living people.

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F.K.: It reminded me also of Proxopera, which has a strong political and social statement, yet the people — especially the centre ﬁgure — control the reader's attention. B.K.: He was modeled on an amusing man, a teacher named Curry, I got very friendly with. He died, actually, while I was in hospital, dropped while he was on his way to school. It was my father who picked him up; they were quite close friends. He was an amazing man. What I was trying to do when I cast him as Mr. Binchey was to imagine what he'd think of the set‑up at the moment. So I had him there before my eyes. An amusing man, indeed, Curry. He was Shavian and Wellsian. I had a brother‑in‑law who was a Shavian and a Wellsian and a Chestertonian as well. They got really worked up about it in those days, you know? Because Chesterton and Shaw were all Republicans sort of.

F.K.: There are, also, those wonderful short stories like “A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly.” B.K.: You know that the original of Butterfly was really quite different? I altered the appearance and the name because I heard she had settled down and was respectably married, and I didn't want to write anything that would hurt anybody. She wouldn't have taken an action, I'm quite sure, or anything like that.

F.K.: Is that the White Horse Pub down on Eden Quay where the story's set? B.K.: Yes. Alas, it's practically gone. I was down that way recently. It was beside the old Irish Press building. The O'Connell family have gone from it now. The upstairs bar is closed, and there's some sort of small bar for young people on the ground floor. I remember one night in the White Horse when Jim McGuiness was editor of The Press. Upstairs, we had at the counter Professor Dudley Edwards. Desmond Williams, Kevin B. Nowlan, Con Leventhal (Sam Beckett's friend), Tommy Woods (External Affairs), and Brendan Behan doing his capers in the middle of the floor. That was the night Brendan said to me: “The three ould ones [old ladies] had put down beds outside Montjoy jail and laid down on the beds with their clothes on. And President Cosgrave was going in to visit the jail for some reason, and they began to call him names.” Behan was miming it on the floor, you know. It was hilarious. And Behan knew the ould ones, at least he knew one of them, that being Maud Gonne. I met her up in father Senan's office. The other was Mary McSweeney; that was the second ould one. He didn't know her, and I never knew Mary McSweeney. And when Cosgrave comes in they begin to shout at him: “Lloyd George's Green Linnet.” (That was what they called the Free State soldiers in the green uniforms.) “Traitor to Ireland. Arrest us! Arrest us!” Cosgrave, according to Behan, said: “I may be a promoter of Lloyd George's Green Linnets. I may be a traitor to Ireland. But I won't arrest you; I'm not a collector of antiques.” And at this stage, Dupley Edwards said: “Brendan.” “What Dudley?” “How dare you call my mother an ould one.” She was the third one, that Brendan didn’t see in front of the jail. Dudley's mother was a famous Suffragette. But you can imagine that performance.

F.K.: How long did you work for The Press? B.K.: I was fourteen years there. I went over from The Independent when my first book was banned by the censorship, In A Harbour Green. The theory was that I was put out for writing dirty books. That wasn't true, actually. I'd become friendly with M.J. McManus, who was the literary editor of The Irish Press then; and he invited me, practically. He and R.M. Smiley, editor of The Irish Times (I knew Smiley, too) and I were sitting in the Pearl Bar with Brinsley McNamara (who was a good friend of

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mine), so it was arranged that I would go to The Irish Press. I was interviewed when I went down there by Bill Sweetman; and Bill Sweetman said: “I only have one thing against you (he was a great man, Sweetman). You come from the North of Ireland. I had a lot of trouble with a man from your part of the country”. (That was A. de Blacam– Sweetman and himself didn't get on). So then, he said to me: “Are you irregular?” I said: “Do you mean my bowel movement?” “No. I mean do you come in or do we have to send out for you.” So, I said I'd turn up. So that was my interview. Then M.J. died and I succeeded him. so I was fourteen or fifteen years in The Press, until I went to the States. It was quite a place to be in those days. The comings and goings were marvellous.

F.K.: There doesn't seem to have been in your writing, or that of your companions, a strong distinction between the work of a journalist and the work of a writer of ﬁction. B.K.: I remember John Montague worrying about that, but I said you can't compartment your mind. And, actually, working on a newspaper is useful to a writer of fiction. Because the good thing about newspaper men, photographers and reporters, is that their job is everybody else's business; and you hear and find out things that you wouldn't know about otherwise. You're always getting bits of information from your colleagues. I was almost housebound for Sweetman's time; I wrote editorials. And then when M. J. died, I did the literary editing. But after that when Jim McGuiness came in I had God's end of opportunity to go wandering about the country. Which was great fun. We had a driver, a hell of a time. When I would head out into the country, nobody knew what I was up to. I could go where I pleased. That was a great idea.

F.K.: Dublin of that time, I imagine, was much like you portrayed it in “A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly,” a very democratic literary world. B.K.: It was. Yes, it was easy going. You knew everybody. It was a free and open society.

F.K.: It looked like it was also a great deal of fun. B.K.: It was good fun. They were great people. There were men like Austin McDonnell. I even used Austin's name in “A Ball of Malt”. Austin had been sentenced to death in his time for his Irish Volunteer activities. But the sentence was communted; he did some time, I think, in Derry jail. He was a real man, tremendously tall, handsome man. He was one of the chiefs of the Dublin Fire Brigade. A tremendous man, he had a great tenor voice which, if had a drink taken, he was inclined to sing “My Boat can lightly Float” (the Galway hooker song) or “My Dark Rosaleen”. Another story about Brendan and himself once. Austin, when he had a day off, would walk around the pubs and have a drink here and there, talk to friends. But I was sitting with Brendan upstairs in the White Horse. And Brendan was in very poor health; he had a terrible hangover. His head was practically down between his knees. Austin came in; and he had been meditating on history. He was giving a lecture on the woes and suffering of the peasants of Lewisburg, County Mayo, during the Famine. And he said: “They ran after the carts, taking the grain out of the carts with their cupped hands, catching the raw grain and eating the raw grain. And Brendan lifted his head with great weariness and said: “Austin.” “What, Brendan?” “Austin, it was fucking good enough for them.” His worries were not then with the peasants of Lewisburg in 1847; he was thinking of himself. At which Austin laughed with great splendour and sat down and bought Brendan a cure. It was a humorous and lively

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society around there. The Press asked me to write an article about my memories of it which, thank God, they'd didn't have to use because we just survived.

F.K.: Were Flann O'Brien and Patrick Kavanagh part of this? Keily: They were in the neighbourhood, yes. They were around. Brian [Brian O'Nolan, a.k.a. Flann O'Brien] came and went. George Gormley, Brian's uncle, was the last sports editor of The Evening Mail. And he was second cousin to my uncle, Peter Gormley, who died in New York some years back, who relates me to the Hanahoe family, the lawyers. So both our mothers were Gormleys, O'Brien and myself. So when his eldest brother died, the classics professor, I was out at the funeral. All the leading mourners were up from the North, and I swear to my God they were all the image of my mother. It was frightening. They came over to me and said: “We know you are one of us; you have the countenance”. Apparently, I have a McGovern face. A very odd thing happened to me in a bar in the Eighties in New York when I was first there. Kevin Sullivan said: “The man who runs the bar says if you have a drink anywhere else before you have a drink in his pub, he'll never speak to you again”. Well, I was visiting with Jim Carroll, who was the nephew of Jim Carroll who was Lord Mayor of Dublin here. Great people. Jim, the younger (the old man's dead now), Jim's back farming in the West now. So I went up to the pub and when the owner came in he was a Colonel Gormley, U.S. Army Retired; when he heard my mother's name was Gormley, the pub was mine. Drinks on the house for all and sundry. And in strolled two policemen; you couldn't see them for pistols. I thought it was a raid or something; they were off duty and in for a drink. By this time I was beginning to talk like Myles, and I said that I would prefer if they removed the pistols because I worried that the least academic disagreement might lead a fatal arbitrament. No bother. They put away the pistols. Then this old man came over to me. Now John Wilson, the minister, knows this story about a good man who runs the pub at Bulter's Bridge. And they knew the old schoolmaster referred to and said this man who spoke to me was quite right, said the resemblance was weird. This old man came up to me and said: “You're name is McGovern.” I said: “It isn't, but it's a very odd thing you should say so.” He said: “You're the living double of a master McGovern from Crosherlough in the County Cavan that I knew in the old country”. I said: “Where did he come from.” He said that he came from Glangevlin where the Shannon River rises. Well, I said: “My father's mother was McGovern from Glangevlin where the Shannon River races”. Isn't that weird. But John said he knew this old schoolteacher; there was no doubt about it. So I haven't the Gormley face, but Brian and myself have part of the Gormley name. Probably, the first reference I ever encountered to Paddy Kavanagh was when I was working in the Post Office in Omagh, and I read The Irish Press every morning to protect myself from the inroads of British imperialism. In the spring of 1936, there was an article on the front page with the credit line, Peter O'Curry. Peter had edited The DundalkExaminer; then he moved up to Dublin to The Irish Press; and then he edited The Weekly Standard. The article was about going to Inishkeen to meet this young poet [Patrick Kavanagh] who had his first book of poems published. And the poet came out over the threshold saying: “I was called 'an idler by the noisy set/ of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen/ The martyrs call the world”. The Standard, I met Peter O'Curry the first paper I read to the English Lit. at college, the one on Chesterton; I

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was already on a retainer from Senan at the time; whether I wrote for him or not, I had a retainer from him. And Peter took the chair for the reading of this brilliant paper; and he said to me after: “What are you going to do with yourself?” I said high school teaching or something. He said: “Do you want a job? Come down to me tomorrow and you'll have one.” And he offered me a part time job while I was still in college on The Weekly Standard. And Paddy and himself has always remained friendly; in fact, Patrick's A Soul for Sale is dedicated to Peter O’Curry. Paddy was a bit hard up at the time, and Peter brought him on the staff of The Standard while I was still there. I was doing the films, too, for The Standard. When I went on to The Independent, then Paddy took on the film column after me. But he gave up going to films after the interim of Gone With the Wind. He never went back to films again; he just reviewed them from the advance publicity after that. Said it was simpler. As a matter of fact, the very first time that “Raglan Road” was sung, She was in college with me. Now Paddy and herself used to be seen having tea in Michell's select little tea shop at the bottom of Grafton Street; it's no longer there. And her family, who were very well‑to‑do, heard about her going about with this threadbare poet. Of course, they raised bloody murder, and that was the end of that. But he came into me one day and Kevin B. Nowlan (I'd brought Kevin B. into The Standard to write editorials; Peter asked me to bring some college chaps in) and Kevin and myself were in this room; and Paddy came in and had written it out in pencil; and his spelling was worse than the spelling of Mr. Yeats; and he said could we sing that L to the air of “The Dawning of the Day”? So Kevin and myself stood up and said we could try. If you ever heard Kevin B. Nowlan and myself singing together, cacophony. Oh my God. So the three of us began to sing “Raglan Road”; and Peter O'Curry came in and said: “What in hell's name is going on in here?” So we explained, and Peter joined in; and that was the first time “Raglan Road” was ever sung. It was an incredible quartet: Kevin B., Paddy, myself, and Peter O’Curry. But Paddy, he was always good. From some most ordinary event, he could really begin talking, some trivial, semi‑sort of ordinary event, he could begin talking; and the vine would rise from it, you know, to all sorts of lofty considerations. He was rather interesting that way. And behind all the anger and gruffness, he was a gentle-hearted fellow.

F.K.: When did you go to America? B.K.: Sixty‑four. It was Louis Rubin rang me one night to go out there. He was excellent. I was at Hollins College with John Rees Moore and Lex Allen. It was a very pleasant place.

F.K.: You were publishing a lot in The New Yorker then? B.K.: Quite a lot. And before then. The first story, oddly enough Sean White did a bit of The Captain With the Whiskers in Irish Writing, and Maxwell in New York wrote to him about it and asked had I written short stories and would I send him short stories, so that was the beginning of my contact with The New Yorker. Maxwell and Rachel MacKenzie were my chief contacts there.

F.K.: I guess it's because the Irish short story has gotten so much attention that, it seems to me anyway, that your short stories have gotten more attention than the novels. B.K.: That's possibly true.

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F.K.: But I've enjoyed the novels just as much. What have you been working on since Proxopera? B.K.: I have two in mind at the moment. One, I always promised myself to do, is a novel on the famous Montgomery‑Glass murder case in Newtownstewart in 1875. Not so much the murderer or the man he murdered, but the figures who stood around it. A school friend of mine, Brian McBride, up there a local historian, (a very good man) did a stage play on it. Denis Johnston and Phillip Rooney both did radio plays of it. It was a celebrated case; an assistant inspector of police murdered a bank cashier. Money was involved in it, alright because Montgomery was in financial difficulties; but there was more to it than that. I think the year had something to do with it; the Franco-Prussian War was just over. Montgomery was the iron man, and regarded his friend as the decadent French; there was something of that in it. But then the people who were around the murder case are fascinating. The local petty sessions clerk and post master was a man called Gordon, who wrote a little book about the whole affair. And this book came into my possession some years ago. This Gordon also wrote poetry. Well, decent verse. But really, as I said, it's not the murder itself so much as the people who stood around it. I have little bits of it written here and there.

F.K.: How are your memoirs coming? B.K.: Well, Methuen has done the first part of it. The second, well, chunks of it are written. The first one is about growing up in Omagh and the people I grew up with. And the second will be about Dublin. I took the title, Drink to the Bird out of Edward Arlington Robinson's poem, “Mr. Flood's Party”; Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon Again, and we may not have many more; The bird is on the wing, the poet says, And you and I have said it here before. Drink to the bird. When he puts the jug down on the ground, he puts it down very tenderly on the ground, “knowing that most things break”. Patrick Colum knew Robinson very well; he used to talk about him a bit.

F.K.: What made you come to Dublin from the North? B.K.: Well, I always knew Dublin because I had a sister living here. And so I used to come up on holidays, even when I was a kid. I was first in Dublin, I think, when I was ten years of age. I came up with my father. But I've been permanently in Dublin since 1940. (I was in the orthopedic hospital out Finglas way, but that wouldn't count). I came up then to go to college when I came out of hospital. I had been briefly with the Jesuits before I was in hospital, but that was down in the Midlands. But I knew Dublin. I had a brother‑in law, Tom Stanley, who taught me how to know Dublin: go to Nelson Pillar and take any tram to its terminus and then walk back to the Pillar along the tram tracks. You couldn't get lost, you see. That was when the trams were coming and going at the Pillar. A three pence, that was to get me from the Pillar back to home on the tram. And I saw old John Milton's Latin poems in a bookstore, and I expended my three pence. To get back to the Pillar, I had to go on walking then; I was footsore by the time I got home.

F.K.: Except for Proxopera has the North ﬁgured in your writing? B.K.: Well, the Carmincrop Cross thing, of course. I go up there quite a lot, too. I'm a freeman of Omagh. It's a good town, too. It was a good town to grow up in. Still, it's a good town to visit.

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F.K.: So, then, you're well settled in Dublin? B.K.: Oh yes, Dublin more than any place else. But if you're not born here, you still wouldn't be accepted. You might be described as a Dubliner, but not as a Dublin man. There's a subtle difference there: a Dublin man is the genuine article. There's Seamus Kavanagh's definition: a Dublin man doesn't go home for Christmas; he is at home. It's subtle, that. Kavanagh, I don't know if you ever encountered him; he was an actor, retired from acting into radio work and the like. He was a great humourist. He was good at definitions; incest was cashing a check in your own bank.

F.K.: I heard a terrible one. Two ould ones were shopping on Moore Street. Looking at carrots in a cart, one ould one pointed to a huge carrot and said: “That reminds me of my husband.” “Is it the length of it?” “No, it's not the length of it.” “Is it the width of it?” “No, it's not the width of it.” “Well, if it's not the length of it and it's not the width of it, what about it reminds you of your husband?” “It's the dirt on it.” I heard that from some of the women of Enniskerry. B.K.: Frank, I notice you said you heard that from the women not the ladies, of Enniskerry. That reminds me of Peter Grimes' St Augustine I started reading once and never finished. Now Augustine really got worked up about sex and baptism and all that and was in controversy with Julian. Very strange man, Augustine was. Wisdom in him, alright; but by God there was a lot of other things in him too. I think that carrot story would have flattened him.

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

ENGLAND

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John Wain, Remarks on the short story

John Wain

EDITOR'S NOTE

First published in JSSE n°2, 1984

1 The short story is, of course, sui generis; it is not an unsatisfactory form of the long story. It is a form on its own, with its own laws and its own logic. A short story has its natural length. It isn’t trying to do the same thing as a novel. It has ground staked out which is its own ground. Historically, it is not an ancient form. It’s very much a modern form. It belongs to modern literature, the literature of about the last hundred years. It comes into being at about the same time as the specifically modern poem, just after Edgar Poe remarked that the long poem was a contradiction in terms. Whether the rise of the modern short story coinciding with the rise of the modern poem is simple coincidence I don’t know. I can’t formulate an explanation as to why it should have done this, but it is a noteworthy fact that it did. It also arose at about the same time as Impressionist painting with its obliquity of approach. You know that when an Impressionist paints people, he often puts them at the edge of the painting, or just walking off the painting, as if you catch them in the act of getting on with their ordinary lives, as if the painter were saying, “Yes, I’m not sitting this person down right in the middle of the painting and painting them. I’m painting a cafe, and there’s a man and a girl sitting at a table, and they’re over to one side, and about half the painting is made up of empty table, because that’s in the picture too, and that is also what I'm painting.” And the short story arises at about the same time as these other phenomena. I cannot explain why, but that it did so is obviously true. The short story, vis-à-vis the novel, is almost exactly like a drawing as compared to the painting. When we see a perfectly successful drawing we never say “How good that would have been if only it could have been a painting.” A painting is an entirely different thing. It has a depth, and it has a richness that the drawing can't have. The

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drawing catches a moment - forever. It's completely satisfying on its own grounds. The short story very nearly always does, or most characteristically does, deals with a moment of perception, very much what Joyce called an epiphany. It deals with a moment of perception. It deals with a moment of realization. I'm not going to go over what the other speaker said and contradict individual statements, but I was surprised by the remark that “Nothing very much can happen in one day.” I think that as we go through our lives, we often find that, as people say when they're telling you about an experience: “All of a sudden I realized that so-and-so.” With regard to your perception of life, things can happen in one day; things can happen in one minute that change the way you look at things, and this is very much the material of the short story: The moment of recognition, the moment of eye-opening. But, of course, a short story is not completely wedded to dealing with such moments. It can also show you, from outside, the essence of a life, the essence of the man's frustration when he gets back home and his boy has let the fire out, and he beats him. It's a concrete representation of the kind of life, the kind of frustration, and the emptiness that his life has, and the unbearable resentment that wells up in him, and makes him behave unjustly. It says everything in a very economical way.

2 Now, I think that is the first thing that one really must say, and it is the basis of what I want to say: that the short story has its own logic and its own laws, and it is not trying to be something else and failing. It is very triumphantly doing one thing. The best short stories are completely unforgettable, and they're just as good as the other work by the same author. I do, to speak briefly of my own practice, write short stories occasionally, and I agree very wholeheartedly that there is something instinctive, almost a knack; it's quite irrational. Writing a short story, to me, is very much - as I said, it's like a drawing - but it's also, on a humbler level, like a cook turning out a blancmange. You know you get the mold, and you turn it upside down, and you lift it off, and either the blancmange is perfect or it just falls over, and nothing will remedy that. That's it: it's ruined, and with a short story, it turns out right, or it doesn't turn out right. I have never read a fairly good short story. I have never read a short story that succeeded up to a point. There are perfectly successful short stories, and there are totally unsuccessful ones, and there's nothing in between, which again is rather like a drawing: it hits the nail on the head; it gets it right, or else it's nothing. And the satisfaction that one gets when one manages to turn that blancmange out perfectly, and it couldn't be done better, is a very great satisfaction, and I feel very glad that I have that knack. But a knack it is. It is not related to one's deeper powers, which is the reason why many famous writers have not been able to write short stories. It is a knack that they lack. It is something almost physical, the movement of the wrists, and one can do it or one can't.

3 Now the literary form that the short story most resembles is poetry, though I think that even poetry is not so much a matter of knack, not so much a matter of turning out the blancmange as the short story is. Even poetry is not that. Nevertheless, poetry also is something that evidently is partly instinctive, something that many respect-worthy writers have not been able to do. I mean, I don't know whether Tolstoy wrote any poems, but they haven't become well-known if so, and yet Tolstoy was a very great writer, and, therefore, there is once again the element of the given, the element of the instinctive power which is somehow implanted in some people and not in others. There is at least one writer in England today, that is Victor Pritchett, who writes marvellous

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short stories and has done so for many years, and his few novels, I think, are much less interesting, and he is a man who works very naturally in the short story and gives the impression of being short-winded; he doesn't like to keep it going for very long.

4 Now, following on from the fact that the short story is like a drawing, we have the concomitant fact that you can write a short story about people that you don't know, whose lives you don't know, in very great detail. You see, if you write the realistic novel as I do, I mean, there are all kinds of novels, but if, as I do, you write the middle-of-the- road realistic novel as it's been understood in Europe for the last two hundred years (ordinary, credible characters in ordinary settings)... When I write a novel about people, I always have to write about the kind of people whose lives I know in detail, because the novel presents people making choices, and then what follows from that choice, and what they do next, and you've got to know what kind of work they do, and what they do when they get home, and what their homes are like, and what their relationships are like. You've got to know people very well to write a realistic novel about them, which means that all the novels that I have written have dealt with the kind of person that I am and the kind of person that I mix with; not necessarily the kind of person I am temperamentally, but the kind of milieu. I am a very middle of the middle-class person. My father was a dentist, and so when I was growing up, the people who came to our house were either medical people or clergymen (because my father was interested in church matters). I now know people who are scholars, or lawyers, or medical people again, or people who are in communications, radio, journalists and, of course, other writers. Now, those are the kind of people I know, and, therefore, if I'm going to write a novel, I'm stuck with those people. They're all right; they're human beings too. I mean, the emotional and moral problems that people have are real emotional and moral problems; therefore, I don't mind writing about them. But if you write a short story, you can – because you don't need so much detail and because a short story takes one instance of that person's life, takes one specimen moment – you can, in fact, go and spend a day visiting a factory, you can look at someone working at a factory bench, and you can get a flash of what it must be like to be him or her, and then you can write a short story which just gives one flash of that person. You might get it wrong; it might be a flash that's quite misleading, but assuming that you are going to get it right, you don't need a lot of detail. You could observe that person from the outside, and, therefore, whereas when I have written novels, I have always written about the same milieu that I actually live in, when I've written short stories, I've written about agricultural workers, industrial workers, very old people, children, a boy who was a lifeguard on a bathing beach: things that are not within my ordinary experience but about people I've observed, and obviously observed to some extent from outside; though ideally one tries, of course to interiorize, one tries to sympathize with every human being, of every kind, in the world, if one possibly could. But writing a novel about them is not just a matter of sympathizing with them; it is a matter of moving around enormous amounts of information. Now a short story does not need enormous amounts of information. It is, therefore, extremely liberating. It has the power to liberate you from the social milieu that you know best.

5 Now then, let's get a little closer to the question: how does it do this? The form that it most resembles is poetry and, like poetry, the short story is irreducible. You cannot tell it in other words. The novel is the form of literary art that is the most possible to translate into another language, for example, because you still have the story; you still

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have the characterization; you still have the order of the incidents, the structure of the narrative: you have a great deal when you translate a novel. When you translate a poem into another language you have nothing, because that element in it which is poetry belongs to the language and is untranslatable. So you can only produce another poem in your own language which bears some relationship to it; you can carry over some of the subject matter, but you can't translate the poem, per se.

6 Now in exactly the same way, while you can translate a short story more or less, if you're meticulous enough, because you haven't got the problem of the verse and so on, it still comes very close to that inseparability from its original expression. Even a short story that actually has a story - and many of them don't - that has a narrative, an event, un événement, even such a short story always uses some very telling detail, and if you took that detail away, it's quite impossible to say exactly what would have gone from what the story is saying, but one knows, of course, that something important has obviously gone.

7 There is a story by Maupassant about an ordinary Parisian citizen called Monsieur Depuis in a railway compartment. (Maupassant loved railway compartments.) The world is going by outside, and you see the world through the window, but the world does not intrude on this closed situation. Now, Monsieur Depuis is going out of Paris after the siege of 1870. He's going to see his wife and children whom he sent to Switzerland to be safe during the fighting. And he's been a member of the guard in Paris, and done his patriotic duty, and he’s terribly tired. He’s a middleaged, peaceful sort of man. One pictures him as a grocer or something of that kind. And he's slumped in the railway compartment, watching, idly looking through the window, and as he sees groups of Prussian soldiers everywhere, standing about, and France seeming to be, as it were, haunted and desecrated by these soldiers in their alien uniforms. And there are two Englishmen in the compartment who are reading to one another out of a guidebook and treating the whole thing as an interesting sightseeing expedition that couldn't really concern them. And he falls asleep, and as the train rolls through the countryside, Monsieur Depuis goes to sleep. And then a Prussian officer gets in and behaves insufferably to him, and sits pointing out of the window, saying, “Yes, that's where I killed half a dozen of these damned Frenchmen,” and so on and so forth. You remember the story. Anyway, in the end, the Prussian behaves so abominably that Monsieur Depuis can't contain himself, and he gives him a punch on the nose, whereupon the Prussian says, “You will fight a duel with me. I shall get one of my fellow officers to be my second at the next stop, and you will get off and fight a duel.” So he says, “All right, all right, so I am going to be killed. I'm going to be killed.” He doesn't know how to get out of it; there's no way to get out of it. And, obviously, fighting with a professional soldier, he's not going to be able to win the duel. One of the Englismen agrees to be his second, and the whole thing is grinding on. The train gets to a station. They get out. They go behind some sheds. The Prussian has another officer. The Englishman is seconding Monsieur Depuis. They raise their pistols, and the order comes to fire, and to his absolute stupefaction, Monsieur Depuis kills the officer; by some fantastic feat of chance, his gun goes off just a little bit before or something, and the man falls dead. He's killed. So he goes back to the platform, and the train's still there, and he gets on, and the two Englishmen get on. And the train starts its journey again. And he sinks back, utterly exhausted by the whole horrible experience, and he goes to sleep again, and the two

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Englishmen look at him with amazement: he's asleep again. The story begins with him asleep and it ends with him asleep. Now, what that story is about is the man going to sleep and going to sleep again. And if I were to try to tell you in other words what that is saying about the nature of Life and the nature of experience, I couldn't. I couldn't unpack it, any more than you can unpack what is said in a poem. It's very close to what we used to call pure poetry. You know, there was a vogue for la poésie pure; it isn't necessarily the only kind of poetry, but all poetry approaches it to some extent. And that detail of the train with the man asleep, and then the dreadful, ghastly situation of the duel and the death of the officer, and then the train going on with the man asleep again - that is how the short story works. Incidentally, I must be honest and confess to you that I have known that story all my life, and Maupassant has always been very important to me, but when I was making my preparations to come here, I got the Pléiade edition of Maupassant in order to read the story again. I thought I'd better re-read it, and I found that in the version that's there, he doesn't go to sleep - either at the beginning or the end. But I'm perfectly sure I didn't dream it. Maupassant very often revised his stories. The textual notes in the Pléiade edition, in the case of Maupassant, are extremely brief, and the editor simply says, “This appeared in a certain publication in 1883, and that is the text I used.” That's admitting that there are other texts; he doesn’t tell you anything about them. Maupassant has that wonderful gift of the detail that says it all. There's another siege of Paris story you'll remember about two middle-aged Parisians who get out through the German lines, and they go fishing. And they catch some fish. And on the way back, they're caught; they're captured by the Prussians who take them to their commandant. And he's trying to get some information from them about the defenses of the city. And they won't tell him anything, so he gets each one off on his own, and says that the other one has talked, and they still won't tell him anything. So he has them shot. And as they're led away to be shot, he sees the bag with the fish that they’ve caught, lying there. And he says to his orderly, “Oh, we'll have that tonight. It will be delicious;” and then he lights a cigarette.

8 Now, that story would really not be anything without that detail of eating the fish that the men have caught. And if I were to try and say what it is that that detail says, I probably could do it if I talked for an hour, but Maupassant can do it in those few words.

9 Now, this is why the short story has no need to defer to any other form because such a detail would be lost in the large canvas of the novel. Such details do occur in novels, but you don't notice them so much because the extent of the novel is so much greater. So that is one point I wanted to make. There has always been short fiction. There have always been short stories since mankind began. Of course. And short narrative occurs all through world literature from the very beginning. But I think it's quite easy to demonstrate that even the greatest examples of short narrative from the ancient world, and, for that matter, the medieval world, are quite different. The conditions of modern literature are different, modern literature of the last hundred years, are quite different. And if you take even the most memorable short tales, and think of a typical one... Now, here I find myself in a slight difficulty because I want to refer to a story from the Apocrypha. Even in this secular age, it might offend some people if one used a story actually from Holy Writ for the purposes of literary criticism, but the Apocrypha, presumably, is a different matter. And I want to use the story of “Tobit“ from the Apocrypha. Now I don't want to insult

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anybody's intelligence, but I might just help one or two people if I briefly remind you of what happens in the story of “Tobit,“ because, of course, there are very well-known stories, but perhaps you will be patient while I just very briefly say what happens in the book of “Tobit.“ I'll cut it down so remorselessly that it won't seem a very interesting story, but... Tobit is a good, God-fearing, religious Israelite, who obeys all the religious commandements and keeps all the observances, and he's the diagram of a good, upright, God-fearing man. And, in particular, the Israelites, at the time of the story, were in captivity, as they were in so many of the Bible stories. Tobit, who has managed to avoid being persecuted and has some kind of responsible position, is always on the lookout for religious duties that he can perform; and, particularly, he buries the dead. When he finds somebody lying dead, he buries him with the full procedure; he gives him a proper religious burial. And he gets into trouble for this, and he has to flee and go into hiding, and then there's another change in the political system, and he's allowed back, and he lives with his wife, Anna, and his son, Tobias. And one day it is a feast day where the Jews are commanded to feast, a religious feast day. So Tobit does all the things: he says all the right prayers, and he does the ritual washing, and then he sits down to eat this meal. But before eating the meal, he says to Tobias, his son, “Go out and find me a member of our tribe who fears God, who keeps the law and bring him in to share our food.“ Tobias goes out, Tobit is waiting - and the son, Tobias comes in and says, “There's a man lying dead out there. He was strangled, just a few minutes ago, and he's lying dead.“ So Tobit immediately gets up from his meal, goes out, picks up the body, and takes it into a shed or somewhere where he can hide it until nightfall and then dig the grave, and not be seen, and give him a proper burial. The neighbors see this and mock him. They say, “Look at him: burying a dead body again. The number of times he's got into trouble for that - you'd think he could have learned his lesson.“ And they pour mockery on him. But he just goes ahead and he takes the body in.

10 Now, that night, in sorrow, he buries the man. And it's a hot night, and he's lying out of doors. And he lies with his face turned towards the wall, and there are some sparrows in the wall whose droppings fall on his eyes. And white patches appear on his eyes - opaque white patches. He's now struck with blindness. And he's in despair, and he prays God to let him die.

11 Now at just the same time in the same country, there is a young woman named Sarah who is also praying for death, and her problem is that she has seven times been betrothed; seven times they've had a wedding feast; and seven times the bridegroom's been destroyed, between the wedding feast and consummating the marriage. The bridegroom's been killed by a fiend, an evil spirit called Asmodeus who has particularly marked out this girl's bridegrooms as victims, and he always appears on the wedding night. So she is being mocked at by other people of her generation saying, “You must be a bad-luck bringer; you must be bad news. I hope you never have children.“ And she's in complete despair, and she prays God that she may die. So you have Tobit and Sarah both praying for death. And the two prayers arrive at the throne of God at the same time, and God says to his archangel, Raphael, “Go down, and put the troubles of these two people right.“ So Raphael departs. The story now takes a turn here. Tobit has to send Tobias on a journey. It doesn’t matter what the journey’s for. It’s to claim some money that he left or something, but

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never mind. He says to Tobias, “Go on this journey and take someone with you who knows the way and knows the country. Go out and find a guide for your journey.” So Tobias goes out, and the first person he meets is Raphael, who has assumed ordinary human shape for this errand. And he says, “I'm looking for somebody who knows the way to so and so.“ “Oh, I know it. I know the country, and I'm of that region.” “Oh, well, that is good,“ says Tobias. “You must come see my father, and he will hire you.“ So he takes the archangel in, and the old blind man is sitting there, and he says to the archangel, “What is your family? Who is your father? What is his tribe?“ And Raphael gives him a set of invented answers. And he say that he's called Azarias, the son of the older Aranius, who is a kinsman. And Tobit, who is very obsessed with relationships and tribal matters, is very pleased that he's found somebody of the right family. And he says to him, “Ah, you come of a good family, and you have a good father.” So the two of them go off, and they go off on their journey, and then it becomes pure folk tale. One night they camp by the river Tigris. Tobias goes to the river to wash his feet. An enormous fish in the water grabs one of his feet. And he calls to Azarius to help him, and he says, “Get hold of the fish and pull him out of the water.“ So he pulls the fish out of the water. And then Azarius says, “Cut the fish open, take out the heart, the liver, and the gall.“ So he does it and he wraps them up, and they go on their journey. And as they go, Azarius says, “Now, we're going to stay with so-and-so, and he has a daughter called Sarah, who wants a husband, and it would be a very good thing if you married her. The old man has got wealth. You would inherit all that, and what’s more, she's a very nice girl, and you ought to do it.” But he says, “Look, I've heard about these seven men who were killed by Asmodius. I'm afraid.“ “That's all right. Do it.“ And something in the angel's authority convinces Tobias. And when they get there, and he meets the girl and he meets the father, and he asks the girl's father if he may have the girl in marriage. It's arranged there and then. According to the law of that time, the old man writes a marriage contact immediately. They have a meal. Then the young couple go to bed, and the father doesn't ever expect to see Tobias again, so much so that when morning comes, he tells the servants to go out and dig the grave, so that they can get him buried before anybody sees him. But what has in fact happened is that they go to the bedchamber. Asmodius does appear, but Tobias has been told by the mysterious friend, the angel, that he must take the heart and liver of the fish and burn it, and the fumes will drive away any evil spirits; it will drive away any fiend or devil of any description. So when Asmodius appears, Tobias puts these two organs of the fish onto the hot incense that they're burning. The smell immediately banishes the fiend, who is then pursued into Upper Egypt, which is a rather nice touch, by Raphael, who binds him hand and foot, presumably for eternity. He never reappears in the story. So, Tobias has married the girl and lived, and when they discover that, there's a tremendous feast. Everybody is full of joy, full of contentment of every kind, and the archangel, still in his human identity, says, “Now the gall of the fish has another use: it cures blindness. In particular, it removes white patches from the eyes. You powder it, and you blow it on the eyes.“

12 So they journey home. The old, blind Tobit comes out to greet his son, and Tobias blows the gall of the fish on his eyes, and forthwith the patches peel away, and his eyes are normal. He can see.

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So they're all completely overjoyed. Tobias has come back. He's got a wife. He's rich. Tobit can see. Their troubles are over. The happy ending of the story is now with us, and the story ends with a tremendous burst of joy and gladness. And then, in the middle of the feast, Tobit says to his son, Tobias, “What about the fellow who went with you to show you the way? We musn't forget to pay him.“ And Tobias says, “Pay him? We'll give him half of everything we brought. He deserves it: he cured your eyes, he enabled me to survive Asmodius,“ and so on. And the old man says, “Yes. We will give him half.” So they call him in, and they say, “You must take half of everything we brought - the slaves, the gold, the camels, and this and that. Go in peace.“ And the angel, then, reveals himself and says who he is. Now part of why that dénouement is moving is, of course, because of the stately way it's told, the stateliness of the language. I'm quite sure that in the original Hebrew, the language is very beautiful. In seventeenth-century English, it’s this: Surely I will keep close nothing from you, for I said, “it was good to keep close the secret of a king but that it was honourable to reveal the works of God. » Now, therefore, when thou didst pray and Sarah, thy daughter-in-law, I did bring the remembrance of your prayers before the Holy One. And when thou didst bury the dead, I was with thee likewise. And when thou didst not delay to rise up and leave thy dinner to go and cover the dead, thy good deed was not hid from me, but I was with thee. And now God hath sent me to heal thee and Sarah, thy daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One. Then they were both troubled and fell upon their faces, for they feared. But he said unto them, “Fear not, for it shall go well with thee.“

13 That, of course, is magnificent. It's one of the great stories, but we will now stand away from it and consider that narrative and why it is different from a modern short story. We could describe it, I think, by saying it is a blend of two very well-defined genres. First of all, it is an instructional religious story. It is the story of how a good man was rewarded, because it goes into great detail about how scrupulous Tobit was; Tobit always - in misfortune, in sickness, in everything else - observed the law and kept the commandments of God, and he was rewarded, because you note that the reward is purely a personal reward for him. It doesn't flow from anything in the situation. When Tobias marries Sarah, her father was very glad that he's a kinsman, but actually, all the other seven were kinsmen too. In the eyes of the world, by the standards of ordinary morality, Tobias has no more claim to the girl and the fortune than the other men. But his claim is that the archangel is looking after him, that God has sent Raphael for that purpose. Therefore, it is a direct story of intervention on the behalf of a good man, and, thus a story that naturally arises in the literature of a much-suffering people, the Jews, whose traditional literature is full of those stories. That is one of its two main elements, and the other, of course I needn't say - you know already - is folklore. It is pure folktale: the magic properties of the organs of the fish, for instance. It's very much an Eastern folktale, like the kind of story that we find in “The Arabian Nights“, and indeed, it is, as you will, of course, know, cognate with a very widely distributed folk story which scholars call “The Grateful Dead,“ and which occurs across Europe and Asia. In the “Grateful Dead“ cluster of folk-tales, there is always a rich merchant who goes travelling, and sees a dead man whose corpse is being maltreated. He goes over and

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says, “Stop that.“ And they say, “He died owing us money, and now he's dead, and we can't get our money.“ So he says, “Leave him alone. I'll pay the money.“ So he pays the money, and he buries the man. Later on in the tale, when he's fallen into poverty and misfortune, he wants to marry a rich girl, but the trouble with this girl is that she's had seven husbands, and all the husbands have been killed by a snake which has come out of the mouth of the bride. A mysterious slave advises him and says, “Do it. It will be all right.“ Something impresses him about this, and he goes and marries the girl, and that night they go to the bed chamber, and this snake does come out, whereupon the mysterious slave appears and kills the snake, and they all live happily ever after. It turns out that the slave is the spirit of the dead man that he has helped.

14 Now, that story appears intact, you see, in the book of “Tobit,“ which explains the tremendous emphasis on Tobit burying the dead and getting into trouble for it, and getting up from the table to go and bury the dead. The story of the grateful dead is embedded in an instructional religious story. Now it's superb narrative; but it is nothing like a modern short story. I hope I've made my point, that the great stories of antiquity, though they're short and they're stories, are not what we call “short stories.“ They have different roots and different modes of procedure. And I want to end by considering one more story, one modern short story, this time from the earlier years of our century, in 1907. Penguin Books have just put back into print and made available again The Grim Smile of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett, so it's a very easy book to get. It can be bought at any wayside paper shop, practically, news agency in England now, certainly any book shop. It contains one of Bennett's finest works. Bennett is a writer who is not in fashion at this moment. He's a minor classic of English literature; I suppose people would more or less agree with that assessment. Some of his books, like The Old Wives' Tale, continue to go on and on, and they always have readers. And he represents the attempt to plant in English the kind of novel that was so strong in France in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries: the realistic novel, the novel which was, above all, truthful. Bennett is a great writer about provincial life, and he has a story called “The Death of Simon Fuge,“ which is in this book, The Grim Smile of the Five Towns. The “five towns“ are what Bennett called what is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent, which is actually six towns, a place where you worked, and you didn't really do anything but work, because it was organized for work, and outside work, you could drink beer and watch football that's really about all you could do. Not a place where there was fine appreciation of the arts, you would have thought, or very much in the way of high civilization, though of course, it was the town of Wedgewood. It is the only town in England known by the name of a trade - the Potteries. Now, Bennett came from there, and when I say came from there, he left at the same age that Joyce left Dublin – twenty-one. And he had a very ambiguous relationship with it. He was an artist of memory, like Joyce. He wrote about the Five Towns all his life; all his best work, or nearly all his best work, is about it. But he died in 1931 when I was six years old - and I remember that the older people didn't like him. They disapproved of him. To them, he was a man who'd made a lot of money writing about them, but he didn't go and live among them, you know, and they disliked him. When he died, he left instructions that he was to be taken back home and buried. And he is buried, under the shadow of a great slag heap, in the middle of this very working town, a man who could easily have gotten into some fashionable graveyard in London if he'd wanted to.

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But he had a relationship with the five towns that was very deep and very complex, and “The Death of Simon Fuge“ is a wonderful story, which I'm sure you'll read because it's very easy to get hold of and very cheap, and I’m not going to spoil it by talking very much about it. I just want to lay it before you, for your attention, because, once again, it is the art of the short story in suggesting, in using very telling detail; it says as much as a novel, it says easily as much as a novel of a hundred thousand words could say on this theme. It begins with a train, like Maupassant. In the train compartment is an esthete from the British Museum, an expert on ceramics, very much a Londoner, very much a metropolitan type who knows all the fashionable things, who keeps up with everything that happens in London, and who reads the right papers, and who is very much in the swing - which was the other half of Arnold Bennett. Bennett lived in London most of his life - that's to say when he didn't live in Paris, because he was passionately fond of Paris and lived there for about seven years. But Bennett was always very keen on going to the latest music, and going to the theatre, and keeping in touch with everything. And this man represents that side of him. And he's going down to the five towns where he's never been, in his life. And he's going down to see this bunch of strange provincial people who - he really almost expects them to have tails, I think. And on the way down, it gives a beautiful, concise picture of this man, the kind of thoughts he's having, what he's reading, and then he gets there. And he looks out of the train window at the blackened houses and the smoke and the dirty canal, and he thinks, “Is this where Simon Fuge came from?“, because in the paper on the way down, he's read “Death of Mr. Simon Fuge, Painter,“ and there's a little appreciation of this exquisite painter - not one of the very famous ones but somebody with an exquisite gift who is very well-known like himself. And he's been reading that Simon Fuge is dead on the way down. And he gets there; he looks around, and he says, “Is this where Simon Fuge came from?“ And the evening is just - he meets the man who runs the local museum he's going to work with tomorrow, and they give him dinner, and they take him out and get him drunk, and one thing or another. He meets the local people. And on one side of it, the story follows a very well-worn pattern: it's the taking down of the courtier by the peasant. You know, that's almost a folktale: the man from London who knows it all and arrives and finds that they know it all, too, and they actually know more about contemporary music and things than he does. And he gradually realizes that behind their rough exterior, they actually are people with a great deal of information, and he comes to respect them. But when he brings up Simon Fuge, they won't have it. They won't even talk about him, because they rather have the attitude of, “Oh, yes, Simon Fuge, yes, well, we knew him well,“ you know, like the people from back home, always, you know. It's no good talking. Right up to recent times, the people in Dublin would never have any respect for “Willy Yeats“ because “We knew him, when.“ And so whenover he brings up Simon Fuge, all they're concerned to talk about is that Simon Fuge had a rather mysterious, amorous entanglement with two sisters. And it's not quite known whether he got anywhere with these sisters or whether he did with one and not the other or maybe both of them or what. And one of these sisters is married to one of the men whose houses he goes to, and she receives him in this nice, comfortable house, and the other is working as a bar maid. And in the course of the evening, they meet the other one. His host, Mr. Brindley, has said he'll find out; he'll bring the subject up.

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“By the way,“ said Mr. Brindley, “you used to know Simon Fuge, didn't you?“ “Oh, Simon Fuge,“ said Miss Brett. “Yes, after the Brewery Company took the Blue Bell at Calder over there I used to be there. He would come in sometimes. Such a nice, queer old man.“ “I mean, the son,“ said Mr. Brindley. “Oh, yes,“ she said. “I knew young Simon, too.“ A slight hesitation and then, “Of course.“ Another hesitation. “Why?“ “Nothing,“ said Mr. Brindley, “only he's dead.“ “You don't mean to say he's dead?“ she exclaimed. “Day before yesterday, in Italy,“ said Mr. Brindley. Miss Brett's manner certainly changed. It seemed almost to become natural and unecstatic. “I suppose it'll be in the papers,“ she ventured. “It's in the London paper.“ “Well, I never,“ she muttered. “A long time, I should think, since he was in this part of the world,“ said Mr. Brindley. “When did you last see him?“ He was exceeding skillful, I considered.

15 Nothing actually happens. It's like Chekhov. They go from house to house to talk, and you never even find out what happened between Simon Fuge and this girl. It's very much a Chekhovian story. (Bennett was so passionately fond of Chekhov that he had two complete sets of Chekhov's stories - one in his London house and one in his country house - so that if at any given moment he suddenly wanted to read a story by Chekhov, he was only seconds away from the bookshelf.) And this is a Chekhovian story, I think one of the first in English - 1907. But as they go from house to house and talk, and they bring up Simon Fuge, and they bring up this and that aspect of Fuge's life and finally the Londoner goes into the art gallery. And he sees a little painting. The little picture showed all this: it was a painting, unfinished, of a girl standing at a door and evidently hesitating whether to open the door or not; a very young girl, very thin, with long legs in black stockings, and short, white, untidy frock; thin, bare arms, the head thrown on one side, and the hands raised and one foot raised, in a wonderful, childish gesture - the gesture of an undecided fox terrier. The face was an infant's face, utterly innocent, and yet Simon Fuge had somehow caught in that face a glimpse of all the future of the woman that the girl was to be. He had displayed with exquisite insolence the essential naughtiness of his vision of things. The thing was not much more than a sketch. It was a happy accident, perhaps, in some day's work of Simon Fuge's, but it was genius. When once you had yielded to it, there was no other picture in the room. It killed everything else, but wherever it had found itself, nothing could have killed it. Its success was undeniable, indestructible, and it glowed sombrely there on the wall - a few splashes of colour on a morcel of canvas. And it was Simon Fuge's unconscious power of challenge to the five towns. It was Simon Fuge - at any rate, all of Simon Fuge that was worth having - masterful, imperishable, and not merely it has challenged. It was his scorn, his aristocratic disdain, his positive assurance that in the battle between them, he had annihilated the five towns. It hung there in the very midst thereof, calmly and contemptuously waiting for the acknowledgement of his victory. “Which?“ said Mr. Brindley. “That one.” “Yes, I fancy it is.“ He seemed to agree. “Yes. It is.” “It's not signed,” I remarked. “It ought to be,“ said Mr. Brindley. They laughed. “Too late now.” “How did it get here?” “Don't know. Oh, I think Mr. Perkins won at a raffle in a bazaar and then hung it here. He did as he liked here, you know.”

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16 He then changes the subject to show the man something else, but you get, you see, this little masterpiece, which the man says, “Oh, well, the fellow who used to run the gallery, he did as he liked,“ the implication being that it was an eccentric act to hang that painting, and the whole feeling of putting up a wall against Simon Fuge - that is how Bennett felt. It's very, very engagé, that story, because Bennett was just coming into his strength. In another year or two, he was to write Old Wives' Tale, and then he really became a world-famous author. But at the time he wrote this story, he was just conscious of being a very good writer, conscious that nobody back home had very much heard of him, conscious of strength, also feeling that double pull, feeling very drawn back home and, at the same time, not wanting to go back because of the kind of attitude they would have - all these things. I'm putting them so crudely and quickly.

17 And there is Simon Fuge's painting, and as the man gets back into the train to go back to London, he thinks “A strange place,“ I reflected, as I ate my dinner in the dining car, with the pressure of Mr. Brindley's steely clasp still affecting my right hand and the rich, honest cordiality of his au revoir in my heart; a place that is passing strange. And I thought further, “he may have been a boaster, and a chatterer, and had rather cold feet at the wrong moments, and the five towns may have got the better of him now, but that portrait of the litte girl in the Wedgewood Institution is waiting there, right in the middle of the five towns, and one day, the five towns will have to give it best. They can say what they like. What eyes the fellow had, when he was in the right company!

18 That's how it ends. Now that is one of those last sentences, rather like, “I'll tell you,“ said Rosie, “he was such a perfect gentleman,“ at the end of Cakes and Ale, which, incidentally, I think is a book, a satire on English class consciousness, and, therefore, that last sentence is absolutely masterly, because it irradiates the entire book. “What eyes the fellow had, When he was in the right company,“ but what was the right company, for Simon Fuge? Was it the people that he came from? Or was it the Italians among whom he died ? Was it London where his painting became known? What was the right company? It's just such a perfect touch; it's that kind of detail. And, as I say, that is an example of a short story which has, I think, been neglected. I think it is the best thing that Arnold Bennett ever did. It's very easy to get hold of. Now that must be my excuse for putting it very firmly in front of you, except, of course, that anything that underlines the power that Chekhov has had must be illuminating. And we mustn't forget that even Chekhov, great, as supremely great as he was, Chekhov had the way made straight for him by Turgenev. Turgenev is the genius behind Chekhov, of course. And the short story begins - one of the first volumes of the modern short story is A Sportsman's Sketches by Turgenev. And you start reading them and you think they're just beautiful little sketches of Russian rural life, with the gentlemen going hunting and staying in the huts of the peasants. And then gradually as you read one fragile story after another, you realize it's a social document against serfdom. And that is another quick footnote: that the cumulative effect of a number of short stories can be exactly the same as a novel.

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V.S. Pritchett (1900-1997)

Ben Forkner and Philippe Séjourné

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Ben Forkner and Philippe Séjourné, July 18, 1985, First published in JSSE n°6, 1986

1 The following interview took place at V.S. Pritchett’s home on Thursday, July 18, 1985. Because it was a weekday, and Camdem Town in London is a working-class town, the streets were almost deserted when we arrived. We were early, and walked over to Regent’s Park to pass the time. For a man who delights in borders, and all sorts of subtle hesitations, sidesteppings, intrusions, and escapes, V.S. Pritchett's house stands helpfully in the midst of several distinct but watchful urban frontiers. From a quiet residential crescent of late Regency townhouses, he faces Regent's Park across a couple of busy roads and a railroad track. He wakes up to the sound of the animals in the Parks’ well-stocked Zoo. The Park is a large green expanse, full of fields, thick untrimmed trees, and hidden paths. Behind his house lies Camden Town with its crowded blind alleys, its warehouses, and its shops where he does the afternoon's shopping. As if to insist on this crossing of realms, on the day of the interview a Spaniard had decided to put himself in one of the Zoo’s cages as a stunt. He apparently attracted little attention, possibly because as Pritchett says, in the interview, most of the citizens are busy acting out their own private roles. We stopped in the Park just for a few minutes, time enough for tea and biscuits in an outside café not far from a field of dogwalkers. It was a warm afternoon and the Spaniard was perhaps asleep in his cage. There was no sound or sign of movement from that area of the Park. When we returned to Sir Victor’s house, we deliberately walked past, thinking we were still early. As we turned back, there he was, having come outside to meet us, worried that we were confused. The interview took place in a comfortable living room, hung with paintings, mostly several remarkable, secretive green landscapes by a friend, Reynolds Stone, and dominated by a large glass case full of stuffed birds, a collection worthy of Pritchett’s Uncle Arthur, but actually a gift of an old friend and editor. As the reader of the

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interview will sense, Pritchett's remarks are expansive and inventive, often seeing in obvious questions hidden directions. We talked for well over two hours, having been given “as much time as you want“. We would like to thank Sir Victor not only for the generous and penetrating answers, but also for his hospitality, a kind welcome and relaxed atmosphere, and some excellent Bergerac wine.

Outside england

Ben FORKNER: My ﬁrst question is about your early life and the way it stimulated your interest in the short story. I know that you ﬁrst began reading and writing short stories when you were in Ireland. V.S.PRITCHETT: That's true, yes. My beginning life was quite outside writing. I was a journalist and I was sent to Ireland during the Irish Civil War in the 20's after the Treaty when the two sides in the Rebellion fought each other, and I read a great deal of the Irish writers then such as Yeats, George Russell (A.E.), Liam O'Flaherty, Frank O'Connor, Sean O'Faolain, in fact all those remarkable writers. They had all read the Russians, and there was a tremendous interest in literature in Ireland, Dublin has got splendid bookshops...

B.F.: You met Liam O'Flaherty? V.S.P.: I met him, I knew him fairly well. I admired his stories and from that it seemed to me that this is the form of writing I should try and do myself, because up till then I had written nothing else but sketches, descriptions of places, that kind of thing, but not a complete story. He was of course very interested in Chekhov and D.H. Lawrence, so there was a double entry into the short story via Ireland. In England, I don’t think I had even read any Kipling in my twenties, though all my elders knew him by heart. In fact it was much later that I read English short stories. But Hemingway's dialogue attracted me.

B.F.: And you've said it was a good period to begin writing short stories. There was an active interest, not only in Ireland, but... V.S.P.: Well, everywhere. There was in England — D.H. Lawrence, for example and Katherine Mansfield — and of course in France. In Ireland, there was a link with the Abbey Theatre where they produced a large number of one‑act plays, and the one‑act play was the thing which was becoming extremely popular in Europe outside Ireland. Really the idea had come to Ireland from Europe. Such plays are of course a step to the writing of short stories: it's adjacent to it. That was my beginning. However what I wrote then was very short, not much more than anecdotes, with a slight poetic tendency to them, but still anecdotes. Even the plainest short story is a poem.

B.F.: Did you write them for publication? V.S.P.: Yes, I tried to get them published. Indeed I wrote one “Rain in the Sierra,“ which was accepted in the paper called the Irish Statesman but never published. The paper went bust (laughter). Actually, I had travelled a good deal, you know, I had worked and lived in France, I then went to Dublin and to Spain. My first real published story of any scale: “Tragedy in Greek Theatre“ was published in the Cornhill and it was thought well of. I thought, well, I must be getting better because I can get a long story published. This story was set in Taormina.

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B.F.: One thing I noticed in going through your autobiographies is the importance of travelling and going across borders. You end A Cab at the Door with these words: “I am pretty sure that although I am often described as a traditional English writer any originality in my writing is due to my having a foreign mind.“ You started writing when you started crossing frontiers? And looking back on your life in England? V.S.P.: Yes, I think this is true. I left school when I was sixteen and I had a very modest education, but the one thing I was rather good at was languages and I was longing to get abroad and to see other countries. And especially the notion of crossing from one frontier to the other, as I felt that I had crossed frontiers in English life too. I had crossed the frontier out of rather modest lower middle class circumstances into the company of rather intellectual people. This transition from class to class and from country to country was very liberating to me.

B.F.: And this is what you meant by being on the borderline when you write? V.S.P.: Yes, I do feel that. I feel it's a break with absolute realism; you're crossing from one portion of the mind to another portion, from reality to the imagination. It's the stimulus of doing that, I think, which has been important to me. It still is.

B.F.: And at the same time you began talking about national character. You talk about the American South, somewhat, but mainly about the French character, the Spanish character, and the Irish character. In your stories too, people are often identiﬁed by their national character. V.S.P.: Yes, I think that is so, though theories of national character are very shaky. When I was young I was enormously opposed to the notion that other nations were alien, therefore they were “wrong,“ or that is to say, they had mistaken ideas and habits which, as a matter of fact, quite a large number of my very young contemporaries — especially schoolboys — firmly believed. The kind of Englishman I didn't much care for in those days was the kind who automatically went out to Europe, to India, to places abroad. They had such conventional and distorted views of the people they were living among. And I thought that the only thing that would interest me if I went to these places were the people themselves, and not the English colony. I tend to think all foreigners are right. Ireland was a great test because after all the Ireland of that period had been fighting the British up to then. Like many English people I loved being in Ireland, and the British and the Irish privately got on enormously well together, and that was quite a revelation to me.

B.F.: Were they welcoming? V.S.P.: Oh, enormously, enormously.

B.F.: You didn't know Yeats beforehand? V.S.P.: No I didn't know Yeats beforehand, I'd read him of course. I didn't know any Irish people.

B.F.: James Stephens? V.S.P.: Yes and Frank O'Connor later on. I didn't know any of these people before. But Dublin is a small city, it had an intellectual society; if you were a journalist, as I was then, it was very easy to know them, and I was passionately interested in them, and I found even the most anti‑British Irish (nominally anti‑British Irish) in Ireland, just after the war, were far from hostile; we were on the friendliest terms at once. I am capable of a little blarney myself — the Cockney kind!

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B.F.:And this was during a war. V.S.P.: It was actually during the Civil War, after the Treaty when Sinn Fein split.

Philippe SÉJOURNÉ:And in what year was that? V.S.P.: That was in early 1922. The Rebellion was in 1916 and I had got to know some of the people in the Rebellion who were the most congenial company, especially the father of the present Prime Minister.

B.F.:I can't remember exactly where in your autobiography you say that the Irish are especially gifted in the short story, and in that way they're similar to American Southerners. V.S.P.: The two societies had certain resemblances.

B.F.:Why do you think that's so? V.S.P.: That's a very hard question to answer. I think there's a similarity between a certain kind of person in the American South who is very much like the Anglo‑Irish gentry, and in fact there was something like an Anglo‑Irish situation in the South really. It is another version of a similar situation, of people who had large houses and estates, who ruled, or have been dominant, being suddenly dislodged, or gradually dislodged from their position. And especially Ireland and the South seem to me, from my reading too, as it were, colonies. They had known defeat. There had been large estates or plantations and their capital disappeared year after year. They say if you leave your capital still, it dies away in three to nine years.

B.F.:Having no capital... V.S.P.: Nor I! (laughter), but I am fascinated by the theory. One of the best Anglo‑Irish writers, Elizabeth Bowen, was herself the daughter of a colonial Irish family who became extremely poor in the south of Ireland, not so far from Limerick. It was a time when one met plenty of these people and their manners were delightful, they were very amusing, they were intelligent, but they were quite clearly crumbling as a social element.

B.F.:How would that lend itself to the short story form? V.S.P.: Well, I would have thought that it lent itself because the novel depends enormously upon its sense of a stable social structure and the short story does not really depend on there being a social structure at all. Perhaps there is one of some sort, but it can direct itself to life outside the theoretical, or practical interest of the country. One of the problems I think that Chekhov had when he wanted to write a novel was that he did not quite have the breath for it: the society he lived in was despotic and anarchic. He had his opinions about it but that is another matter. He was detached from ideological politics.

B.F.: I think you quoted Frank O'Connor somewhere about saying that some of the Irish, perhaps not so much the AngloIrish, but the Catholic Irish, are in a similar situation — though looking from down up, rather than from up down —, but they live in a rather anarchic society. V.S.P.: It is rather an anarchic society, yes. Or it was. I would have thought anyhow, there is a basic oral gift of story‑telling in Ireland; in fact one might even go as far as to say it's their substitute for a morality, that's to say moral and ethical arguments soon turn into anecdotal and narrative ones. Telling a story as it were is partly a form of evasion, or it's a form of getting around serious difficulties by not propounding.

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B.F.: Yes. V.S.P.: I think the Irish particularly like their situations enlivened, whatever they are. In Britain there is on the whole, the general tendency to play down situations as much as possible. All countries have their hypocrisies.

B.F.: That's a good distinction. V.S.P.: The thing we hate is situation. The Irish love situation (laughter).

B.F.: Some of the American Southerners I know do much the same thing. They like to sort of over‑emphasize a situation, even one of their own. By exaggerating, or dramatizing it, it becomes something else. It no longer needs to be addressed. V.S.P.: It becomes as it were a legend in the making. The other thing is there was at that time in Ireland, and I think there still is despite the pedantry, a very strong poetic gift. Sometimes just a mere ballad, at other times much more sophisticated, but it is there. The same gift exists in England but in an utterly different way; it comes out in quite a different form. But in Ireland it is very spontaneous, like Irish ballads. And as they sing it you feel that the ballad has come straight out of a lasting situation and the legend has grown around it.

B.F.: I'd like to ask you about each of these Irish writers, but that would take us too long. V.S.P.: One thing that always struck me, if I may say so, about Liam O'Flaherty was a story of his in which — it's a summery day and it's by the sea and a butterfly's flying over the land, flying out to sea, and there it is going across the English Channel and you can see it for a long time and eventually it will disappear. Where does it disappear, does it cross the sea, does it fall down into the sea or what? The observer on the scene identifies himself as it were with the butterfly going across the sea. Of course it is a very slight idea but it's a very curious one, and a real one.

B.F.: What's the title of that story? V.S.P.: I've forgotten. I think it appears in a book The Tent.

An english family

B.F.: To shift to something a little bit different as far as your early interest in the short story: one thing I noticed in reading especially your ﬁrst volume of autobiography, almost all through it you speak in terms of oppositions, between the north and south in England, or between your mother and father, or between your father’s family and your mother's family. Not only many of your own short stories, but one characteristic of the short story form itself may be this sudden sharp opposition between two forces that you have to work for in a novel over a long time... V.S.P.: I think that sort of thing had a great influence on my story writing. It always has. There was a vast difference between my parents. My father came from Yorkshire and from village Yorkshire at that, and my mother — she was a Cockney came from round the corner in London here; she came from Kentish Town, she worked in a shop; and the difference between the very talkative and the totally restless Cockney, with his rather superficial wit and his local stories and general mixture of merriment and sentiment is quite different from the stolid yet passionate Yorkshireman who is tough and blunt and doubts words and is moralistic. My father was a very religious man, my mother — she'd belong to any religion you offered to her to keep you quiet (laughter). I think in the first long story I wrote you get that conflict. I went to Sicily and in Taormina I saw a lot of painters, painting little pictures for tourists, and I got

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fascinated by one of them and he said it was so it could be put in a suitcase and this way it was an instant sale. And it became a kind of parable of the split between the artist and the businessman. That was the kind of thing which was really going on in my family because my father, although a businessman, and a religious man, had a certain degree of artist in him because he was a designer in the textile trade; he made all sorts of objects which were fashionable at that time but no longer are, and which showed a great deal of craftsman's skill, if not a pure artist's imagination. So in a way in that story it's reflected.

B.F.: There are also ﬁgures in your family past. I was thinking especially of your Uncle Arthur who seemed such a sceptical and strong‑minded man, and in your own stories you yourself are very much interested in showing the limitations of your characters' beliefs or ideas which is something your Uncle Arthur would have enjoyed. V.S.P.: I think, in the case of my Uncle Arthur, who is a very good example, he was just an ordinary working carpenter; he lived in York, and he was madly passionate about the famous cathedral. He knew every stone of it, measured the stones of it. He was a practical man but he had an extraordinary kind of semi‑aesthetic gift, and similarly he loved everything in nature, but he did not stop at that. He would get on his bicycle and drive over to cliffs on the sea and dare himself to climb down the cliffs to collect birds' eggs. He had an absurd collection of bird's eggs — he would have filled this room — taken at the peril of his life and with a collector's care. He also collected insects, there were cases of every kind of known fly and irritant in English life at various stages. There they were in their cases, but he personally had obtained them. Well this is a kind of act of poetry, of folly and poetry in this otherwise practical carpenter, a poor man too. On the other hand, one other thing which has never ceased to surprise me, he had read that extraordinary psychological classic of the 17th century, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which is the most extraordinary book of classical learning about neurosis and all that sort of thing, primitive psychology, early psychology. And he used to read this with absolute delight, with great pleasure — how much he understood I don't know.

B.F.: He would quote from it? V.S.P.: He did quote from it, yes. And I think it was partly useful to him in his war with his brother‑in‑law, who was my grandfather, who was a Congregationalist minister, preacher, always referring to the Bible. Uncle Arthur used to say “Shut up! Burton, look it up in Burton“ and he'd throw the Bible down. That sort of split in character is the thing that interests me, it still does.

B.F.: That's another opposition between someone who has a strong religious belief and the other — your Uncle Arthur or your mother —. Your Uncle Arthur would ﬁght against it and your mother would try to avoid it, perhaps, but there was still that opposition. V.S.P.: Absolutely so. There is still that opposition. It still fascinates me.

B.F.: You said once that your ﬁrst story was a lament. You said most of your stories had been laments. What did you mean by that? V.S.P.: The original thing which I wrote that about was a novel I started writing when I was ten; the germ of it was that I had read a long story by Washington Irving, a book for children about the Alhambra, and it was republished in a magazine with pictures. I read this and it gripped me completely and I decided I must write a novel about the recapture of Granada. I knew nothing about it at all except what I had read and very rapidly, like any schoolboy writer, I was longing to describe the battle. And I thought,

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“Oh, God, when all these men have been killed, what's going to happen“? I supposed I must get some of them wounded and call for ambulances, but there were no ambulances; and so the women would come and look for their dead husbands, and then they'd break into lamentations. The word “lamentations“ impressed me very much and, in fact, I suppose, by transposition later on in life. I came to realize that people are always in a state of regret, or they are lamenting that such and such a thing did or did not happen. In small ways — I don't mean they are tearing their hair, but there is a split of sadness in life, a feeling of loss very often.

B.F.: In most of your stories? V.S.P.: I am very conscious of that, yes.

Early influences

B.F.: I'd like to ask a little more about the ﬁrst short stories you read. You said that in Dublin you read D.H. Lawrence and Joyce's Dubliners. V.S.P.: Yes... yes, I read them, and I also read an English writer who is now rather forgotten but who was an extremely gifted writer of stories, in a very small compass, a man called A.E. Coppard. I admired his stories enormously. And in fact I used to know him, when I was living in the country. He was a nearby neighbour. And he was a very strange man; he was a warehouse‑man's clerk or something like that who had decided to be a writer, so he had gone out and lived in a shed in the woods in Buckinghamshire, entirely on his own, with no sanitation and his drinking water from a well, in a shallow well in the earth. And he was a natural perfectly spontaneous man, not muddle‑headed he was absolutely clear‑headed. I don't think he had any views about life in general, any kind of intellect, but he had a marvellous appreciation of the instant; he could describe a squirrel very well, he could describe a game‑keeper, he could describe a couple of old farmers arguing about whether, beef is better than veal to eat, or what pork is like, and things like that. He had a great decorative sense of comedy. He was unfortunately, when I look back upon it, a rather folkish writer; he came at a period when the peasantry were dead really and they only existed in pockets in England, in little places, and their traditional customs by that time had almost gone. It was when suburbia spread out and the countryside died. That curious old England went out. Another writer who was very good, in the same way, in his early stories, who came later, was H.E. Bates. He wrote very well, very good English, had a good style, but was also brief.

PH.S.: How old were you when you were reading these writers? V.S.P.: Well, I suppose when I was in my twenties, I should think, when I came back from France. Because when I was in France I read simply nothing but French literature, French and Russian. I didn’t read any Russian stories, but I did read a lot of French stories; I read Maupassant of course and many others. And when I came back to England — in fact I was rather too foreign when I came back — I was terribly soaked in French things and literature and language. It was very hard for me even to get French out of my head, and to be able to write English.

PH.S.: Do you think you may owe anything to Maupassant, for instance? V.S.P.: Well I think any short story writer does for one or two of his stories. I think he's bound to interest, especially the river stories, the boating stories of the river

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Seine. His style is very limpid; he was after all taught by Flaubert. And so he is, at that stage, a model. Any young writer is bound to turn to him for a period.

At ease with the short story

PH.S.: Now, may we turn to your success, your being hailed as one of the masters of the short story, and also you have been one of the most successful I would say from the public's point of view. What are the reasons for this success both with the critics and the public? Were they the same? V.S.P.: I think the public has come on rather more slowly. I think the critics were first, really. Many of my best early short stories I couldn't get published anywhere which seems to show there was not a public for them. A story like “Sense of Humour“ which made me as it were tremendously admired by a small circle of people who knew. But up to then I'd never been able to find anyone to publish it. It was completely incomprehensible to them. I think the critics were the first. I suppose the critics really tended to be my contemporaries, probably the same age as myself.

PH.S.: I wondered whether the reason for your success was the great variety of subjects you were able to treat? V.S.P.: I think this is undoubtedly true. I've led a pretty restless life which is rather good for short story writers. And in that way one collects a good many subjects; and I think I've had a strange passage through society itself. I've been in almost any class of society. I mean I've found myself in it by accident for some reason or other, and I think I've had a journey through the English class system in a way, a more amusing one than most people, but still... I think also I have a rather ironical comic sense of life, and in fact that is an important point to me: I've always thought that the comic is really an aspect of the poetic. It is the sister of the poetic quality. And certainly my early writing — out of those Irish influences — was a strongly poetic, indeed sometimes overpoetic and the comic is the basic thing there. My fundamental view about the story is that it begins as a poetic insight, and that it is also a way of seeing through a situation, a “glimpse through“ as someone has said in which you are in fact writing something perhaps like a short poem. I think the best examples of the short story in this sense are the sonnets of Shakespeare. Each sonnet is an intricate piece of poetry, but at the same time it is “a glimpse through“ the life, a situation, the instance of feeling that he is evoking. It's more than an impression of surface. It cuts deeper than that.

PH.S.: Do you write easily, does it come easily to you? V.S.P.: No, not very easily. I make innumerable false starts. If I make a good start, then suddenly I get stumped. As Chekhov said: “the middle is the difficulty.“ I don't know how to go on. Or I don't know how to make the transition from this scene to the next scene. Things like those are things that are difficult for a short story writer, generally because he has too much piled up inside him, and doesn't know how to distribute it. Then I find I have to put it down and go back to look at it. And then I somehow see what I've got to do next. And when the story's done it's generally a failure towards the end of it. It's going downhill fast. And I must now try to control it. So I write most stories three or four times over. I don't think I've ever just dashed off a short story. It takes me quite a considerable time. I think very often the end of the story is something totally different. For example, I wrote a story called “Neighbours“

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about two years ago. I wanted to write a story about a woman's hairdresser who lived in London and went to work in a big shop in Piccadilly. I imagined this man, and I knew he was perpetually complaining about how people really traded on him in one way or another, how he was always called in to help in awkward situations and so on. I also noticed that he was a man who like myself didn't take a bus to the office. He walked all the way, from one end of Kensington right across the parks into Piccadilly. But he was also an ardent window‑box gardener; knew a great deal about plants. All these pieces of information came into his character and I thought it would be a good subject. I began to see, of course he's gardening, he's gardening for women's hair. This sort of symbolism gripped me for a time, but I was over‑loading it in the story. So I put the story aside, and then I suddenly realized — he had been talking about difficulties with his neighbour, a very boring woman who lived below him in her flat. That's another incident in the story —. I went away to Cornwall and I suddenly realized, my God! this is the place to put him. Let's take him away from his London place. And then I had the notion that he should meet this woman whom he dislikes, down there. He's staying at the same hotel. And then I had the sort of thing I wanted to write about. And so I had to scrap a lot of my verbiage, and come down to the main thing. And the main thing simply was — having had a very trying time with this lady — he hears from her that she's leaving her flat — she's married somebody down in the country — he'd been longing to avoid her and now he's terribly upset that she's now gone and he’s got nothing to complain about. This important aspect of life is gone. And it was only when I went down to Cornwall that I realised I must reimagine him. I'd heard too much about him. That I think is one of the important things about writing stories: if somebody begins to tell you a story, you have to say “Shut up, stop it.“ I don't want to know what really happened. I must re‑invent. PH.S.: So it's the poetic influx? V.S.P.: The poetic influx is absolutely at the heart of it, I'm sure.

PH.S.: Speaking about your method of working, I was struck by a sentence you use in one of your prefaces, you speak of “boiling down a hundred pages into twenty or thirty.“ Is that what you actually do? (laughter). V.S.P.: Well I think I actually do. Sometimes I've noticed that the story which perhaps runs from about fifteen to twenty pages, I look at the manuscript of it and I find I've got versions about that high. I've always been rather ashamed of that because I thought it shows how stupid I am. But I remember reading the memoirs of Babel, you know, the Russian. He wrote The Red Cavalry, a brilliant post‑revolutionary. He was involved in the civil war after the Revolution and he's a marvellous laconic short story writer. Many of his stories are not more than three pages long. They're quite astonishing. Somebody was interviewing him and he came into the room and they found a pile of papers about a foot high; and Babel said, in a slightly nervous exhibitionist way: “that's my last short story of three pages.“ You do have to cut down, cut down, cut down. With your writing a narrative story of any kind it always seems to you first of all that every event has equal importance, that every bit of it ought to have three sentences to it; when sometimes three words is quite enough.

PH.S.: Well, I was wondering about that because sometimes I feel that some of your stories look like extracts from what might have been novels. Do you sometimes have this feeling

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that what you’re writing might be developed into a novel or be part of a novel as well as be a short story? V.S.P.: I believe I don't think that really because when I wanted to write short stories and the publisher said he would not publish them unless I would write a novel, I was appalled because I had no idea how to construct a novel. So I read dozens of novels to see how you wrote a novel and I got more and more confused. I did manage to write one long slightly anecdotal story which was superficially, shall we say, the plan for a novel which I managed to turn into an apparent novel, but after that I was beginning to write novels in order to please this publisher, and ones which were certainly quite well written but they had no success. I found that really: short stories were much better. I'd much sooner write them. I have written, I suppose, two novels which are quite good. One has been republished lately: Dead Man Leading. And I also wrote Mr. Beluncle which is a transformed autobiography. These did succeed. I don't think my novels are very good. No one ever seems to mention them; I would not be surprised if some people thought them unreadable...

PH.S.: Going back to what Ben was saying a moment ago: I was struck by the opening sentence of your Living Novel when you complain of having read too many novels when you were young. Why is that? Why do you think it was wrong to read so many novels? V.S.P.: Well I don't think I really did think that but I was always told so. I was brought up at the age when people tried to stop you reading novels. I was a voracious reader. I would not say I had read the whole of Walter Scott but I had read a good half of him by the time I was sixteen. And I had read the whole of Thackeray, most of Dickens and was on to Balzac and Tolstoy. I suppose it incited me to wish I could do that; but the labour in front of me seemed preposterous and enormous: how on earth shall I ever learn to be able to construct an edifice! I think for example in the Twenties (when I grew up) the people who distinguished themselves as novelists at that time had not read very much because they hated Victorian literature while I for instance was soaked in it. There was a revolt against the traditional English novel in general and its particular values and so on. My reading of French novels and Spanish novels liberated me from the enormous, rather crushing moral power of the Victorian novel. I don't think so now but that's what I thought at the time (laughter).

Hearing the tune

PH.S.: When you say that you have occasional difﬁculties in writing, does that mean that a number of your short stories were not completed or not proposed for publication? V.S.P.: Yes, some I scrapped or some I kept and read years later and thought “Good Heavens I know how to do this now.“ I know now how right Laurence Sterne was when he said that one cannot write until one “hears the tune in one’s head.“ That's particularly true of short story‑writers. You don't want an awful lot of facts, you don't want particularly an idea, but what you really want is to hear the tune of the first sentence and the note you wish to prolong. That's the thing to wait for.

PH.S.: There are certainly many young writers who get in touch with you and ask for your advice. What would you say are the main dangers for a young story writer, the main causes of failure? V.S.P.: I would have thought all sorts of wrong emphases in the writing. Poor slack English is a very common thing among...: when you're very young and write

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sentences which seem to hang like laundry on the line. It seems all right, but it is not all right (laughter). Also, much too much explicitness is a bad thing. There is no need to describe everything that goes on at the table where the family is sitting. There are certain things you should pick out. You should find ways of describing, say a street like this — just to get it in a sentence or two. You should also have a much better ear for ordinary speech than is common. That I do feel very strongly, because a lot of people, young writers, don't know how people speak. They give them written sentences to say instead of spoken sentences. Beware sentences that explain too much. A story must never explain, it must enact and suggest.

B.F.: Did you practice taking down speech? I know you took notes when you were in the Appalachians. V.S.P.: Yes, I did. I had a mania for taking a notebook with me and writing down every sentence that I could. I did it for years. I have stopped that now. Perhaps it is a bad thing; perhaps I should start again. But I have a trained memory for any kind of phrase, anything heard in a shop or in a train. A phrase was often more important to me than a sentence. I think that question of speech is very important for young writers. Chiefly for the reason that people are not writing when they speak.

Short‑story characters

PH.S.: Now speaking about your characters. In your novel Dead Man Leading you give the deﬁnition of what is the character of a bad novel, “the character who's got inextricably confused with the character of the author“... V.S.P.: Yes, that's true.

PH.S.: Does that apply to the short story? V.S.P.: I would think it does. The author may have a character in his head, but I think he ought to be able to describe it without being too intricate about it. But, in general, I think the characters need to be liberated from their authors. That I think is important. There is a certain kind of first novel in which the hero is only too obviously a projection of the author in more favourable circumstances than in real life.

PH.S.: Still is not there a fair amount of autobiographical elements in your stories? V.S.P.: Oh, a great deal but transformed or filtered.

PH.S.: But that does not interfere? V.S.P.: That does not interfere at all, because to make things true they have to be made unlike yourself, they must appear not to be your view of them. You have to liberate your characters from yourself. You mustn't hang to them like the ghost at the feast. The ghost must be absent. They have to appear to be entirely on their own. I think it would be very difficult for me to write a portrait of myself. In fact I don't know where I would begin and indeed if I tried to put myself in a novel, or indeed in a story, I might put a tiny section of myself because it represented something in the story, but not otherwise.

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PH.S.: Do you think that in your stories you have room to develop a true character, do you think the characters of a short story have the same vital energy as the characters in a novel? Have they got the same requirements as far as the writer is concerned? V.S.P.: They have a very different requirement. For instance, a full‑length portrait in a novel by Tolstoy of Prince Andrew may only appear in a novel. It is intricately examined. It is examined morally, socially, with a good deal of detail, because such writers are generally describing not simply individuals but a state of society in which they live. And doing so, how they evolve from this society, or escape from it. Now the short story writer only does that by indication and if he finds that a character is being, shall we say, ruined by society or by his social upbringing, he has to find a way of demonstrating this in one or two incidents, or in some reflection. He has to develop a certain sleight‑of‑hand. He’s constantly reducing the size of the field he's got in front of him, but he’s increasing the intensity. I think intensity is something very marked in the best short stories. They're not superficial in just hitting upon one or two things. They've chosen those things for a purpose which runs clean through the story. And which sharpens it...

PH.S.: In your view, is the character the center of the short story or is he only a medium through which something else is represented? V.S.P.: Well I think he's both that really. He is a character in the story, but also he represents things in the society around him. The ordinary human being has not got on his shoulders the burden of the novelist. He's got a greater burden, that of living (laughter). And so therefore he can be known for the aspects of this burden. For example, since it was something I wrote fairly recently, this question of the hairdresser. He's very comfortable in his flat. It's all rather decorative. He's a sort of homosexual. Anyway he is a man who’s not much interested in women. He does his own cooking, and everything is absolutely just so. Being visited by a woman who is not like that, who is a widow and has got endless stories of her woes and difficulties and all the rest of it, whenever he meets her here or wherever she goes, he has an awful feeling “My God, let's keep away from ordinary life. Really she is a sample, she’s human, she's awful.“ His feeling is that of somebody who cannot stand the boredom of any aspect of ordinary life. Yet, on the other hand, will go to enormous fuss, if anyone drops something on his sofa, some wine or something that spoils the velvet, he'll go all over London trying to find something that really cleans velvet (laughter). I remember Arnold Bennet who was a writer I very much admired in many of his remarks about writing. He talks about one of his characters towards the end of a story as having to “bear the exquisite burden of life.“ Well I think that phrase is one I do rather feel. Only when I say “burden“ I don't mean something that is really bowing me down but it is something I had to deal with. But I think the dealing with it should be exquisite, I mean to say it should be more delicate, perhaps more perceptive. I'm not very keen on a generalizing morality.

PH.S.: If characters are not completely developed in a short story, would you agree that they may be more like types than actually live characters. The French academic Alain Theil, whom you remember, said that he had found only ten types of female characters, such as the light woman, the unsatisﬁed woman, the deserted woman often divorced and so on... Would you agree with a deﬁnition like that or would you think it is unfair? V.S.P.: It's a generalisation which may have a certain amount of truth but most of the novelists' or the short story writers' duty is to destroy generalization. Supposing I am

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faced with writing about one of his types, I should have to see that she is not a type. I should have to contradict the view. He might still say you're writing about a “light woman“ but “you have never seen a light woman like this before“ would be my answer. All human beings are different and I want to see the distinctions. There is something that takes them outside the generality. One of the things that has always impressed me about Dickens — sometimes I have been compared, sometimes wrongly I think — people say his characters are done in caricature: I think that is totally untrue, almost totally untrue. Especially in the English characters. A large number of English people you see walking up and down the street are acting a part. They are concealing themselves from everyone by extraordinary acts of behaviour. Strange verbiage comes out of them, certain fantasies come flying out of them, which is part of their character. They see themselves curiously, I think, on some kind of private stage. And in England particularly where the sense of belonging to a society, where social pressures are strong, we tend to escape to our private stage. The sense of one's obligation to society, almost in any class under any circumstance, or one's role in society, is very strong indeed. But of course it's an unbearable burden. What you have, there's still yourself, this you are but up to a point. Now what do you live by? You live not by that, but possibly by some fantasy view of yourself or by some aspects of yourself which you hide from society, which you cherish, and large number of people are always seeing themselves — you see them in Camden‑Town all day long — as being some one else. There used to be a newsagent here, a rather mocking character, and he would have a chat with you, and then he would suddenly put on a different voice and say: “Don't call us, we'll call you.“ He saw himself as a film producer sending an applicant away. All you were doing was buying a paper from him (laughter). I could see somehow or other he would assume that, instead of being behind a counter, he ought to be sitting in a cane chair in a studio in front of people asking for parts. He was exactly like that. I think many people are adjacent to life, not drowning in it.

Importance of the plot

PH.S.: Would you agree with the idea that because the short story is short it's easier for its authors to deal with characters whose personalities are fairly simple or who have strong characteristics to be easily... V.S.P.: That is perfectly true, yes. But even a simple character may have a moment of sudden drama in his daily life. H.E. Bates has one about a peasant who, as he ploughs a field, suddenly gets a message that his son had died. What the ploughman’s “character“ is, we don't know. We don't know what he is. We don't know what his character is. He is a ploughman. We can guess what a labouring ploughman’s life is like. We can see he is a hard working man, that he is devoted to his job, and all the rest, but he can be made to seem a very powerful example of human being, of a humble human being with no characteristics except that he goes to work. Yet suddenly this blow occurs to him in the course of an ordinary day's work. In an ordinary day there is this devastating message which he will have to live through as the day passes. That day will be one of the dramas in the life of an ordinary man. The Russian writers have had the sense of the natural yet inexorable flux of the day passing through ourselves. That itself disposes of the need of plot or the elaboration

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of character. As that excellent critic John Bayley has said about Russian writing in general: for the Russians “the doors and windows of the human house are wide open; their minds are living in the open...,“ in the passing hour. The story is, in essence, a poem.

PH.S.: Well you have introduced my next point speaking about the unnecessary plot, the limited importance of the plot. When reading your stories, I have some difﬁculty in deciding how important or unimportant the plot is for you. Is the plot of a story something that worries you? V.S.P.: No, not at all. I have to know what the beginning, middle and end is, if you mean that. But as far as an intrigue is concerned, or a complicated intrigue, no, I'm much more interested in the character, whose personality takes over. They certainly may get into trouble. I occasionally can think of plots which would turn them into anecdotes, I'm not very clever at that. In fact, I rather shy away when I see an anecdote coming up. They are too easy to invent, I try to avoid it. I don't say that I always do, I always feel that an anecdote part should be watched very carefully and, as much as possible, the end of the story should lie open, so that you feel, that your people have got to go on living when the story is over. However it is not necessarily so. Large numbers of good short stories have had rather tricky endings.

PH.S.: In fact there is a variety in your short stories? V.S.P.: Yes, Yes.

PH.S.: Some of them have a very clearly deﬁned plot, for instance“The Necklace“ or “Blind love...“ but if you take “The Two Brothers“ it seems the story might have ended without a conclusion perhaps... V.S.P.: Yes, but it is an early story and happened to be “true.“

PH.S.: ... One of the two brothers leaves but he might have continued to live next door. Does that bother you? V.S.P.: No, it doesn't bother me. “The Necklace“ I wrote as an exercise because I thought I had lost the ability to write a story. I was working on The New Statesman at the time and I was awfully busy. And I suddenly realized that I was running short of short stories, and I thought I'd better try and do something about it. And I remembered that Henry James had decided that he must really write a “necklace“ story. The “necklace“ story of Maupassant is the classic model and an astonishing number of writers have turned to that story and said “I must write a "necklace" in a different way.“ And so I did it for that reason: it did release me.

PH.S.: But still you think for instance that a nice little twist at the end of the story may be a good trick: I am thinking for instance of “The Wheelbarrow;“ suddenly we discover what the man's real interest is, but is it for you merely a technical trick or... V.S.P.: Not at all. It is a surprise, but it occurred to me in real life. I was giving up my house in the country, I decided that I couldn't be bothered to take the wheelbarrow with me, so I gave it to a local man who was the gardener. By this time I knew enough about country people to realize that whatever situation they got into, the “things“ were the important thing to them. I knew the man coveted my wheelbarrow. It was natural for him to go for the useful object rather than for something else. Covetous self‑interest is traditional of course. But I didn't think of it particularly as a trick but it certainly is an irony. That story was particularly interesting for me to write because it is about a Welsh miner. I do know the Welsh rather well. And when I read some of my stories I very often can remember from what particular real instant in

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life — or something like it — any sentence came from. And I've often thought — supposing I lost my memory — I could always go back to my stories and find the whole geography of my life, the travelling, friendships, goodness knows, in random detail, going back even into childhood. They don't belong to the period of the story necessarily. They sometimes go right back to childhood. I think childhood is an enormous source, the real well from which literature really comes.

PH.S.: Well my last question because we can't go on too long... V.S.P. (laughter): Have another drink!

Of trickery in the short story

PH.S.: Is not there a danger, many people would say, of the short story becoming artiﬁcial with such components as the ﬁnal twist, or the introduction of short bits of information at any point of the story that will serve to bring about the conclusion, or the necessary selection of components in which the role of the writer is too obvious? Do you think there is some truth in all that, that there is a danger for the short story? V.S.P.: Well there's the same sort of danger really that there is in the novel on a larger scale. I think if you try to write short stories well, you try and evade those things. I mean they stick out a mile when you read them through to you. And you think “No, that is really not so, not like the life I'm trying to put in.“ Nevertheless, there are a vast number of anecdotal stories which are like that. I think actually there is a public taste for the anecdote, that is much stronger than it is for the story which is not an anecdote. Maupassant, Maugham, even Chekhov sometimes, sinned in this way. One must of course distinguish between the “trick“ ending and the “closed“ ending in which the story has a fitting end. I think we've had far too many anecdotal stories. The twist can be avoided entirely by making it spring from the characters themselves. The finest stories have a natural, even intense musical power. I would have thought the number of people who like non‑anecdotal short stories is the number of people who read poetry. One must distinguish between irony of life and mere wit. Experience often tells us that the comic and the dire are often opposite sides of each other, yet somehow united. We laugh and cry at the same time. Information is very bad in the short story. But I think there are the people who like it, they don't like stories to be over too quickly! People like to read novels as if they were getting into a nice hot bath you know. Lolling about in it. They like to “lose themselves.“ Whereas in the best stories you find yourself. I think that is undoubtedly true. The best stories wake you up. Even if they wake you up to preposterous things, they do wake you up.

PH.S.: If it does not wake you up, it is a bad short story? V.S.P.: It is a bad short story, that is it! I don't object to a certain amount of trickery, life is often bizarre and has its own wit. One of my “trick“ stories, as you might recall, is the story I wrote about a dentist. This is straight from life. I didn't have any trouble at all in this. It was told to me by my dentist as he was struggling with my tooth. I knew him well and knew certain things about his life. He was a born non‑penitent, but he needed to confess. He was a tremendous pursuer of young girls to whom he wrote poems. And in his surgery he had a file full of carefully type‑written poems — written in the manner of one or two modern American poets — long poems. He would dish these out to girls and read them to persons like me to see “What do you think

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about this one.“ “She was a goddess but she had feet of clay“ (laughter). Then he became more confessional, describing how he ran off with his father’s mistress: frightful troubles and all the rest of it. He even interpreted it as a “touch of the Oedipus complex.“ It is unbelievable but there it is. And the fact that he should tell the story is perfect, it ends with his own polite, professional words. His own trick — not mine. Very English. The only thing that I had to do was to write it entirely in his abrupt dialogue, so that this is not the impersonal voice of the author speaking to you, but it's the dentist himself. He read it a year later when it was published and congratulated me and hoped I got well‑paid for it! PH.S.: Well, as you said, short stories should wake people up: is it for that reason that very often they tend to deal with rather unusual or extreme situations or characters? V.S.P.: That also happens, I suppose, but they don't always deal with such strange situations as my dentist. If you've got really extreme characters or strange situations, you must take care to be neutral. Strange situations are strange. It is one of the writer's duties to suggest the strangeness of ordinary life.

PH.S.: I was thinking of “The Satisfactory“ for instance... V.S.P.: “The Satisfactory“ yes.

PH.S.: This exchange of sex and food during the war, the lady providing extra food and the man giving sex in exchange. V.S.P.: That is a trick story, I think. Yet, I observed it in my daily visit to a restaurant where such a woman was feeding a man. There was a certain trade in food coupons during the war.

PH.S.: But is it not the extreme limit of something fairly usual... I mean it is usual to see a lady giving something nice to a man... but this is an extreme case, she hardly ate at all and he ate for two... (laughter). V.S.P.: It seemed comical and yet passionate to me — a trouvail. I don't claim it is a great story; it is a little farce. I don't see why one should not be able to write all kinds of stories. I've often thought when recalling people's criticism of the early Chekhov — you know he wrote some hilarious short stories — that a writer who can write short stories is able to write any kind of story, and if he can he'd better. Because if he's going to write a trick story and it obsesses him, then he'd better do it, to get it out of his system.

What future lies ahead

PH.S.: My last question for a conclusion would be: what future do you see for the short story? It seems that people are, maybe, less interested in short stories than they used to be ﬁfty years ago? Is the short story dying out, do you think? V.S.P.: Well, the rise of the short story was due to the proliferation of magazines, monthly magazines, weekly magazines. People needed stories. Remember that novels, in the nineteenth century, were serialised month by month in magazines. Television is killing the magazines. It is very difficult to find any one to publish a short story. This won't stop stories being written. They do well in collections. But in Great‑Britain a writer is paid very little for individual stories — far less than in America where the rewards have been far larger —. My two early stories “A Sense of Humour,“ and “The Sailor,“ I was paid £3 and £7 respectively, but they “made“ my name. Had I been an American writer in my twenties I would have earned far more

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than that. I lived on literary journalism. So stories, the most important thing in my life, have had to take the back seat, in earning my living. But in the end, my collections of short stories have had enormous success in Germany, in the U.S., in Japan and in Great‑Britain. I suppose it's the reward for having been paid very little at the start, but I don't know (laughter). Anyway that is how it is. Television is the main enemy of all reading. People now are ceasing to read and certainly very few get the habit of reading in their childhood. In previous generations people read in their old age, because they had taken it up when they were children. Now children don't need to read a book. You will say that television occasionally puts on a story for twenty minutes, isn't that a good idea? Well, they do that sometimes. But unfortunately the written short story is immediately distorted by television. It's rather like a novel being different when it's put on the stage. It's a different medium altogether. The radio is by far the best medium for stories: listeners are readers.

PH.S.: Have you had experiences with television? V.S.P.: “Blind love“ was done on television and some of it was rather well done. I watched it being made and they took a great deal of trouble. The only thing was that it was on a serious subject in which detail counts; on the screen it went at the speed of a horserace — a uniform speed. A short story does not go at uniform speed. It also changes direction. The television is very onespeed. If you went at the same pace you would be writing a novel. Another of my television stories is “The Wedding.“ I was afraid of that being done because it had to take place in the real country, among real country people, farmers and so on And the television has had the habit of inventing a kind of standard English peasant type — people we always called “coming from Loamshire.“ I wouldn't have been able to bear this because I've known farmers very well indeed — in fact I've had them in my family and in my wife's family. Fortunately, the T.V. people took the story to a remote rural district in Yorkshire. Most of the actors were actual country men acting, and some came from that part of England. Their accents were true. There was not a touch of Broadcasting House in them. They spoke very naturally. They caught the note of frolic you need if you are going to describe a country wedding: the air of genial lust and general horseplay. The action of the story came to my mind from an actual wedding in which the young farmers had ropes tucked under their wedding clothes. The custom was to lasso some of the ladies like cattle which they manage very skilfully to do. The larding was rough but it was not detestable, it was human, even had an elegance. But they did it well, they didn't race it through, and they had a rather tricky subject because the rough farmer who was a rich widower (in my story) is determined to marry a country girl who was extremely well educated. In fact she teaches literature and is not a stuffy school Ma'am at all. She's a publishable literary critic. Improbable? Not at all. Read D.H. Lawrence. I know more than one instance. One has to make this possible. I think I know how to do that. I think they didn't quite, but they had a splendid girl for doing it, and I think they did it pretty well, but again it is the speed that seems to be wrong. I don't know, perhaps you could read that story in much less than half an hour — and the television was half an hour — perhaps you can read my story in a quarter of an hour, but that quarter of an hour would seem very long.

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PH.S.: So you would not advise young short story writers to address themselves entirely to the T.V.? They should continue to write... V.S.P.: I think they must write... I think T.V. would mislead them... still, it depends... A good many people with talent are very open to experiment in new forms. Most of the good writers have been daring. They've taken risks, they constantly want to refresh their talents. Perhaps television will catch up with us. It is still in its adolescence. In the meantime we survive because there are still addicted readers who like to reflect as they read, and not merely to see instantly and to forget.

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Graham Greene (1904-1991)

Philippe Séjourné

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Philippe Séjourné, First published in JSSE n°4, 1985

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks are due to several members of the Department of English and American Studies of Angers University, particularly to Ben Forkner, for help with this inteview at various stages.

1 [...] Because of the obvious sincerity which I did not want to lose and in spite of a few imperfections inevitable in the natural flow of conversation, the text of Graham Greene’s interview has been preserved practically word for word. Graham GREENE: As far as short stories are concerned, I've only written a few, one volume called Twenty One Stories, and two small volumes of short stories. I don't feel at home in the short story, partly because as a novelist, some of the charm of writing a novel is that you don't know everything which is going to happen. I generally know the beginning and I generally know the end; but all kinds of things as may happen in the middle which I had not expected... The short story being a much shorter piece I have not found the method of surprising myself in the short story and therefore, reviving my interest. And therefore, my short stories have played a very small part in my life: my own short stories. The short story has one advantage, I think, which Chekhov used a great deal is the open end, that one is not left with an anecdote. And the novel, I think people would be disappointed with the novel having worked through perhaps three hundred pages if the novel had an open end. The novel has to have a closed end, I think. But perhaps I don't know what my difficulties in the short stories... where they arise. I have written a few which I like but to me it's a difficult technique.

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Philippe SÉJOURNÉ: Well thank you for this introduction which already provides some necessary clues as to your general attitude to the short story. Now, I would like to raise a question about what you wrote in the introduction to your “Nineteen Stories“ in 1947: “I present these tales merely as the by‑products of a novelist’s career.“ This seems to be in accord with what you have just said... G. G.: Yes, yes.

Ph. S.: But what you wrote then, was it just about yourself? Or do you believe that novelists in general ﬁnd short stories mere adjuncts to their main work? G. G.: No, I don't think so, I was talking only about myself, although I think an example of a writer who really abandoned the novel was V. S. Pritchett. I think he found the short story was more important to have and more tractable than the novel; although I like very much one of his early novels. I think it was called Dead Men Leading or Dead Man Leading. But he seems to have almost given up the novel. But on the other hand, we have a very good short story writer in England, an Irishman, William Trevor, and he has written as many novels as short stories, so that he seems to be an adept with both. And of course, one has the great example of James Joyce. I think “The Dead“ is one of the finest short stories, not only in the English language, but in literature.

Ph. S.: Now, I thought you might have changed your point of view a little although from what you have just said you probably have not, however. In the Introduction to your “Collected Stories,“ you still speak of the short story as a form of escape, but you also write: “I believe I have never written anything better than “The Destructors,“ “A Chance for Mr. Lever,“ “Under the Garden“and “Cheap in August”“... G. G.: Yes, that's quite true.

Ph. S.: Is that as far as your short stories are concerned? Nothing better than any other short story or considering the whole of your production? G. G.: I don't think so. I would still say that it applies to my short stories. Those were the ones perhaps I preferred. But I would hesitate, I think, to say that they were better than what I consider my best novels. But I think these were the short stories, certain short stories in which I feel I did succeed. To some extent “Under the Garden“ did have an open end, which I found the most difficult thing to achieve.

Ph. S.: What did you ﬁnd so good about them? What were the qualities you enjoyed in these short stories? G. G.: Well, first of all, readability, I think, which I don't always find among some of your critics (Laughter).

Ph. S.: Well, personally I ﬁnd those very good indeed but there are quite a few besides I like as much. G.G.: Yes.

Ph. S.: I am thinking in Twenty One Stories of “The lnnocent“... G.G.: Yes, I think I can say that's good, it's a little bit anecdotal, isn't it? And perhaps, I have an unfair prejudice against the anecdote. The anecdote is too closed, perhaps.

Ph. S.: Would you say the same about “The Jubilee“? G. G.: I'd say about the same thing. There again, I think it's quite a good anecdote, and I'd put it in the same class as one called...

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Ph. S.: Also, I thought that “Under the Garden“ is excellent but also “Dream of a Strange Land“ which I ﬁnd disconcerting... G. G.: Yes, I like that.

Ph. S.: ... and “The Discovery in the Woods.“ G. G. Oh Yes! My attempt at science‑fiction (Laughter). The only science‑fiction I have written.

Ph. S.: I found something biblical about it. Weren't you rewriting the story of Noah's Ark and that sort of thing? G. G.: Well, I am beginning to forget the story now. I've forgotten how the story ends.

Ph. S.: They ﬁnd the big ship stranded... G. G.: They find the big ship stranded. How does it end?

Ph. S.: ... and they say they're sorry there are no longer any giants now. The little girl says that... G. G.: Oh Yes! Because, the dead old giants. Yes. Yes. I dare say Noah's Ark was somewhere in my mind.

Ph. S.: And how do you like these... G.G.: One thing that might be of interest on the short story, is that at least two short stories have been dreams, that I've had at night. “A Dream of a Strange Land“ was really a dream. The only thing which was not in the dream was the revolver shot at the end, and curiously enough, one called “The Root of all Evil“ which was a funny story, was simply a reproduction of a dream I had had at night. In fact, I woke laughing (Laughter).

Ph. S.: More generally would you say that the short story serves a purpose of its own? Is there a need in our world for the short story? Does it help to give a better, a more complete picture of the world? G. G.: I suppose somebody who has written as Chekhov did a whole œuvre in the form of the short story certainly serves a purpose of getting a whole picture of the world. One volume of short stories... I find myself — although I admire Trevor’s short stories I admire Pritchett's short stories — I come to read a volume of short stories with hesitation and reluctance. I don't want to change my mood every thirty pages. I like to feel myself taken into something of length, where I am going to stay with the characters over a long period. I find it disconcerting like reading an anthology of poetry. I prefer to read the works of a poet rather than a few poems by this poet and a few others by another poet. I find the change is disconcerting. But that's a purely personal attitude. I'm sure that many people prefer the short story to the novel, probably, for the very reason that I find them disconcerting.

Ph. S.: But when you're about to write something, how do you feel that it is going to be a novel or a short story? Is it because it is a particular theme, does it seem to you that this theme has to be worked out in a short story? G. G.: Yes, and... I don't know. Perhaps I'm eccentric in this. I know the number of words before I begin to write: not fairly roughly, but rather accurately. For example in the novel The Human Factor, I decided it would be around a hundred and ten thousand words. And it turned out to be around I think a hundred and eleven thousand, three hundred and something. I have this habit of believing in some sort of computer in the brain that I mark every hundred words as I write with a little cross and keep count of the number of words written all the way through the book. And

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the same with the short story. And so I imagine that when an idea comes to me, I can feel this will be four thousand words, two thousand words or ninety five thousand words.

Ph. S.: I read somewhere that you said you wrote about three hundred words every day... G. G.: That's what... It used to be five hundred. I'm lazier. It's the minimum I set myself. It may be three hundred and fifty five. And the three hundred is marked, but it's to give myself the necessary energy to, at any rate, do something every day.

Ph. S.: But if you write a short story, don't you try to write the whole short story in one go? G. G.: No. I can't do that. It's too long.

Ph. S.: Now, because of its dimensions, do you feel that one of the weaknesses of he short story is that it has to deal with something extraordinary? Because it is going to be so short, that it has to be more violent, to deal with some extraordinary event, extraordinary character, or an extraordinary set of circumstances? G. G.: I don't think it does necessarily. I wouldn't say that Chekhov dealt much with violence, or even... some of his stories may deal with extraordinary circumstances, but I wouldn't have thought it was a characteristic of Chekhov. I don't think it would be a characteristic of Pritchett. Or even of Joyce...

Ph. S.: ... but maybe of some of your own stories? G. G.: Some of my own stories, certainly. But then, my novels have often dealt with violence too.

Ph. S.: I am thinking of some extraordinary events, for instance, the man who brings back the body of his little son in a plane... in “The Overnight Bag“... G. G.: Oh, there is nothing in his bag. He is not really bringing a child back in his bag. It's in his imagination.

Ph. S.: “The Shocking Accident“ is rather extraordinary too, the pig falling from a balcony... G. G.: This was based on a real fact. There was an accident of that kind in Naples once (laughter), where a pig was being fattened on a balcony.

Ph. S.: You seem to have borrowed occasionally from incidents you have actually seen on the street? G. G.: Yes, and overheard in a restaurant.

Ph. S.: How much truth is there in, for instance, “May We Borrow your Husband?“ How much did you retain from an overheard conversation? G. G.: I changed the venue. I was staying in a hotel at Cap Ferrat and looking out of the window. I was watching a pair, a couple of homosexuals during a day, outside. And the idea came to me from that. I imagined the circumstances, I imagined afterwards certain circumstances, but it came to me from watching them. And then as I didn't know Cap Ferrat especially well, I changed the scene to Antibes.

Ph. S.: And in “Chagrin in Three Parts“... G. G.: The restaurant is Felix au Port, and there were a couple of lesbians whom I used to see dining there frequently and whom I regarded from a distance. There was no incident like in the story but they read the book later and spoke to me and were very pleased at thinking that they were the characters in the story (laughter).

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Ph. S.: As a more general question, would you say that the novel is more sociological and the short story more concerned with the inner secrets of the individual? G. G.: I think that's probably true. Although in a way, I hate the word “sociological“. I hate sociology which has invented a whole new jargon in the English language. But I think it's probably true.

Ph. S.: The Irish and the American writers of the South have tended to claim that the short story is the ideal support for the description of misﬁts, outlaws, outcasts, while we might say the novel — as typiﬁed by Balzac for instance — presents individuals as elements of organized groups? G. G.: I think that there’s a part truth in that, but I would hate to see the short story become simply what they describe. It seems to narrow the bounds of the short story unnecessarily, that description.

Ph. S.: Would you agree then with the idea that the short story deals with the individual, almost any individual being more or less a misﬁt or an outcast? G. G. No, I don't think that's necessarily the case at all. No.

Ph. S.: Would you agree that you belong to a category of short story writers who are sometimes very ambitious about what they expect of a short story? In other words, that it should carry a message, not necessarily a moral message but an eyeopener of some kind? G. G.: I don't see myself doing that at all. I mean I dislike the idea of messages, certainly. No. I mean to me it's not true.

Ph. S.: I have a feeling you would accept for the short story your own deﬁnition of a good story in “Journey without Maps“: “It had not merely a plot but a subject?“ G.G.: Oh! Yes. That I would agree with, yes. But that applies also to the novel, doesn't it? It must have a subject as well as a plot... In fact a plot... E. M. Forster considers the plot was almost an unfortunate adjunct to the novel.

Ph. S.: But is it not technically very good for a short story to have both a plot and a subject? Because, even if the plot comes to an end, the subject itself leaves the door opened as you suggested? G. G.: The open end. Yes. I agree entirely with that.

Ph. S.: And you think that in your own stories, there is both a plot and a subject, in quite a few cases? G. G.: Yes, I think in quite a few cases, not in all cases I'm afraid.

Ph. S.: In the best? G. G.: Yes.

Ph. S.: I don't want to be indiscreet, but I'd like to ask you how you feel the differences in technique when you set about writing a short story or a novel? Do you feel you are confronted with a different world? G. G.: Yes, I feel that I'm confronted by something which is going to go very rapidly. And finish in a rather short space of time, say a week. And that in a way, I feel that one has got to be more concentrated, to get over the effect one wants rapidly, that there’s a kind of time element pressing on one while for the novel I like to feel a whole period of time confronting me where I can change my mind, when a character can suddenly alter. There is a kind of feeling of leisure about writing a sentence while for the short story, I feel now “I've got to get this done.“

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Ph. S.: Do you know from the start what the short story is going to be? The whole of it? G. G.: I think yes, and that is what worries me about the short story. But as I say, I want to be refreshed by surprises. I'm glad when a character behaves in a way I never meant him to behave. When a line of dialogue comes out of the blue and seems to have nothing to do with the story. And one obeys one's instinct and puts it in and then one hundred pages later, the reason for it appears. As if the unconscious is working all the time in a novel. And the short story seems to me more the conscious than the unconscious at work.

Ph. S.: Would you say that novel writing is an obstacle to the writing of short stories? Are there not some kind of habits that may be in your way? G. G.: Well, certainly. I think I'd written (apart from childish things) a good many novels before I even attempted a short story. I would say that I had written three novels before... I think the first short story of mine (apart from a childish thing when I was sixteen) was one called “At the End of the Party“ about two children. And that would have been published, I think, around the early 1930's. And I would have published three novels before I did that, and written five.

Ph. S.: In terms of technique of the short story, what importance do you give to the plot? Is it essential there should be a plot in a short story? G. G.: No, I would dislike to say that anything was an essential in writing, because it seems to limit one, and I don't think that one should feel that there are any limits. And, I mean, for example, there is a little anecdote short story of mine which one can hardly say to have a plot: when I am left alone in a railway carriage with a baby and his mother has gone to the lavatory. I mean there is no real plot in it. Still it could be called an anecdote I suppose, but it goes a little bit beyond an anecdote, in looking into the future of the child.

Ph. S.: Don't you think several of your short stories in some aspects are similar to some of your novels, in particular those you have deﬁned as “entertainments“: “Loser Takes All“ or “Stamboul Train“ or “Gun for Sale“...? Don't you think the choice of a situation which carries in itself its own development and conclusion is somewhat the same? And also these entertainments are limited to a small number of characters and then, of course, there is the hunt technique in several of your short stories... G. G.: The what technique?

Ph. S.: The technique of the hunt... For instance, in “Under the Garden“, the man hunting for... G. G.: Looking for his past.

Ph. S.: Or “A Discovery in the Woods“, the children running for something. G. G.: That's true...

Ph. S.: Or “Chagrin in Three Parts“... G. G.: Is there a hunt there?

Ph. S.: Well, one of the women is looking for something very deﬁnite and she is trapping the other one... G. G. If you meant hunt to that extent (laughter). I can accept that. I think there’s a hunt in almost any story written, because the author is always hunting something.

Ph. S.: Yes indeed... And what about your approach to the comic? Some of your short stories are obviously small comedies... G. G.: Yes, yes.

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Ph. S.: My feeling is that you have always had a sort of nostalgia for the stage. Of course you have written several plays.. G. G.: I've written about six.

Ph. S.: But you would have liked to write more? G. G.: Yes, my first attempt at writing was a play, when I was still at school, which was accepted by a company. I think, an experimental company who thought that I was a rich man, and would pay up money for the production, and then when they found out a schoolboy... nothing happened. But, my first ambition was to write plays, and I still enjoy dialogue very much in books. Dialogue as a form of action. The complaint I make about some writers of novels is that the dialogue does not advance the story. The dialogue is just there, and could go on forever almost.

Ph. S.: Is it more descriptive? G. G.: It's not part of the story, it's not part of the action.

Ph. S.: Did you have many short stories made into ﬁlms? And were you satisﬁed with the result? G. G.: Yes, television in England did a series called “Shades of Greene“ in which they produced eighteen stories in thirteen installments. And for the first time on the whole I was thoroughly satisfied with the films. There were only four that I thought very badly done. They were very faithful to the subjects and the plots and the characters and some were outstandingly good and one which I would have thought would have been the most difficult was perhaps the best: “Under the Garden.“ They tried to sell the series to France incidentally, but were told that the stories were too intellectual. These films were too intellectual. I don't know what was meant by that (light laughter).

Ph. S.: But you were not satisﬁed with your novels made into ﬁlms? Do you see any reason for that? G. G: Yes, the novel is more difficult to make into a film. I've had experience with script writing for films. A novel is too long to make even a long film. It has to be cut drastically. And often what is cut seems unimportant and yet in cutting something which seems inessential, the character becomes flat and faded.

Ph. S.: I was thinking of a comparison with the world of comedy, not only in terms of construction, which is obvious for instance in “When Greek meets Greek...“ G. G.: Yes, yes...

Ph. S.: But also I was wondering: do you think humour or some form of comic is a good ingredient in the short story? G. G.: I certainly think it's a good ingredient to have a certain bit in a novel. But I'm not sure it's necessarily so in a short story.

Ph. S.: Don't you think it could help the principle of revelation which is so... G. G.: Yes, I mean some short stories demand an element of humour, even sad stories, but I would not call it an essential.

Ph. S.: Because, of course, humour is so important with you, I mean it's almost a philosophical sort of humour: the gap between what life is and what it might be... G. G. Yes, yes.

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Ph. S.: But you don't think it's more obvious in your short stories? G. G. I wouldn't have thought so. I should have thought that there are humorous short stories and non‑humorous short stories. There is much less of a blend than there is in a novel.

Ph. S.: Of course, there is a variety in your use of the comic, from a mild form of humour which you reveal for instance in “The Innocent“ to the gross tagghler of “The Overnight Bag“ or “Alas Poor Maling“ with his borborygms... G. G.: (Laughter.)

Ph. S.: Now speaking about your characters in short stories, do you think they can be approximately the same as the characters in a novel? G. G.: I don't think there is room to develop a character so much as in a novel, do you? And one of the things I like about the novel, and I think I've only brought it off once, is that the character can change, and is not the same at the end of the novel as he is at the beginning. I think I brought that off in The Honorary Consul, where the two principal characters, well the three principal characters have changed a good deal in the course of the story. But that there is hardly room to do in a short story. I think you've got to establish a character sufficiently vividly to the reader... and one has to simplify for that reason a bit.

Ph. S.: Would you go so far as saying that some of them are mere pretexts or supports for the story, the story being the important element? G. G.: I'm afraid that's true, probably. I don't think that that's a thing to be glad of.

Ph. S.: I have a wonderful sentence by Alberto Moravia: “Characters in short stories are the products of lyrical intuitions, those in a novel are symbols.“ G. G.: Say that again, would you.

Ph. S.: “Characters in short stories are the products of lyrical intuitions, those in a novel are symbols.“ G. G.: That's interesting. I don't... I'd rather think a lot about that. I think I can see the possibility of that being true (laughter).

Ph. S.: When he speaks of a symbol, I think he explains afterwards that he means a symbol of a whole sociological background, and even philosophical... G. G.: In that case, yes, I think I would agree.

Ph. S.: That would mean they are much richer, much more developed than... G. G.: Yes, yes. He's put it very succinctly, and when you put things succinctly, you have to think a lot before you accept it. But I think he is right. Yes.

Ph. S.: Would you agree, again speaking of characters, that in short stories the external forces, such as destiny or circumstances or even the deﬁnition of the short story with its limitations, may play too great a role at the expense of a natural development of characters? G. G.: I'd say yes. I think that's fair. But one begins to... look always for exceptions.

Ph. S.: But the fact that these external circumstances are so important in comparative weight in the short story... G. G.: Yes, yes.

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Ph. S.: ... is it not the reason why so many weak people are introduced, or inexperienced, passive people, of course the misﬁts we were speaking about, or in particular children... You introduce many children in your short stories. G. G.: I also do, I think, quite a lot in the novels. It's not only in the short story.

Ph. S.: But in the short stories, they are sometimes central characters, which I don't think they are in your novels. G. G.: In “The End of the Party“, certainly they are central, “The Innocent“, yes. They play a big part in The Comedians, in The Human Factor. I think even in Our Man is Havana. After all children are I don't know what in the population of the world, what percentage of the world are children. They play a large part in life (laughter). It's rather like when one is accused of introducing Catholic characters. One has to admit in England, at any rate, one in ten people is Catholic. And it would be remarkable if you had books which didn't have at least one Catholic character... I mean, I'm accused of introducing too often Catholic characters but the answer in England is that ten per cent of the population is Catholic, so it would be really odd if a Catholic did not figure in a good many novels even if the writer is not a Catholic.

Ph. S.: About The Honorary Consul, you have just said again that it's one of your favourites because the central character is different at the end of the novel. Is this not an indirect condemnation of the short story because there is no time for a character to change? G. G.: I don't think it is a criticism of the short story. It means that the short story is a different form of art. Just as the novel can't include poetry, the short story can't include, can't deal with certain things.

Ph. S.: Well, I'll come to my concluding question. I hope I have not been too long... G. G.: (Laughter). Not a bit.

Ph. S.: lf you had to give advice to a young writer, what would you tell him makes a good short story? G. G.: Oh, my goodness.

Ph. S.: Or the reverse question: what are the main causes of failure? Is it because one is too ambitious, wants to put too many things into a short story, or fails because of lack of technique, lack of simplicity... G. G.: Bad style.

Ph. S.: Or because he does not respect what I'd call the unities, a short story having to be limited in place, in time, in the number of people introduced? G. G.: Well I can imagine... I don't know. Because... You speak about unities there, unity. I can imagine suddenly that somebody would produce a brilliant short story in which the first two pages took place in Hong Kong, the next two pages in San Francisco, and ended up in Buenos Aires. I can imagine it being done. I don't like the idea of any rules. And the use of the word “essential.“ I think that Joyce broke all the rules that were possible to break. My only advice would be to say: “Get ahead with it, and let us see it when it is done“ (laughter). But I would hesitate to give him any advice.

Ph. S.: You said that you much preferred reading a novel than a series of short stories. Would you think it is a good idea, a sort of remedy for that, to write a collection centering on one subject, more or less what you have done in your comedies of sexual life for instance? G. G.: Yes, yes. That makes it slightly approach nearer to the novel, perhaps. But of course, I mean, all these things are exceptions. I've read, and reread continuously

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Chekhov, for instance, Turgeniev. I don't hesitate to read a volume of short stories by Pritchett or by Trevor.

Ph. S.: Because of the unity you ﬁnd there? G. G.: The unity there; the author provides the unity. But I'm afraid I'm unadventurous, and I don't feel a strong inclination to read a book of short stories by an author whom I don't know, or a new author. It's a very unfair prejudice of course which publishers also have.

Ph. S.: Would you go as far as foretell the end of the short story like some people today think that the novel has little more to say? G. G.: No. I think they've said the story or the novel has nothing more to say ever since Homer.

Ph. S.: Would you agree with and can you explain the fact that the short story is much more popular in English speaking countries than in France? G. G.: Is it, yes. You don't have... Since Maupassant, who have been your great short story writers?

Ph. S.: Not many... G. G.: No, it is quite true.

Ph. S.: There are one or two today... G. G.: And yet, there is very little encouragement to people, to new writers to write short stories in England. They have very few papers now. There were more in the early days of this century, more magazines who took short stories, than there are now. I can only think for the moment of one magazine which has a fairly limited circulation, perhaps two that take short stories in England, which is a handicap, when you also have a handicap of a publisher who is unwilling to risk money on a volume of short stories, unless by an author who he believes will write novels.

Ph. S.: But you don't think there is anything special in the French mentality that is an obstacle to writing short stories... G. G.: Now you can tell me that better than I can (laughter).

Ph. S.: But you've lived in France so long! G. G.: But you've lived in France a great deal longer...

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A.S. Byatt - b. 1936

Jean-Louis Chevalier

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Jean-Louis Chevalier, Conference on the English Short Story since 1946, December 4, 1993, First published in JSSE n°22, 1994Entretien revu par L. Lepaludier

A.S. BYATT: “The Chinese Lobster” is the most recently completed of my stories, and one I'm rather pleased with technically. Like most of my work I've been brooding about it for about 8 years or so before I wrote it and I will tell you how it began later, but, it's a story which isn't about what it appears to be, when you first meet it, which since I'm going to read the beginning, you need to know.

J.‑L. CHEVALIER: Iknew you would read from “The Chinese Lobster “, but not where you would stop, and I would like to start from the same short story myself, since I think it is one of your ﬁnest and most recent ones. It contains what is, at least to me, a touchstone, or should I say a “philosophical stone“, a gem of many radiances, which says, “Any two people may be talking to each other, at any moment, in a civilised way about something trivial, or something, even, complex and delicate. And inside each of the two there runs a kind of dark river of unconnected thought, of secret fear, or violence, or bliss, hoped‑for or lost, which keeps pace with the flow of talk and is neither seen nor heard. And at times, one or both of the two will catch sight or sound of this movement, in himself, or herself, or, more rarely, in the other. And it is like the quick slip of a waterfall into a pool, like a drop into darkness. The pace changes, the weight of the air, though the talk may run smoothly onwards without a ripple or quiver”. This is the most meaningful moment, together with the most beautiful piece of writing in the story. My point is that words, concepts, semantic and syntactical correspondences, drama, emotion, wisdom, voice, thematic magnetism, structural points, narrative expression — all that concerns matter and manner — contribute to the sudden triumphant emergence of poetic truth. This is to me a miracle of writing, and I could happily spend the rest of the day taking it to pieces and putting it together again, like the archeologist or curate in Randolph Ash's poem. But I am not here to speak, only to make you speak. What I would like to suggest is that this paragraph, which also forms a whole unit in the structural development of the story, may be something you would like to speak of at length. My reason for thinking so — and I shall ask whether you agree with it or not in a minute — is that it is for the sake of such passages that you write at all. I shall then ask

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you to discuss the passage from the point of view of theme, structure and narrative. But would you ﬁrst acknowledge — or not — that this passage is the kind of writing you care and write for? A.S.B.: Yes, I think specifically this kind of moment is the reason why I write short stories. It is a form I took up very late, and only after reading the short stories of Alice Munro, who changes direction suddenly in the middle of a story and is doing something else. And, I suppose the other thing about this passage is that the whole of my life has been spent in consciousness of the fact that what is going on inside one's head — which is the reason why one writes — now and then makes contact with life as it is lived, life as it is observed and one is suddenly in the same place as oneself completely, very briefly; which my characters in my early novels always wanted to be and usually didn't manage to be. And also, I suppose, this passage is a bit of non‑mimetic writing, writing thinking, which is something also writing is for. It's something drama can't do, television can't do, no other form can do, no other form can think; but I think most people don't think of short stories as a thinking form: a novel is discursive, thinking in a very short text is a difficult thing and technically rather frightening.

J.L.C.: It seems to me that it is also interesting from the point of view of theme, because it introduces something unusual; and from the point of view of structure, because it is a unit in itself: from that moment the story takes on another dimension, which it never loses, as it is from this paragraph that the story becomes not the story of the girl, but of the adult people. There is also the question of the narrative beauty, which you have just spoken of.

* * *

— A common theme in your stories is the weird, or the strange, the unusual, the eerie, the extraordinary. If one takes “The July Ghost”, it is of course the story of a boy ghost. And “The Next Room” is about parents' voices speaking in the next room, after their deaths; and this is continued by a Red Indian chief discussing spirit‑voices of ancestors on television; and then there is the chance meeting with a funny lady, called Mrs Roote, who runs an “Academy of the Return — Thanatology and a study of the Afterlife”. As for “Racine and the Tablecloth”, there is in it, right in the middle, “le songe d'Athalie”, which has something to do with the unusual. While “Rose‑Coloured Teacups” has to do with a vision. What about ”The Dried Witch?” How would you deﬁne the strange in “The Dried Witch ”? A.S.B.: How would I define the strange in “The Dried Witch?” Ah! I'm very frightened of “The Dried Witch”. I think again I took up writing short stories in order to accommodate the strange. I think. I began some time before writing Possession. Iam a person without religious beliefs and without any experience of ghosts or odd things of that kind, but the older you get, the more you see that human consciousness is completely preoccupied with what is not seen, with what haunts, and the stories we tell each other are rather like the ghosts we tell each other about, around the fire, which again are rather like, as one gets older, the memories of people one knew, who were alive and are now dead, a child or one's parents—and my own mother, just before she died, became completely obsessed by the fact that she could hear the voices of her parents quarrelling in the next room, and I at the same time read a thanatological book, saying that when you died, you went through a tunnel into the bright light, where your parents were waiting for you — I wasn't sure I wanted either my mother's parents or my own mother to be waiting for me at the end of the tunnel. But in “The Dried Witch” it was

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partly the impulse that was much more metaphoric, curiously, because it appears to be a story much more about witchcraft. It's a story about oriental womanhood and life in a very structured oriental village, which I put together largely out of the Chinese stories of Shen Tsunh Wen. The impulse was about equally aesthetic and very personal — I wanted to write a story because those Chinese short stories had moved me in a way I didn't quite understand. The shape of Shen Tsunh Wen's Chinese short stories was unlike anything I had read. Although it did resemble Alice Munro in appearing to be inconsequential, it wasn't beautifully constructed, it just strung a little bit next to the other, and yet the whole was a complete whole, from which you could neither take anything away or add anything to. But it was towards the end of my days in the department of English in University College, London, and several women there were agreeing that we had all observed that women, once they got over the age of 45, began to be persecuted by groups of people, and, obviously if you want to write a story about that, you do better to choose a metaphor a long way away, the life of a Chinese lady, or possibly a Burmese lady, or possibly an Indian lady in a village seemed quite a good metaphor. So it was partly a story about the persecution of post‑menopausal women, and the strange, somehow, became a metaphor in that case for both things, for my response to Shen Tsunh Wen. The oddest thing that happened to me was that when it came in book form, a Chinese scholar approached me at a reading I gave and said: “Do you realise you've written a perfect Chinese short story?”

J.L.C.: Anyway, what I like in your stories is that one can always connect them with other things. What you have just explained about those ladies who inspired you into writing “The Dried Witch” is more or less what Beatrice Nest says in Possession, and she is a sort of good witch. What strikes me is that all the unusual, weird, strange people tend to be either grown‑up ladies or very young children — sometimes girls, but mostly boys. “The Changeling” is a child of the fairies of course, and Josephine's subject is fear; it so works that one is sure something is to be wrong with the boy, because he is already inhabited by some sort of strangeness. It is a thing you ﬁnd rather often — or rather I ﬁnd rather often in your stories — that the strange, the weird, does not concern, I should say, the ordinary man or woman, married and thirty or forty years old, but characters who are preadolescent or nearing death. Is that a correct reading of your stories? A.S.B.: Ithink it is, and I think I got interested in the strange as I reached the stage of contemplating the death of my own parents, which means always contemplating your own death, which makes you think about the continuous life of the dead in a much more immediate way than you think of it, when you're in your twenties or so... — You did have a question?

J.L.C.: When you mentioned what this Chinese critic said to you — I'm not well versed in Chinese literature at all — but I'd be interested in knowing what he actually meant by “this is a perfect Chinese story, you've written a perfect Chinese story?” Did you ask him to tell you exactly what he meant? Because I'm not quite sure... A.S.B.: It was a woman in fact...

J.L.C.: I'm sorry. A.S.B.: But, well, the trouble was, that there were hundreds of people gathered round, and she did send me another Chinese story, in an envelope, but she didn't really explain. I was — I said I'd been reading Shen Tsunh Wen and she said, “Ah, that explains it”, because a lot of other people have thought the story, which doesn't

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specify where it's set, was in other parts of the east, and it can't be to do with inconsequentiality, which is what I felt was the shape of Shen Tsunh Wen's. Because it's not an inconsequential story, it is a very tight one. So it may be simply to do with the fact that it's about the sort of phlegm with which the woman faced the fact that she had always been condemned to death and would be left to die; it's the Chinese temperament, that's my guess again, so that's not terribly helpful.

J.L.C.: But it's more content than form. A.S.B.: Ihoped it was form, and that's more or less what she said, but I still can't understand it.

J.L.C.: Before we leave the weird, I would like to say that it goes on with your most recent work. “The Chinese Lobster” has to do with forms of mental illness and the fascination of suicide. “Art Work” shows how a couple of artists may be inhabited and, as it were, haunted by their cleaning lady: the art work, which is the secret art work of the cleaning lady, from the moment it is revealed and becomes famous, completely changes their outlook on art — and the lady artist starts writing books — “A Book of Bad Fairies” and “A Book of Good Fairies”, the cleaning lady becoming a fairy and/or a witch in spite of herself. As for “The Conjugal Angel”, it deals with seances, another form of the unusual and the weird, which works beautifully between people who believe in seances and people who do not. One may quote the evocation of a bevy of little girls, and then the evocation of the most important dead man in the whole l9th century, Arthur Henry Hallam. Could you explain why you took up all those different threads about seances and mediums, which appear in your short stories before and after Possession? A.S.B.: My primary impulse with things like seances and mediums is a perfectly pragmatic English empiricist intellectual desire to understand something that appears to me completely irrational and odd, but I have to admit that the desire to communicate with the dead, which at first appears to people with my kind of upbringing as a kind of Victorian crankiness, is, in fact, a much more usual aspect of human nature than 20th century rationalism. It did fit on reading Freud's Totem and Taboo and Frazer's Golden Bough; and I was particularly struck by Freud quoting Frazer, who said that the recently dead appeared to primitive people as demons — and I can only think of the French word “apprivoisés” — and when they are “apprivoisés”, they become respected ancestors, who are even thought of as helpful spirits, but they have to be distanced. And you can see this is a metaphor for mourning, but I think it isn't only that — because culturally in the whole of human society it hasn't been that; things have been so personified or felt to be so immediate, that they have been experienced as forces or beings; and literature in a way is also a way of taming such violent persons or beings, of giving them form. There is a wonderful book by Dr Alex Owen (who is a professor at Harvard, a woman) called, The Darkened Room, which is a study of the Victorian medium as a professional woman — it was one of the professions open to women in the l9th century, for all sorts of reasons which I reject, which my kind of feminism doesn't like, because women were “passive” and “receptive” and “irrational” and “able to take in airwaves” and “see the unseen”, because they were simply “vessels” which “needed filling up”. One doesn't like that, at least I don't like that set of imagery, but again you have to see that it exists, and I think it took me some time to see that my interest in these things was actually turning into a metaphor for fiction, a seance is a fiction. So when I wrote “The Conjugal Angel”, which is based on a Swedenborgian seance, which was held by Tennyson's sister, Mrs Jessie, who had been engaged to Arthur Henry Hallam, who had been dead when she held it, for many years, I invented two mediums, and these

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two mediums were the voices of the writer in me, and I came to need two: there was one woman who was a novelist manquée, who went to seances out of human interest, she wanted to know the stories of the little dead children and why the other women were grieving, it made her daily life more interesting, because she got closer to real people, which one does, if you're at the point of their terrible grief and anxiety; and the other one, a woman who would have been a poet, if she hadn't been a medium, who saw a very intense, precise image of the nature of things; and she, of course, is the one, who finally does in my story, since it is literature and not spiritualism, see Arthur Henry Hallam — because it's literature. Yes?

J.L.C.: Itook the uncanny, for example, in “The Next Room”, when you talk about the miners in England as “self‑starved deadmen”, or something like that, I took it to be a sort of discontinuity of history in the ability to go on — a metaphor for the state of England or something like that. A.S.B.: There is a little of that. I don't know quite where I got that from. It came in rather by accident. ...What I really wanted, and this is partly a sort of rather small technical problem, I have to find professions for my narrators, which are not always my own. One of the great hazards for any writer is to go on writing about writing and one of the things I could make the heroine of “The Next Room” into, was a job which in fact my present husband had had, which was a kind of economic intelligence researcher. And then I suddenly realised that, in fact, the miners in the North of England do think of themselves as “dead‑men in a dead profession” and everything is a ghost town — but I discovered it was an “objet trouvé”, that metaphor really. It wasn't the original push behind the story, which was my own mother's story about how she heard my grandmother shouting at my grandfather in the next room...

J.L. C.:But it also means that the woman who runs away from the house where her mother has just died, wants to see the real world, and the real world is represented by a man who says, “I'm dead” —so that she finds herself in the next room long before she is dead. J.L.C.: We should now make a complete move and turn from the strange to civilisation, or rather to the “civilised”. In “Sugar” —a story I shall not discuss because I do not think it is a short story at all — it is either a récit or a poem — anyway, in “Sugar” — here I have to say “your father”, because it is the one story in which you say, “I am the person who says I in the text” — your father, then, defines his journey to the Rhine, which is to be his last journey as “civilised”: “’It was civilised’, he said with satisfaction of his last painful venture, he described cranes and herons and castles and the moonlit water and his own defeat by a brief climb from the mooring place to the town centre. He was also a good raconteur, not like my mother, deliberate, weighing his words, judicious, telling you some things and holding back others”. This means that when he uses the word “civilised”, he is not saying something that he does not control. This is confirmed by your own description of the Dutch hospital: “It was a spotless and civilised hospital, full of seriously gentle doctors and nurses, all of whom spoke an English more perfect than might have been found at home. My father disliked his dependence and they made it decorous for him”. Later on, you describe what was to be your last conversation with your father, and you say, “During these weeks, during that unaccustomed talking, which despite everything was pleasant and civilised as he meant it to be, he did try to construct a tale, a myth, a satisfactory narrative of his life”. What there is to conclude from these occurrences of the word “civilised” in the dramatic context of the last illness of your father — and in a story whose emphasis is laid on truth and respect for truth—is that, when you speak of “civilised” being so important, you are being truthful. It seems that being and acting “civilised” is a kind of saving grace, both in living and in dying. And I may further prove my point by adding that “civilised” is also a saving grace in writing. In “On the Day that E.M. Forster Died”, one finds: “Forster, much

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more than Lawrence, corresponded to Mrs Smith's ideal of the English novel, he wrote civilised comedy about the value of the individual and his responsibilities”. Finally, “civilised” is a saving grace in any ordinary human intercourse. In the text quoted from “The Chinese Lobster” one also ﬁnds, “Any two people may be talking to each other at any moment in a civilised way about something trivial or something even complex and delicate”. Those are not all the instances of “civilised” that I could pick out in your works, but I think they are representative. What do you make of them? A.S.B.: They cause me temporarily to try and think about myself as I would think about any other writer—what does she mean? It does matter to me increasingly, that word. I know where I found it, when it started to glitter at me, the way words do, when you suddenly realise they now have a meaning for you; I found it in Willa, and Willa Cather also uses it rather obsessively, and she uses it about the settlers in America or in Canada, moving out into land, it's not in opposition to the native people that are found there, but in opposition to nature, really, and building little communities, and she uses it about the archbishop in “For Death Comes the Archbishop”, against all odds building a beautiful French church in the middle of the 'pueblo'. And she uses it also most beautifully in “Shadows on the Rock”, which is a novel about Quebec, in which, all through the deep winter a French Huguenot émigré family keep alive a pot of parsley, and I she says, “as long as people continue to make civilised food and offer it to each other, human beings will be all right on the surface of the earth”. I think I have a very complicated image of the human community holding itself together by decorum, by good manners, by handing each other carefully cooked food, by talking to each other with consideration, by keeping certain rules, and beyond that is violence and terror and the opposite side of human beings, like going through the Gulf and covering it with tanks and pollution and oil and awful things. I did admire my father, because he sat there and he was dying and we both knew he was in pain, and what he was doing was, in a sense, very very artificial: he was making a good death, as I read that the Bretons used always to do, when I put that into Possession and into the short story in Possession. He was making a good death, and he was talking away about the history of the human times he had lived through, the First War, the Second War, Dickens, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, the interesting conversation of the Dutch doctors, who were civilised because they didn't simply come and poke him and go away, they stood and stopped to talk to him about books. It didn't make his death any less awful but it did make us human, and that's what it really means. It was only at lunch today that I realised that it might have been taken to do with the imposition of the power of certain states on others, or Roman civilisation, or colonialism. I don't mean that, I mean civility, I mean good manners, which matters very very deeply.

J.L.C.: Both, civility and civilisation then, I suppose. Is this the reason why there are so many writers as characters in your stories and books? Is it because writers are civilised people? A.S.B.: No, the reason there are so many writers is because like all writers nowadays, I don't know enough about any other profession.

J.L.C.—Ido not believe you, I do not believe you – A.S.B.—There are all sorts of things I want to know about, but I like writing about people when they are thinking at top speed, and I cannot write about what a captain of industry is thinking at top speed — to save my life — though if I could I would.

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J.L.C.—Could we come to the stories within the stories? It is not an infrequent feature of your stories that they themselves include stories. Sometimes we do not read the story which is only alluded to, and sometimes it is there for us to read. In “Morpho‑Eugenia” we are given to read Matty's story, called “Things Are Not What They Seem”. In Possession there are stories by Christabel LaMotte that come into the text. Do you write those short stories within long stories in a different way from “straight” short stories? A.S.B.—Yes, I think I do — I think the story within the story always represents a different kind of grip on the world, a different kind of reality, and also it's always of course about a reading experience; it turns the writer into a reader and it turns the reader into a reader of a reading; and it somehow lines the reader up with the writer as the reader of this text within a text — I think that's what it does. Also one of the things that most moved me as a reader of other people's writing was The Golden Notebook, in which Doris Lessing has a novel within a novel, and she says, “I could turn my serious novel” — this is a paraphrase, it's not what she says — but she says, “I could turn my serious novel into a banal romance by taking out about 10% of my vocabulary.” I like writing something constructed on a different principle of vocabulary into one text from another text, I like writing the narrative expectations of a fairy story into a realist short story for instance. I hadn't expected to write a Victorian fairy story into my Darwinian fable. It all grew out of my observations that a particular kind of caterpillar was a walking metaphor, and then I did some etymological research on its name and discovered that it was about six metaphors and then the story couldn't help being written.

J.L.C.—Shall I ask you about titles now? It is known, because you mentioned it several times, that Possession is the only one of your novels whose title imposed itself on you before it was written or even started. And in Possession there is an instance of poetic inspiration, when Roland, towards the end of his adventure, collects lists of words and starts using them and giving them titles: “Tonight, he began to think of words, words came from some well in him, lists of words that arranged themselves into poems. “ The Death Mask”, “The Fairfax Wall”, “ A Number of Cats”... He added another, “Cats' Cradle”... Tomorrow he would buy a new notebook and write them down. Tonight he would write down enough, the mnemonics”. Granted that a short story is neither a novel nor a poem, is there a habit or a system of inspiration as far as titles are concerned when you are writing short stories? And what should a good title be? A.S.B.—Ithink a short story in my mind is much closer to a poem than a novel is, and since it has fewer words, the title is a much more integral and less accidental part of the whole text, and if I've got the title, even the provisional title, wrong, the style of the story starts slipping sideways. I thought of a story in the train, as I was coming here. We were talking about the awfulness of deciding that your dog has to die, and I was thinking you could write a story about somebody preoccupied with some quite other death, who has to make this decision, and then I thought of about eight titles. I thought of, you know, “Dog's Day” and “A Short Life” and neither of those was right, and then I thought of “Death of a Dog”, but you can see that defines it wrongly. When you've got anything as small as that, where the form has to be imposed from the beginning, you can't find it by starting writing, because there isn't room in this short story to find it. If you get the wrong note in the title, you're lost, so I have to find them early, whereas a novel can wander along with several possible titles, and quite often has been published under a title that had nothing to do with the running title that it was being written under. The Virgin in the Garden was called A Fugitive Virtue until it went to press, and then I thought, “No, no, it's really called The Virgin in the

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Garden” which was a title I had found out of all of those words, but you can’t do that with a short story, it is a different animal.

J.L. C.—Exactly! This is the reason why I would like you to explain why “The Chinese Lobster” was called “The Chinese Lobster”. I have my own interpretation, but I would like to have yours, because is not mainly, primarily, focally, about a Chinese lobster, as you might say that “The Changeling” is about a changeling, “The July Ghost” is about a ghost in July, “Rose‑Coloured Teacups” is about rose coloured teacups, and even “Medusa's Ankles” is about the ankles of a lady who sees herself as a Medusa. But as a title, “The Chinese Lobster” is, in my opinion, une fausse piste. Why did you choose it? It is the only one of your stories which has a fausse piste title. Are you aware that it is so? Did you do it on purpose? Why did you do it? A.S.B.—One of the obvious reasons why I did it is to do with Beckett, because there is “Dante and the Lobster”, which I think is one of the greatest short stories. It's one of the greatest short stories of all time in my view, and the last two sentences about the lobster being put in the pot to be boiled, are: “It is a short death. It is not.” And there is a kind of resonance between these two perfectly true observations and the whole thing that goes with it. The other reason it's called “The Chinese Lobster” is because the lobster existed exactly as it is described in exactly that restaurant and it was about to be turned into a Chinese lobster dish, and, beyond that, it rather pleased me because of all Matisse's oriental images, which are in fact very western, and all those cheese plants going up the windows of the restaurant, which no longer exists, always reminded me of Matisse, but they were terribly Chinese cheese plants and they were stuck, and the little Chinese idol which also exactly existed in exactly the colours as I described it. Matisse might well have painted, if he could have seen it, because he would have liked those, that balance of colours, but it remained resolutely a Chinese... god.

J.L.C.—I'm sorry to differ, but you are discussing this title as if it were not a fausse piste. A.S.B.—Perhaps it is not a fausse piste (laughter). It's a kind of dissonance and the story's about a kind of dissonance. And it isn't the same lobster because the lobster is death...

J.L.C.—Yes, I agree. A.S.B.—But I did see it and it wasn't dead when I saw it. That was the horror of it.

J.L.C.—It seems to me that the slowly dying lobster is a sorry animal in itself, but it is also a symbolical representation of Peggi Nollett with the two teachers, the two crabs on both sides. But if one accepts this symbolical representation, that the lobster is Peggi and the two crabs are the old fogeys, Gerda and Perry… A.S.B.—Oh, no, no! It isn't the case at all, there simply were two crab –

J.L.C.—...then she is, in that structure, the central character, — which she is not! A.S.B.—She isn't, and in fact... I... and she didn't... and... oh dear!

J.L.C.—This is exactly what I mean, it is a foil. A.S.B.—The trouble with being the author is that you can always tell the generation of the story, which is a cheaty way of getting out of commenting on what is now before you. The truth is, there were two crabs.

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J.L.C.—Inever doubted for one moment that there were two crabs. If there are not two crabs, there is no symbol. A.S.B.—And the story existed in my head for quite a long time without Peggi Nollet, because the actual conversation was about Ruskin, not about Peggi Nollet.

J.L.C.—...Who became Matisse... A.S.B.—Yes, and people become totally different from each other, but it isn't about Peggi Nollet, and I think that Peggi Nollet arrived in the story rather late. I mean the depth of the story is about that passage you read out, about two people talking about one thing and both realising that what is going on in their head is quite another thing, and, as it were, courteously or in a civilised way, acknowledging this. There were two sentences, which were spoken by the man in the restaurant, one of which was the sentence about: “Yes, it seems perfectly clear, when you get round to committing suicide, that this is what it is to do with and it's nothing to do with the feelings people think you have, when you get round to committing suicide, if they're not trying to commit suicide”. And the other one was truly said by somebody looking at that unfortunate lobster as he left the restaurant “I find that absolutely terrible, and I don't give a damn”.

J.L.C.—Exactly, which shows it not to be a fausse piste, but one has to come to the very last sentence. A.S.B.—Imeant that it wasn't a fausse piste. “Any two people...” [reading]

J.L. C.—When you choose a title for a short story, what do you have in mind? Do you want to help the reader ﬁnd a real clue to the story, do you want him to get a good start at the beginning, or do you try to satisfy yourself, your instinct? A.S.B.—I think most of the titles are somehow, as it were, the metaphor in the story.

J.L.C.—Icould give them to you. There are titles quoting from the text. “The Next Room”, “Loss of Face”, “In the Air”, are phrases in the text, aren't they? Then there is one instance of a title which is a quotation from a poem quoted in the text — “Precipice‑Encurled” — which becomes entirely understandable only when it is quoted. There are also titles focusing on central occurrences — “On the Day that E.M. Forster Died”, “Racine and the Tablecloth”. Or else they focus on the central objet — “Rose‑Coloured Teacups”, ”Art Work”— or on the central character—“The Changeling”, “The July Ghost”, “The Dried Witch” — or on a particular feature of the central character — “Medusa's Ankles” — but Medusa is not a character in the story, she is a metaphor for the central character. And there is “The Chinese Lobster”, who is not the central character, but again a metaphor. That doesn't quite answer my question. My question is: Do you do it to satisfy yourself, or with an idea that somebody is going to read it and maybe make something of it before reading the story? A.S.B.—I do it partly to tempt the reader. In so far as it has any relation to the reader, it's terribly important. That a title of a short story shouldn't look like the title of another short story, which is why none of my dog titles will actually do, and I think I try very hard to avoid rather delicate, fading kind of titles that don't attract you in, because I have noticed this sounds banal. But it does matter. If you ruffle through a book of short stories you actually read the one that you like the title of first, which means it's like looking at a lyric and seeing if the shape of it pleases you. Beyond that, I do it in order to get some kind of image for myself, that I, as a writer, think that I

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might form as a reader, if I saw that title. You know, it has to look interesting as though somebody's thinking, as though you don't quite know what it is. I think it's more important that you should look as though you don't know what it is, that it should look as though you know exactly where it's going. It struck me when Jean‑Louis Chevalier read out “Racine and the Tablecloth” — that that actually goes with “The Chinese Lobster”, because it's got the rhythm of the Beckett story, again, “Dante and the Lobster”: “Racine and the Tablecloth”, and it's a kind of another homage to the impossibility of writing short stories as good as that one — ever. And “On the Day that E.M. Forster Died” reminds me of the text which French people wouldn't be able to pick up because there's no equivalent French Bible to the English Bible, but it's the vision of Isaiah, “On the day that King Uzziah died, saw I the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple”. And I want the rhythm of that to sort of get a kind of rather large image of things, or echo, in people's minds. I mean titles obviously do matter with novels, but novels are such substantial objects that you can give them quite banal titles and they will survive them. I think a short story can be sunk by... you know you can never call one ”A Clear Morning”, even if it was exactly the right title, or one can no longer ever call a short story “Happiness”, although Katherine Mansfield once called one “Bliss”, but you couldn't do it again, or you shouldn't, I think, do it again.

J.L.C.— You were talking about the reader, how much do you think of the reader when you write — and do you? A.S.B.—Jean Louis Chevalier read out a quotation from me about how there were writers who never thought about readers — I think this must change over a lifetime. When I began to write I had a sort of despairing sense that there wasn't a reader, and I set up one. One appears indeed in “Racine and the Tablecoth”, a kind of hypothesised ideal reader, who is known as “the reader”, who will read the exam papers and understand every word you have written. My image of that person was somebody rather like Henry James — I used to write novels because I thought Henry James saw what I was trying to do—

J.L.C.—I am sorry, but your Reader with a capital R, who was like James, is as invention of a character in the story, he is not the actual reader of the story. A.S.B.—No, no, but he did exist. No, no, it isn't to do with the reader of the story, but the reader of the story I don't know...

J.L.C.—But you speak to him in “Racine and the Tablecloth”. A.S.B.—To the reader?

J.L.C.—Youtell him: “You might suppose that grown‑ups...” — “You also almost certainly know that...” — You can believe, I hope you can afford to believe that...— etc. A.S.B.—It's very interesting to have a second person in the stories, because I don't believe any single reader has ever identified himself or herself with that “you”. I don't know if any of you do, but if I see a sentence saying “you might believe”, I identify myself with the speaker, not with the hearer, you know, it's a kind of — I can't think of the right word—but it's a kind of falseness in it, always. It's like John Fowles's endless interpretations telling me what to think. You don't identify with the person who's being told, — but I do now have a strong sense of real reader, simply because, as you get older, you get more and more real responses to your texts, with which you have to deal, real people talk to you about the way they've read them, and

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this changes the way you feel about them, it just does. I used to think it wouldn't at all, but it does, one should be honest.

J.L.C.—So yousaid at the beginning that you took up writing short stories quite late. Could you tell us if novel writing and short story writing are related for you in some way? A.S.B.—I took to writing short stories for the reasons given by the lady in “On the Day that E.M. Forster Died”, and I suddenly realised that there were more and more and more things in the world that I noticed, and that I haven't got enough life to write already the novels I have thought of, without any more novels. And so I started seeing things in this very condensed clear way, as images, not necessarily to be strung together in a long narrative, but to be thought out from. And when I was in my twenties, if I looked at anything and suddenly — you know, if you are a writer, even a potential writer you look at something, you think: “That's for me”, and the next thing, is just something you happened to have seen — I was driving through Texas with two Texan ladies, one of them suddenly told me the story of a friend of hers, who had had a ranch in Montana, and had had to come back to Texas, and had a whole sitting‑room full of paintings of the skyline in Montana, the whole of the house was simply full of paintings with no people, just the sky in Montana — and I thought, that's for me, that's all I know about that at the moment, but it's for me, I can do something with it. But when I was twenty, anything like that, I would wait till it fitted into the shape of a big novel. Now I start making it into a thing much more like a poem, which is a story, and it can have people attached to it, who don't have to have immensely complex characters or histories. It's for the image — And I think I shall write a story about the lady in the room with this wonderful Texan skyline, surrounded by images of Montana, because it's so terribly moving, but I haven't yet worked out quite why it belongs to me, I just know it does. — Or the dog... — I don't actually want the dog in a novel, I should try and keep him out of a novel, he can stay small.

ABSTRACTS

A.S. Byatt était l'invitée d'honneur du colloque. Les participants ont pu apprécier la double qualité d'A.S. Byatt : en effet, elle a su apporter sa sensibilité d'écrivain, ainsi que son expérience d'universitaire et de critique littéraire. Écrivain, elle a publié romans et nouvelles:Shadow of a Sun (1964), The Game (1967), The Virgin in the Garden (1978), Still Life (1985), Sugar and other Stories (1985), Possession (1990), qui lui a valu le Booker Prize et le prix Irish Times/Aer Lingus, Angels and Insect (1992) et, tout récemment, The Matisse Stories (1994) dont elle a lu des extraits de la nouvelle intitulée “The Chinese Lobster“. Universitaire et critique littéraire, elle a publié plusieurs ouvrages critiques: Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch (1965), Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time (1970) et Passions of the Mind (1991). Evoquant sa jeunesse dans Passions of the Mind, elle lie écriture et lecture dans une dialectique de

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désir et de plaisir: “Greedy reading made me want to write, as if this was the only adequate response to the pleasure and power of books. Writing made me want to read.” Les questions de cet entretien sont posées par Jean‑Louis Chevalier, professeur à l'université de Caen, traducteur du roman Possession et de plusieurs nouvelles de A.S. Byatt. L. Lepaludier

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Louis De Bernieres b. 1954 - Mavis Gallant - David Madden

Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interview led by Linda Collinge and Emmanuel Vernadakis, February 1, 1997 “Other Places, Other Selves“ conference, First published in JSSE n° 29, 1997

1 Louis de Bernières lives in London and is the author of four novels and several short stories, many of which are set abroad, primarily in Latin America and Greece. In 1993 he was selected as one of the twenty Best of Young British novelists.

2 Mavis Gallant has been a short story writer since the early 1950’s, publishing her first works in The New Yorker. Born in Montreal, she traveled extensively before settling in Paris. Her impressive volume of Collected Stories was published in 1996. Many of them are set in Europe: France, Spain, Germany or Italy, for example.

3 David Madden was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is the Director of the Civil War Center at Louisiana State University, author of several critical works and of short stories and novels. His novel Sharpshooter, published in 1996, recounts the experiences of a Civil war veteran and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

4 During the course of the afternoon discussion, the writers expressed a general disregard for setting, much as Eudora Welty does in her essay “Place in Fiction.” The consensus was that all components of a short story are linked, but that character, plot, narrative or technique have priority over setting as such. Indirectly expressed, one of the main ideas of the discussion is that the “other place” for these writers, all avowed “foreigners”, is fiction itself as it allows “another self” to come alive.

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I. On the conscious choice of setting

Emmanuel VERNADAKIS: How do you decide upon the setting of the short story? David MADDEN: I don’t feel a sense of deciding on a setting, ever, even though I’m aware of being a Southerner and I'm attracted to places in the South. An example of my not being that drawn to the South is that I’ve lived in Baton Rouge and near New Orleans for thirty years now and I’ve set only two stories in Louisiana: one before I ever got there which appeared in a men's magazine and “The New Orleans of Possibilities” which uses New Orleans as an image, a metaphor for the imagination (...) So the question is simple and I know why you ask it but it actually goes to the heart of what I do which is totally opposite from caring one way or the other about the setting.

Linda COLLINGE: So the setting is not the point of departure? D.M.: No (...) what attracted me far more than the setting [in “The Singer”] is the technique and the sense of the power of the imagination...

E.V.: What about you Louis, is the notion of the setting important to your conception and creation of the story? Louis de BERNIERES: I never think of the setting first. What usually happens is I get an idea for a short story or some way it just drops in my lap. Somebody gives it to me and then I have to think of the right place. So for example I didn’t go to Cephalonia with the idea I was going to make a novel out of it. I just went there on a holiday and found a story waiting. And most of my short stories arise out of things that people have told me or things that arrived out of the blue and once they have arrived, I think you have very little choice as to where you set it. I couldn’t possibly set the story I read here [“Stupid Gringo”], I don’t know, in Brighton, could I? Because nobody is afraid of going to Brighton. D.M.: I was robbed in Brighton! L.d.B.: You should go to Bogota! I think the setting is dictated by the narrative and I am mainly interested in narrative. That’s really what drives my writing.

E.V.: Do you feel the same way about that Mavis Gallant? M.G.: What do you mean exactly?

E.V.: Do you think that the setting is not as important as the narrative? M. G.: I don't think there's any difference. A story arrives with people and these people have their nationality, their background, the place they live in. It all arrives together, it's not divided up: the narrative, the setting, the story.

L. C.: But very often are there places that you've been, places where you have had on experience, and the story comes from something that happened there? L.d.B.: Yes. I do have a natural sympathy for some places and not for others. So, I feel completely at home in Greece or Latin America. But other countries which I really love... I love Portugal but I’ve never really had the feeling that I could get a story out of it somehow. One day, maybe, I should be walking round in Porto and a story would fall from heaven and I should be lucky that way. I’ve never tried to set a story in France even though I'm really quite familiar with France. Because nothing has arrived.

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L.C.: So very often the setting has been for you, to come back to the subject of the colloquium, another place... L.d.B.: ... and the type of people who are in it, of course.

E.V.: So you mean that there is obviously a link between character and setting? L.d.B.: Oh absolutely! I agree with Mavis. They arrive together. I agree with that completely.

L.C.: But are you personally attracted to places that are outside your home? L.d.B.: Yes. That’s exactly it because when I was nineteen I spent a year in Colombia and I think if I spent a year somewhere now, it would have far less effect on me. But at the age of nineteen, it’s a tremendous culture shock going from Britain to Colombia and an even greater shock coming back to Britain. I could go into great length about that. I know I never really felt completely British again. Obviously I’m completely familiar with Britain and indeed I love it but I’ve always felt more European or more cosmopolitan. And one of my problems with setting things in Britain is that it’s so familiar that I don’t see it. But recently I had a conversation with a French artist I met in Pau. We were talking about Europe, Euro skepticism, etc... and he said to me “For me Britain is the most exotic country in Europe because I can to go Germany, I can go to Holland and it’s just like France, but when I go to Britain, c'est un asile immense.” It’s a huge lunatic asylum. When he said that I thought “Yes you’re probably right.” Since that time I have been beginning to set short stories in Britain just by trying to realize how mad we are! D.M.: (...) I really regard Venice as my spiritual home (...) it is very curious to me how literal settings where I have spent my life do not really produce stories whereas metaphorical or spiritual settings that I choose to be metaphorical...see really I would have called [my short story] “The Venice of Possibilities” but instead I call it “The New Orleans of Possibilities.” New Orleans does give me that feeling because it stimulates the imagination and that's really my home, the imagination. (...)

L.C.: Mavis, we ﬁnd in several of your short stories the idea of English enclaves in other countries, France for example. Is that an area, related to the English enclaves in Montreal, that particularly interests you? M.G.: I’m not aware of anything particularly interesting. Things just come up and I write about them... (...)

II. On the link between character and setting

Andrew PAINTER: (...) When you start writing you’ve got place and the character which I agree you can’t separate. But while you’re writing, because you’re writing a story, you’re not writing an encyclopedia, you’ve got to select what you’re going to put into the story and how you go along, or as you say, things come to you which are going to enter the story. So you can't put everything. And if we take place and “je”, those two entities, then you've got to limit the number of elements which are concerned with place and you've got to limit the number of elements which are concerned with this “je”. So is it, when you’re writing, if you’re writing in a sort of egotistical way, using the qualities which define “je” to define the place or do you use the place to define “je”? (...) Do you understand what I mean? I mean you’re writing on a character who is in a place and there's a relationship between place and this “je”. M.G.: It’s fusion, it’s not relationship. It’s fusion. That’s a different thing.

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A.P.: Yes but the fusion consists of two elements... M.G.: No, they’ve become one at that point.

A.P.: (...) if we imagine that as a writer you try to ﬁt yourself into the skin of this character in the story... M.G.: If you’re trying to, it's not going to work. It has to... it comes spontaneously. (...) L.d.B.: I can say that what it feels like is them putting themselves into your skin. It feels like the character putting themselves into your skin, not you putting yourself into theirs. I’m sorry to get mystical but that is what it feels like. You often hear writers saying things like “It’s like dictation from ghosts”. You know, you can get quite spooked by it. These characters arrive and they rapidly become real and they rapidly take over the narrative so that when you’re writing the narrative, you often have very little choice as to what the characters do. They even misbehave and you have to reconstruct the plot!

A.P.: I agree with that and I’m trying to construct a hypothetical question, based on this question asked in the title of the colloquium, whether the character imposes itself on you as a writer or you on the character? M.G.: Neither. (...)

A.P.: Does the character’s identity influence the place or is the place used to deﬁne the character? L.d.B.: It's both, it’s not either/or. It’s a sort of complex symbiosis. M.G.: I would say it’s neither...

L.C.: David, would you mind if I put you on the spot... D.M.: I would love to because I don’t disagree with what Mavis is saying. I’m just different. So I’m not going to be disagreeing with her. I’m going to be expressing a different idea. I think you can separate place and character, I’ve done it many times. Places may come across to you my reader as very convincing and you’re really there. But I can take a very mechanical artificial attitude and change it. (...)

III. On the creative process: Listening to another self?

Marta DVORAK: [Louis] said something about “taking dictation from ghosts” and he makes [writing] sound as if it’s very romantic. I’m sure there’s a lot of hard work involved. And it would really be interesting if you could try and let us in on this process... L.d.B.: When I’m writing, I mean, I was trying to think the other day, how can I describe what’s happening, and the only phrase that I could come up with was “passionate imagination.” Is that any help? I get so immersed in the world that is coming out of me or which is creating itself inside me that real life just goes to the dogs, so I don’t go to the launderette, I don’t cook and the house gets about that much dust...

M.G.: The plants die... L.d.B.: The plants die! You know, my friends cut themselves off until I'm back to normal. And it's almost... the Ancient Greeks used to think of it as a kind of madness or a kind of possession. And that's really how I feel it is too.

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M.D.: Do you write right from the beginning to the end? Do you rewrite? L.d.B.: No, I might write the last chapter first and then the middle. I write whichever bit I fancy next. It isn’t in any logical order and I usually don’t work out what order my chapters are going to be in until I’ve got them all done. M.G.: Well you have to think of it as an unedited film. Then the real work is putting the film together as economically and as clearly and with as little junk in it as possible.

M.D.: So most of it is clearing house actually? M.G.: It’s not all that easy. (...) M.G.: You know, sometimes it’s as if the story were already written and you are trying to attain it. And you just know there’s something there and you’re trying to get it. But it comes in bits and pieces exactly as he has said. It doesn’t come chapter one page one... in my case, dialogue comes, long stretches of dialogue. But everyone is different. D.M.: You know, the most thrilling moments for me are moments in revision, a technical reversal or decision that changes everything. Not some new development in a character necessarily. In fact, the technical decision produces the character. Getting back to critics, the best expression of what I already was doing and felt is Technique is Discovery by Mark Shore which I think is a really masterful essay in which he says: “technique is discovery, discovery of the people and the place and all those things that give you the illusion of reality.” For me they come through technical choices. So I can get very thrilled. I decided after 2000 pages of Sharpshooter – which was about one family, half of it, then another family – to make a technical choice. I need a first person narrator instead of an omniscient narrator. I need somebody like that sharpshooter in the tower in that one page in the middle of the novel in its present form who can look out over everything. And it was the most thrilling moment in the whole fifteen years I spent on that book, when I realized the sharpshooter is the one that I need for the whole story. So for the next ten years it was revision, to get to your suggestion, it was a revision process that was every day equally as thrilling as the inspiration for the story itself. So the character was the product of a cold-blooded technical decision. And the character, I'm told, comes across as a living, breathing human being. To me that’s far more magical than writing in a state of, always in a state of “passionate imagination,” except I really like that phrase and it's really true to me too. L.d.B.: You can use it. D.M.: Yes, don't worry! (...)

IV. On languages and translation

L.C.: Louis, in your latest novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, set in Greece, there’s a lot of language play (...) You use several languages: German, English, Italian and Greek. Is it with the hope that your reader will not understand, just as for the short story you read “Stupid Gringo”? L.d.B.: Well, we’re getting back to the subject of technique. It’s often necessary to put in bits and pieces which you agree to not necessarily understand but which will give a

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feeling of authenticity and atmosphere. So for example I went to ask some Greek friends of mine for a list of all the best Greek obscenities. And I went to an Italian friend and did exactly the same thing, except that he gave me a list of the names of types of ice cream to see if I'd fall for it. I'm not interested in obscurantism just for the sake of it or to try to be clever. It's really a question of atmospherics. I try to use people’s... well, maybe the rhythm and word order of their own language. You’ll find that in my Latin American novels the dialogue is written in a very similar word order to the way you would say it in Spanish although I used English words. And that's really to give a flavour of the language. I try to do the same with the odd bits of Italian and the odd bits of Greek. It’s tricksterism, it's illusion-making and all I hope is that it works.

L.C.: And how does that work out in translation? Translating into Greek for example? L.d.B.: Well, you know English is half Latin and half Germanic and I use almost exclusively the Latin half. So translating into most southern European languages is no problem at all. And my Greek translator said to me “Do you write on purpose to make it easy to translate?” And I said “No!”. The Greek translation was the one I had the most trouble with because I had lots of quotations from Ancient Greek writers like Pindar and from Homer, etc... And my poor Greek translator had to try and find out what the original bits of Greek were. You see, to translate that book into French is no problem, you can just render the Ancient Greek as modern French, but my unfortunate Greek translator had to actually try and find the original quotations. And I couldn't remember where they came from half the time, like Pindar’s Fifth Thracian Ode. I mean I don't even remember reading it.

A.P.: Do you know why you use the Latin part of English? L.D.B.: Yes, it’s partly because I had Latin hammered into me when I was a little boy at school and I was almost fluent in it by the time I was thirteen. Then, during all that time I studied French and then I spent my year in Colombia where I picked up bits of Spanish. I’ve just been eased in that direction. It’s not a conscious artistic choice. I have a feeling that many American writers go for the Anglo-Saxon half.

E.V.: Is it for the same reason that there’s no German point of view in your novels. I mean there is a Greek point of view, there’s an Italian point of view, but there’s no German point of view. You have an Italian who speaks in the ﬁrst person, a Greek who speaks in the ﬁrst person but not a German character... L.d.B.: But I do have one German character who has something to say from time to time. You know, Lieutenant Weber?

L.C.: Yes, but it’s dialogue, it’s not in the narrative. L.d.B. – That’s true. That had never occurred to me.

V. On foreignness

E.V.: V.S. Prichett said that he had somewhat of a foreign mind. Do you think that this applies to any of you? M.G.: Foreign from what?

E.V.: Foreign from English, obviously. M.G.: Well in my case, I’ve spent more than half my life in France, so I speak actually more French than English in my daily life, so I don’t know, I can’t make that apply.

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L.d.B.: I think I’m a full-time foreigner.

E.V.: What do you mean by that? What do you think a foreigner is? L.d.B.: A foreigner is, I suppose, someone who is always a little bit on the outside, never absolutely sure that they're fitting in. But fortunately for me I'm the kind of happy foreigner who loves wherever they go. I may be typically British. I think the British are like those great big stupid dogs that bound up to you in the park on a wet day and put muddy paws on your clean white shirt. I think I’m a bit like that, you know, wherever I go I think I’m welcome and I set about enjoying myself... so as chasing rubber balls. D.M.: (...) I often think of myself as the man who fell from Mars. (...) I've always loved Byron's phrase, maybe from Childe Harold: “I moved among them but was not of them.” M.G.: Don’t you think any artist thinks that? D.M.: Yes any. I do. I think that is a habit of mind: being foreign. But I’d be curious to know whether people who aren't artists feel that way as a kind of permanent habit of mind that you only sometimes realize you have. I’m not sure it’s different, it’s just that maybe we do something with it that’s different. M.G.: I felt foreign until I left Canada and I don’t mean that as a boutade. But I never felt that I fitted in and I was sure that there was nothing the matter with me. I just needed to find a society with people who thought the way I did. I came to Europe and I never had any more trouble. I’m serious. D.M.: Yes, I know you are. But I can’t imagine though myself finding that place even in Venice if I stayed there. The topic of your conference I mentioned to an editor, Maureen Hewett at the LSU Press. I said “Well the topic is this and it has made me really understand my work as a whole for the first time by my trying to answer it. I said “What do you think of this idea?”and before I could say anything she said “Oh but other places, other selves, that expresses what people experience when they read.” That’s a given for reading. And that’s very simple, it occurred to me that was a simple thing for her to say, but it’s absolutely true. That’s why we read... it amazes me though that people who read for that reason want to pin down a specific place in relation to a specific character. Because I think that part of it is kind of irrelevant for me but not for some writers who actually consciously think in those terms because what they produce comes out of a conscious thinking in the terms that I think the question poses. M.G.: Everybody must read Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading... It’s just out, it’s absolutely marvelous. It's in English.

L.C.: Mavis, you spoke last night of Paris being “the place you like best,” “the place you like for writing.” Is that one of the reasons you went there? M.G.: I wanted to live there. I went there. I was not disappointed and so I stayed there. Why, I don’t know. (...)

E.V.: Do you feel at home in Paris? M.G.: Oh absolutely, from the first minute. But it came out of my reading.

E.V.: And what about when you get back to your real home? M.G.: Well, what is a real home? It’s in your mind really.

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E.V.: Do you feel that you have a home Louis? L.d.B.: Moi? Partout. As I say, I really like everywhere I’ve been and I’m very confused about where I should buy a house. M.G.: Buy a mobile home and take it with you wherever you go!

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

SCOTLAND

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Muriel Spark - b. 1918

Jeanne Devoize and Claude Pamela Valette

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Jeanne Devoize and Pamela Valette, “Narrative Techniques in the Short Story”, Conference January 21, 1989, First published in JSSE n°13, 1989.

1 Muriel Spark’s versatility — a novelist with some twenty titles, a playwright, a biographer and literary critic, and of course a short story writer — her delightful unconventionality, the incisiveness of her wit, her narrative power, are only a few of the traits that make of her one of the best loved and most widely‑read British writers of our times.

Jeanne DEVOIZE: How did you become a writer originally? How did you decide it would be your profession? Muriel SPARK: Well, I was quite a child when I started writing and I wrote poetry. I always thought of writing poetry. But gradually, when I was about 30, I started writing narrative poetry which told a story, and from that I moved into the short story, encouraged by the fact I won a prize with my first short story which was called “The Seraph and the Zambezi”. As I won this prize, I thought it was a good idea and I got more and more interested in the short story. Then, a publisher asked me to write a novel and I thought I would try that. Meantime I had collected my short stories together and I published the novel and the short stories and I decided not to do any other sort of work whereas up to that point I needed to have a job as well. That’s how by about the age of 35, I was already writing as a professional. It took a long time because I had a son to bring up and various economic family difficulties. It wasn’t too long after I decided, that I got started.

J.D.: I seem to understand that you prefer the novel to the short story. M.S.: I feel more at home with the novel, I’ll tell you. I feel I’d like to write short stories. But unless I have got a novel going always at home, waiting for me, a novel ready and started, I’m not happy. I feel there’s so much in life that I want to put into

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this novel, whatever it is, the one I’m doing. While one is writing a novel, it’s amazing how one is a magnet for experience, the sort of experience that you need, just for that novel. An event will happen, one will meet the sort of people, just the one needs. It seems to be like that. It is not so of course but it’s because one is looking for certain experiences.

J.D.: Have you ever written a short story while you were writing a novel? M.S.: Oh yes. I very often write short stories. All my short stories have been written recently while I was writing a novel. And I can’t think that I won’t write always two or three short stories every year. Something occurs to me that has got nothing to do with the novel I am writing. It occurs to me in short story form. Or a title. One idea. One single theme. And I’ll elaborate on that. I think “Oh, that would make a good short story.” And I make a few notes and play with it.

J.D.: Do you feel that one genre is superior to another? M.S.: No, in a way, I feel the short story is superior, it’s more difficult. If one is a perfectionist — it’s not that I am exactly a perfectionist — but I like to get the very best out of every form. I really do think the short story is something by itself and it’s superior to the novel in many ways. It’s nearer to poetry and likely to have a longer life sometimes.

J.D.: Among your own short stories, which are your favourites? M.S.: “The Portobello Road”, I think, is my best. Or, maybe there was one which I wrote called “The Executor”, not long ago, which I think is up to the standard. What I think about the short story is that it leaves more also to the reader’s imagination. Films are made of my books and stories. I don’t make them. But if I were a director of a film, I would rather have a short story to work on than a novel because there is more field for imagination, more scope.

J.D.: You alluded earlier on to the Scots, to Henry James as your favourite authors. M.S.: Well, in the field of the short story, there is also Guy de Maupassant. Henry James, of course, is the outstanding one. Let me think of the ones that are really terribly important to me: the Irish writer, Mary Lavin — she’s awfully good, I think —, Sean O’Faolain. The Irish are very good, they really are. There’s Edgar Allan Poe, who is thrilling. Wilkie Collins is very good with short stories. More recent ones, I don’t know very well. I must admit I haven’t read a great deal. In that Collection Winter's Tales that comes out every so and so, there are always one or two very good ones. I can’t think of any just at the moment. The Borges ones. Yes, he is always reliable.

J.D.: Do you feel you belong to any particular literary tradition, yourself? M.S.: Yes, I think I would belong, in the writing of prose, to a literary tradition which is connected with the belletrists like Max Beerbohm, a humourist. On the level of thought, Pritchett and that sort of fantasy. I am very interested in event, following event, following event. Also, you wouldn’t think so, but I owe a lot to Proust. I read Proust over and over again. What would we do if we didn’t have Proust? Can you imagine a literary world without Proust? It’s a drug. It works. Beautiful.

Pamela VALETTE: On the subject of literary influences, you just said you wrote narrative poems. Were you inspired by somebody? M.S.: Well, I did write a book on the poet laureate John Masefield because, for a long time before I wrote books, I wrote critical studies, on Mary Shelley, Wordsworth and

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John Masefield. Well, John Masefield was a narrative poet. He told us stories in verse, he was a ballad writer. And then I was writing ballads, long stories, stories in verse, so I could see I had this urge for narrative, for telling a story.

P.V.: You lived in Central Africa, didn’t you? M.S.: Yes, it was Zimbabwe, Southern Rhodesia.

P.V.: What was your experience in Central Africa? Were you in a town? M.S.: I lived in two towns: Bulaware and Salisbury. Now it’s Bulaware and Herare. And sometimes in absolutely isolated spots. My husband was a teacher and we were moving around a great deal.

P.V.: What sorts of contacts did you have? You didn’t teach yourself? M.S.: I didn’t teach myself, no. But my son was born there. I didn’t have very much contact with young people, except people of my own age. I was in my teens myself.

P.V.: Many of your stories take place in Africa. M.S.: Yes, it left a very strong impression but I wrote only one thing there and it was a poem. The poem was called “The Go‑Away Bird,” which later I wrote a story on, but on a different theme.

P.V.: There are two short story writers of our time who wrote a great deal about Africa: Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. Do you know them? M.S.: I didn’t meet Nadine Gordimer, but I do know Doris Lessing. I loved her earlier work. I preferred the earlier about Africa to her later: The Grass Is Singing is beautiful.

P.V.: But how would you compare your vision of Africa to theirs? M.S.: Doris Lessing is very much more political than I am.

P.V.: And Nadine Gordimer too. M.S.: Yes, she is, of course, she’s later, younger and also has a reason to be more political, she comes from South Africa where there was a political situation. In Rhodesia, there was a colonial situation. It wasn’t quite so oppressive. South Africans are perfectly educated people. There’s no reason why they should go in one door while the white people go in another door. Perfectly ridiculous. But the Blacks in Rhodesia were extremely primitive at that time, sweet people but extremely primitive. There was no political situation, there was no movement in the late 30’s, no freedom movement, although a lot of us felt they should get a better deal, better schools than they had. The law wasn’t too bad. There certainly weren’t oppressive laws; it was under British rule, which wasn’t wonderful, but it wasn’t too bad. But Doris Lessing has a more political mind. She is a communist and has a much more political mind. She is a very good writer. She’s a communist, though, or was. I don’t know whether she still’s got her party card. I think so.

P.V.: Were you still in Africa during the last war? M.S.: Yes, I was in Africa, I was stuck there. We had to go to South Africa until 1944 and then I got home and I was in the Foreign Office.

P.V.: And do you ﬁnd the war and the work in the Foreign Ofﬁce had an influence on what you wrote? M.S.: I think so because we were doing propaganda, inventing lies, which suited me all right. Inventing lies to mix up with truth. Mixing it all up and then putting it out for the German soldiers to swallow, to try and say one thing and then it was not true

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at all, or half of it was true. Anything to demoralize the German troops, in France, on the radio. And so, of course, that job suited me all right. It was inventive.

P.V.: I don’t remember if among your short stories, there is one that recalls those times. M.S.: Yes, there is: “The Poet’s House.” It’s a strange thing. I had not written sequels. But I had written two essays on that; one is autobiographical; and the other is reflection on having written an autobiographical piece and a story. It was Louis McNeice’s house. Another thing which affected me during the war is, while I was there, a school‑friend of mine — she wasn’t a close friend — was murdered. She looked very like me and that was the basis of my story “Pan‑pan, tu es morte,” “Bang‑bang, you’re dead,” the basis of it. In the hotel where I was staying, this girl was killed. I heard it. I heard the bangs. That was a terrible experience. She lived where I lived in Edinburgh. We looked very much alike. Altogether this was the basis later on for a story.

J.D.: What, after all that, do you think are the main values that remain with you? M.S.: The main values are really spiritual. I’ll tell you that wartime in Africa was not very nice. People were coming there for air training schemes and everything, people who really couldn’t cope with the freedom of life in Africa, having a lot of servants and everything. So in fact, I wanted to get back home. I liked Africa because there were beautiful birds, beasts, flowers, but I didn’t think the white people that I met were so very nice. It’s not because they were oppressive or anything. I just didn’t like them. And I didn’t like the Blacks either. There was nobody I liked to talk to. There was just nobody. And the English when they get together are very pretentious, you know, in small villages. So it wasn’t a life that I could continue with.

J.D.: Do you think there’s anything left of your education in Scotland in you? M.S.: Oh yes. You see I love the border ballads. I have just been writing my autobiography. I have written 10 000 words of it, which brings me up to the time before I went to school. I tell how we spoke two different languages. Scottish and English. The effect of the Scottish border ballads on me was very, very important from the point of view of how I write, how I look at things, the bite, the malice, the hardship, the harshness, the softness, whatever it is. It had a big effect, ineradicable, from the start.

J.D.: Did you receive a religious education? M.S.: No, as a matter of fact, I did not have a great deal of religious education. I think that school was nominally Presbyterian, but in fact it was progressive rather. And it was deeper than that. This border ballad savagery was what appealed to me, a much earlier state of being. Historically, I was very, very attracted to that.

P.V.: You were taught the border ballads at school or at home? M.S.: At school and at home. Yes. I had the border ballad from a very early age.

J.D.: Now, I have made an attempt at trying to guess what sort of a person you were through reading some of your novels and short stories and I would like you to tell us whether I am right or not. I thought you were a very independent sort of person. M.S.: I think so, yes.

J.D.: Not very sentimental. M.S.: No, I am not very sentimental.

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J.D.: I would say you probably hate any kind of vulgarity or hypocrisy. M.S.: I don’t like that, no, it’s true.

J.D.: There is something perhaps slightly obsessional in your personality? M.S.: Absolutely. Oh yes. I get an obsession. I am not paranoid against people. I get an obsession about something I want to do and I can't get rid of it till I have done it or found it. I am very obsessional by nature.

J.D.: I thought perhaps, at times, you rather enjoy shocking people? M.S.: I like to make people think, you know. I really do. I don’t like to give the wrong impression to people by hiding anything about myself. The thing is, if one speaks too much about oneself, one gives the wrong impression. They put the wrong weight on you.

J.D.: What about your fascination for the uncanny? M.S.: Oh yes. That’s bound up with the border ballads and this Celtic twilight‑feeling. J.D.: Yes, I felt there was a Celtic influence in some of them. I was wondering whether the experience in Central Africa, through putting you in contact with different mores and a different culture, perhaps did not encourage that as well. M.S.: Perhaps. I must tell you that the time I spent in Central Africa was very unhappy and I had great personal problems. One way or another I had responsibilities and problems. I don’t know how I faced them at the time. It wasn’t till afterwards. It hit me, you know. So that in fact Africa didn’t make a deep impression on me. To me, it was the dark continent. Very much.

P.V.: Did you ever hear about witchcraft? M.S.: Oh yes. The witch doctors come back now, I think. Now they've got independance, obviously they would come back. They were dying out because there were lots of missionaries. The missionaries were not bad people, you know. They did a lot towards educating the black people, giving them some self respect, and help, and various things. But in fact, there was a war in Rhodesia, a war of independance and the witch‑doctors are back again. They got rid of, they massacred a lot of the missionaries.

J.D.: I got the impression that at times those uncanny, either phenomena or odd characters that you create are a source of anguish or is it that writing is a means of getting rid of the anguish that sometimes they suggest. M.S.: It could be. It could be. After a while, of course, whatever the original impulse. There is a mutation. When one succeeds in writing it becomes a habit and a happy habit. Things change but one goes on doing the same things for a different reason, the same activity. An original activity is very often based on all sorts of things, a sense of injustice, resentment, humiliation, all sorts of reasons why an artist becomes impelled to express himself. However that changes and then one expresses what one has to express not for oneself but for everybody or hopes that it’s for everybody, not for one’s own feelings, but for everybody.

J.D.: I seem to feel also that friendship is very important for you. M.S.: Yes.

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J.D.: There’s several stories I read which suggest that when you meet people again after a long time, there’s always this fear or awareness of the changes that have occurred in them. M.S.: Yes, yes. I think this is true that people are sometimes quite unrecognizable and yet the nucleus of the person is there. It’s very often the case when one sees one after a long time. For instance, in “The Twins” and the story about old people in MementoMori. This is what Proust did.

P.V.: You said the other day about friends that you hadn’t seen for a long time and the way you thought it was best to leave them, not see them again, to keep the happy memories. M.S.: Yes, sometimes it is, but sometimes one looks different oneself and it rather seems as if a veil has been painted over them, they’re blurred, and sometimes they are more charming. Life has mellowed them. They've become more interesting sometimes.

P.V.: To come back to the bizarre, there’s quite a number of ghosts in your stories. M.S.: Yes.

P.V.: Do you half believe in them or in an after‑life? M.S.: Yes, I do. But not in the sense that one could possibly describe it. I have never seen a ghost. I have never had a real psychic experience that I felt a ghost in the room although I am sensitive to atmospheres, vibes as they call it. But I do think that this expresses something that can’t be expressed, in any other form. The after‑life exists but not in the form that you can say that the word “after” or the word “life” has any meaning. But it exists because we almost feel that it does in the way of what we’ve made of ourselves, the human race and its possibilities. Ghosts exist and we are haunted, whether we like it or not in the sense that it can only be expressed by a physical presence, or a ghost, but in fact, I do believe in the presence of something that you can call a ghost but not in the physical outline. I don't see any other way in which you can express this actuality, and I can’t deny the actuality simply because there is no other way to express it.

P.V.: It’s something immaterial. Perhaps what goes on in our subconscious. M.S.: Yes, in our subconscious, something psychological, immaterial or...

P.V.: In “The House of the Famous Poet.” I was struck by this sort of “abstract funeral” and the soldier who appears again and again... M.S.: Yes, that’s the one I wrote about because I felt I should explain and I wrote an essay on that story, and then I wrote a reflexion on what actually happened. I did go to Louis McNeice’s house and I think I had the sensation of a dying culture or a dying event. You see, there were some very near hits. The bombs were falling and there was this Morrison shelter. That Morrison shelter was a shelter built in a bed and with a steel roof over it. There was the feeling that there could have been a direct hit at any moment and I remember we went to a pub with this girl for a drink and there was a Cockney girl who was swearing at the Germans in the sky, as they were, and the feeling was that it was only an abstraction. The fact that it was confusing made me write twice about it, once to give the factual background and the other to show the connexion between the poet's house and then my reaction to it. The two things.

P.V.: The girl, when she realizes who the poet is, runs away... M.S.: Yes...

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P.V.: Don’t you think she may have a sort of presentiment, the intuition that death is hanging over the house. Finally the house is bombed after she’s gone and the poet has come back... M.S.: Yes. The house, in fact, was not bombed. What happened — but this was shortly after I had written the story — Louis Mc Neice died, which I wouldn’t have been aware of — but maybe I sensed it. That was in the 50’s, but the story takes place during the war.

P.V.: And you never forgot the house... M.S.: Oh no, no... The house made a very deep impression on me because I went around touching all the pencils and it was most fascinating. I did not touch anything as such. I didn't move anything, I didn't snoop but... I am very fascinated by people’s houses, actually.

P.V.: I would have thought that perhaps when you wrote in the ﬁrst person, you felt more involved, but you said earlier it wasn’t the case. M.S.: No. If I write in the first person, it’s generally because I want to draw sympathy for that person. I think a first person narrator draws more sympathy than in an objective story where it's all in the third person. But very often I try to put myself in somebody else’s skin, totally different. Sometimes, I write as if I was a seamstress, a dressmaker in one of my stories. That’s where the “I” comes in, the first person. But the third person very often is my own experience. But then I feel more free, I feel less embarrassed when I can say “he” or “she” or “this happened.” But the only time that I’ve known a first person narrator not to be really sympathetic is in Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier where the first person narrator is supposed to be awful.

P.V.: Of course it can be a way of being detached, but on the other hand the ﬁrst person narrator more or less judges those she sees, shows them as she sees them and often doesn’t let the reader make up his own mind about the characters so that he can’t help seeing them through the eyes of the narrator. For example in “The Pawnbroker's Wife,” which is so funny, those people are frauds but they get away with it and everybody is afraid of them. I felt that the narrator was aware of all this but immensely amused by those women... M.S.: Yes, that’s right, she egged them on and finally admired their craftiness, their art.

P.V.: Well, don’t you think we might have seen those characters as unpleasant if it hadn’t been for the ﬁrst person narrator? M.S.: Oh yes, certainly she makes the reader see them through her tolerant view, her tolerant humour. But when I say that I write in the third person more of my own experience, it’s rather like some people who are able to speak with a mask. The third person is a mask and then one is freer to speak of one’s own experience. In the first person, I feel I am wearing the mask of somebody else.

P.V.: For example in A Far Cry from Kensington. M.S.: Yes, it’s really somebody else, imagined, although there are my experiences, too; my experiences really put on to somebody else, not all my experiences, there are the people’s too. In the first person I am another person.

P.V.: The other main characteristic of your ﬁction is humour and irony, therefore leading to a satirical view of things. M.S.: That is Scottish. Maybe I’ve got too much of it. I’ll never be a good romantic writer.

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P.V.: It’s very difﬁcult to pinpoint what makes it so funny. M.S.: Humour is generally a matter of language.

P.V.: On the other hand, I ﬁnd you show little tenderness for most of your characters. M.S.: Well, maybe I don’t, not in the stories. Maybe for the old people in Memento Mori... It’s difficult for me to show sympathy for people who are fortunate. I don’t know why.

P.V.: You show a certain sympathy for deﬁnite types of characters, for example in The Bachelors, people who show honesty, sincerity and courage. The epileptic character in The Bachelors has his own sort of honesty and courage and he doubts, he questions himself, he is modest. M.S.: I deliberately made an intelligent character of him.

P.V.: I would say that when you describe your characters, you have no illusions about them. In a way, you are rather skeptical. M.S.: Maybe I think so. Probably that’s Scottish too. Maybe too much.

P.V.: I feel you don’t seem to expect too much of your characters. You take them as they are, you don't expect them to have admirable qualities. M.S.: No, I don’t. I don't know why that is. I am not very good at portraying nobility, noble qualities. I don’t think I have ever tried it really.

P.V.: Finally, you remain rather detached. M.S.: I don't know. Not always detached. But I do think that there is a lot of human qualities that I haven't yet managed to portray. I always can in the future, you know, one is always thinking in different terms.

P.V.: I felt in The Bachelors and in other stories too, that you were annoyed by the silliness of women. M.S.: Yes, the women who let themselves be taken in by spiritualism.

P.V.: On the contrary, you have a deep loathing for other characters who have a sort of unhealthy and morbid nastiness —and then you’re not at all detached. M.S.: Yes. The homosexuals, fakes.

P.V.: In The Bachelors, you have a strong sense of evil and also in A Far Cry from Kensington. M.S.: Yes, I think I did. The same type of character appears in the two novels. It’s very difficult to portray pure good. A bite, malice: it sharpens every form of art. There has to be some.

J.D.: I had a general impression of pessimism. M.S.: I don’t think I am a pessimist, really.

J.D.: I was thinking you seem to suggest that one cannot escape one’s education. M.S.: You mean, predestination.

J.D.: Yes, as if you were caught up in the mesh of your own education. I was thinking of that beautiful short story “You should have seen the mess.” M.S.: They liked that in England a great deal. They are always broadcasting it. It’s just really a sketch of a horrible puritanical little girl. You know, they go on like this in England. Maybe I’m on the gloomy side or pessimistic, but I do think we should all take it cheerfully. I do hope my literature shows a certain cheerfulness or humour, a certain philosophical cheerfulness.

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J.D.: I was thinking also of Robinson. I was very much interested in Robinson. Whereas in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, optimism is the dominating note, it is deﬁnitely not the case with your Robinson. M.S.: O yes! Robinson himself is a very pessimistic type, very gloomy.

J.D.: I was struck by the way you very seldom use a moral vocabulary. Usually it’s a concrete vocabulary and although the story may be moralizing, there’s no moral vocabulary as such. M.S.: I leave that to be reconstructed. No, I never take a moral attitude or if I do, I mean it. It’s suggested in some particular way. That’s achieved by leaving out a lot of adverbs.

P.V.: Much of what you say is implicit in fact. Your language is rather elusive and concise. M.S.: One should really leave something for the reader to construct, something individual so that every reader should get something special for himself, I think. I hope so.

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

CANADA

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Alistair Macleod - b. 1936

Linda Collinge and Jacques Sohier

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interview led by Linda Collinge, and Jacques Sohier, Conference on “The Implicit, in the Short Story in English“, December 7, 2002, Published in JSSE n°41, 2003

1 Born in Canada and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Alistair MacLeod chooses the harsh landscape of Cape Breton as a setting for most of his stories. In so doing, he pays homage to the labouring inhabitants of the island, mostly miners and fishermen and their families, but also raises questions about how individual destinies are formed in the web of strong family ties and tradition. His short stories were collected into two volumes, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, published in 1976, and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun, published in 1986. They have been recently republished with new stories as Island, The Complete Stories (2000). Alistair MacLeod has also published a novel, No Great Mischief (1999).

Linda COLLINGE: Can you tell us when you ﬁrst knew that you would be a writer? Alistair MACLEOD: No. I always liked to read and I always liked to write and I always could do that type of thing. Well, I was always interested in literature. I think while I was growing up, I was like someone who had musical ability or athletic ability, who can do certain things, but I never thought I was going to spend my life as a singer, or playing basket-ball although I could catch the ball and carry a tune, and I never thought I would make my living as a writer and I did make my living as a writer and that was a good thing. Then what happened? I was the kind of person who won the prize in high school for the best story or the best essay. But then, one thing happened that led to two things: I went to study for a PhD in English and that can be kind of soul-destroying. It is hard to be dazzlingly imaginative and get a PhD in English or in anything else, because you have to jump all the hoops. You study for the French exam and you pass, you study for the Latin exam and you pass, you study for the German exam and you pass, then

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you study for the comprehensives and you pass, you present a thesis proposal, etc. But one of the things you do is that you certainly analyse literature a lot, you certainly read a lot of short stories, lots of novels and so on. So somewhere along the line, I said, “Well, maybe instead of analysing James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ for the 95000th time, or ‘A Rose for Emily’, I should try and write one myself. So I decided to do that and I did and it was fine. The other thing that happened was I was six years in the US and I was away from what I considered to be my home landscape. I don’t know if it is absence that makes the heart grow fonder, but when I was far removed from my home landscape, I began to think of it, more thoughtfully I think than if I had remained in it, and I began to say “Well, if I am going to set fiction somewhere, why not set it here, why not?” So I did that, and it has been successful. You see I was kind of old when I began to do this, about say twenty-seven…

LC: Could you tell us what the ﬁrst story was that you imagined? AM: No, I don’t think so. Probably the first two short stories I had published: a short story called “The Return” and a short story called “The Boat”. “The Boat” was originally published in TheMassachusetts Review and then it was picked up in Best American Short Stories of 1969, so that’s a long time ago. But the people in there were Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, who had a posthumous story in there… It was good from the start although it was kind of a late start. It has not been a prolific life, but everything that I have done has been well received. I never got a rejection slip in my life, but I think part of that is because I thought a lot about it. I said “I want to do this, I want to do that.” So I guess I have been lucky, or slow, both.

Martin SCOFIELD: I want to ask about the short story. You have written a novel, but your main focus and your main writing has been in the short story. Why the short story? AM: I think I like the compression of it, the intensity of it and that you can deal with one or two ideas. I like to write with a kind of intensity. In track and field terms, I think of it as a 100 yard-dash, whereas I think of a novel as a marathon! When I began to write the novel, I was not sure whether I could maintain that intensity for 300 pages. That’s why I like the short stories.

Peter MULLER: Could you tell us a bit more why you have eventually changed and moved to this new genre, the novel. Was it because it has been a challenge that you needed to deal with eventually, or was it something that had to do with the material that you didn’t ﬁnd the shorter form sufﬁcient for, or what was the reason? AM: I think it’s more or so the latter. The story that I read from – ‘Island’ – is 40 pages long and I have another one ‘Vision’, which is about 40 pages long and it seemed they were getting longer and longer. They were getting to be novella-like it seemed to me, because I had more to say or thought I did. So, it just seemed like I needed a bigger canvas or I needed a bus instead of a Volkswagen! I needed more space to put my people in, so that they could do more things. I had a lot of clothes and only had a small suitcase, so I said, “I'll get a bigger suitcase to put all this in, so I can package these people and what they are going to do”. I spent most of my life teaching at university and that is a lot of work, so very often I would just do the novel in the summer. I would do a little bit, put it away, and then begin the next summer. So the novel went on too long. If I had been working on short stories, I would probably have another number of short stories. But it was the material.

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Vasiliki FACHARD: Whom do you address, who is your ideal reader? AM: I don’t have any ideal reader. I think that one great thing about being a creative writer or an imaginative writer is that you can just do anything you want, and then hope for the best and it will always come along. Most people who write, not creative or imaginative writers, have things imposed upon them. They have dead lines they have got to meet, they have limitations of length. They have to tell the truth, which you don’t have to do in fiction at all. I just say: “Just do the best I can and then, I will send it out, and it will find a home”. And it is not like writing situation comedies for TV, only half an hour long with a laugh every three minutes. You can do anything you want. I don’t say: “Well, this is aimed at middle-aged women in Algeria!” Island has been translated into fourteen languages. And I love that because I think of writing as a communicative act. My work has always been popular in mainland Europe: in France, Italy and Germany. But I was surprised a little bit when the Israelis bought the work, or when the Japanese bought the work, when the Albanians bought the work, or when the Turks bought the work. That is a long way to answer your question but when I was writing in Cape Breton, I was never saying, “I bet the Turks will like this”!I was just saying “I am just going to do the best I can”.

Jacques SOHIER: I like the way you describe the work of dentists in “The Closing Down of Summer”. You say that there are “limited possibilities to be found in other people’s mouths.” Would you say that when you write, you experience unlimited possibilities? AM: Yes; I don’t know very well about dentists, although I know a lot more about them since I did all this research. I got to read their magazines and that is quite a lot of fun. Well, I just think of limited possibilities to be found in 32 teeth, although dentists become richer than most writers…

JS: You are very ironical with the professionals, dentists, lawyers… AM: Well, I don’t know if I’m ironic, I am interested in a lot of this work, with how people spend their time living their lives. A lot of people spend their time living their lives with their bodies, and a lot of people spend their time sitting at a desk all day or peering into people’s mouth. But yes, I think, as a writer, you can just soar beyond the 32 teeth in a person’s mouth. You can do their ears and their eyes and their hair: it is all there!

Héliane VENTURA: But in your novel No Great Mischief, you also choose for the last Alexander the profession of dentist. So, you must have a fascination for dentists... AM: I chose in the novel the profession of the orthodontist, and the orthodontist is a fancy dentist. What I liked about that is that it’s a very new profession. Forty years ago, there was no such person as the orthodontist. There were primitive dentists. But orthodontists, in North America, are about the richest people that there are. And they get rich by looking after the teeth of the rich. Poor people never go to the orthodontist, they never do. In my novel, I just wanted to make this young man a rich young man, so he becomes a rich young man. The other thing I liked about the orthodontist’s job is that you change people’s outsides and you give them nice smiles but inside they can still be rats, rats with nice smiles. So, I was interested in that idea of cosmetic work where you change people’s externals but inside they are still the same.

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JS: We observe several references to other writers in ‘The Boat’ for instance when you mention Mickey Spillane, Ernest Haycox, Faulkner, Dostoyevsky and Manley Hopkins. Would you say you admire those writers? Or have they inspired you in any way? AM: No. That section in ‘The Boat’ is about an older man who likes to read and he just reads anything. You used to be able to get boxes of used books for not very much money and so these boxes just come and what you get in the boxes is very uneven. You get classics – like maybe Gerard Manley Hopkins –, Mickey Spillane, that kind of detective book, or westerns or How to Build a Better Fruit Cake! There would be all kinds of things in there and he just reads them all. It’s like someone who does indiscriminate reading. Some of the books affect you more than others.

John CASSINI: Just a quick question about your childhood. Were you a voracious reader? AM: No I do not think I was voracious, but I liked to read. But I wasn't under the bed reading by myself, or anything, no.

JC: Do you have a ﬁrst remembrance of a passage, an author, a book, that really kind of grabbed you? AM: No, I don’t. But I really liked literature in school, so I just read whatever they gave me in grade ten and I kind of liked it all! I liked Macbeth and I liked Wordsworth and I liked whatever came along. I was like the guy reading the indiscriminate box of books!

Corinne DALE: I noticed in your stories almost a motif having to do with vision: eyes, damaged eyes, blindness, second sight, references to Gaelic stories about those things and I even wondered if the environment that your stories are set in might be a particularly harsh environment for vision, I don’t know. But I just wondered if you would talk about that constellation of images having to do with vision… AM: As ‘Island’ was my story about isolation, ‘Vision’ was my story about vision. So I just put everything in there I could think of about sight, about literal sight: people who can see certain things and people who can’t see certain things, you have the colour blind test for your driver’s licence at some places; and people who can see the future, like second sight, like what happens when you go to the fortune-teller, or people who can see the past very clearly, people who remember the past. People who are literally blind, who can’t see anything literally but can see in other ways. People who can see things but are too stupid to see what they do see. Like in families, someone is neglecting the middle child and you say “Do you ever notice that you pay all your attention to your oldest daughter and your youngest daughter?”, “Oh, I didn’t see, I can’t see that”. So ‘Vision’ is a long complicated story with all those people in it who can see things and can’t see things. And the other kind of image I had in this story was… it is about – what will I say – illegitimacy. Sometimes people are seeing people and they don’t know that these people are their grandparents because they were raised in the house down the road. So they are seeing people and they think of them as Neighbour Brown and then later they see the truth or someone reveals to them the truth, that Neighbour Brown is really their grandmother. So I was interested in all those possibilities of what we see and what we don’t see, about people who want to see things, people who don’t want to see things. I don’t know about the geography affecting your eyes, but maybe it does for people who are in the Arctic a lot, they suffer from snow-blindness. People get sand in their eyes a lot and people who work in certain professions, as I said before, or work in

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physical professions, they lose their eyes, they lose other parts of themselves, they lose their hands, they lose their feet because of the nature of their work.

John PAINE: I was reading ‘Clearances’, which is the last and I guess the most recent story that you have published. It is one of those long short stories that you were describing earlier, with 30 to 40 pages. It put me in mind of a number of Southern short story writers, particularly a writer from my state of Tennessee, especially the sense of vague longing, a kind of nostalgia, perhaps a sense of loss, the elegiac tone that has been ascribed to you in book-jacket copy. I wonder if you, as a short story writer, consider as your peers people like Peter Taylor, Eudora Welty… AM: Well, I think people from the South, and this is obviously speaking in clichés, have been in their landscape for a long long time, as a lot of these people that I write about have been. And I think if you are from a landscape that goes back, this may not be very long in terms of a country like France, but goes back for centuries, and if you have a relationship with the land and you are able to say, rightly or wrongly, this is my parents’ land and my grandparents’ land and my great grandparents’ land and my great great grandparents’ land… People who have been in the same place for a long time very often have an attachment to that place, which is different from people, say, in Chicago, who buy a house for $80 000 and then get to a higher level of income and buy a house for $120 000 and just keep moving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, based on what they can afford to pay. And that is very different than being on these old farms or places. I think because people have been in the South longer than many of the people have been in…Southern California perhaps, they have a little different attachment to certain things.

RM: I guess this is more of a personal question. I am from Inverness County, MargareeValley… AM: Oh, what is your name?

RM: My name is Rodney Macdonald. AM: Oh my gosh, you are probably my cousin!

RM: I relate to what you said where being away you really see more into where you are from. I have only been in France for two months but that is as true as it can possibly be. I don’t understand where you started to be able to write the lives and the personalities of the people where we are from, because I have a deep longing within me to know these people and know where I come from. When you read ‘Island’, I was thinking ‘my grand father has a lobster ﬁshing shanty on a wharf, right on the shore where we sat growing up’, but at the same time, I feel like I don’t have this deep connection with the people who produced me. When and where did you start to really get this insight? How did you write these personalities? AM: I don’t know but as I said earlier, I think when I began to read all these short stories that you read, then I began to think “well the place that I come from is as interesting as any of these places, why not?” Rural Mississippi is not the centre of the universe, or D.H Lawrence up there in the north of England is not the centre of the universe, Thomas Hardy down in the south of England, these people are not the centre of the universe. But their stories have become kind of the centres of the universe. So why not do it? I never wrote about any of my own family, I don’t like to do that, I think it is a limitation of the imagination to say “I am just going to write about my aunt’s clothesline!” But I began to think about those things you are talking about. There is a theory that people write about what worries them. That people worry about different things depending on the geography that they come from, that

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Canadians worry a lot about snow, because they are in it a lot and winter will kill them; and last week I was in Mexico and nobody in Mexico worries about snow, they don’t worry about winter because it will never kill them, but other things will kill them. And I think all of these people worry about their children or they worry about love. There are kind of universal concerns up here and then, there are specific concerns down here that come very often from your geography, from your religion, colour of your skin, there are all kinds of things that are specific. So I began to think about that and I began to say “Well, I am going to deal with a character, this is her concern, or this is his concern and I want to structure it in a certain way, so that these specific concerns become universal concerns”. And this is hard work to be effective because you want people to be moved by your story.

Question: Hello, (Gaelic greeting) AM: Where are you from?

Q: I am from mainland Nova Scotia but I studied at the Gaelic college. I can’t tell you how much I relate to your work and I thank you for making it, for writing it. I read on the poster that you ﬁshed and you've mined and you worked in woods to put yourself through school. I can tell by reading your work that you have been there, you have been to that place as in the real thing, the real Cape Breton or East coast sort of life-style. You are teaching English in Ontario during the year, you are doing lots of things in your life… Did you ever feel like you had one foot in one world and one foot in another world? AM: All the time.

Q: All the time, this is how we feel. Do you think it is there, or is it in here? Is it inside or is it outside? How do you feel about your identity as for example a Cape Bretoner? AM: I do not know what you mean by inside or outside, what do you mean?

Q: This landscape. AM: I carry it with me all the time, inside. That landscape is with me all the time. I think that’s just memory. Lots of people find their bodies and their physicality in places where they don’t necessarily, emotionally want to be, but they have to be there for economic reasons. Nearly 12 million refugees are on the move all the time. Why are they on the move? They are on the move because they are starving or they are looking for a better economic life. But if you go wherever refugees are, they are always playing the music of their homeland which sustains them emotionally while they are physically in some place where they're cleaning the toilets, where they are doing work that doesn’t do much for their souls. So I think this is a common idea. I think people carry things within them that are what they are truly, but sometimes can’t express because of certain things.

Laurent LEPALUDIER: When reading ‘The Closing Down of Summer’ and other stories, I found that both the ﬁshing and the mining communities had some place in your short stories. In ‘The Closing Down of Summer’ there is this narrative in the ﬁrst person in the plural, ‘we’, which gives a very high sense of belonging to a community and it seemed to me, when reading it, that there was also a nostalgic sense for a lost community or a dwindling community, something that was going to disappear. Is that right? AM: Yes I think so. I think in ‘The Closing Down of Summer’, you have those men who are contract-miners who move all around the world and the man who speaks, speaks from the ‘we’ position. I see him as the captain of an athletic team, a football team and they say to him “what are your plans for Saturday?” and he never says ‘my plan

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is’, he says, “we want to shut down the defence, or we want to score early”. He is the spokesperson for a group of people who are doing the same thing. And the other thing I was interested in there is sometimes parents give their children advice and the cliché is that the children rebel against the parents. But very often they don’t, they just do what the parents tell them. So these are people who work with their hands, men who work with their hands, because this is an all-male world that they are in, and then they say to their children “Don’t do what I do, go and be a dentist, go and be a lawyer, go and be something where it will be physically easier and you’ll make money” and very often these children say ‘OK’. And they go off and learn all kinds of arcane things, they go and become English professors or something, and then when they come back to talk to the father twenty years later, they have nothing in common. So by encouraging them to do something different, they have lost them. It is a kind of ironic situation. I was also interested in the idea that a lot of people make their living by talking, and then there are other people in the world that hardly ever say anything. But it doesn’t mean that their thoughts are not as valuable as those of us who talk a lot. If you listen to those of us who talk a lot, you realise this, and they realise this. There used to be a sports commentator in the United States named Howard Cossel. He would interview the athletes and say “When you’re running to the basket, what's going through your mind?” And very often the guy would say “I just shoot the ball”. I thought this was an interesting contrast between tremendously good physical men who did not talk and the sedentary Howard Cossel who couldn't do any of those things but could really talk.

LC: Do you think the relative absence of dialogue in the stories might be explained through that? AM: I think so. I think that a lot of people talk and a lot of people don’t talk. And sometimes, occupations dictate whether you can talk or not. Men in fishing boats never talk all day because they can’t hear one another. The waves are shroshing over, they just work and they never speak or they make signs because they can’t hear one another above the wind and the waves. But their brothers who work in the fish plants stand all day cutting the fish, and they talk all the time! Their occupation leads them to be able to talk or not to be able to talk. So that’s the thing about the dialogue, a lot of people in the stories don’t speak very much. This has been a problem with the filming. They are always going to make films and I say “You’d better watch out before you make your film – I think people get carried away by the story – because there is not much talking in those stories.”

LC: I noticed that in your stories there was an interesting contrast between the implicit and the explicit around the theme of death for example. For example in stories like ‘The Boat’ that ends with the description of the father that’s been killed at sea and in ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ where the character is maimed by the dog, there are very vivid descriptions of death. On the contrary in some other stories like ‘The Road to Rankin‘s Point’, death always remains only suggested, it’s never completely revealed, it remains completely implicit. The same is true for example in the story ‘In the Fall’ where we suppose that the horse is going to be killed and the child has understood that the horse is going to be killed but it’s never really mentioned. So my question is: how would you explain the very strong

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contrast between the very, very vivid description and practically the unsaid as if it were too painful to say. AM: Sometimes you intuit things without really knowing them in a rational sense and this will depend on what you are like. And sometimes there are things like suicides. There is a lot written about suicides and the guilt the people left behind sometimes feel, because they say “Oh, if I had known he was going to do that, I would have done something else”. When people die in mysterious ways, sometimes there are signs and signals when you play things back; there was a kind of implicit something that was happening that you didn’t see. If somebody is blown apart in an explosion or something like that, completely accidental, then you know how the person left, but these other issues sometimes you don’t know and there is a lot of implicit, especially among people who don’t talk a lot.

LC: Some descriptions of death are very vivid, as if they're almost an expression of the unacceptability of death. And that seems to be somewhat in contradiction with the idea of belonging to a community and passing on life from one generation to the next. In that case death is not unacceptable, death is just part of life. AM: People who work with their bodies, as a lot of these people do, who work outside, do get kicked by horses, do get blown up in mines, do get washed overboard. You die in a very visual way which is unlike slipping into death in a hospital bed with lots of shots of morphine so you won’t feel death. So I think that is part of that. You can be positive about life and pass it on to the generations and still die. This is what happens.

JS: You have taught creative writing classes. How do you go about teaching these classes? AM: Well, you can’t give people ability. You can’t give people imagination any more than you can give people musical ability or athletic ability. You can’t give them what they haven’t got. But having said that, if you get somebody with athletic ability or with musical ability, you can make them better. Musical people who can read music are better off than musical people who can’t read music, because they have another dimension to them. People with athletic ability who come under the influence of a good coach will be better. You can never give students subjects, I don’t think, because I believe that art comes from the heart, from the emotion, from what you care about, and you can care about anything, because individuals care about different things. Then you say “Well, now this is what you care about. If we are going to make this into fiction, we have to do something with this. Tell the story from the point of view of the mother, tell the story from the point of view of the daughter, tell the story from the point of view of the old man next door”. These are all things that can be taught, techniques that you can apply to people with talent, but you can’t give them the talent. We all know this. So can you teach creative writing? Well I just think of it as “Can you teach the piano?” you say “Sure, teach piano, some people will be better than others.”

JS: And in return, have those classes had an impact on your writing? AM: Not very much because I think writing is so very individual.

LC: How do you choose a title for a short story? AM: I like the stories to have nice rolling titles. And sometimes I have them and sometimes I don’t. I think that sometimes titles are better than the stories! A title that I really really liked is by a Southern writer Carson McCullers who had a novel

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called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and I just think this is such a lovely title, or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe. They are just beautiful titles. Some of my titles are ‘The Boat’ (hum), ‘The Return’ (hum), ‘Vision’ is a little better, these are kind of monosyllabic little titles. Then I had a title ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ which I really liked and which was the title of the first collection of short stories that I brought out. The publishers did not want that title because they said it was awkward and hard to remember. They said if people have a hard time remembering it, it will not sell as well. It sold very well, so they were wrong on that. But I encounter people and they say “I read your book ‘Bloody Old Salts’, ‘Salty Old Gift’, the book with ‘blood’ in the title and ‘salt’ in it”, and I say “Oh, yes. Good that you read it”. So it is kind of clunky in the mouth! And a lot of people think it is from the Bible, but it is just from me! And then, when I brought out my second collection, ’As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’, the publisher said “I suppose you want this title?”, “Yes” I said. But I had beaten them down by that time, so they let me do almost anything I wanted. So I think ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ has all kinds of reverberations in it in terms of the story and of the collection and I think ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ has all kinds of reverberations within the story. What I was interested in ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ was cause and effect, and primitive people and a lot of critics of that story think that birds sing in the morning before the sun comes out and I never thought of that at all myself. What I was thinking of is, in places like Canada, when spring comes after the winter, some people – I am imagining these people – say “Oh, spring is coming. Pretty soon the birds will come.” Or other people look for the first robin, the first bird and they say “Oh, the birds are here, that means the spring is coming”, like the birds will bring the sun with them, which of course they don’t, but it is an idea. So I like those kinds of titles because I think you are able to do work in the title as well as in the story. Whereas with ‘The Boat’, ‘The Return’ you are there with your little ‘the’ and your little noun and it doesn’t reverberate as much as the others.

HV: About ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’, to me it sounds like an incomplete metaphor, because ‘as birds bring forth the sun, so’ and then, ‘so’ is missing. Is this the way you meant it, or is it ‘when’ birds bring forth the sun? AM: Yes that’s the way I meant it. Like in the novel, No Great Mischief, the original sentence was ‘No Great Mischief if They Fall’.

HV: Can I return to ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’, the story itself, because it is certainly a fascinating story. There is a sense of doom that pervades the story. That is in contradiction with what you have said about survival and the fact that what you were trying to voice through the anxieties of the characters was the theme of survival. AM: In that story, a lot of people are trying to survive. But in certain families, there may be certain things in your DNA or in your genetic make-up… Say, you are a woman and your mother died when she was forty and your grandmother died when she was forty and your great grand mother died when she was forty and your great great grandmother died when she was forty and suddenly you are 37 and you don’t feel so well, “Well…”, you say. Or else you say “Well, I don’t believe in any of that, that’s just coincidence, I feel fine.” But I think once you have knowledge – and in that story there is a character that says “you cannot not know what you do know”– once you know things, they are yours until Alzheimer comes! You may say “I am not going to believe this, I am not going to think about this today, I am not going to think, I am

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not going to think…”, but it is still there, and you can just push it back so far. I was interested in the idea of what we carry with us. The other thing I was interested in was people with a belief, whatever that belief is. If they are inside the circle of the belief, that is reality, and people who are outside their circle of belief think of them as strange.

HV: But they believe in the evil spell, they feel that they are under a spell, and they cannot escape this spell. Is this something that you are particularly fascinated with? AM: Kind of, yes. It is not as extreme but it is like people who believe in voodoo, or who believe that other people are capable of taking your souls…

Q: Do you ever read any criticism, literary criticism on your work, scholarly criticism? AM: Sometimes.

Q: And does it effect you in any way? AM: No. I don’t think so. See it always comes after the work is out. And I think that you just have to do what you do. Anything you write excludes 99.9% of the world. I am not talking about serious literary criticism but people can always say “why don’t you have more references to religion in your work, or more references to sex, or more references to vegetarians, or more references to Star Wars, or more references to rabbits?” I just say “Well, this is what I’ve got and this is what I do, I can’t do everything, so here I am”. But, yes I read literary criticism.

Q: What about your relationship with your translators? AM: I don’t know. All I can do is hope that the publishers put you in good hands. And I think because the publishers try to make the book as good as it can be, they generally do put you in good hands. But sometimes I think it’s not the case. Sometimes in the short stories, I find three of them translated by somebody and then the next three translated by somebody else. I ask the publishers why and they say “Well she did three and then we didn’t think she was good enough so we gave them to somebody else”. But all I can do is trust. I usually trust the publisher, if not out of sensitivity, out of sales. But sometimes there are just things you can say in one language and you can’t say in the other. And sometimes the translators phone up. The French translator will phone up and say “What do you mean by this?” And sometimes the habits or the landscape are strange to the translator.

Florence BERNARD: I translated the two ﬁrst collections of short stories. The two little books. AM: What is your last name?

FB: Bernard. AM: Oh, I see! You are like someone from a novel. I talked to you on the phone but I never saw you.

FB: In fact I was much younger when I translated your short stories. I think I was very shy to talk to you because I have so much admiration for your work. AM: But you won a prize for that?

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FB: Yes. And your ﬁrst one “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” was also published. A French publisher bought my translation. AM: You phoned me up once about the “poultice made of cobwebs”! You do very good work. I am very glad to meet you.

LC (to Florence Bernard): How did you translate the two titles? FB: I first translated three short stories of the first collection for my MA thesis, and, at first I translated ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ by ‘Cet amer héritage au goût de sang’. This was the title for the MA thesis and then after that when I talked to the publisher, he wanted to have a shorter title, so we just stayed with ‘Cet amer héritage’, which is a good title I think. In fact I have it here,…oh, no, ‘Cet héritage au goût de sel’, for the first one, and then for the other one, ‘Les Hirondelles font le printemps’, because it is impossible to translate exactly… well that’s one of the things the other publisher from Montreal told me. He said I was too close to the English language in the titles.

LC: Does the term ‘salt-gift’ exist? AM: No, this is my idea. But I thought with ‘salt’ because it deals with that kind of place, ‘lost salt gift of blood’, and blood has salt in it obviously, and I liked salt because it is one of those condiments when little bits make things better and too much make things worse, so it is a balance. And then in that story, the gift is ambiguous. It’s about the birth of a child born out of wedlock, which is not a good idea in the eyes of some, but as the child grows, the child is seen as a gift by others, so it has got that ambiguity to it.

MS: When you compose your stories, do you think about story sequences? AM: No.

MS: If not, what care do you take with the placing of the stories when you publish a volume? Is it important to have them in a certain order? AM: In those early two volumes they were placed in certain orders.

MS: The ﬁrst three in Island are about boys growing up. AM: Yes, those three in Island are placed in chronological order.

MS: From when they were written? AM: Yes. When you are writing stories, when you are in the immediacy of the story, you obviously can’t see down the road. So I just write maybe one a year for a long time and then put them together.

LC: He mentioned the stories about children growing up, those ‘coming of age’ stories in Island. Is there something particular about that life event that you wanted to deal with in your stories? AML: I think that one of the interesting things about being a child and maybe about being an adolescent is that a lot of things happen to you for the first time. So, these first time experiences that happened to you when you were young will never happen again with the same kind of emotional intensity. I think that one other thing that happens when you move from childhood to adulthood is there is a while, when you are a child, that you think that your parents can do everything. If your doll is broken or your wagon doesn’t work, you can take it to your mother and your father and they will have answers to everything. But then when you move, however we do this, from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, you realize that adults can’t do everything and now you are one of them and there is

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no one to run to, because this is what it means to be an adult. So I was interested in that kind of moment.

JS: In ‘Winter Dog’ you say that memory is more real than reality. AM: Well, I think we are around reality all the time. And a lot of it is boring, we can’t stand it. But we remember emotional highs and emotional lows. And they have an emotional hold on us that the dull reality does not have. You will remember something like those images of the dog -- that man in ‘Winter Dog’ sort of says “I remember this”. So that emotional memory is stronger than having, say, crepes for dinner, though I know that’s reality.

HV: There is a tremendous empathy between the writing voice and the character in your stories. Is it the only way you want to write? You seem not to want to take any distance from your characters. AM: That's a triumph of technique! I like to have empathy with the characters. Because it’s too easy just to load people down with bad characteristics so I say: “What I’m going to do, even if people do bad things, is to try to understand them.” I think in that way, you perhaps have more insight into the human condition, or the way people in certain places are trying to live. So I’m glad to have empathy with them, I like them all.

Q: But you kill them off! AM: I don’t kill them all off! We all are going to be killed off! It is what I said, don’t be surprised if you die one day, it’s going to happen. People that we love leave us, we leave them. I don’t think this is a breakthrough. At 66 I’m aware of Time's winged chariot drawing near, more so than when I was 46 or 26. But even at 26, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be eternal, an eternal flame.

Q: Do you know how you will end a story in advance? AM: Yes. Yes, I do. I write the conclusion when I’m half way through. And I work really hard on a conclusion when I’m half way through because I say: “This is going to be the last thing that I say to the reader and it’d better be good or as good as I can make it”. And so the last lines of nearly all the stories I thought about. The last line of ‘The Boat’: “There was not much left of my father, physically, as he lay there with the brass chains on his wrists and the seaweed in his hair.” And the last line of ‘Vision’: “And forever difficult to see and understand the tangled twisted strands of love.” Last line of the novel: “All of us are better when we’re loved.” I say: “This is what I am going to say and this is going to be my last paragraph or my last image.” And I work towards that, the way the boat works towards the lighthouse. I see that as my destination. I start and when I’m half way through, if it is going well, I say “Now, what’s going to happen in the final scene”. She is going to leave the island, the father is going to be washed over, there is going to be this resolution to what we see and what we don’t see or what we missed in ‘Vision’. And ‘In The Fall’, “I think that I will find David that perhaps he may understand.” This is the older boy who suddenly realizes what it is like to be an adult and that the parents are not monsters to sell the horse as the little brother thinks they are because he loves the horse. So there will be that, if not resolution, a kind of understanding. To be able to work that way you have to be really sure of yourself, you have to say: “All right, this is my story about vision, this is my story about death, this is my story about cliché. This is going to involve this kind of boy, this kind of man and woman,

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this kind of event, and then it is going to end like this with this scene, and the scene is going to be outside in the wind and the rain or the scene is going to be at night with the boat leaving”. So that’s the way I work.

MS: It’s interesting when you say that you write the end about half way through. Is that because it is only half way that you really know what the end is going to be? AM: When you’re writing, you feed off what you’ve written and then you say “Now it’s time to think about the end”. And it nearly always works out fine for me. It keeps you thinking all the time, thinking of the destination.

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Mavis Gallant - b. 1922

Anne-Marie Girard et Claude Pamela Valette

NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR

Interviewée par Anne-Marie Girard, et Claude Pamela Valette, 25 août 1983, Publié dans le N° 2 du JSSE, 1984 L'entretien qui suit a été enregistré le 25 août 1983 dans l'appartement de l'auteur.

Anne-Marie GIRARD : Cela paraît surprenant que l’on ne puisse pas trouver vos ouvrages à Paris ou à Londres. J'ai cherché en vain, chez Foyle's, chez Hatchard's. On m'a seulement proposé une Anthologie de Nouvelles Canadiennes où ﬁguraient deux de vos textes. Comment expliquez‑vous cette situation ? Mavis GALLANT : Je suis vraiment désolée. Je ne me rendais pas bien compte de ce problème. Il est vrai que mes livres sont principalement édités aux Etats‑Unis et au Canada.

A-M G. : Et dans lequel de ces deux pays êtes‑vous le plus connue ? M.G. : Il y a trois ou quatre ans, j'aurais dit : « Aux Etats-Unis ». Maintenant, c'est au Canada, ce Canada qui, depuis un an, s'intéresse enfin sérieusement à moi, ce dont je suis ravie. Tous mes livres y existent maintenant en « paperback » (mes deux romans vont sortir en septembre 83). J'ai donc la chance de voir, de mon vivant, tout ce que j'ai écrit imprimé.

A-M G. : Avez‑vous déjà obtenu des prix littéraires ? M.G. : J'ai reçu le prix du Gouverneur Général en 1982 pour Home Truths, mon recueil de nouvelles canadiennes.

A-M G. : Vos nouvelles paraissent d'abord dans des revues, et plus tard elles sont groupées en recueils. Mais, à mon avis, il y a trop de recoupages. Par exemple, «The Other Paris » se trouve non seulement dans le livre qui porte ce nom, mais aussi dans The End of the World. Il en est de même pour « The Picnic » ou « About Geneva » N'est‑il pas agaçant pour le

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lecteur achetant un ouvrage qu'il croit entièrement nouveau de retomber sur ce qu'il a déjà lu ailleurs ? M.G. : Certes. Mais je n'ai, à cet égard, pratiquement aucun pouvoir sur les éditeurs. Ils font ce qu'ils veulent. Certaines nouvelles semblent les attirer plus particulièrement, comme « Acceptance of their Ways » — vous savez, cette histoire de trois femmes seules dans une petite pension de famille de la côte ligurienne — qui semble être leur favorite. Je ne peux plus la supporter ! En ce qui concerne Home Truths, j'ai insisté pour que l'on s'en tienne à des nouvelles non encore publiées. Il est facile de faire un choix, puisque j'ai donné tous mes manuscrits — ou plutôt mes originaux, car ils sont tapés à la machine — à l'Université de Toronto.

A-M. G. : Vos nouvelles n'ont, je crois, jamais été traduites en français. N'avez‑vous pas envisagé de les traduire ou de les adapter vous-même, ce que vous permettrait aisément votre parfaite connaissance de notre langue ? M.G. : Absolument pas. Cela me serait impossible, ou alors je réécrirais tout. Une traduction a été faite récemment au Québec, mais elle était très mauvaise, j'ai dû la refuser. On m'y faisait employer des mots comme « déconner » ou « déblatérer » — je veux dire dans la narration, pas dans le dialogue — qui n'ont rien à voir avec mon style, et, de plus, elle était truffée d'erreurs. Quant aux éditeurs français, ce que je fais ne les intéresse pas du tout. En France, ceux qui me lisent, ce sont les universitaires.

Claude Pamela VALETTE : N'avez‑vous jamais essayé d'écrire directement en français ? M.G. : Non. J'en suis incapable, je manquerais de profondeur, de nuances. Je possède bien mieux l'anglais. C'est une langue admirable, dont je ne me lasse pas d'exploiter les possibilités. Pour moi, le français est avant tout la langue de la conversation. Les Anglais ne savent pas amener une conversation, c'est un art qui leur échappe.

A-M. G. : Quelle est votre attitude vis‑à‑vis des critiques ? M. G. : J'ai pris l'habitude de ne pas lire les critiques, du moins pas tout de suite. En général, j'attends un an, et je peux alors m'y mettre en toute sérénité.

A-M. G. : L'essentiel de votre œuvre se compose de «short stories » et « novella », c'est‑à‑dire quelque chose qui, par sa longueur, est à mi‑chemin entre la nouvelle et le roman. Est‑ce par là que vous avez débuté ? M.G. : Non. Comme beaucoup de jeunes, j'ai d'abord écrit de la poésie. J'ai arrêté vers l'âge de dix‑neuf ans.

A-M. G. : Vos poèmes ont‑ils été publiés ? Ou du moins les avez‑vous conservés ? M.G. : Je n'ai rien gardé. Ce n'était que le désir de s'exprimer d'une adolescente, une adolescente assez solitaire, enfant unique dont le père est mort jeune.

C.P. V. : La nouvelle ne peut‑elle pas, par certains aspects, être rapprochée de la poésie ? M.G. : Bien sûr. D'une nouvelle, il faut tout lire, on ne peut rien sauter. Ce qui est accessoire disparaît, seul subsiste l'essentiel.

A-M. G. : Est‑ce avec des nouvelles que vous avez commencé à gagner votre vie ? M.G. : Non. J'ai débuté comme journaliste. A vingt et un ans, j'ai été engagée par un journal de Montréal, The Standard, qui n'existe plus aujourd'hui. On m'a d'abord chargée de commentaires de photos. Il n'y avait pas de télévision à l'époque, et le public était friand de photos. Au bout d'un mois, j'ai proposé un reportage sur un poulbot de Montréal, un gamin de cinq ou six ans que j'avais remarqué dans la rue. Je l'ai suivi pendant plusieurs jours, accompagnée d'un photographe. C'est ainsi que j'ai eu mon premier «by‑line », c'est‑à‑dire un papier avec mon nom, ce qui n'était pas

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mal pour mon âge ! Et je suis passée au rang de « feature‑writer ». Pendant ce temps, j'écrivais aussi pour moi, mais je n'ai rien essayé de publier jusqu'à l'âge de vingt‑sept ans. Je me demande pourquoi ! J'étais sotte ! Ma première nouvelle fut acceptée par The New Yorker en 1951. Vous pouvez imaginer combien j'étais heureuse et fière, car il était — et il est — très difficile d'y entrer. Et depuis, je n'ai jamais cessé d'écrire pour eux.

A-M. G. : Combien de nouvelles y avez‑vous publiées en tout ? M.G. : Une centaine, plus quelques autres ailleurs, dans Esquire, Charm oudes revues universitaires. Mais on ne vit pas de sa contribution à des revues universitaires ! Maintenant que John Cheever est mort, je suis devenue la plus ancienne « fictionnelle » du New Yorker. Derrière moi vient Updike, qui a neuf ou dix ans de moins, mais qui a commencé à écrire très jeune.

A-M. G. : Pouvez‑vous expliquer votre prédilection pour ce genre bien particulier qu'est la nouvelle ? M.G. : Pour faire des romans, il faut avoir quelques «réserves » devant soi—réserves de temps et d'argent. Or je voyageais beaucoup, je circulais en Europe. Quand aurais- je trouvé le temps de mener à bien une œuvre de longue haleine ? Par ailleurs, la nouvelle est un genre qui convient à mon tempérament, qui me satisfait pleinement. Plus j'en écris et plus j'en acquiers le goût et la technique. Pourquoi s'occuper de ce qui n'est pas nécessaire ? Le roman a besoin de tisser des liens entre les événements, et il faut être Stendhal ou, mieux encore, Flaubert, pour réussir à rendre chaque passage intéressant. Par contre, dans la nouvelle, tout le « connective tissue », c'est‑à‑dire ce qui lie les muscles aux os, est supprimé. Voyez les quatre nouvelles que j'ai terminées cet été, et dont la première, « The Recollection », vient de sortir dans The New Yorker du 22 août. Il s'agit des trois mêmes personnages : un homme, un Français, et deux femmes, à différentes périodes de sa vie. La première occupe sa vie dans un certain sens, puis elle disparaît lorsqu'il épouse la seconde. Ensuite vient la mort de la seconde et enfin le retour à la première. Ainsi les personnages changent de poids. L'histoire commence à Paris sous l'occupation et se déroule sur quarante ans : j'aurais pu en faire un roman, mais je suis contente de ne pas l'avoir fait. Il ne me reste que les quatre temps forts, j'ai éliminé le reste. C.P. V. : On ne peut s'empêcher de remarquer que beaucoup de nouvellistes sont des femmes — dans les pays anglo‑saxons, mais aussi maintenant en France. Croyez‑vous que ce soit un genrelittéraire qui leur convienne plus spécialement ? M.G. : Je ne crois pas. Il y a autant d'hommes qui écrivent des nouvelles en anglais que de femmes. Tenez, regardez l'Anthologie du New Yorker pour la décennie 50-60 : Cheever, Updike, Salinger, Bellow, etc., etc. Bien plus d'hommes que de femmes !

C.P. V. : Y a‑t‑il quand même des femmes nouvellistes que vous ayez particulièrement aimées ou admirées ? Katherine Mansﬁeld, par exemple ? Ou Jean Rhys ? M.G. : J'ai beaucoup lu Katherine Mansfield, mais entre quinze et vingt‑cinq ans. Quant à Jean Rhys, j'avais plus de quarante ans quand elle fut rééditée — à la fin des années 60, si je me souviens bien — et je suis très mal à l'aise avec l'éternel sujet de la femme qui souffre sans rémission, avec toutes ces pleurnicheries...

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A-M. G. : Pourriez‑vous évoquer la genèse d'une de vos nouvelles ? Comment l'idée de base naît‑elle dans votre esprit ? Met‑elle longtemps à se développer ? M.G. : Il faut parfois des années pour qu'une histoire prenne corps. L'idée germe et mûrit petit à petit, j'y réfléchis, elle me travaille, et je ne me mets à écrire que lorsque je la sens tout à fait au point.

A-M. G. : Apportez‑vous généralement beaucoup de corrections à la première ébauche, ce que peut laisser supposer votre style très soigné ? M.G. : Je ne fais que ré‑écrire. Au cours des années, j'ai remarqué quelque chose. La non‑fiction est semblable à une gelée : vous pouvez la refondre et la remouler tant que vous voulez. Avec la fiction, il arrive un moment où cela devient dur comme cette table, qui est en marbre, et il ne faut plus y toucher, ou vous ne ferez que des égratignures. Sinon, il faudrait tout casser.

A-M. G. : Si l'on compare des nouvelles comme « From the Fifteenth District » ou les nouvelles sur Grippes à ce que vous avez écrit dans les années 50 ou 60, on est frappé par une certaine différence de ton. Les nouvelles les plus récentes me semblent plus sophistiquées, les thèmes plus proches de l'actualité, le ton plus dur. Est‑ce là une évolution consciente ? Sauriez‑vous en déﬁnir les causes ? M.G. : Il est naturel que l'on change en vieillissant, que l'on évolue, sans pour autant en rechercher sans cesse les raisons. J'ai en effet eu une période satirique, qui a duré deux ou trois ans. Mais avec « Luc and his Father », j'ai recommencé à faire autre chose. Quant à mon Grippes, qui m'a déjà inspiré trois nouvelles (une quatrième est en chantier), je me défoule avec lui, je m'amuse. Vous savez, c'est le type du littérateur parisien, toujours un peu copain avec les gens en place, qui joue sur tous les registres, qui se faufile... quand même touchant, à sa façon.

A-M. G. : Vos personnages sont‑ils purement ﬁctifs, ou vous sont‑ils inspirés par la vie réelle ? M.G. : Il est bien évident que la réalité nourrit la fiction. Souvent même elle la dépasse. En général, mon point de départ est une situation épisodique, un événement qui m'a frappée, ou bien un être réel, mais quelqu'un que j'ai rencontré par hasard et que je ne reverrai probablement jamais. Je n'utilise pas mes relations, ni à plus forte raison mes amis. Il m'est tout de même arrivé une fois une aventure déplaisante : c'était avec la nouvelle appelée « The Deceptions of Marie‑Blanche », qui est restée gravée dans mon esprit, bien que je relise rarement ce qui a été publié et que j'oublie beaucoup de ce que j'ai écrit. J'y raconte, vous vous en souvenez peut‑être, les fiançailles successives, et chaque fois ratées, d'une jeune Canadienne dont la mère impose aux divers prétendants tout un rituel qui finit par les décourager. Or il s'agissait d'une personne réelle, mais jamais je n'aurais pensé qu'elle tomberait un jour sur cette histoire. C'est pourtant ce qui s'est passé. La jeune femme s'est immédiatement reconnue, surtout à cause de la phrase sur sa bouche si petite qu'elle était forcée de manger les myrtilles (on dit a « bleuets » au Canada) une à une. Elle a été profondément blessée et j'ai eu la plus grande peine du monde à me faire pardonner. Cela m'a servi de leçon et rendue très prudente.

C.P. V. : Beaucoup de vos nouvelles sont écrites à la première personne. Sont‑elles autobiographiques ? M.G. : Quelquefois, mais toujours de façon déguisée. Je n'ai rien fait qui soit entièrement autobiographique. Il n'y a que des éléments. Dans les quatre dernières nouvelles de Home Truths, la narratrice, une jeune femme qui s'appelle Linnet Muir, si

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elle n'est pas exactement moi, suit tout de même mon chemin. Elle revient des Etats‑Unis où elle a fait des études, se marie pendant la guerre, comme moi, elle devient journaliste, comme moi... Mais souvent, c'est un homme ou un enfant qui raconte.

C.P. V. : Vous attachez‑vous à vos personnages ? Avez‑vous l'impression qu'ils vous deviennent familiers ? M.G. : Pendant que j'écris, bien sûr. Mais après un temps, ils me quittent. Un temps encore, et j'oublie jusqu'à leurs noms. C'est normal, les personnages ne sont pas vos créations, ils existent d'eux‑mêmes, et ils se révèlent à vous. Vous les décodez comme vous décodez les personnes que vous rencontrez. Vous les oubliez comme des gens croisés dans la rue. Par contre, je me rappelle les lieux, les endroits qui ont servi de cadre à mes nouvelles, par exemple des quartiers de Paris. Le Luxembourg, c'est « Baum, Gabriel ». En passant dans la rue du Bac, je pense à A Fairly Good Time, ce roman situé dans le quartier, et je me dis : « Tiens, c'est là cette charcuterie où elle s'est arrêtée ! ». Mais d'elle, je ne sais plus rien. Ou encore, l'autre jour, j'ai longé les Tuileries en autobus, et une de mes nouvelles, «The Statues Taken Down », m'est revenue à la mémoire : elle se passait au moment où Malraux, vous vous en souvenez, faisait enlever les anciennes statues pour les remplacer par des statues de Maillol. Je me suis rappelé que j'avais écrit une histoire autour de l'événement.

A-M. G. : Il y a pourtant peu de descriptions dans votre œuvre. Mais vous excellez à rendre une atmosphère en quelques mots, avec une extraordinaire économie de moyens. N'êtes‑vous jamais tentée par de plus longues descriptions ? M.G. : La description fait partie de ce superflu que j'évoquais à propos du roman. Je la trouve inutile et ennuyeuse. Une atmosphère se dégage d'elle‑même, elle se crée autour du récit, comme par magie. Si vous, l'auteur, vous voyez, le lecteur voit aussi, quelques indices suffisent.

A-M. G. : En fait, vos évocations de lieux et de paysages, qu'il s'agisse de Paris, du midi méditerranéen ou du Canada, font penser à celles d'un peintre. J'ai été frappée par cette phrase de «One Morning in June » : « The Paris winter had been sunlights ; later on, he saw that its grey contained every shade in a beam of light ». Il sufﬁt de regarder vos murs pour se rendre compte que vous aimez la peinture. D'où vous vient cet intérêt ? Votre père n'était‑il pas peintre ? Je vous pose cette question en pensant à la nouvelle intitulée « Wing's Chips », qui sonne si vrai qu'on ne peut s'empêcher de se demander si cette petite ﬁlle, ce n'est pas vous. M.G. : Mon père en effet était peintre, mais, mort à trente‑trois ans, il a peu produit. Un jour, un restaurateur chinois lui demanda une enseigne, ce dont je fus très fière, car j'eus l'impression qu'enfin il avait un métier comme tout le monde. Un de mes premiers souvenirs, c'est celui de mon père m'emmenant dans un musée. Un tableau, paysage d'hiver. Il me dit : « You see, snow isn't white — it's grey, blue, even dark ». Quelque chose comme cela.

A-M. G. : Quels sont vos peintres favoris ? M.G. : J'aime trop la peinture pour avoir vraiment des favoris. Mais Manet, Goya, Delacroix me «parlent ». Lorsque je me suis établie à Paris, j'ai commencé à acheter des tableaux de peintres contemporains. Comme celui que vous apercevez sur le mur du fond : c'est l'œuvre d'un Japonais, Josaku Maéda, qui était à Paris dans les années 60. Il représente le Mandala, l'humanité.

A-M. G. : La plupart de vos héros — si on peut les appeler ainsi — sont, d'une manière ou d'une autre, des exilés : Américains qui vivent ou voyagent en Europe, militaires appartenant

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aux troupes d'occupation installées en Allemagne après la guerre, ou encore ces Anglais qui passaient autrefois l'hiver sur les côtes de la Méditerranée. Pourquoi un tel intérêt pour cette catégorie d'individus ? Ne vient‑il pas de ce que vous êtes vous‑même transplantée ? M.G. : Je ne crois pas, car je ne me sens pas du tout transplantée. Déjà lorsque j'étais jeune, j'étais fascinée par les réfugiés venus habiter Montréal. Ils représentaient pour moi une culture et une civilisation différentes et je ne perdais aucune occasion de les rencontrer.

C.P. V. : Presque toutes les nouvelles de The Pegnitz Junction se déroulent en Allemagne, ou mettent en scène des Allemands. Vous semblez particulièrement attirée par ce pays. Pourquoi ? M.G. : Il s'agit là du passé, d'une période révolue de ma vie. A l'origine, il y a eu une expérience journalistique. Au printemps de 1945 nous sont arrivées au journal les toutes premières photos des camps de concentration — des photos prises par l'armée britannique qui venait de libérer Bergen‑Belsen et qui étaient distribuées dans le monde entier. Le rédacteur en chef a décidé de sortir un numéro spécial et il m'a appelée. Je reverrai la scène toute ma vie : lui, blanc comme un linge, et ces photos étalées sur le bureau. Vous ne pouvez imaginer le choc ! On savait qu'il y avait des camps, mais on croyait que les détenus étaient fusillés. Je n'avais que vingt‑trois ans, et je ne pouvais croire ce que je voyais, que c'était des êtres humains — non seulement des Israélites, mais des Grecs, des Hongrois... J'avais l'impression que l'humanité tout entière était enfouie là‑dedans. J'ai pensé : il faut savoir tout de suite ce qui s'est passé dans la tête des Allemands. Et l'on ne va rien apprendre par les victimes. Ceux qu'il faut questionner, ce sont les bourreaux. Et s'ils affirment : « C'étaient des ordres », eh bien ! cherchez celui qui a donné les ordres. A quoi sert de lui crier : « Salaud ! ». Demandez pourquoi, « Salaud » viendra après. Il faut savoir, car nous allons devoir vivre avec cela, c'est notre génération qui l'a subi, et aussi qui l'a fait. Et il faut y penser sans adverbes et sans adjectifs. Je n'étais pas loin de croire que, n'importe où, de telles choses peuvent arriver. Une fois les gens en marche, qui sait jusqu'où ils iront ? Mais, au journal, mon analyse les a scandalisés. Ils ont pensé que je voulais comparer les Canadiens aux Allemands. Car le Canada était férocement antisémite : on a fait, pendant la guerre, entrer quatre mille Juifs, en tout et pour tout, dans ce grand pays vide. Ils m'ont presque qualifiée de traître et ils ont entièrement refait mon papier, sans me le dire. Plus tard, pendant les années 60, je suis beaucoup allée en Allemagne. Je voulais essayer de comprendre. Et je disais à mes amis allemands : « Je veux rencontrer des petits bourgeois. Ne me donnez pas des intellectuels ». Ce drame s'est passé dans la petite bourgeoisie, c'est une histoire poujadiste, au fond. C'est alors que j'ai écrit cette série de nouvelles, pour essayer de comprendre, autant que je le pouvais. Une fois les réponses — ou ce que je pensais être des réponses — trouvées, j'ai abandonné le sujet, pas politiquement bien sûr, mais comme thème.

A-M. G. : Un autre de vos recueils a pour titre The Other Paris, ce Paris où vous avez choisi de vivre depuis de longues années. Pourquoi ce choix ? M.G. : D'abord c'est une ville magnifique, pleine de ressources, où l'on ne s'ennuie jamais. Et puis c'est une ville que j'aime, où je me sens bien, où je peux vivre comme cela me plaît. Je trouve les Français très accueillants, en dépit de la réputation qu'ils se font à eux‑mêmes. Le tout, c'est de parler la langue.

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A-M. G. : Par contre, vous ne semblez guère aimer les Anglais, si j'en juge par la façon dont vous les peignez. M.G. : Il ne faut pas généraliser. Mais il est vrai que j'ai toujours trouvé odieuse la façon dont certains Anglais—je parle des Britanniques—qui vivaient sur la Côte d'Azur ou la Riviera italienne faisaient travailler les enfants du coin en leur payant des salaires de misère.

A-M. G. : Comme le jeune Angelo de « An Unmarried Man's Summer ». C.P. V. : Ou la petite ﬁlle de « The Four Seasons ». M.G. : Exactement. C'est là un cas vrai qui s'est passé en France et que j'ai transposé en Italie. Devenue adolescente, la petite bonne est venue travailler chez moi (j'habitais Menton à l'époque) et m'a raconté son aventure. Ces Anglais, c'était des survivants d'avant‑guerre. Ils avaient l'habitude de vivre d'une certaine façon, d'être servis et, comme ils n'en avaient plus les moyens, ils exploitaient, mais avec le sourire. En y pensant, vous relisez Virginia Woolf d'un autre œil. Elle se plaignait de ne pas avoir d'argent, mais elle avait trois domestiques.

C.P. V. : On rencontre beaucoup d'enfants dans votre œuvre. Parfois ce sont eux qui racontent l'histoire, c'est leur regard sur le monde que vous nous transmettez. Ce qui est frappant, c'est que « vos » enfants sont, la plupart du temps, des enfants sans attaches, ou délaissés, comme Bernadette, comme la petite Véronique de « An Autobiography ». Ou alors, c'est l'excès inverse : dans « Going Ashore », une mère divorcée, frivole et inconsciente, traîne partout derrière elle sa ﬁlle de douze ans. Bref, ce sont surtout des enfants malheureux, incompris. Faut-il y voir une influence de votre propre enfance ? M.G. : Peut‑être. J'ai eu une enfance assez triste. Je n'avais, je vous l'ai dit, ni frère ni sœur et, dès l'âge de quatre ans, j'ai été mise en pension dans un couvent de Montréal, qui s'appelait Saint-Louis de Gonzague. Entre parenthèses, il était tout à fait inhabituel, à l'époque, de placer une enfant de famille protestante et anglophone dans une école uniquement fréquentée par des catholiques francophones. Ma mère m'a emmenée là‑bas. Elle m'a dit : « Je reviens dans dix minutes », et elle n'est pas revenue. Puis j'ai perdu mon père à l'âge de dix ans, et ma mère, s'étant remariée, s'est laissé tout entière absorber par sa nouvelle vie et ne s'est plus du tout occupée de moi. J'ai alors été ballottée d'école en école. C'est pourquoi j'ai souvent eu l'impression, étant enfant, que j'étais à la merci du monde adulte. Et je porte sans doute cela en moi, plus ou moins inconsciemment. Mais, depuis des années, je n'écris plus du tout sur les enfants.

C.P. V. : Aimez-vous la compagnie des enfants ? M.G. : Oui, mais lorsqu'ils ne sont pas avec leurs parents. Car, autrement, ils cessent d'être naturels, d'être eux-mêmes. C'est aussi vrai pour les parents. Ils sont mieux seuls, plus détendus. Les parents ou les enfants pris séparément, parfait. Mais les familles m'ennuient.

C.P. V. : Et les femmes ? Avez‑vous l'impression qu'elles sont pour vous des personnages privilégiés ? Qu'il vous est plus facile ou plus naturel de parler d'elles que des hommes ? M.G. : Absolument pas. J'écris énormément sur les hommes, et de leur point de vue. Mais alors je fais attention. Car un homme ne réagit pas comme une femme. Vous avez lu « Potter », qui est l'histoire d'un homme jaloux. Eh bien ! un homme jaloux ne dit rien, tout reste en lui, il avale, en attendant le moment propice. Tandis qu'une femme remuera ciel et terre pour savoir, elle se confiera à ses amies...

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A-M. G. : Etes-vous féministe ? M.G. : Pas dans le sens de descendre dans la rue et faire des choses idiotes. Je crois — et cela est bien banal — je crois à l'égalité économique, cent pour cent. Je ne supporte pas qu'une femme soit moins bien payée qu'un homme, qu'elle soit diminuée. Je l'ai subi comme journaliste : je ne gagnais que la moitié de ce que gagnaient mes collègues masculins qui faisaient le même travail. Et j'ai entendu un des rédacteurs dire (je ne peux que vous le dire en anglais) : If it hadn't been for the goddam war, I would never have hired one of the goddam women ! ». Il fallait s'accrocher, car les hommes revenaient du front. Mais de là à s'opposer à tout, comme l'ont fait et le font les féministes américaines, non. Elles se rendent ridicules par leur agressivité, qui vient sans doute de ce que, dans les pays anglo-saxons, les hommes sont agacés par les femmes. Ils ne s'y intéressent pas. Cela a été pour moi une révélation, lorsque je suis venue en France, de découvrir que les hommes aiment la compagnie des femmes, leur conversation. Bien sûr, les femmes sont très différentes. Mais, à mon avis, une femme « bien » est vraiment supérieure à tout !

C.P. V. : A part romans et nouvelles, vous avez écrit une Introduction aux Lettres de Gabrielle Russier, cette jeune enseignante aixoise qui était tombée amoureuse de l'un de ses élèves et qui fut amenée au suicide par la malveillance et l'incompréhension de son entourage. Qu'est‑ce qui vous a intéressée dans ce fait divers qui tourna au scandale ? M.G. : C'était une commande d'un éditeur américain. Autrement, je n'y aurais jamais pensé. Je me suis attachée au contexte politique et social de cette affaire, plus qu'aux aspects psychologiques. La preuve, c'est que je n'ai cherché à rencontrer ni le jeune homme, peu intéressant à mon avis, ni ses proches. Je me suis bornée à interroger des gens qui les fréquentaient ou les connaissaient, susceptibles de m'aider à découvrir la vérité — assez sordide, il faut l'avouer.

C.P. V. : N'est-il pas étonnant quand même que vous ne vous soyez pas intéressée à la personnalité de Gabrielle Russier ? N'avez-vous jamais eu l'impression qu'elle aurait pu être la protagoniste de l'une de vos nouvelles ? M.G. : Non. Enfin, l'idée ne m'en est pas venue. Je ne peux m'imaginer écrivant sur une femme tourmentée par un homme plus jeune et allant jusqu'au suicide. Je peux comprendre qu'une femme soit tentée par un garçon très jeune, mais, si j'écrivais sur elle, elle finirait par renoncer !

A-M. G. : Et votre livre sur l'affaire Dreyfus, où en est-il ? M.G. : Il est presque terminé (ce que je dis depuis plusieurs années...). Je l'ai promis à l'éditeur pour l'automne. J'y travaille depuis près de dix ans. Jamais je n'aurais cru que cela me donnerait tant de mal. Car je ne suis pas historienne, et j'ai dû me livrer à un énorme travail de documentation. Si c'était à refaire, je ne recommencerais sûrement pas, mais je dois avouer que ces recherches m'ont passionnée et que j'ai beaucoup appris. C'est une affaire invraisemblable, extravagante. J'ai vécu avec les différents protagonistes, dont les noms eux-mêmes ont des sonorités plus romanesques les unes que les autres. Des noms comme Boisdeffre, du Paty de Clam, Labori, Zola... Tout un monde d'intrigues et de passions surgit rien qu'en les prononçant ! Tenez, je vais vous montrer les trois gravures que j'ai de Labori à trois moments du procès de Rennes. Je les trouve merveilleuses. Et l'on m'a aussi fait un autre cadeau, une pièce historique, dont je suis très fière : une page de L'Aurore, du jeudi 19 janvier 1898, autrement dit l'original de «J'accuse », paru tout de suite après

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l'acquittement du vilain monsieur Esterhazy. Elle me vient d'une personne que j'ai interviewée dans le cadre de l'affaire Dreyfus.

A-M. G. : Comment organisez-vous vos heures de travail entre les nouvelles et des œuvres comme celles qui vous ont été inspirées par l'affaire Russier ou l'affaire Dreyfus ? M.G. : Dreyfus, pendant plusieurs années (de 70 à 80 à peu près), m'a dévoré la vie. Je me levais très tôt et j'écrivais « pour moi » entre six et neuf heures, et le dimanche. Tout le Fifteenth District a été fait ainsi. Maintenant, je ne pourrais plus.

C.P. V. : Je crois que vous vous êtes aussi lancée dans le théâtre récemment et que vous avez écrit une pièce qui a été jouée au Canada. Voudriez‑vous nous en parler un peu ? M.G. : Volontiers. Le titre en est What is to be done?, vous savez, le fameux «Que faire ? » de Lénine — titre que lui‑même avait emprunté au célèbre roman de Tchernychevski. Que faire pour réveiller un peuple amorphe, analphabète, ce qu'était le peuple russe à l'époque ? C'est un titre très évocateur pour les Russes cultivés, que j'ai repris satiriquement puisque, dans ma pièce, qui a pour cadre Montréal entre 42 et 45, les deux héroïnes se passent et se repassent le pamphlet de Lénine. Elles veulent se familiariser avec le marxisme, et elles croient qu'en Europe on prépare la révolution. Puis le temps passe, et elles prennent conscience des réalités. Je ne savais pas si, au Canada, on avait ces notions politiques, car c'est un point de vue très européen, mais cela a marché.

A-M. G. : Comment avez-vous vécu cette expérience, nouvelle pour vous ? M.G. : Cela a été quelque chose d'extraordinaire, une grande joie. La pièce a été montée au Tarragon Theatre de Toronto et donnée «in repertory », c'est-à-dire pour une période définie d'avance, de novembre à décembre 1982. Voir ce que l'on a écrit prendre vie sur scène, entendre les rires du public, c'est une expérience grisante, inoubliable. Tenez, j'ai ici deux dessins, l'un offert par le créateur des décors, l'autre par le dessinateur des costumes, qui vous donneront une petite idée. Et, cet automne, on verra la pièce à la télévision canadienne, en quatre soirées d'une demi-heure (ce qui est facile, puisqu'elle est conçue sous forme de petites scènes style cabaret). Le texte va être publié sous peu.

A-M. G. : Actuellement, à quoi travaillez-vous ? M.G. : J'ai entrepris une autre pièce, mais je l'ai laissée en plan pour terminer Dreyfus.

A-M. G. : Et quels sont vos projets, immédiats ou à long terme ? M.G. : J'envisage un livre sur deux femmes que le hasard a fait naître à quelques jours d'intervalle et qui représentent pour moi les deux aspects de la femme française, le côté païen et le côté mystique, le sud et le nord — chacune d'entre elles ayant été modelée par sa mère et étant devenue ce que celle‑ci souhaitait qu'elle fût. Je suis depuis longtemps fascinée par ces deux destins parallèles et opposés. Mais je ne veux pas vous citer le nom de ces deux femmes pour ne pas déflorer le sujet. Et puis, en octobre, je pars au Canada, invitée par l'Université de Toronto, où je passerai l'année comme «writer‑in‑residence ». C'est une fonction qui n'existe pas en France, n'est-ce pas ?

A-M. G. : En effet. En quoi consistera votre travail ? M.G. : A suivre et aider les étudiants qui veulent écrire et dont les professeurs pensent qu'ils ont quelque talent. Je les recevrai un par un, sur rendez-vous, deux après-midi par semaine. Il ne s'agit absolument pas de faire des cours ou des

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conférences. Je suis tout à fait opposée aux cours de «creative writing » qui, à mon avis, ne servent pas à grand'chose. Ce que je conseillerai aux futurs écrivains, c'est de lire, beaucoup lire.

A-M. G. : Pensez‑vous que l'on naît ou que l'on devient écrivain ? M.G. : Pour moi, aucun doute : on naît écrivain, quoique l'on puisse avoir, bien sûr, une vocation tardive. Mais encore faut‑il savoir si l'on veut écrire : dans ce cas, il faut se consacrer à sa tâche et renoncer à tout le reste. Un mari, des enfants, cela me semble difficilement conciliable avec le métier d'écrivain. Ou alors, on ne fait rien comme il faut !

A-M. G. : Il nous reste à vous souhaiter un agréable séjour à Toronto et à vous remercier d'avoir répondu en français, ce qui a prêté à vos propos un charme tout particulier.

RÉSUMÉS

Mavis Gallant, née à Montréal en 1922, réside à Paris depuis 1952. Outre ses deux romans (Green Water, Green Sky, 1959, et A Fairly Good Time, 1970), plusieurs recueils de nouvelles, reprenant des titres parus dans The New Yorker et différentes autres revues, ont été publiés : The Other Paris, 1956. My Heart is Broken, 1964. The Pegnitz Junction, 1973. The End of the World and Other Stories, 1974. From the Fifteenth District, 1979. Home Truths, 1981.

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

CARIBBEAN

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Olive Senior - b. 1941

Dominique Dubois and Jeanne Devoize

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Dominique Dubois, and Jeanne Devoize., Caribbean Short Story Conference, January 19, 1996.First published in JSSE n°26, 1996.

Dominique DUBOIS: Would you regard yourself as a feminist writer? Olive SENIOR: When I started to write, I wasn't conscious about feminism and those issues. I think basically my writing reflects my society and how it functions. Obviously, one of my concerns is gender. I tend to avoid labels.

Jeanne DEVOIZE: How can you explain that there are so many women writers in Jamaica, particularly as far as the short story is concerned. O.S.: I think there are a number of reasons. One is that it reflects what happened historically in terms of education: that a lot more women were, at a particular point in time, being educated through high school, through university and so on. But I also think that we benefitted from the feminist movement and the whole notion of women being freer to pursue their interests. Women began to take their work out of the cupboard and show it to people. A lot of the women I know got a lot of encouragement from men in the Caribbean, both scholars and other writers, and so on, as well as from each other.

D.D.: In a lot of your short stories, the characters speak in creole. Did you learn it yourself? Did you speak it? Is there a certain unity in terms of creole in Jamaica or is it different from village to village? O.S.: I grew up speaking creole and English. When I went to high school, we were punished for not speaking English, proper English, you know. I consider myself bilingual. When I'm with my friends, I switch to creole, if necessary. So I have no problem writing it. My characters arrive with their language, whether it's English or creole. In answer to the second part of your question, I think the creole that is spoken in Jamaica is all one but what you will find is that people in the city might speak a bit differently front people who are deep rural, who are from the country. And of course

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the creole is changing. I can't speak authoritatively about it, but it's a language that is constantly changing. Young people are coining words all the time. They are making up new phrases. And of course the Rastafarians have also influenced creole. So I think the distinction might not nowadays be so great between city and town because they have come closer together but changes will be observable over time. The way our grandparents spoke creole was very different from the way we were speaking it, which is different from the way young people speak today.

D.D.: On the same topic, I have got a quotation from Sam Selvon who said: “You become creolized, you are not Indian, you are not Black, you are not even White. You assimilate all these cultures and you turn out to be a different man who is the Caribbean man.” Is it a view that you share? O.S.: Well, the term “Creole” too is very confusing, the way it's used in the Caribbean. So there is the Creole language and then there is the word “Creole” which in itself has different meanings because historically it meant a white person born in the Caribbean; now it's being used to reflect the kind of fusion of cultures that Selvon is talking about. In that sense, I do agree that what makes the Caribbean unique is the blending of many different cultures. And there are those of us who regard ourselves as creolized in that sense, in that we are reflecting all these different cultures corning together. So I definitely would agree with that. Not everyone agrees. There is a big intellectual debate actually about how to define Caribbean society. So the notion of defining it as a Creole society is only one of the approaches.

J.D.: Talking about this idea of the melting‑pot, and all the different cultures and different races and different religions in the Caribbean, do you still feel that there is a real unity somewhere within the Caribbean? O.S.: I think there is at a deep level, because we share a common history, and all Caribbean societies are mixed, you know, racially and culturally and so on. Unfortunately, because we are so fragmented geographically and linguistically, there are no mechanisms for really bringing us all together. So I think the whole notion of the Caribbean being one is an ideal that intellectuals share. But in practice I don't know that it will ever be realized because you'll find that the Caribbean is no longer in the Caribbean now; it's in Brooklyn, it's in London, it's in Toronto, it's in Amsterdam, in Paris and so on. But there is a level at which I would say yes, we do have a lot in common and we always will.

J.D.: What do you think of this diaspora of Caribbean people and how do you think it’s going to affect the Caribbean in the future? O.S.: It's unfortunate in a way. Obviously it has its down side. It's a drain on all these countries. But I guess it's inevitable. And it's nothing new. People have been migrating from Jamaica from the mid19th century. So it's good and bad. I'm personally concerned about the effects that is has on people back home, particularly when nowadays, a lot of people who are migrating are women who leave their children behind and I think it has a very negative effect, socially, on these societies. But obviously it also has beneficial effects. So we can't escape it. I think we are going to see a lot of interesting writing coming from the diaspora. We are seeing it now. Caribbean literature is no longer just in the Caribbean; it's all over the world.

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J.D.: Don't you think, though, it affects the writing in as much as perhaps you forget some things or you put more emphasis on other things? O.S.: Yes. I think one of the dangers is with language. I found that some of the stuff has language which seems to me not quite authentic. But I think it's because the people writing it left a long time ago. And they don't keep going back. So that can be problematic. But I think the writers who were born or brought up abroad are bringing a whole different approach to the literature.

J.D.: If you compare a writer like Michael Anthony who writes about the enchantment of the isles and somebody who is abroad who has perhaps come to see things differently, the outlook must be different though. O.S.: Yes, I think the eye is quite different. People like Jamaica Kincaid or Michelle Cliff have an approach that would be very different from that of Michael Anthony. I think it's inevitable. And what's also interesting is that it is in the diaspora that there is a sense in which you can talk about ‘Caribbean literature’, because a lot of the young writers of Spanish and French and Dutch backgrounds are now writing in English. So I now have access to it in a way I never had before. Not all are in favor of this trend but it is certainly transformative.

D.D.: You said in an interview by Binder which has just been published in a journal in France, that when you left Jamaica, this was a choice, this was not exile. Was your literary expectation part of the reasons why you left or were there other reasons? O.S.: Well, it's kind of peculiar because I left Jamaica, but I didn't plan to leave. In other words, I really left for a year. I said: “I'm going to take a year off and write.” And then the year became two and three and four. And then I suppose my literary expectations became bound up in it because I had to make a decision. I was going to spend all my life working at other things and writing on the sidelines or I was going to try and make writing my main activity. One of the reasons I'm living in Toronto is because the Caribbean live in Toronto. There is nothing I want that I can't get. It's also very close to Jamaica. I suppose what I have sought and I am trying to find is the best of both worlds.

D.D.: So you meet other writers. Is Austin Clarke for instance in Toronto? O.S.: Yes. Austin Clarke has been there for a very long time. I just met him recently, actually. A very delightful man! Actually, there are a lot of Caribbean writers who have been in Toronto for a long time: Dionne Brand, Norbese Philip, for example.

J.D.: All Caribbean writers speak about the hierarchical structure of Caribbean society. Could you give us a bit of the background on this? O.S.: I think it's an integral part of colonial society; hierarchy based on race. Race and class were identical and the social structure was a pyramid: white, brown, black. To a great extent this has been changed but not in any absolute sense. We haven't yet really freed ourselves from mental slavery and so the mentalities are still with us. Slavery ended in 1838 but that hierarchical structure still remains in our social relationships, in the way we deal with each other. Some people still have the sense of hierarchy and of privilege.

J.D.: There seem to be other sorts of hierarchies as between country and town, people who have been abroad and people who haven't, between the rich and the poor, and so on. O.S.: Well, some of those have broken down. For instance, the difference between town and country has broken down because of communication. Travelling has become commonplace. So in a sense the society is now more integrated whereas

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when I was growing up, there was a very clear distinction between urban and rural life. There have also been enormous changes as far as race and racial relationships are concerned. I think now class is based not so much on race as on money, wealth... Then there are other changes in the society but I don't think they are as deep rooted. We don't talk about White and Black in the sense the Americans do. We are very conscious of shade of skin, of facial features, of hair. These things are still very much with us, you know.

D.D.: Is lightness of skin still an advantage? O.S.: Some people would say yes. It's not the advantage that it used to be. There was a time when that was it. The lighter you were, the more privileged you were. Now, I think, people are privileged by other things such as education. Education has worked in reverse, has undercut that hierarchy. The old wealth in all of these countries in the Caribbean is still in the hands of a light‑skinned oligarchy. But it is changing. I know a lot of young entrepreneurs who are darkskinned, who come from groups who in the past never had these opportunities.

J.D.: In many stories, there is always this very great emphasis on the notion of respectability. Do you feel this is disappearing or what? O.S.: Yes. These societies have been so transformed in the last 20‑30 years. Respectability is still important but it is now regarded as an old‑fashioned virtue and other things count for more. These societies have now become very materialistic. So what really counts now is wealth and the visible signs of wealth and the signs that you have travelled and so on. But when I was growing up, respectability was everything; it was a crushing sort of weight, especially for girls. Middle‑class girls were brought up really according to Victorian standards. So it was a very restrictive kind of upbringing. For a lot of us, it's almost like a straight jacket. Still I would say the society has manifestly changed and a lot of the change has to do with what started to happen in the sixties at Independence beginning with the music. The music is one of the expressions that enabled people to break out of the mould. Music has also been the route to the acquisition of wealth and status for a lot of poor, underprivileged, uneducated people who would never have had any chance in life except for this talent. With the music came other forms like art and so on where the formerly unheard underclass were able to express themselves. And that has transformed the society. It wasn't just the singing or the art. It's a whole style of behaviour, dress and everything, which has filtered upwards. A sort of reversal of things. A very interesting phenomenon.

D.D.: You mentioned the Rastafarians. Obviously, everybody knows about the movement. But is it still a strong movement nowadays? O.S.: Rastafarianism is now an international movement. But I think it has lost its religious center. It started out as a politico‑religious movement. Now I think a lot of it is just fashion. Who is a rasta? Anybody. You could become a rasta tomorrow if you did up your hair. It has contributed to a lot of the creativity in these islands. But I would say it's lost its momentum as a social force because Rastafarianism started out as the religion of the oppressed. It was the poorest people in the society who were Rastas, outcasts. But that's not so today. Rastas are the trendiest people. So Rastafarianism has changed. It's still a powerful force. But it's changed its nature.

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J.D.: Several critics said that the notion of exclusion was a very frequent ingredient of the short story. Would you say this is the case with the Caribbean short story and how does it work? You yourself have very often dealt with this notion of exclusion? O.S.: I am not quite sure about the world exclusion.

J.D.: They tend to say that the short story prevails as a genre in societies in which exclusion is a basis of the society. O.S.: Oh! I never heard that. That's quite interesting actually. I am not sure I can comment on that because I have never thought about it. Your question is “Is that why the short story is so privileged in the Caribbean?”

D.D.: I think, up to a point, you started giving an answer to that question when you explained, for instance, why you started writing short stories rather than novels. And you said that a lot of the women writers were the same. O.S.: I think one of the reasons that so many of us are writing short stories, particularly women, is that we don't have the time or the space to write novels. To have that kind of space is a privilege which I, for a fact, have never been able to afford. That's part of it, I think. But I know that some people feel too that there's something about the way we tell stories: we all come out of a society in which story‑telling is very important or has been in the past. And that also might be influential. I know I grew up hearing stories and of course these are short stories. So we tend to tell stories. When I started to write, I didn't consciously think of why I wrote in this way: the stories just came in that form.

D.D.: And yet the people who started to be well‑known as Caribbean writers, I mean, like George Lamming, actually wrote novels. O.S.: Yes. My take on it is that virtually all of those writers were men, except for, I think, Sylvia Winter. She was the only woman novelist of that period I can think of, and in those days you didn't call yourself a writer. You called yourself a novelist or a poet because those were the two forms that were recognized and those people like Lamming and Naipaul and so on, they had to get validated by the metropole, and therefore they had to write novels. Most Caribbean women I know are writing in all genres, which I think is unusual. We don't feel constrained to produce the grand novel but at the same time we don't feel we must be boxed in by the story we write. We write all kinds of things. I don't know whether it's a function of gender or not. But also, I think, the women just don't have time. You see, the men have wives. If you have a wife, you can sit and write a novel because the wife is taking care of the housework and the kids.

D.D.: I suppose you're right and that it's easier to be an academic if you are a man than if you are a woman. O.S.: I know what I am talking about in terms of the help and the support men get, even for people to type their stuff.

D.D.: Computers have changed that! J.D.: In that interview we mentioned earlier, you suggested you couldn't really think of any writers who truly influenced you in your writing. Do you really feel you have never been influenced by anyone. O.S.: Oh no! It is just that I am not conscious of who influenced me. I think it's for the critics to look at my work and discern influences if they consider that important. When I was young, I read so much ‑‑ I read everything ‑‑ that I cannot point to any one writer and say: “that's what influenced me.” I am very conscious that I was

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influenced by the whole canon of English literature because, growing up in a colonial society, I was exposed to it. I was also influenced by the oral tradition. But I am not conscious of any one influence. I mean, I am sure I was influenced by the Bible because my mother was a great Christian and when I was young, we read the Bible; influenced by Church hymns and the rhythms. So I would think I am creolized in that sense, in terms of influences. I am not denying influences. I am just saying that, unlike other writers who might feel ‘this is the person who influenced me’, I don't feel that way because my reading has been so eclectic and I didn't know any writers or anything like that when I was growing up. But I will say that, at a critical point, I think in my early teens, I discovered American writers and particularly this school that's called the Southern Gothic, you know people like Truman Capote and Flannery O'Connor, and that made a very profound impression on me because I could identify with their work far more than I could with, say, the English writers culturally. I was very impressed by that school of writers at a very impressionable age. Recently, in the last 10‑15 years, I have been very impressed by the South American novelists, in particular Jorge Amado of Brazil, Garcia Marquez. Amado has certainly opened my eyes to other ways of telling stories. But I shy away from “influence” because I feel that unless you are conscious of a particular influence, it's hard to talk about what influenced you. I feel I have been influenced by everything.

D.D: And is it by reading a lot that you gained that craftsmanship? Our students are interested in the narrative strategies you use and whether you are fully conscious of them and how you gained that knowledge. O.S.: When I was at school, mastering the English language was very important. So I got a good educational grounding. I was a voracious reader. I tell all my writing students: “You learn to write by reading.” So the fact that I read so much obviously contributed to my ability to write when I came to write. And I was trained as a journalist and I think that helped in shaping my style. I learnt a lot about story‑telling, I truly feel, from hearing stories all throughout my childhood and even hearing Bible stories. I mean I hate religion as you probably know from my writing. But the Bible does provide a lot of good examples of story‑telling. To answer your question more specifically, when I started to write, when I wrote the stories in Summer Lightning, which are my first adult stories ‑‑ and I make a distinction between that and stuff I wrote that is juvenile ‑‑ when I came to write Summer Lightning, I was not conscious of craft. The stories came, I told them, but I wasn't consciously crafting the stories. The craft, I guess, was there. But my consciousness of craft came after my first book. I'd like to think that the stories on my third collection are much more consciously crafted. In fact, one reviewer said they were too well crafted. I mean, you can't win! When I say I wasn't conscious, I mean of structure, I shouldn't say craft, because it's always been important to me how I write. I have always been very concerned with how I use language, from a very early age.

J.D.: Do you think that you have structuring metaphors which are basic to your work? O.S.: Again, that's not something I am conscious of. But I work the stories out in my head before I go to my computer. Therefore I feel that they've been worked on by my unconscious a lot before I actually put them on paper. I believe that the work comes from a very deep part of myself, and I am respectful of that. So I suspect there are probably patterns and images there, but they are not conscious.

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J.D.: Well, there are many from the Bible. O.S.: I still read the Bible actually. What I hate is religion, I hate organized religion but I have nothing against the Bible: I think it's wonderful.

D.D.: You said that you were quite interested in mythology and there is one myth that, it seems to me, is not part of your work and it's the myth of the eldorado and yet most other writers cannot wait to include that in their writing. O.S.: Actually there is a lot of mythology in my poetry, especially my book of poetry, Gardening in the Tropics. The eldorado myth is a South American myth. I remember as a child it's something we were taught in school. But it's never admitted itself in my own consciousness. The people who write about it are Guianese because I think it's very much a part of their culture or Trinidadians who are closer to South America: it's a South American myth.

J.D.: Anyway, you very seldom speak about an Eden which would be something similar in a way. O.S.: I don't write about myths in that conscious way. To me, it's more symbolism than myth. For instance, the symbolism of water is very strong in my last book. But I haven't been using mythology in the sense of myth except in my poetry.

J.D.: In the Caribbean short story, you often ﬁnd the use of the historical perspective. Do you think this is likely to slowly disappear or is it an increasing tendency? O.S.: This is an interesting question. I think it's part of the whole intellectual process where all of us have been engaged in a struggle to discover who we are, both individually and collectively. This is why we do have this talk of historical consciousness. I don't think it will ever go away because this is central to the Caribbean identity. I think we'll always be in the process of trying to decide who we are.

J. D.: Is this why you and many writers often use child narrators? O.S.: No. People keep asking me about it. And again, you see, my stories arrive fully blown and they arrive in the form you get them. I didn't set out to use child narrators. Some of my stories are autobiographical in the sense that they draw heavily on my sensibility as a child. So I think it's only natural that my early stories did use the voice of a child. I'm basically interested in answering the question, Who am I? Who are we? To do that, we have to go back to the past.

J.D.: Do you feel that this process of writing you were describing, the fact that you get your stories in your head before writing them, might contribute to the rhythm your stories have? O.S.: May be, but also when I get my stories down on paper, I also read them aloud just to get the rhythm right. I am very conscious of the rhythm of every sentence and I've always been. But I think the rhythm comes also from the fact that I do use the voice a lot. I like to write in the first person, I like to inhabit somebody else's body and tell the story through that person. In other words, what I am trying to do more and more is to take myself away and let people speak directly. And I think one of the reasons I want to do that is not just because you can get closer to the bone but also because I like the language that comes out of that process. If you are writing in the third person, your approach is different ‑‑ the rhythm is different ‑‑ than if you are writing in the first person. It's easier to get the rhythm if you are in the first person.

D.D.: In “The Two Grandmothers”, what did you try to do? This is basically what we could even call a non‑narrated story, not a ﬁrst person narrative, is it? We were just wondering: is

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this girl having all these memories and putting all these memories together or in your mind, is the mother there? O.S.: How I see it is, the little girl is talking to her mother. She is telling the mother these things over a period of years. She is just there chatting away.

D.D.: The mother is not answering. For you, was it a conscious way of saying that up to a point, the mother is not paying any attention to the little girl because she is a chatter‑box, also because she is interested in other things? Was this conscious? O.S.: No, that wasn't conscious. Though I suppose it does reinforce the notion of it. With “The Two Grandmothers,” I wanted to project something about the society, but strictly through the child's point of view. Everything is deliberately filtered through her consciousness.

D.D.: A lot of these children are lonely children. Why? O.S.: What I drew on, particularly in my early stories, was how I felt as a child. I was a very lonely child myself, very alienated. So I think there's a lot of me in these children, even though their situations are not necessarily what my situation was. I think the emotional power in the stories comes from my use of my own emotions, how I felt.

D.D.: What struck me, in this respect, is that you changed the background. You were from a poor background and yet most of these children are in richer backgrounds, upper middle‑class. Would you say that this is something that you were aware of doing? O.S.: No. That is part of my own background. I come from a very poor family and I grew up in a village. But I was adopted ‑‑ not formally ‑‑ by my mother's relatives who were reasonably well‑off. They had a big property and they were very European in their perspective whereas in my mother's village, the influences were very African. And when I went to live with my other family, the way of life was very different. So through that, I was very much exposed to that kind of privileged upbringing. One had to use the proper silver and all this, things that I sort of satirized, you know. And also, of course, I went to high school, which in Jamaica was very elitist at the time. To go to high school, you were either rich or white or bright. I got a scholarship. But you were privileged by education. And so I am very unusual as a Jamaican actually in that I've been exposed to sorts of extremes. And also I have had experience of a black culture and of a white culture. I am very unusual in that respect. When I write about any sort of household, I know what I'm talking about because I've lived this kind of life. And even in Jamaica today I have friends from the highest and the lowest. I can move very easily from one to the other, which is good for a writer. It was hell as a child but very good for a writer.

D.D.: You just mentioned something that I ﬁnd very interesting and I would like to have your feeling. Because, if we read in The Castle of My Skin for instance by George Lamming, this is very autobiographical and in it he really regards his experience in high school as something which was almost unbearable. Really the child suffered. Clearly you didn't suffer or did you? O.S.: No, not really. Not at school. I went to a girls' school. Things might have been different in the boys' schools. They had caning, hazing and so on. I think we all had a damned good education in terms of our schooling. We can’t deny that. But I do think education displaced us because education was European, it was white. Some of the schools were quite racist. The privileges operated there too. The lighter skinned you were, the more you were favoured by the teachers and everybody.

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J.D.: Listening to you and reading your work, I feel you have a great sense of humour. Yet I feel sometimes that your humour can get quite sarcastic, more pungent than that of other writers, even though some of them are perhaps more bitter than you are. O.S.: I feel very strongly about certain things, for instance religion, respectability, and all of these things. I have rebelled against those things and therefore I do tend to satirize them. I do see things humorously. My stories reflect the way I deal with life. We do tend to laugh about lots of things. If I'm writing a story which happens to be humorous, I do go over the top sometimes. Sometimes, I really have to say: “No, no, no, cut back a bit.” I enjoy myself so much. It's like getting revenge over all these adult people who, when I was a child, made me miserable. Not that I'm writing about real people, but those types who have annoyed me so much. All they were wanting was conformity. So, when I'm writing these things, sometimes, I do get carried away and I laugh. I think it's so funny and these characters get out of control. But I bring them back.

D.D.: You would not subscribe to what Wilson Harris said in one of his conferences. He said that sometimes his characters do visit him and actually shape what he writes. O. S.: He does. I have heard him speak of it. One of the things I regret is that I have never had enough time to really let myself go as a writer because I do feel there is a level at which I am not writing and that I'd like to be at. Where things get out of control and you just let it happen.

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Merle Collins - b. 1950

Thorunn Lonsdale

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Thorunn Lonsdale, Caribbean Short Story Conference, January 19, 1996, First published in JSSE n° 26, 1996. Thorunn Lonsdale spoke to Merle Collins, the short story writer, poet and novelist, on 19 January 1996, during the University of Angers colloquium on The Caribbean Short Story.

Thorunn LONSDALE: How did you start your writing career? Merle COLLINS: With my short story “The Walk” [from Rain Darling] in 1977 which I wrote after a workshop in Grenada. And this was the first piece I ever remember performing.

T.L.: In that story, do you think the ending is amusing, when Queen realizes that for the money spent on food and drink on the long walk across the island they could have got the bus? M.C.: No, not really. It was more the different perception involved – that aspect of poverty, that in saving, you actually spend more. I think poverty engenders the need to hold.

T.L.: In your short story “Gran” there's a sense of retrieving local customs and history. Is that a part of your aim as a writer? M.C.: My immediate answer would be no, because I have a fear of being prescriptive about the responsibility of the writer. But in many ways I do want, yes, to record things that have disappeared. I've dedicated The Colour of Forgetting to my nephew Kevin, born in Grenada but living in the States, and Rotten Pomerack to my niece Keva, who was born in the U. S. I'm concerned that they know about that stuff.

T.L.: Was all your early life spent in Grenada? M.C.: Yes, until I left at the age of 18 or 19 to do a degree in English and Spanish at Mona in Jamaica. I've returned to Grenada frequently, but I spent, for example, six

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months in Mexico to improve my Spanish, and some time in Washington D.C. Then I lived for 11 years in England. Recently I moved to the States to teach at the University of Maryland.

T.L.: Do you like teaching? M.C.: (Long pause) I imagine I like teaching.

T.L.:Did you think you would live that long in Britain? Or was it like your poem “Seduction,“ in which you describe the way time slips by unnoticed? M.C.: Yes, it was like that... The invasion of Grenada by the U.S. in October 1983 was very important to me politically, and when I moved, in 1984, I was too disillusioned with the U.S. to go there. I hadn't been disillusioned with England in exactly the same way, by that recent invasion experience, so I guess that's why I chose to go there, but I wasn't expecting to stay 11 years!

T.L.: Could you say something about the impact of the invasion on you? M.C.: I've expressed many of my feelings in my novel Angel. The fact that the heroine, Angel, has lost an eye by the end of the novel expresses my feelings about something being lost in a physical sense, but a deeper understanding being gained. I was moving beyond thinking of the revolutionary struggle as a formal political struggle. I now have less trust in formal political leadership. The attempt to change things before the invasion was important. There was a feeling 'something had to happen'. But terrible things happened. Many people, including Maurice Bishop, the Prime Minister, and Jacqueline Craft, the minister for Education, were killed. The problem was treated as an aspect of the U.S./Soviet axis, which was not what the whole Grenadian story was about. Grenada had to find its own answers. The invasion was a kind of new colonialism.

T.L.: You wrote your doctorate at LSE on Grenadian politics, didn't you? M.C. Yes, the title was “Politics and Development in Grenada 1950‑1979.“ T.L.: Can you say something about your early exposure to literature? M.C.: At school I didn't think the stories of my relatives had anything to do with serious literature. I wrote a poem which I realized was a rewriting of Hardy's poem “The Darkling Thrush.“ It was a revelation when I went to Mona and heard Brathwaite read his poem “The Dust,“ and heard people like Derek Walcott and V. S. Naipaul read their work.

T.L.: Are you working on a new collection of short stories now? M.C.:Yes, The Ladies Are Upstairs. I'llread from the lead story to the colloquium.

T.L.: Your short story “The Visit“ in Rain Darling is set in England. Do you think you'll write more about England now that you've left? M.C.: Yes, I do in the new collection.

T.L.: Are you nostalgic about London now? M.C.: Yes, I feel I miss the community of Caribbean writers which I wasn't as aware of when I was there!

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T.L.: How do you see the relative importance of the poem, the novel and the short story? M.C. That's really an unanswerable question. I'm thinking about short stories at the moment. In fact something someone said at the colloquium about V. S. Naipaul's use of different voices made me see how I could manage the form of a story I'm writing about a young woman and her aunt.

T.L.: What's the title? M.C.: The working title is “Gem's Story.“

T.L.: Why is Grenada called Paz in your novel The Colour of Forgetting? M.C.: Grenada's history has been so troubled by colonialism and conquest, and I wanted to create an ambivalence with a name that means 'peace'. I was interested in the blue of tourist brochures, and the way that suggests peace. And Paz is Grenada, but it's every other Caribbean country... it is really the mythical representative of them all.

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Part two: Interviews of short story writers

UNITED STATES

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Peter Taylor - (1917-1994)

John H. E. Paine

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by J.H.E. Paine, Gainesville, Florida, April, 1986, First published in JSSE n°9, 1987.

1 Peter Taylor was born in 1917 in Trenton, Tennessee, a small town in the western part of the state. He was reared in that rural community and was exposed as well to the burgeoning cities of Nashville, Memphis, and St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Southwestern at Memphis before finishing his undergraduate degree at Kenyon College in Ohio, where John Crowe Ransom was his mentor and where he published his first short story. After serving in the army during World War II, Taylor taught English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro for twenty-one years, before moving to the University of Virginia, where he retired from the English department faculty in 1982. His teaching career was puncutated by sojourns at the University of Chicago, Kenyon College, Oxford, Harvard, and elsewhere, and by a Fulbright Fellowship to France and numerous other academic awards. Throughout his writing life he has steadily produced volumes of short stories, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker, as well as two novels and several plays. The Old Forest and Other Stories (1984), a collection which includes many of his best stories from 1941 to 1981, brought the PEN-Faulkner Award, in recognition of Taylor’s stature as a major American short-story writer. His short novel A Summons to Memphis (1986) has reaped the Ritz-Hemingway Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it also has occasioned thoughtful reviews by Marilynne Robinson in The New York Times Book Review and John Updike in The New Yorker. Taylor’s is an eminently respectable and Southern literary- academic career.

2 In his fiction, Taylor sticks closely to the genteel southern social circles in which he grew up - mostly Tennessee people in or oriented to Nashville, Memphis, or St. Louis. Taylor’s subject, almost invariably, is the upper-middle-class society of the Upper South between the wars. His stories of the private lives of the Tennessee bourgeoisie,

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taken as a whole, build a mosaic of the rifts and tensions which characterized Southern life in this period - the transition from a rural to an urban environment, the conflict of generations, the loss of a spiritual center - while displaying a stylistic grace, an ironic detachment, and a control over material achieved by very few writers of modern fiction. J.H.E. PAINE: The sempiternal Peter Taylor question. How can a writer recognized as the greatest living short story writer in English be so little known? Your career may in some sense be seen as the success story of the college‑boy narrator in “1939“ who steps out of the shadow of Henry James. Yet your work seems to be read mostly by relatively narrow circles: general readers who have followed your stories in The New Yorker over the years, a small group of scholars concerned with Southern ﬁction, and what one might call “Tennessee readers“ — those with ties to your corner of the world who enjoy seeing their region represented in ﬁction. Peter TAYLOR: Well, it occurs to me that one group of readers is omitted there, and they are in a sense the most important group to me. That is my numbers of literary friends when I was growing up and through the years. It's what made it possible for me to go on without minding that I had no big reputation as a writer, but I had such wonderful writers as friends just by chance, I suppose, from the time I was very young, that when my books and stories came out, it was sufficient satisfaction to have letters from them and to have their appreciation. They were just extravagant in their praise, primarily Robert Lowell and Randall Jarrell and Jean Stafford and Allen Tate, too, and Robert Penn Warren. They really constituted all that I cared about as a public; I was perhaps mistaken to do that, but I did and I was hardly aware of how little known I was until a few years ago when people began writing — Jonathan Yardley and others — about how little known I was. I knew that I had no big reputation, but I didn't think about it much. I never lived in the center of literary activities. We've always had a place off somewhere in the country, and our friends, like the Lowells and the Jarrells, would come to visit us, or we'd go to Europe and set up with them. Jarrell and his wife came and set up in Monteagle while we had a cottage there, and we went to Italy with them one summer, and Robert Fitzgerald is a great friend of mine. He would write to me about my stories, and Jarrell and Lowell did, so that I didn't go by the number of reviews in the periodicals and The New York Times and such places. I would get pretty good reviews in those places, but I didn't get much sales for my books, ever.

J.P.: You really had a sense of community. P.T.: Yes, I think there was a sense of literary community in that world we lived in. Tate and Warren and Ransom — I had such confidence in them and they were so enthusiastic about my stories, and I thought they were the greatest living writers, and perhaps they were at that time. It was very lucky for me just to be born in their midst, and then to make friends from the early time. Lowell and I were roommates at Kenyon all the way through, and we remained closest friends as long as he lived. He'd come and stay with us weeks at a time, we were that close and wrote to each other always. I have, you know, hundreds of letters from him and from Stafford and lots of others, and from Jarrell about my work. Jarrell was so funny about the work of his friends. If you published something he didn't like, he just wouldn't speak to you. We were staying together in a little Riviera town one summer and I passed Randall on the street downtown and he turned away and wouldn't speak, and I went to his wife Miriam and said, “What have I said to

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Randall? What's happened?“ And she said, “He doesn't like that last story of yours that came out.“ That seems terrible, but then he would do the same thing to Lowell — we three were friends — and it got so Lowell would say, “Is he speaking to you?“ because he'd get that way, but then if you wrote something he liked, he would write you a long letter about it and that's more valuable than twenty reviews — you got a long letter from Jarrell. I published a story called “Reservations“ in The New Yorker, and it's a story that I had a lot of fun with because I intentionally tried to give it a perfectly naturalistic surface like a love story and then to load it with Freudian symbols all the way through. Well, it was light, but people thought I'd just become a slick writer; they only saw this surface. It was produced on television as a play and it was translated into French in a magazine called Madeleine, a slick ladies' magazine with pages of illustration... But then I was living in London that winter, and I wondered when it came out, “Gosh, people think I've really come to slick and don't get this, don't see what fun I was trying to have.“ Then I got a ten‑page letter from Jarrell, who'd seen every bit of it, interpreting it, liking the story... and what did I care? And my wife is a good reader. We've always had a literary society we've lived in, sort of off the beaten track. I'm inclined to say that serious writers didn't used to go so much by the National Book Award, all these prizes, and being a best‑seller; none of the writers I knew and thought were the best writers had those prizes, and Lytle and Tate and Warren didn't. Well, Warren had earlier All the King's Men, but everybody thought, “What's Red doing having a best seller?“ But he did it just by accident, and it's a wonderful book, I think. I'm inclined, as I say, to feel that it was a somewhat different world, but it may be in the first place that I'm just getting old and say that those days were better in some ways, more highbrow, or it may be that the world has changed a good deal in that respect. I do think the world has changed in other arts, too. For instance, there used to be such a great distinction (there still is, of course, but not made often) between popular music and opera and classical — well, we talked of going to concerts and we liked music and still do go to certain concerts, but then when my children began saying to me, “We're going to a concert tonight,“ I thought, well, that's marvellous, they're going to.... then I realized that it would be a great mob out in the park with rock and roll, and they'd call it a concert. And music critics can make things very confusing at times. They write about rock and roll, you know, with this highbrow vocabulary. I think there is a blurring between serious art and popular art, and perhaps they would say I'm an elitist, but I see no reason for there not to be elitist art. Certainly you don't ask scientists to make everything understandable to the whole population. If they had to do that, we wouldn't get very far.

J.P.: Let's talk about your work particularly. Commentators frequently remark on your ability to weave close detail into the fabric of a story. I wonder if you could say something about your use of the petit fait vrai — the washed river gravel in the narrator's driveway in “The Gift of the Prodigal,“ for example? P.T.: Well, these things are often chance, and it's terrible to give away how chancy it is. That phrase, it sort of delighted me. I liked the way it sounded, “washed river gravel,“ and it's— I don't know whether you know what is called washed river gravel, in Virginia at least. I never heard of the phrase when I was growing up, but it's this little brown sandy‑colored gravel. It's very genteel‑looking, and you get it in

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driveways of rather elegant houses, and I'd noticed this — in fact I'd wanted some for my driveway, but hadn't ever got round to doing it. I'd always thought, I'm going to get me some of that. But when I got to doing this [story], it seemed just right for that house and for this man to be putting in washed river gravel in his little driveway and having it raked, you know, and cared for so. As to its symbolic significance — I feel very strongly about the use of symbols and symbolic elements in fiction. I think that symbols are there only to support the story and the effect and the belief, and that when you write a story around a symbol having the symbol more important than the story itself, as some modern stories seem to me to be—in fact, I heard some young writer say, “I've got the story all written, but I've just got to put in the symbols“ — that seems to me perfectly ridiculous. The symbol should come out of the material. It should be part of the naturalism of the story, and then if they have great symbolic feeling, they are wonderfully effective, but I often don't realize what symbols are in my stories until somebody points them out. I wrote a story called “The Walled Garden,“ and a friend of mine sent me a whole class's papers on that story—he let some class write an interpretation of “The Walled Garden,“ and they all gave it a Freudian interpretation, and I thought it was perfectly marvellous. And I think that if the story works, that's the way it works. That's why it's as powerful as it is, because it has this, but I had no ideal of it when I was writing the story. I think writing stories is rather like dreaming, and that if you have a certain temperament or sensibility, you'll have an affinity for certain symbols that will make the story have its impact. I resent a lot of the symbolic values in Joyce and other writers. For instance “The Dead“ I think is a wonderful story, a naturalistic story, and I don't deny the interpretations that are put on it, the Christian interpretation on that and on “Araby,“ but I just sort of shrug and say, “Yes, that's there,“ and I'm sure it helped Joyce write the story maybe, but I think he wrote a good story almost in spite of those instead of because of them. I think that interpretation of “Araby“ about the medieval search for the Grail — I can see it in there, but it's not what makes it a wonderful story. Or in “The Dead,“ I don't deny the interpretation of the crucifix, but I think it's fiction, I think it's the last scene when her lover dies out in the rain. I don't deny the symbols — I might, except that if you go through the story and look at the names of the characters, you'll see that it's very suspicious, that they are the right characters — Malins for... Eden, Freddy Malins is the character — from mal, you see. Joyce may have done all that, but I don't like that either, names — I try not to get a name that is too significant or symbolic. When James does it, sometimes I smile (he’s one of my great admirations), but I'll say “that bad James, he shouldn't have done that.“ I mean he'll have Mr. New — Mr. Newsome in The Ambassadors, he'll have names like that off and on. I'm sure it must have been conscious with him — I don't know, but I don't like it and I think that someone who doesn't ever do that — I don't say he’s a greater writer than one who does — is Lawrence. I'm crazy about Lawrence's stories, not about his novels. I like one or two novels, but I think the stories are magnificent. They are stories that are very hard to write; that's the hardest kind of story to write, without having any of the props or crutches or anything like that.

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J.P.: That leads me to another question. It's been suggested that you’re a nineteenth‑century storyteller in the line of Trollope, say, reﬁned through Henry James. This bothered me, when I ﬁrst saw that formulation for your art, and I wonder if it's... P.T.: Well, Trollope didn't have the influence on me when I was younger. Naturally in sophomore English I'd read The Warden and Barchester Towers, but that was the extent of my knowledge of Trollope till much later, and that use of place, I mean as I used Thornton in a not‑very‑powerful way, but I've used the world that I know, I've probably learned more from Faulkner and Hardy, because Faulkner had an influence on everybody of that generation. As a Southerner you learn from Faulkner; he was in a way the one who taught us how to look at ourselves. And then you looked at yourself as different from him eventually, but still those stories in These 13 to me are amongst the great stories of the world. I like them much better than the more rhetorical novels and later stories. I like “Was,“ in Go Down, Moses. I like those stories very much. They're the work of genius, but I think “Was“ is one of the funniest stories ever written in the world, and I find myself sometimes tempted to steal from it. I think those stories of his are just perfect in These 13. I mean “A Rose for Emily“ and “That Evening Sun“ and those stories. Where did we come to this from? I got off a tangent...

J.P.: Oh, we're talking about people that influenced you. P.T.: Oh, yes.

J.P.: You've managed to suggest Faulkner, which I hadn't really hit upon in a direct way. P.T.: But he — we're such different temperaments that our writing has such a different feeling, an attitude toward the South, but you learn where you can learn from other writers who have made use of the context; the context of the stories is very important. If you take “A Rose for Emily“ and set it in New York State in 1920, it just wouldn't make any sense at all. Flourishing New York, just as I say. Shaw took a Chekhov play and he set it in prosperous Edwardian England, at the turn of the century, and had a story very much like Chekhov's in Russia where the whole fabric of society was being torn up, everything was failing. The farms were not working properly and so on. Well, it made sense in Chekhov, the context of the story was very significant in the events, in the larger context. And it is there in Faulkner in a country that has been taken over by a greater power on its border, and so we learned that from Faulkner, Southerners always did. Eudora Welty, and I think Flannery O'Connor indirectly through Eudora Welty maybe, learned it and so on. But then we learned it from Hardy, too. We all read Hardy in school and later, and that had a big effect. But you learn from bad writers as well as good writers. I don't mean bad writers, but very low middle‑brow writers. There was one called Margaret Ayre Barnes in the twenties and thirties that wrote books; they were Book‑of‑the‑Month Club, I think. They came to our house and that's how I read them. I suddenly began reading her stories — I had lived in Memphis and St. Louis then, and I suddenly saw — she was writing about Chicago actually — the world she lived in was a subject for fiction, and you could do something with that kind of world. I had the great pleasure of meeting her many years later when I was forty, I guess (I had read them when I was fifteen), and she was an old lady in Chicago. I was teaching at the University of Chicago and I was just by chance taken to lunch with her. It was the greatest pleasure for me to tell her of being acquainted with all her books, and I think she hadn't met anybody in years who was.

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But I learned from her use of subject — the world of her stories and interpreting the characters in terms of that world, how the characters affected the world and the world affected the characters. That's to me one of the most interesting observations in life now, seeing people in their context. Other people will find it obnoxious in me sometimes, I mean personally — maybe in stories, too — because I at once begin wanting to know who people were and what they were. It's immensely interesting to me, all the things that make up people’s lives, because it's not just one thing, but there’s that maybe dominant thing about growing up in Middle Tennessee and observing them and knowing who they were. I was behind a boy in the chow line once overseas during the war and I heard him talking, and I said, “You're from Tennessee,“ and he said, “Yes,“ and I said, “You're from Middle Tennessee.“ He said, “Yes.“ I said, “You're from Davidson County.“ That's the sort of observation that I loved learning from other writers. Now you didn't learn that from Chekhov or from James so much, though I maintain that if one thing is true in art almost surely the opposite is true; that is, that if you say a writer is of the Flaubertian school, then he must write about what he knows and the details of his life and write about character in the right context with who he is. But you can do the reverse — you see, James and Hemingway wrote about Americans in Europe, but that same significance is important. James’s Americans in the European background as they so often are — it means so much more than that; if it were just that, it would just be history or something, but it's puritanism against catholicism, and then the characters shape up that way, and Hemingway — it is so significant that his characters are abroad when they are abroad.

J.P.: There's still a context there. P.T.: Yes, there's a context there. It's the poetry of it in a way. You can say so much more by these coincidences of the character and the context.

J.P.: Let me focus a little bit on a slightly different subject. I could hardly help notice in your work — this is not the case in the work of other prominent Southern writers — that religion doesn't seem to play a very direct role. The one story I ﬁnd it in is “The Hand of Emmagene,“ where fundamentalist ideology is part of the title character’s neurosis, but really it's her personality that's the center of interest, I think, not her particular kind of faith, so why does religion...? P.T.: But that's implied in her faith. You know, there’s the business about her going off to the far side of Nashville to go to the church, to her denomination and how they were always changing, breaking off and going in her denomination to different sections, spawning new churches, and that is implied there, but you're right, it doesn't appear and it's very easy for me to sit up here after the fact and give reasons, but it is perfectly true that I grew up in a family and really a class of people maybe who were not religious and for whom there had been great battles of religion in the past, as there had been great battles of politics. There were two subjects at our dinnertable that were not allowed to be discussed, and they were politics and religion, because my grandfather on one side had married three times and each one of a different denomination — the first Presbyterian, the second Episcopalian, the third Methodist — and there were battles over it, and he was divorced, which was a great scandal, from his second wife, who wanted to send his children away to Sewanee Military and to an Episcopal girls' school. And there were very ugly things about it, and then on my father's side they had been Roman

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Catholics and had left and become Baptists, but on their deathbeds — really my father called a Roman Catholic priest, this was after 100 years of being [Baptist] — they had come from Maryland down to North Carolina, and one of them left the church and went and founded a Baptist school in South Carolina, Furman, and then the same man came on — his father never spoke to him again because he left the Catholic church — and then he went and was president of the University of Alabama, and then some of his brothers went to Tennessee, and they were violent about religion. One of my family who didn't believe in graven images and all her money to the church in Rome. So we had those backgrounds on both sides, but we went to church, we went to the nearest Sunday school whatever it was. There were more Methodists in West Tennessee and Presbyterians and Episcopalians. I went to Episcopal schools, but at home my father loved to argue religion, and I saw him crucify members of the family who were Episcopalians especially. I've often thought of writing stories about religion. I know a good deal about it and the Methodist church and the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches and the Baptists some, too, because we had aunts who were strict Baptists. My mother had notes she kept from an aunt who had been Roman Catholic and became Baptist, and she had been invited to the baptism, to the christening, of my oldest sister, and she wrote back, “Thank you for your invitation, but I'm not inclined to witness the barbarous ritual of infant baptism.“ So you see the sort of thing that was impious, and I wrote one story that was never put in a book... called “Tom Tell Him,“ and it's based on several episodes. For one, there was a baptismal font in the Episcopal church in Trenton, and my great grandfather had given the land for the church. But the Episcopal flock had shrunk to near zero and they all had to go across the county to another Episcopalian church, and so the church fell into disuse and was about to fall down. They got a man to come and tear it down, and he was told he could have everything in it. He took the baptismal font and set it up in his side yard as a bird bath, and so then the whole town went up in arms.

J.P.: You've studied the drama and you've published a number of plays in addition to your short stories. Could you say just a bit about what prompted you to turn to this second literary vocation? P.T.: I wanted to write plays before I wrote stories. I have some very crude things I wrote very young. I'm still working on plays right now. I love to have my plays produced and to go and work with them and rewrite them and everything. I've done it at colleges and at the Barter Theatre in Virginia. I've written a volume of one‑act plays, Presences, and I enjoyed doing that very much and have been to productions of them at colleges. I had a very happy situation for a while at Kenyon. The man who directed the theater there for years was the best director of that sort I've ever known. He did all my plays as I wrote them, and that's what every playwright needs, somebody who's going to give your play a production right away. He did these one act plays and he did “A Stand in the Mountains,“ “Tennessee Day in St. Louis,“ and well, several one‑act plays. I'm writing a trilogy, two other plays to go along with “A Stand in the Mountains.“ They all take place in something I call Allen Moutain, like Monteagle. And so my interest goes on.

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J.P.: Did they influence the way you wrote your short stories or the way you looked at the short story? P.T.: Well, of course I think that the short story is much closer to the play than it is to the novel, that it's a dramatically compressed literary form, and I've pointed out that it's much more natural to go into a play than to go into a novel, generally speaking, for short story writers, and yet short‑story writers are pushed into writing novels by the market. Publishers insist. I had a battle about my book of stories, The Old Forest. Knopf and Farrar, Straus refused to print it — they're sorry now, I'm happy to say — until I gave them a novel first; it's a way of prizing a novel out of you... Eudora Welty, it's her stories that are wonderful. Her long novel is not nearly as good as the stories in my opinion, however good it is. And Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools is not as good as her stories. Of course, as Lowell said about that, if anybody but Katherine Anne had written that novel we would think it was pretty good, but the stories are so much better. And then J.F. Powers, whom I admire immensely, wrote one novel, under pressure, and it was a good novel, but it was not the inspired thing that some of his stories are.

J.P.: It's an endangered breed. Well, let me ask you something about The New Yorker. Many of your stories were published in The New Yorker. People started identifying you as a New Yorker writer. Nobody really likes to be categorized like this. How do you react to being called a “New Yorker writer?“ P.T.: I wouldn't have liked to be a Partisan Review writer or an Esquire writer or any other category you put on a writer, but I do admire and respect The New Yorker a lot. Of course, when you talk about The New Yorker, it has not been the same magazine all these years. It is in some respects, but there've been different editors. They've had continuity in the principal editor, but the fiction editors have changed, and you can trace the differences in the stories to the different fiction editors that were there. When Katherine White was editor — that was in the early fifties — I think they had marvellous short‑story writers: J.F. Powers, Eudora Welty, Mary McCarthy, Salinger, all those writers and others, Malamud I think, all the writers who were there — I include myself in that bunch — at that period the fiction in The New Yorker was the best fiction we've seen in a magazine in a long time. Before that, the earlier New Yorker story writers were Dorothy Parker and others — they wrote lightweight stories relatively — humorous stories and not very important as literary history goes. Then after Katherine White there were other editors, and they stopped printing Eudora Welty and all those writers. In fact, Jean Stafford is another one of those. We were very good friends, and she would say that she was going start a club of New Yorker rejectees because they rejected a lot of us. And so I asked to be released from my first‑reader’s agreement with them. But then after several years I began writing these other stories, and Eleanor urged me to send them to The New Yorker. I said they were not going to print them, and then suddenly they did, and they've been printing everything since then. So it's the different editors. There is a marvellous person there now, Frances Kiernan, that I like working with. She's edited my last three stories, I think.

J.P.: Do you think The New Yorker has had anything other than a positive influence on American ﬁction? P.T.: Well, yes it has in a way. You could say it, but I don't think it makes them out as villains. For one thing I think The New Yorker is a literary magazine in the sense that

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no other big magazine is in this country. They select the stories for the story's sake and love to discover young writers. They've discovered a lot and printed a lot of unknown writers, including Padgett Powell, who I think is a very good young writer. Now we may not agree with their criterion for fiction or for the short story, but they do have one. They don't print names, as I think most of the magazines do, ones that would compete with The New Yorker. They'll take a bad story by Saul Bellow or by me maybe, because of the name, and that's not exercising literary judgement, and The New Yorker doesn't do that. And they've had other effects. I think that Jean Stafford was — you can't blame The New Yorker for this — but I think she should have been a novelist. She should have written numbers of long novels that she never wrote, because as soon as she began printing stories in The New Yorker, she gave herself over to that and wrote short stories for them and for herself. Maybe she would never have written those novels. I thought she was going to be sort of another Thomas Mann in this country from her early work. They had some effect, maybe, because they encouraged a certain side of my stories and I may have just gotten carried away... One time when I had a first‑reading agreement with them, I think I had five stories. If you had four stories in the period of a year, you got 15 % more money for everything retroactively, and they paid just enormously, it is the only magazine that's really paid writers the money they made, because the writers owned it. If you wrote six, you got 25 % more. Well, one year they wrote me that if I wrote one more before the fifteenth of June, I would have six stories during the period of twelve months and I would get 25 % more for all of them. So I was young and full of energy. I went over to the college to my office and locked myself up for a couple of weeks and wrote a story that I sent to them and that they took. Well, my conscience is such that I was a little ashamed that I could just turn it out if I could now sit down and write, and I thought of just the material to put in it. I have never put that story in a book. It is buried. I've had people ask me about it, but I'm so prejudiced against it… But generally speaking, I think The New Yorker encourages writers. Another thing. I felt so guilty about making so much money from The New Yorker for a few years when I was still young and idealistic, I was determined to spend all the money as I made it, and that's why we went to Europe every year for about five years.

J.P.: Let me ask you something else. It has to do with Southern fiction. There are lots of rumors about the demise of Southern fiction. I've heard Reynolds Price give it fifty years, and the critic Lewis Lawson has said that “Southern fiction must continue to fight its way toward a vision of life made vital by Christianity or die.“ What would you say is the future of Southern fiction? P.T.: Well, it depends of course on so many things. I can't predict what's going to happen, how completely plasticized we’re all going to become and how much we're going to all be just alike, but I see young writers now in the South writing stories that reveal enormous talent for fiction. I've noticed that in recent years a lot of them have come out of the Highland South, more than they used to. Fred Chappell, I think, is a marvellous writer, and there are others that write stories about the mountains. There's a man up in West Virginia who died last year, just a boy, Breece Pancake. He had been a student at Virginia, and he was a very talented and energetic person that

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would have been productive. Some people write a story or two and that's it, and nothing's wrong with that, but that's it. He was going to write a lot. I think that there will be fiction going on in the South as long as people are trying to discover their own identity. That's part of it, they're going to write stories about the world they live in. It won't be the same South that you and I may have known, it'll be a different one, because what we knew was very different from our parents and grandparents. I wrote one story in which I dealt with this subject matter, and I'd like to do it again, called “Mrs. Billingsby Wine.“ It is about everybody turning to his own period. In it, Mrs. Billingsby was talking about how wonderful Thornton had been in her day, and the young woman who came there began to resent it because she remembered a Thornton of her youth as so marvellous and she thought of that as the real Thornton. We all do this to some extent. Then there is language. I object terribly to the use of certain words our children or our young students use. Then I remember hearing my father blast one of my sisters for using the word “guys.“ “You guys,“ he said, “that's street language.“ Now, you know, you don't even think of that.

J.P.: Let me ask you about what has been called the digressive retrospective monologue. I think that's... P.T.: I think that describes it pretty well. That's exactly what I'm doing right now.

J.P.: You've been praised for using it perhaps better than anyone else in modern ﬁction, and I think you've almost got a patent on it... P.T.: Well, your virtues and vices, I think, all come from the same... Sometimes I get so sick of it, and then I think, oh no, that's the way I can do it.

J.P.: I was going to put this together with Robert Tower’s saying that your work sometimes deﬁes the concentration of the short story, the brevity that's so typical of the short story. I don't know how you reconcile what might be a naturally novelistic mode of narration with the form of the short story. Could it be because of the Southern storytelling tradition? P.T.: I think that's some of it, that oral tradition and that I lived in a family of story‑tellers. My mother and my grandfather were great raconteurs and anecdotalists, and my father loved so to hear my mother tell stories that he would say over and over, “Tell the one about so‑and‑so,“ and the rest of us would have heard it so many times, we would wander off, but my father could just listen endlessly to those stories. They were always told with the same phrases, the same vocabulary that came in at just right moment. A sense of drama would come right then. Then others, too, my Uncle Alf Taylor, who was my mother’s great uncle. I have just recently acquired a recording of Uncle Alf—just talking and singing with his sons, and Uncle Alf talking about old Limber his foxhound, and his voice is wonderful, it's pure valley of East Tennessee. He tells some stories about old Limber and quotes the stories a slave had told him, and they sing... oh, I think “Barbara Allen“ and some old ballads... It's partly that, but also it's been one of my interests to see if I can get the effect of a long story, of a novel in a short story suggested by this, and I've consciously done it a lot of the time and enjoyed doing it and not always successfully, I think. Sometimes it's what's wrong with stories, but then sometimes it's worked. After all, Turgenev does it, you know; he's a great one for storytelling that way. I don't know whether I

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can point out examples. There's a story called “Old Portraits“ of his that I admire very much, and I think you could point out other people who do it, not as much, I bet. I'm sort of obsessed with it, and I think maybe I talk that way and that's why I've fallen into it.

J.P.: I think it helps incorporate the dimension of time into your fiction, and this brings me to “The Old Forest,“ the story itself and the film that Steven Ross made. You do the voice-over for the film, lending the speaking voice of Peter Taylor to the sixtyish retrospective narrator Nat Ramsey. The film, though it is very well done and faithful to the story, seems to me not to capture fully, even in spite of the voice‑over narration which I know is yours, an important dimension of the story, that of time. I wonder if you could react to that. P.T.: I think that it's a just criticism, but he had to do the story in sixty minutes and under. With more time he could've got that in perhaps, made it visual somehow, and I don't know that it works with my narration. At the very end of the story Nat tells about how time went on and he later went back to school and became a professor and did this and that, and in the story that's sort of woven into the fabric. In the film it's something in addition and it's spoken, and the visual effect of the film is so much greater than any other, I think. The sound, the music, can have a great effect, but the visual is so much stronger. To have got the whole story of the characters and the relation of men and women in the society, whether he could have got all that and this too, I just don't know. I think maybe that if there's a criticism to be made, that's it. But I think that it's an awfully good film the way it is, and much closer to the original than films often are. And for the author to be happy with the adaptation is unusual, I think. I told you that he and I are going to work on another one, perhaps on the novel I just finished, or perhaps we'll make up a whole new story—that's what he really wants to do I think, and I'd do it just for the hell of it. I've really gotten to look at movies with much more intelligence since I worked on that film.

J.P.: Let's talk some more about “The Old Forest.“ In it, you mention Proust and the demimondaines in that story as part of what I read as ironic commentary on the young NatRamsey and his pretensions and then you unmention Proust; that is, old Nat the narrator states that the girls are not demimondaines after all, and it struck me that this is one of the really very few times in all your work that you make a direct literary allusion and refer to another author. P.T.: Well, usually it doesn't seem appropriate either in the characters' minds and therefore in the narrative or in the dialogue, for them to make literary references, because they wouldn't have read things I'd want to refer to. But here these were young girls who would have read Proust, and Nat with his reading Latin and having this side to him, I felt it was possible for it to come into his ken. That's the only justification I can see for it.

J.P.: Are you suggesting the Proustian process of bringing back the past as relevant to this story? P.T.: I don't think I had that in mind. It's a good idea and I like the idea and it does work that way in the story, but I didn't consciously say that to myself. But I wish I had thought of it. I think it would be reasonable and effective and maybe is suggestive of that now. I'll have to look at it again.

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J.P.: Again on this story, I am very interested in the Lee Ann circle of girls. And I wonder to what extent Lee Ann’s group may be symbolic. Symbolic of a new order or a new group of relations. P.T.: Well, that did occur to me and that was one of the things I wanted to suggest in that story, and I felt that it might work with a present‑day audience of readers, to make the connection between them and... Today such girls would be legion, and it's amazing how easily Picasso and Matisse and such people's names can be just mentioned now. But I wanted them to suggest that this was the changing of the relationship of the sexes in society and in this world, but I didn't go so far as to press that. I'm often dealing with that kind of thing. I'm doing it right now with what I'm writing, trying to see how much I can suggest about what the experience of people reading the story long afterward would be, compared to what it would have been at the time, and that to me gives it a greater depth. That's what's fun about it. I told you about this novel taking place on the train in 1915, and then I am planning whole sections in the 1970's and then going back 100 years before that. One of the things on the train, I won't go on with this, but on this cortege going back to Tennessee, there were just the three sisters in one drawing room and a widow stepmother and an aunt in the other drawing room on two pullman cars, and in between there are all the men, and they're all different kinds of men, relatives, and some of them getting drunk... these women locked in these rooms, and then suddenly having to go up and sit with the body in the baggage car—so with all these possibilities, that's what marvellous to your imagination. You wonder what is this relationship with these women, their isolation and all, and even the three women who are young married women in their twenties and their husbands...

J.P.: You're always dealing with the complications of male‑female relations. P.T.: Isn't everybody?

J.P.: Well, yes. What strikes me about your stories over and over is that the women characters seem to get very special care, more care overall than maybe the male characters, they're more sensitively drawn. I think of Miss Leonora, I think of Shirley, I think certainly of Caroline Braxley and Lee Ann. Male characters... they're oafs or they're indecisive, they vascillate, sometimes they're even neurotic. P.T.: That's exactly the way I'm writing about these characters in this new novel now. There's a boy in love with the three sisters, and then you see him in the 1970's and he is an old man and he’s never married and he’s very peculiar.

J.P.: Why are women in the psychological and often moral ascendancy over men in your ﬁction? P.T.: Of course, probably I really think they are always, but I think in the South particularly, and particularly the South that I knew growing up; there were old ladies always (I’ve told you my father was a lawyer and he always had a lot of old ladies whose estates he was looking after) around the house staying with us. After the Civil War for a long time the woman in many cases was the dominant member of the house. The husbands didn't know what to do. For the men it wasn't the same; there wasn't the authority. They still had a great deal, but I knew more old ladies who spoke with authority than I did old gentlemen, and who were powerful figures. I knew such ladies everywhere and I'm sure they existed in the rest of the South, and to some extent it was a universal thing all over the world in the old days,

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the spinster aunts who perhaps had a little money and were running things and everybody was hoping to inherit their money and all that.

J.P.: While the men turned their... P.T.: There was nothing to do for the men for a long time. There were some who did well, of course, who went on, but there were a great many from old farming families who'd had a good deal of wealth and they became traveling men for hardware companies out of Louisville and that sort of thing, and the women stayed at home and tried to live as they'd always lived. That's a picture that's partly fanciful, but it's partly true. I don't know whether that's the main thing, but I admired women a great deal, and I loved these older women; I thought they were perfectly marvellous—I did some uncles, too, but the women more than that. I had a family of so many women. There were lots of daughters and cousins who would all be in the house a great deal of the time, and I had two older sisters and my mother and my mother's sisters and all this, but everybody to some extent had this.

J.P.: At the end of “The Old Forest“ Caroline is... Because she has pride of power, she's able to give Nat freedom later; that is, he's able to renounce his career in cotton and take up a much more modest life as an academic and go through graduate school and so on. It is still Nat who makes the decision that changes their lives and yet it's Caroline... P.T.: Caroline is willing to go along, as I felt so many women wouldn't have been. I have great sympathy with a lot of my friends in Memphis of my generation then who are so blocked in Memphis that they can't break, but they would love to get away and live a different life. There's something about it, they can't do it, and often it's the wife who won't allow them to do it, I think.

J.P.: Even in my generation, I have heard of couples where the wife, after being away for a time, has put her foot down and said, “We’re going back to Memphis.“ P.T.: That's the story. It's the story of Memphis's life. They can't leave it—and there are people, not just from Memphis, even more people from Mississippi and West Tennessee, from the peripheral towns and areas in Arkansas, to whom Memphis is the center of the world; they are even more inseparable. Memphis is a very isolated spot, more than Nashville in a way. The people don't dare leave it. They don't have connections in other places. If they leave there, they're nobody and if they stay in Memphis at least they're somebody in Memphis. Of course every place in the world that you live, people from other places have their own types and feel that they are unique, but for me the reason that I'm not just an old codger sitting up gossiping as some of my friends say, is that I've found in it—I must tell you this because I would say it to any other writer, too—I brought to it a feeling about those differences, and they were differences perhaps within me, and there's my experience as a very young person going to both places and then hearing my parents talk about these things. They just talked about it all the time, the differences between Nashville and Memphis, and for me it mean this conflict and these differences, and in my novel [A Summons to Memphis] I say Nashville was the past and Memphis was the present for them. So it's what you make of these things as a writer. You can live in Sanduskey, Ohio, or you can live in upstate New York. If you have the insights and the luck and the temperament, you make up worlds and they are not the real worlds, not the real Memphis or the real Nashville but they are what they represent for me and what they did represent for me.

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J.P.: Let me ask you about “Je Suis Perdu“ because it's one of my favorite stories. P.T.: Well, I'm so glad. It's one of my favorites, and it was one of Jarrell's very favorites.

J.P.: Readers sometimes complain about irony, Peter Taylor irony, and you've said practically any short story has to be ironic. But in this story, which I think is one of your most moving, in “Je Suis Perdu,“ the ironic distance that I keep looking for is attenuated and maybe it's not even there. P.T.: Well it's not in the sense that it is in the others, and it is much more autobiographical. Usually the narrator or the principal character in my stories I'm thinking of as somebody else, this somebody I've known or put in. I dissociate myself from it because it's more fun to write it that way. But in this it was my children and my wife and it's almost precisely as it happened. But after I had thought about it, I looked for irony in it and... When we first arrived in Paris—I was on a Fulbright that year—there was a big dinner for the Fulbrights held at the University of Paris. I met a man there whom I liked. We met him and his wife and his children. He was an historian. He was my age or younger, and he was there writing his thesis. It was to be on the bridges built in France in the reign of Louis XIV. Is that in the story, do you remember?

J.P.: I don't think that made it into the story. P.T.: But that was what he was doing, and it seemed to me such a very special scholarly little subject there to be working on. I was there as a writer to do research, allegedly, on Southerners who had come to Paris during the Civil War and then wouldn't leave.

J.P.: So you really were there to do that, like the narrator in the story...? P.T.: Is that what he says he was there for? Oh, yes, I guess I changed it to that. The narrator was there as an historian; I was going to write some fiction about it. And so that was really what my plan was, but I found nothing in Paris that wasn't in the library at home, though I did meet some people, descendants of those people, but I just had a wonderful time in Paris, doing other things and writing furiously. At any rate, I met this young man and his wife and they had two children, maybe about the age of ours, and it seemed to me he was so typical of the young academic Fulbright scholar, and very attractive they were in every way, very genteel, and so I sort of took him over and to some extent that's supposed to be the whole thing — his attitude toward himself. There’s a little irony there, but essentially you take his experience directly at the end when he says, “after I found things that I loved even more than myself.“ I'm trying to think now of other stories where there’s not so much irony. They would be when they're autobiographical... what about “Rain in the Heart?“ It's the one about the soldier who meets the strange girl and then goes home to his wife, and that again is a very autobiographical story. That whole conversation with that girl — I just ran home and wrote it all down, and the situation there was all very real during the war. I have a few stories like that. I don't think there’s any of the irony about genteel people or anything like that.

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J.P.: You've said a word or two about what you're working on now. Would you like to say something more, ﬁrst about A Summons to Memphis? P.T.: Well, it began as a long story and it got like Topsy, it just grew and grew. Everything we've said keeps reminding me of it today because it's about a family in Nashville that moved to Memphis, and the children all are at an age when the changes are ruinous to them almost, or it seems so to the narrator. It's from Nashville to Memphis they move, and I use those two cities to mean different things in the story. Then, of course, a lot of it is autobiographical, all stories are, but it doesn't matter. To make material over into a story, none of the characters can remain the characters they were in life and it's not making judgements on anybody, I hope. It's a story concerned with old people in our society and what becomes of them. It's about an old man whose children try to prevent his marrying again when he’s eighty, and it's not because of the money really, and it's not because of the grandchildren. There are no grandchildren, there is no land. I say at one point in it that Memphis is a land‑oriented city, that everybody owns some land, that's partly the thing that people ought to be keeping for the children, but it's none of those reasons. But then what is it? That's the mystery of the story — Why are they doing this? But then the story wanders about back into their past life and how he behaved in certain moments, and so on. It was a great satisfaction to me to write it, and I want to see if I can write another that long. That's what I'm doing right now..

J.P.: So the piece that you're doing now is at least a long short story? P.T.: Yes, at least a very long short story and probably as long as a short novel.

J.P.: Have you got a title for it? P.T.: The title I'm using now is “The Senator’s Daughters“ or “The Daughter of the Senator.“ I may get a better tick. That's not very original, and in fact, it's all going to be capsuled in a train journey, and if I could get something about that in there... Frank O'Connor has a wonderful story called “In the Train.“ That's not the title I'm using, but that might be interesting. Titles are just things to play with when you’re writing the story. Every now and then I'll just list all the possibilities and if the theme changes in my mind, I'll change the title.

J.P.: But large chunks of it will happen on the train from Washington? P.T.: The beginning... and I think maybe the end will be on the train, but in the course of the journey the narrator, who is not on the train but has heard about this all his life from members of the family, does know other things, and he wanders and tells about things that happened earlier and later. The characters are drawn that way with their whole life stories, what happens to the three sisters, to their husbands, their marriage, the sort of lives they lived, and what happens to the young man that was really in love with all three of them. And then — I don't know that it will end this way, but this will be in it, I think. The old man goes to a party in Washington that the narrator also goes to, given by a niece who’s now married to a senator. It's not going to be my niece or anything, though I have a niece who is married to a senator. But you see those things are suggestive and I'm not at all thinking of their personalities; I'm thinking of their circumstances.

J.P.: You think you have a disenchanted mind? Which values enchantment? P.T.: That's what Warren says... I'll take anything that Warren says. He must have written that when I was under thirty, in that preface to my book [A Long Fourth

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andOther Stories, 1948]. But he has so much energy and has done so many wonderful things. To bother to write that. I didn't ask him, my publisher just wrote to him and asked him to do it. He's been such a friend to me…

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Elizabeth Spencer - b. 1921

Anne-Marie Girard, John H. E. Paine and Corinne H. Dale

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Anne-Marie Girard, Corinne Dale and J.H.E. Paine, “Short Stories of the American South“ Symposium, February 1, 1992, First published in JSSE n°18, 1992.

1 Elizabeth Spencer has won loyal readers and prestigious literary prizes for her many short stories, collections of short fiction, and novels. Praised by Eudora Welty for her “cool detachment,” Spencer evokes the family and community relationships of the American South with certainty and compassion born of her personal knowledge as a native of Mississippi and a long-time resident of North Carolina. Drawing also on her experiences in Italy and Canada, Spencer demonstrates the range of her social commentary as well as her insight into the complexities of the human heart.

Anne-Marie GIRARD: Several of your novels have been translated into French and some of the collected stories appeared under the title Nouvelles du Sud. Do you know how they were received by French critics and French readers? Elisabeth SPENCER: There was only one piece of criticism I saw, written for La Quinzaine Littéraire — an essay‑review by Danielle Pitavy. It was very gratifying because she really wanted to see what the essence of these stories was, and comment on it fully instead of just a little bit of opinion.

John H.E. PAINE: What sort of reaction did you get in Paris? E.S.: I couldn't tell when I did a reading, what they called a “débat-rencontre,” with Danielle speaking very rapidly about the stories, very ably. I tried to reply in French also, which didn't go terribly well, but they seemed to think they could understand me. On the other hand, the audience was people who had just wandered into that huge bookstore on Boulevard St Germain; I had a few friends and supporters on the first row. They came up later and had some interesting comments. At the Village Voice the night before I was most gratified at the warmth of everyone there. A good many of them were, of course, Americans who were living in Paris, but

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to me they all looked pretty French. There were a lot of French people too, and either they had read me or heard of me, and this just made the nicest kind of feeling when I was reading — that I was really giving something to people who were aware of what I was trying to do.

A-M G: Who selected the stories to be translated as Nouvelles du Sud? E.S.: Ida Leach, the editor. She hasn't given up the idea, I think, of bringing out a second volume of these as well.

A-M G: Why were there three translators? E.S.: They started out with one. But it took them a long time because, I was told, they were being so careful to try to get a good translation. When what they had didn't measure up, they discarded it. I think that's commendable. But it was a happy coincidence I was invited here to Angers at the same time the book had just come out, don't you think?

Corinne DALE: I was wondering how you felt about sitting there in the audience while people critiqued your work. Have you been in that situation before? E.S.: Oh, sometimes; it seems to me I have. With me in the audience they probably are very complimentary, you know. They're not going to come out and say that you made a complete flop with this story or that they don't understand what it's all about. It was fine.

A-M G: Now, you have already published nine novels, if I'm not mistaken. E.S.: Two of them were short novels, and more correctly ought to be considered as novellas, because they have been published together in a reprint. That's what I intended to happen all along.

A-M G: Were they just stories that refused to come to an end or was it deliberate, a deliberate choice of a certain length? E.S.: No, it wasn't. There's usually a central incident in my stories. The central incident in The Light in the Piazza was at an annual sort of exhibition game of calcio, which was a medieval soccer game that they have once a year in Florence on their Saint's Day, St. Giovanni, in the Piazza della Signoria. I was in the stands, by a strange happening with the poet Allen Tate, who had been in Florence and asked me to go with him. At any rate, in the middle of the thing, the little medieval cannon went off, and a man fell down. Perhaps you remember that incident in the story: just when she was about to bare her soul to Sr. Naccarelli, about her daughter's being retarded and unable to mature or be a full person, the cannon went off. Well, the only thing that really happened was the cannon, but later on in the summer — I was staying with an Italian family then, trying to master the language — I asked what happened to him. He died because they didn't give him the proper treatment. He got blood poisoning and died. I don't know if I dwelt on this incident much or not. It was certainly vivid in my mind because of this strange thing happening. I thought about the balance of life and death, how fragile. Something else that happened put me on to the fact that there's kind of an Italian mentality that really doesn't want women to be very, very bright. I exaggerate, and of course the Italians resented this, so I shouldn't make a big point of it.

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C.D.: I thought that was the great joke of the story — that the perfect wife was retarded. E.S.: Well, Ida Leach is from Torino, and I don't know if she's ever going to bring that story out again in France. She admires it and mentioned it because the original translation has long since been exhausted, and I suppose it's available again. But she might feel that I was saying that Italians are stupid. I really didn't mean that. But I'm sure there might be a way for an Italian to resent the story.

C.D.: But it's a comedy... E.S.: I thought it was a comedy, too. It's a comedy; but a lot of people took it seriously. I wasn't trying to write a study of retardation or male attitudes. I was writing comedy. But the thing of it was, I wanted a thirty‑page story about the balance between the death that occurred so accidentally and the coming back to life of this girl under special circumstances, also. And then once I started the story it just seemed to take off. It zoomed past me, you know, and a great deal of detail came alive because I had lived in Florence for a time and in Italy for five years. I had just left and was starting again in Canada, but all those memories seemed to come forth into that story; so before I knew it, I had over a hundred pages. Knights and Dragons started out to be a short story, too. It was going to take place with this woman meeting these people as a cultural representative and taking them to Venice where something very personal and tragic about her life came up to her in the form of this young man, suggesting that he knew what her secrets were. And that I never resolved, because as a short story it just wouldn't resolve itself there; so I left the ending rather vague. I think maybe I sent it to one editor who said it wasn't ready to be published, and so I put it aside. Then I tried finishing it and got them back to Rome and decided to make a short novel of it. I'm of two minds about that story. Some people like it a lot and think it's very successful, and others think it's too submerged in the psyche of the woman to be satisfying as a piece of fiction. So I don't know. I generally follow what my readers say.

A-M G: Do you intend to write other novellas? Is it a length that suits you and that you like? E.S.: I like it, yes. I would like to get a good idea for doing another one. Maybe next summer when I start working again I'll come up with something. I don't have any ideas right now... well, I do, I have a piece of manuscript I might complete.

A-M G: How much planning do you do before starting to write a short story? Do you collect material beforehand or ﬁll in notebooks or does it just...? E.S.: I just sail into short stories. If I run into things that I need more information about, I go find it somewhere. But a novel, now, you've got to plan a novel pretty carefully, else you'll go wandering off in all directions at a certain point, and I do think novels require a sort of containment: theme, place, conflict. It's got to cohere, that long piece of work, because you can't go leading the reader off this way and say I want to go that way.

A-M G: Could you tell us how you choose your titles? E.S.: I enjoy doing titles. The title for the last novel, The Night Travellers, was to be The Lost Children, and I never liked it very much because it seemed to me it would be too downbeat for the reader, do you think so? Corinne, would you go out and buy a book called The Lost Children? It sounds so weepy.

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C.D.: Well, I might, but I think that there's something positive in what they say about travelling at night; not all bad, you know. E.S.: It's got a dynamic to it, a movement.

C.D.: And maybe for some people that's the way you have to go. So I think that The Night Travellers is richer, more suggestive. E.S.: It came late in the book because I had just about finished all of the first draft of the manuscript and was revising. I always do a good deal of revision on a novel. But that business in Isaiah about “Watchman, what of the night?” — I thought, something in this idea is what I want. And I realized they had to get around a lot at night because of their uneasiness about their place in society.

C.D.: There's a question that I've wanted to ask you for a long time: it seems to me that in much of your work you deal with a light side and a dark side. It's the dark side I'm interested in. There seems to be, to varying degrees in different pieces of ﬁction, a seductive but dangerous side that sometimes your characters choose because they are uneasy with the superﬁcial, mannered society that they've grown up in, or they feel some way outside it. I see that in several of the works we've touched on. To go back to “Ship Island” and The Snare, for instance, those two pieces have something in common. E.S.: Oh, yes; definitely.

C.D.: Going into the underworld of New Orleans and the girl choosing that in your story. E.S.: A lot of my characters do that. They like to walk a tightrope over the dangerous in preference to staying with the safe and superficial. It's when the safe world becomes superficial, or materialistic, that's when they can't stand it. So they plunge off into other directions. I don't know if I'm through with that aspect of my writing or not. It seems to me I've got as much as I wanted to out of it. But you're right, “Ship Island” started a whole new cycle in what I was trying to do. Both “First Dark” and The Light in the Piazza were unlikely situations working out in a normal way. And then normal comes up to question. A friend of mine who follows my work very well says, “You're always approaching life in a different way.” So maybe I am. I don't think about it too consciously when I'm doing it; it just seems to me there's some kind of urgency to enter experience in a certain way. But The Snare, “Ship Island,” and “I, Maureen”: I look at those three as sort of a triptych.

C.D.: In those stories do you think it's the individual who doesn't ﬁt, or something that happened in the past that doesn't allow them to ﬁt, or is it something about society itself? Are the people who are content in society somehow not as perceptive as the discontented individual? E.S.: I think society has this broad streak of venality in it, especially American society, the idea of power and money. I don't feel it so much now. I think we've been through a great chastening period during the sixties. That was a turning point, not altogether to the bad. Well, I guess publicly it was to the bad because I don't think anybody can trust their government after all those things that happened. In the Eisenhower period, for instance everybody was so concerned with materialism. It was always: what do you do? How much is he making? That sort of thing was so common. It just seemed to me this idea of phony success was all over the place, and I began to just hate this kind of thing in American life. I suppose without really wanting to, I turned into a social critic. I'm probably giving myself too much weight on that side.

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C.D.: But then these characters who are perceptive, who are different from the ordinary person, at least in those earlier works, what they go into turns out to be a real crime scene. It's not at that point a positive alternative so much as it is a psychological dark side and externally, too, a sinister aspect of life. E.S.: Well, Julia... you're talking about Julia in The Snare. Yes, she was kind of a fool, in a way. She kept on and on, tempting things until really, she got the worst in the end. She lost the man that she loved. She did get the child. I guess the satisfaction she felt was having touched bottom. I think at the end she's become an entity and has arrived at a fixed point. But I just don't know if, even then, you could predict any kind of security because there's still that danger element in the society she’s chosen. What I liked about her, though, was her way: no matter what results, this is what feels right. She finds her balance in very unlikely ways. Like that business of doing these mosaics out of bits of the city. I just stumbled on that. Her whole life had been pieces and bits of New Orleans.

C.D.: And then the girl in “Ship Island,” who returns at the end... E.S.: She knows her own nature now. She was sort of a myth creature, I thought. She half realizes things, more at the end.

C.D.: But she'll never be able to go into the superﬁcial world again. E.S.: That's right. Is that bad or good?

C.D.: I don't know. It causes a dilemma for me as a reader. But as I said earlier, one of the reasons I like Night Travellers, looking at it in the whole of your work, is that it seems to me that this dark side begins to look more positive, maybe because I grew up in the sixties, so I tend to see political activism as something very positive. But do you see that dark side, that underground world, as being connected to the underground world in these earlier works? E.S.: Jeff was an idealist who found that once you start ripping your society, there's no end to where it can ravel out. And he blundered into doing something that was really criminal; he got thrown with those people who were just simply awful, who killed that boy he was with — that Black Panther business. I got a whole lot of that from a man at UNC who had been an activist. He started out doing lectures and rallies. I got a lot of that description of rallies and stuff from him. And then those violent people took over, and began doing things that none of the original ones had any idea would eventuate. What they were promoting was more of an idealistic thing. And my friend said that he wound up seeming like a real conservative. But the story really to me was centered on Mary rather than Jeff, and I think that she found an ambience for herself at the end so that I felt alright about her. She found a place through her dancing, she could relate to people who were quite fond of her, and she had a little community, at the last. Just being isolated would be terrible.

C.D.: She's quite passive in the book, and I know that the book has been criticized... E.S.: It's been criticized for her being passive.

C.D.: The central character, and yet very passive. But you see the dancing as being strong. E.S.: Yes, she clings to that. I didn't think she was all that passive because it seems to me she acts positively in many ways, but a lot of people felt that she was.

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A-M G: In one of your interviews you said that when you felt too close to your characters, it prevented you from writing in an objective way. You give the example of Knights and Dragons. Did it happen in that book? E.S.: Yes, yes, it did. I don't know why that was. It seemed to have a mysterious hold on me in a psychic way. The character in it was rather paranoid and disturbed. If I got into her psyche, I felt myself getting paranoid and disturbed, so I couldn't keep a distance. In The Light in the Piazza I managed to keep a distance from the characters and observe. I was comfortable with everyone in there.

A-M G: Is it especially difﬁcult to keep a distance when your narrator is a ﬁrst‑person woman? E.S.: I've done a lot of first‑person stories with women talking because I'll just hear a voice somehow. That happened a lot in Montreal when I used to be nostalgic for the South. Just to hear a woman’s southern voice talking would lead to my wondering just what stories she had to tell, and listening. Southern women are good story tellers. So that's how a lot of those stories came about.

A-M G: You lived a long time in Canada, so you probably know a number of female Canadian short story writers? E.S.: Danielle Pitavy was saying in Paris that the women in the South and the women in Canada were far ahead of the men at this point. I just think that it happens that sometimes you have more women writers and sometimes more men writers. I don't think of it as a competition.

J.P.: In Canada, critics say that men are on the brutal side of life, with more incidents, more adventure, whereas women are rather on the domestic side. I wonder if the short story is a domestic genre? E.S.: It used to be a very violent genre, didn't it? I mean, you think about Hemingway's stories, like “The Killers” and his bullfighting stories. Everything depended on shock tactics.

J.P.: You've had your share of interesting incidents in some of your stories as well. “A Southern Landscape” is one that comes to mind. E.S.: That's how I stumbled on Marilee. I meant someday to write some more Marilee stories, but I just never have gotten around to it.

J.P.: There is a ﬁne, ﬁne vein of comedy that you mine. E.S.: Right.

J.P.: I found myself reading through the collected stories, and I don't hit it every time, but I realize at some point, I'm being toyed with here; I need to look at this in a different way. That happens in “A Southern Landscape,” I think. You were criticized for saying some people just have to be left as alcoholics; it's okay. Did you get blasted for that? E.S.: No. Don't go criticizing me for that!

J.P.: But you leave him with a wonderful ending to that story, “A Southern Landscape.” E.S.: She hopes he'll go right on drinking.

J.P.: Right, yes. E.S.: Well, she's kind of bitter toward him, you know.

J.P.: “...go right on drinking. There have got to be some things you can count on...” would be an ordinary way to put it. I'd rather say that I feel the need of a land, of a sure terrain, of a

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sort of “permanent landscape of the heart.” Of course, you've described the ruins of the old southern mansion... E.S.: That's really there, you know. There are a whole lot of things in my stories that are really there, or that have really happened. But then the story seems to work around all those in an imaginary creation. That Presbyterian church hand—that's reality. Didn't you ever see it?

J.P.: There is a toughness, though. We speak so often of southern writers who use their past, like when we speak of Faulkner as a historian. “A Southern Landscape” is an interesting example. The house that you describe, the remains of that house are not really looked at nostalgically. It's as though the southern underbrush, the stuff that remains, has importance, but there's also life to be lived. This is part of us, but we'll go on. E.S.: That was Marilee, and that was her attitude.

J.P.: This is Marilee. E.S.: Well, that's true of other literature, you know. It's quite beautiful, a ruin like that. They preserved it, but I think in preserving it now, they've sort of ruined it because they tried to do something artificial to make it still stand, and it looks kind of awful. It used to just stand there out in the old grounds.

J.P.: They're not going to make a theme park out of it? E.S.: All kinds of things are possible. You have the purists, though, who would object to its being exploited in some way.

A-M G: All the same, in “A Southern Landscape,” when you describe Windsor, you write, “What nature does to Windsor it does to everything, including you and me — there’s the horror,” and I was struck by this word “horror.” E.S.: Change and decay.

A-M G: Yes. Very often people say that Southerners have a strong sense of time, a fascination for time, but in your case doesn't it go even further, that is, a fascination with destruction and death? I was struck by the story “Prelude to a Parking Lot.” The house symbolizes life, and then suddenly at the end it's turned into a parking lot, which is a kind of tombstone made of concrete. E.S.: Yes, that's terrible. There's a kind of terror in all that, seems like. Things gone and being wiped out; what to do, nothing.

A-M G: Do you see the short story as an appropriate genre to express metaphysical fears? E.S.: Is that a metaphysical fear?

A-M G: I reckon so. E.S.: Well, there's your answer. If it works, it must be possible. I wrote a lot of those stories during the seventies because I had put a good deal of hope in that novel The Snare, and it was published at the wrong time. It came out just before Christmas and didn't get much notice as a result. A lot of people seemed to like it, but I had thought that it was a notable book. I got very discouraged about writing novels, and that's when I started just pouring a lot of material I had into short stories. I didn't have any idea of collecting them, but some editor wrote me about one of my stories, “Indian Summer,” I think, and asked if I wanted to bring out another volume of stories. I thought, I might as well see her. So when I was in New York I went over to Doubleday to say thank you for your attention, and when I came back I had a contract. She was already on the phone to my agent, and I'd already been to see the top editor, and they said they were quite enthusiastic.

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So that was the turn I took in the road toward short stories. It was very odd: all the stories were out there, and I'd published one small volume called Ship Island, but I hadn't thought to do another one. One thing she did, though, that I didn't like: she put Knights and Dragons in that collection, and I don't think that was a good idea at all. I tried to oppose it. About metaphysics, I would say I admired Walker Percy's approach to life and literature, which is so firmly based in his religion. I feel I do have a base in religion, but I don't know how quite to explore that through the lives of my characters yet. Maybe someday I will. I don't altogether swing with the way Walker does it a lot of times, but sometimes when it succeeds I admire him very much.

C.D.: Would you say that you feel more hopeful or more positive than many of your characters do? E.S.: I don't know. I haven't thought about my characters in terms of hopefulness. I think The Salt Line is a very hopeful book. To me, that ends on a very positive note. And if you give Jeff the slightest possibility of coming back from Vietnam, then The Night Travellers is a hopeful book. They've lived through all that, you know. I think one of my big preoccupations is that you can't say you've arrived anywhere unless you've lived through something to get there.

C.D.: What I think I'm hearing you say is that maybe some of these characters, like Julia Garrett and these earlier people, when they go through the dark side of things, when they touch bottom, that's hopeful because you have to do that, in a sense. You can't be these characters who are just living on the surface of things and never understanding or recognizing the reality. E.S.: And that's all testing and experience, too. It's a testing of the mind.

C.D.: That's an important distinction. E.S.: I don't think that Mary in The Night Travellers — maybe she's passive in this — I don't think she ever intended her life to be so tried by the whole political era. She had no such intention, and yet, I can't look on her as negative because it was her love for people that made her seem that way. I mean, she kept on and on trying to love her mother. Maybe another girl would have said to hell with that, you know. It was impossible to love that woman. She was too schizo. It was finally realizing that made Mary split with her.

C.D.: Maybe we have a prejudice; we assume that a hero is active, but perhaps you can be heroic without ﬁtting that paradigm of activity. E.S.: Some of the critics did see that, I think, and some didn't. I didn't mean to stumble into such a long book. I had wanted to write a short novel about this girl in Canada who had been somewhat abandoned because of the political passion of her husband or boyfriend — I wasn't quite sure — but to have a child there, and then having to get it back from her mother. It seemed me there's something rather touching about having to kidnap your child from your own mother, and then I know all that countryside. I know how it is crossing the border and how you have to do this and that if you've got anything you don't want them to find and then the encounter in Vermont and all that. I thought it might make a good short novel. But the questions it raised were more profound than I had realized: why is the young man absent? what is he doing? and why all this straightened circumstance? So I began to explore, and it began to stretch out.

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C.D.: I see a connection between The Night Travellers and that story, “Jean Pierre.” E.S.: Yes, they go down into New England.

C.D.: And again it's this separation and they don't know... E.S.: That's true. I hadn't thought of that.

C.D.: ... She doesn't know where he is, and then they have that little picnic in the countryside. E.S.: Well, poor old Jean Pierre. That story took place in the sixties, and he felt goaded and fearful of the judgement of the English‑speaking community. You know, the French‑Canadians had this feeling that they were looked down on as inferiors. If he was in business trouble he didn't want her family to get hold of the details of it. You had to read between the lines to get that, but it was a part of the Montreal scene and the Quebec scene as I saw it at that time.

C.D.: That's the question I wanted to ask you: if sometimes you ﬁnd an idea in a short story and then come back to it in a long work. But your answer suggested to me that you didn't see a connection. E.S.: Not too much; I didn't see it like that. In a way they're the same type of women. They have this sense of devotion and fragility, but, you know, there's a strong center of holding on and being devoted to their own feelings.

C.D.: Like Mary. E.S.: Yes.

C.D.: Have you ever dealt with an idea, and then later felt, well, I have something more to say about that, and then developed it in another place? E.S.: Yes, I do try that sometimes. Marilee is the only one, I think, that worked out. There was a character in my first novel, Fire in the Morning, who was from the Delta and married to a man who was unsatisfactory, and ran away, went away from him at the end of it. She was from the Delta and her father was a Delta planter, and I thought their story might be interesting to tell, but I got involved in telling it, and she turned out to be just a minor character in the story. So it's a very slippery thing, because every work is its own powerful self and then it takes away what you intended to do with something. Faulkner was very successful in all that. He could take splinter characters from one work and make them central to another work, or continue — Quentin Compson is continued — through a number of stories and novels. Maybe I don't have that kind of grasp. I did a play that was produced in Chapel Hill a few years ago. The young man in the play had come back from Mexico where he had run away to get over his failed marriage. There were a lot of lines in it when I wrote it first about his experience in Mexico. John and I have been down to Mexico a couple of times, and certain aspects of life there did make a strong impression on me; so I've thought about maybe reinstating him in some fiction and filling in with some kind of thing that might have happened there. He to me was not an altogether sympathetic character, but certainly a very interesting one. I thought I might follow up on some of that, but I'm not quite sure yet how to do it.

A-M G: The character of the uncle comes back quite often in your stories: Uncle Jess, Uncle Rex... E.S.: Right, right, right.

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A-M G: I wondered, isn't the uncle a substitute for the father who doesn't appear much? E.S.: Well, there was a parallel in my own life. My father was a very hard‑working, harried kind of person who thought a great deal about — had to think a great deal, I guess — about making a living and all that and thought life is shaping around what you could do in the way of money. My mother's brother really raised us in a spiritual sense. We were often down there at the plantation. I wrote a little piece about that, non‑fiction, in a book called Family Portraits. It's a collection: it's got a piece of mine, and Clyde Edgerton has a piece in that, and Gloria Steinem, and Alfred Kazin. There’s a woman, one of the editors of the Book of the Month Club, started writing everyone to do these. So I just sat down and wrote about my uncle. But I thought it was very revealing as to why the uncle figure shows up so often in my work because my brother and I — we were influenced by him.

A-M G:: Were all these different uncles in your stories inspired by the same uncle, or by various persons? E.S.: Oh, I don't know if there were any that I drew from life, but maybe the idea of the uncle. You’re right. I think he becomes the friend and confident very often. But poor old Uncle Jess in “Prelude to a Parking Lot,” he was a pathetic figure, kind of ridiculous.

J.P.: There's a different direction I'd like to go. Some Baudelairean echoes have been attributed to you, in The Snare, for example. E.S.: Well, I agree. I was trying to explore. Somebody said that was a Manichean book, to discover the positive nature of evil and find that you can live in its terms, that it doesn't extinguish life, that there’s a way of finding life within it. I don't know if I'm really a philosopher or if I really believe that, but I think in the terms that Julia felt she had to follow, the idea was being tried out and developed. There's a significant passage at the end of the book about a piece of sculpture with a figure of an animal as saint. To me that was a very significant passage. The other one was putting the mosaics together, the art together with fragments. Those two gave meaning in a kind of abstract way to everything she'd been through, and I thought they were just modestly placed there. If anybody wanted to find them, they could.

C.D.: That suggests to me that these characters who, again, are not happy with the society that most people are happy with, are kind of outsiders, and it has occurred to me that they're artists, in a way. E.S.: Yes, they are, they're artists of their lives.

C.D.: So these two artworks that you've mentioned bring the idea that the writer or artist has to be somehow able to see everything in a way that other people perhaps... E.S.: Don't. And there's a scene at the end of “I, Maureen” where they make that photograph. It's a cheap piece of art, but it seems to make a statement.

C.D.: It's a vision, yes. E.S.: She burns her hand.

C.D.: When you were growing up, did you sense yourself as having some distance, as being outside in some way, from what was going on around you? E.S.: Well, I thought it was useful, at times. I was what they call an imaginative child. I must have been a pain in the neck, but I used to make up stories all the time and try to draw things, and tell stories to people about things that never happened. My

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mother was always reading to me: this fueled my imaginative ideas. My father discouraged all this because he thought it was useless and extravagant, but I wrote a piece about that, too. It was funny: Louis Rubin wrote me in Canada. He said, stop what you’re doing right now and write me a piece for a book called An Apple for My Teacher. It was supposed to be about a teacher that had made an impression on my life, and that very day I got a letter forwarded to me from this woman I hadn't heard from in, oh, fifty years, I guess. I thought, well, this coincidence is too much to pass up; so I wrote about her. She had come to our little town when I was in third grade. She loved to read poetry to everybody. She got us to write little things. She's ninety‑seven now and blind, but still going strong.

A-M G: Michelle Gadpaille in 1988 in The Canadian Short Story, characterized you as a lyrical writer. Would you object to the adjective? E.S.: No, I think I have lyrical capacity in my work. It depends on what she read. I think some of my work inclines more toward the lyrical than others, don't you or do you?

C.D.: When you were reading from “The Cousins” yesterday — after they get together, ﬁnally, when the other cousins have gone — I thought those passages were very lyrical, the long sentences and descriptions. E.S.: Well, it was an interesting story stylistically to do because as they moved and changed, the prose could respond to all that. I enjoyed doing that story.

A-M G: According to you, is it possible to associate lyricism and comedy successfully? In “The Cousins,” both elements seem to be present. E.S.: Yes. I think in “A Southern Landscape,” the elements get together very well. It's in my nature to be serio‑comic. I got that maybe naturally, but maybe too from Europeans: Europeans have a lovely way when they're semi‑funny and semiphilosophic. C'est la vie!

C.D.: Yesterday, during the Colloquium, there was a little argument about “The Girl Who Loved Horses” and whether she had “courted rape,” whether she'd asked to be raped. I was, of course, dying to say, “Well, why don't we ask Elizabeth?” E.S.: I know. I was afraid somebody was...

C.D.: I didn't want to put you on the spot. E.S.: ... because I have to disagree with the critics on that. I think she did, you know. She courted danger in the same way she loved. She did love horses, and that's what got her into a lot of trouble in her marriage. She thought this kind of sweeping sexual feeling was connected in some way to his liking horses, too. But he actually wasn't measuring up, and then I think she may have been a bit suicidal. That story came to me from a real story Evans Harrington told. He's at Ole Miss, a writer. He told me that story. It took place in Oxford, Mississippi. Well, I couldn't use Oxford very well because that means William Faulkner. I did know LaGrange well enough to have it happen up there. He said this young man worried this woman once, and she had kicked him out. He was working in the stables, and she and her husband were training horses on a farm and keeping stables there. He got in the car with her. It turned into a contest. She scared him to death; she wouldn't stop speeding, and he finally gave up. Evans said, “I thought it was such a courageous thing to do, and I'm trying to write a story about it, but I can't see how to get hold of it.” So I said, “Well,

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Evans, don't you see, she broke him like a horse.” And he suggested, “You take the story; you write it.” So I wrote it and sent it to him. I said, “Did you really mean I could have this story?” And he said, “I'm not an Indian giver, Elizabeth; it's a wonderful story.” So I sent it to The New Yorker and they replied it was too Gothic and returned it. I sent it to McCall's and they wanted it. They were going to pay me, I think, five, six thousand dollars for that story. This woman wrote an ecstatic letter about it. However, she finally had to refuse it, because their editor said there was the suggestion in the story that this girl really wanted to be raped, and that he couldn't get by with the feminists over a story like that; they'd be all over him, so... The girl did have a weakness toward rape because she asks herself that, but then she doesn't consent. She refuses it. She got hooked up on her husband. I think that was the delaying. She felt rather brutally toward herself in that she felt her marriage was not what she anticipated, and there was this feeling of despair mixed in that. But then at a certain point, she did assert herself and that's what it was meant to show. She almost ordered him: she wanted her children, she said. But another reader told me he interpreted that as she lost her struggle and she would just turn into being like her mother. So there must be an ambivalence in it. Henry James' ending for the novel was that you brought people to a certain point, and then that was it. I feel it's more lifelike to say that you can't finally find the answer to everything in life. So you make it as clear as possible, the way it seems to you it happened. That is one interesting thing to me about literature: it becomes so lifelike, but you circle it in a way. I tell my students that a good story is one you can go off and meditate on, that you think back on, having read it. You look at it almost like an object.

A-M G: Please, tell me, are you a feminist? E.S.: I don't think I'm a feminist in the sense of being very doctrinaire about it. Absolute equality is impossible because men and women are very different. I don't believe in anybody dominating another person. A lot of trouble starts with that.

J.P.: Elizabeth, can you enlighten us on what sorts of games you're playing in The Salt Line? E.S.: Oh, I enjoyed writing that book. Somebody told me he couldn't read it without thinking of The Tempest, Prospero's idea of himself. I think that Arnie, out of personal tragedy and loss and love of other people, becomes almost a myth‑figure. I guess that's what Peggy [Prenshaw] was getting at when she said he was both mothering and fathering the people around him. It's kind of mythic in that a lot of mysterious things happen. To me, the most interesting woman in it was the wife who's died and reappears. He's aware of her presence, and then he sees her once or twice. Well now, I know these things happen. I know people who have told me about things like that happening, and so I do believe that we do have these visions, the return of a person and conversations with them. The Buddha really existed: it was in a beautiful garden that this terribly rich old lady had on the Gulf coast. She had travelled a lot, and she had a collection of oriental things: some of them were outdoor statues. She had Oriental bridges over little streams and little tea houses. And she had a Buddha, really huge and impressive,

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sitting on a pedestal. During storms, before that huge hurricane, the black people in the area used to come and gather in her garden and sit around the Buddha for protection, which was something I didn't put in the book. I felt sure the garden had been ruined by the hurricane, the house blown down, and the Buddha probably swept out to sea and lost. But someone came up to me after a reading and said, “That Buddha’s in the backyard of the house next door.” So he wasn't lost at all. I went down there a lot, and I collected stories from everybody under the sun, and was reading in the library. Oh, they have sheaf after sheaf of clippings of real life events before, and during, and after that hurricane; so I got a lot of material that way. And then I had friends there I talked to. So most of those incidents, like snakes in the tree, really happened. But the whole thing of drug smuggling now, I know some of that goes on in Pascagoula, which is right down the road from the setting of the book. Those islands off the Gulf coast are said to be just like sieves, but I don't know if out from Biloxi that goes on or not. The prototype of Frank was a guy I saw in a restaurant that a friend's daughter was working for, as a way to pick up money. She knew an awful lot about him. Many of these things were just bits and pieces of lore that had a certain reality around them. I didn't invent a great deal of that book at all.

J.P.: I don't know whether you did or not. I see an awful lot of Waste Land imagery in here, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. E.S.: Scavenging and shoring up fragments.

J.P.: Also Lex reads to me like the wounded Fisher‑King—the law and other ramiﬁcations, — or Arthur... E.S.: I hadn't ever thought of that.

J.P.: Arnie is a kind of comic Lancelot, a Ferdinand, and a Percival at the same time. He's ironic with both the would‑be libido and the weaknesses to go with it. He’s the comic rescuer, certainly. E.S.: I ran into a real roadblock because I don't know how it feels to be a man who's impotent. I had it built in there and I couldn't escape because with “resurrection” you immediately run into “erection.” How can you avoid it? I saw it coming, so I asked all the men I could conveniently ask, which wasn't very many. I got a whole cross‑section of answers, but my husband was the funniest one. I said, how does it feel when you...? He said, it's indescribable. I thought this was great.

C.D.: But you described it. E.S.: I guess I did my best. But I wrote that over an awful lot because I didn't feel like I was very authoritative!

J.P.: It seems to me what's even harder in the situation that you set up is that what you really have is a sex war between two men. E.S.: Poor old Lex, he almost had a homosexual attraction to Arnie. It comes out on the island when they're together. He put his hand out to him once. Arnie didn't notice; he was not on that wavelength.

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J.P.: There's this uncontrollable sexual passion, random randiness, about Arnie, even when he's impotent, even when he can’t follow through. He has that kind of sexual persona and yet he’s a ﬁgure of salvation. It is very effective in The Salt Line. Really striking. E.S.: Yes, a salvation figure, that's true. That's what Peggy [Prenshaw] gets out of it. I suppose she's right. There was a strange thing about those ducks in the novel. I was writing a lot of it in Montreal and going back to the Gulf coast and staying during Christmas holidays. Another place I used to wander around in the summer in Montreal was La Fontaine Park, where they have a lake and ducks. It was the day after I wrote that scene about the ducks being killed that these very ducks that had wandered into my story — I was sort of scavenging up my book like Arnie was scavenging up all kinds of things — those ducks had their throats cut.

C.D.: ’After’ you wrote about it? E.S.: Yes, and were found sprawled out by the lake. It made all the papers; they thought vandal boys had taken broken Coca‑Cola bottles and cut the throats. Isn't that awful? So I felt responsible.

A-M G: I have just one more question which puzzles me. You are married to an Englishman, and you've been to England quite a lot, but Great Britain and the British don't much appear in your works. E.S.: Oh, let's see, I haven't written any stories about England. I was thinking the other day, maybe I could. I admire many of the British writers an awful lot. But at the moment I have no audience in England. They haven't picked up my last couple of titles, so I'm not very well known there at all, but I used to be. I had good publishers, who brought out my early books up through Ship Island. I admire Elizabeth Bowen a lot. Her Irish streak is very pronounced in her works. She has some wonderful supernatural touches. She's a very keen social observer, and I think her style is elegant. I met her once. Eudora and she were very good friends, and they came to see me once in Mississippi. Then other writers I admire in England are numerous, really, some of the old ones.

A-M G: You spoke about Thomas Hardy. E.S.: Thomas Hardy was a great shaping force in my approach toward novels when I was much younger. The architecture of those novels is just beautiful. Conrad is my perennial, long time favorite, and I made a recent discovery, well in the last ten or fifteen years. I once couldn't stand Virginia Woolf. I thought she was oversensitive, and vibrated over every little thing. Then I began to read and got very fascinated and taught, in Montreal, Mrs Dalloway, and I thought, this is a great book. And then I like Muriel Spark a lot.

C.D.: Elizabeth, you mentioned earlier that you have a new manuscript, and that you hope to work on it this summer. Will you tell us some more? E.S.: Just being through with my teaching years at UNC and ready to get back into work is very exciting. The two or three longish stories I've got in mind concern Southern settings, one on the Gulf coast, another in an inland town. But so far they're very much in sketchy manuscript, or altogether in my head, turning over and over, wondering how to get out. I don't at present have a novel in mind.

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Each day now, I find myself like a lonely traveller at a crossroads, standing and asking, Which way? Which way? Finally you just have to choose one and keep moving. I hope that will happen soon.

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Grace Paley - b. 1922

Emmanuel Vernadakis and Jean-François Dreyfus

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interview led by Emmanuel Vernadakis and Jean-François Dreyfus, Conference on Jewish Identity and Otherness in the Modern Short Story, March 27, 1999. Transcribed by Denis Marchandeau, First published in JSSE n° 32, 1999

1 Grace Paley is one of the most beloved of American writers. She was born in the Bronx in 1922 to a family of radical Russian Jewish immigrants. As a woman, mother, Jew and political activist, Grace has been committed to fighting for vital social concerns, from protests against War to demonstrations against the production of nuclear weapons.

2 She started writing in the 1950s and is the author of three highly acclaimed collections of short fiction, The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985), published together in Collected Stories (1994). Grace’s stories tell of Jewish family life and create a dialectic of Jewish and American attitudes. The array of almost detached voices in them interweave an American outlook with the Jewish assumption of suffering and sacrifice, of giving and tolerating. Grace has also published three books of poetry, 16 Broadsides (1980), Goldenrod (1982), Leaning Forward (1985), collected in Begin Again: Collected Poems (2001) and a book of autobiographical prose, Just as I Thought, (1998). Her writing is endowed with a deeply humane quality which, in Vivian Gornick’s words, “makes people love life more.”

3 Grace has been given many an award. She received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1961, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1970. In 1989 she was declared the first official New York State Writer by the Governor and was also the recipient of the first Edith Wharton Award. She also received the 1992 REA Award for Short Stories, a Vermont Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1993, a Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Literary Arts in 1994 and has also been given awards by the Lannan Foundation and others. She is a member of the Executive Board of P.E.N and was the founding chair of Women's WORLD.

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4 In 1998 Grace accepted to attend an international colloquium at the University of Angers, as a guest of honour, on the topic “Jewish Identity and Otherness in the Modern Short Story.” Her presence conferred the conference an aura of grace. She gave a reading at the Town Library and at the University Conference Centre, L’Amphigouri, in which her story “The Louder Voice” was performed by the dramatic company “Word for Word.” At the end of the colloquium (which was organised by Jean-François Dreyfus and Emmanuel Vernadakis) she was interviewed by Corinne Dale. Then she answered questions from the audience that included several French academics specialising on Jewish-American fiction. Question: What is special to the short story form as opposed to writing novels? Grace PALEY: When I began to write stories – I had been writing poems up to then – so I decided to write stories, but if I had had a different kind of mind I would have decided to write a novel. But I wanted to make sure that I wrote a story; that I finished it; and the greatest thing for me was finishing my first two stories; that I really got them done. So once I did that I really liked the form. It is much closer to poetry than it is to the novel, even though they are both prose. I now find that whatever I want to do, I can do it with the short story form; stories between two or four pages, twenty eight or thirty two, but within that it does what I wanted to do. Unless I think of some kind of fantastic novel that I can find the form for, I probably would keep writing stories and poems.

Question: I was just wondering whether one of the reasons why you chose the short story rather than the novel, is not that you wish to introduce a dimension of subversion, or as many items of subversion as you can in the story. I am wondering whether the genre of the novel would be as appropriate to introduce that variety of subversion. G. P.: I cannot say I have thought of it that way, but I do know that this works for me so far, and since I do not have much further... You may well be right. But it is not a very good answer.

Question: Who are the writers that influenced you most? G. P.: It is hard to say because when I began writing stories, I had really read a lot. I was a keen reader, like a lot of writers are, and having read a great deal, I guess I just began to put things together. I was very much interested in the form of the short story as I read in Joyce; people of my age were really reading a lot of Joyce at that time. But the short story interested me and I thought to myself, “It can be done,“ which I did not feel about novels actually. But I felt I could make a try at it. In general I read lots of Russian novelists in my family’s home, and everything everybody else was reading. In my introduction to one of my books I talk about having two ears. Since I read a lot, I had already had a lot of literary influences without knowing it. But when I began writing stories, I realized I had this other ear, on the language of home, the language of my street, my neighborhood, my city, and once I got those two ears together, I seemed to have figured out how to do it. But I needed both ears.

Question: You say that [when] you started writing stories, you used your second ear. Do you ever use that second ear in writing poetry as well? G. P.: No. I went to school to learn how to use language for poetry. And then, when I worked things out, that affected my story writing. Learning to use that other ear was very useful, and loosened up my muscles a little bit for writing poems. I think it helped a lot.

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Question: So many people have been asking you why you have not written novels, preferring short stories. So I wonder why it is different for you when you write a poem, because to me your short stories are poems. G. P.: Thank you. It sounds so good, I might leave it at that! Well, when I begin actually to write, either stories or poems, I write a line, and then another line... In some cases I know it is not going to be a story, it is just going to be a poem. But by the third line, I know it is going to be a story, because it is going to flow in a sort of narrative way. That is the only way I can tell that is what is going to happen at that point. But for some stories, I begin immediately with somebody talking to someone, but for certain other things it can go either way at least for two or three lines. And sometimes I make a mistake: the other day I was just turning two poems right back into stories which was what they were.

Question: You have just mentioned the fact that you had to write a line. There are two lines you quote in your latest book, That year, all the boys in my block were sixty seven.Two years later, two other boys had died and my husband said, “well, I’d better take this old age business a little more seriously.“ Did you write something out of it? G. P.: I have never written that story because they are all seventy seven now. I thought it was a great line though, when I wrote it, and it was!

Question: Do you remember this quotation you made about dialogues: I said dialogues, and there are dialogues. This is a very Jewish word. It believes that what happens inside a person’s head is dialogue, not stream of consciousness or third person voice. Free association is just right for psychology. But these Jews are made of history, and they talk in long sentences, especially to themselves. Do you have the feeling that you are working this way with dialogues? G. P.: Well, if you do not have people speaking to each other, I do not know what you are doing writing a story. That has to be happening, you have to have, if not two people speaking to each other, one head speaking to the other, I mean from one side to the other. Dialogue is really action, it is the way you move the story; but it is not just like, “Isn’t that great to have these people speaking to each other for three pages,“ or something like that. It has a job to do. I think people, in a lot of my stories, really think in whole sentences, they do not just smear the paper up. But it is an argument, almost every story is an argument of some kind. You write it because you do not know something, you write what you do not know about, otherwise you would not bother to write.

Question: A lot of your work is based upon dialogues. Did you reject the idea of drama? G. P.: Well, I luckily understood that writing dialogues is not writing theater. I mean theater is a whole different subject, and it is one that I think I have no gift or patience for, because all I can do is to sit in a room and try to write a few words of a story, and do all the other things I wanted to do. I never had an urge particularly to do it. I mean, it is not a solitary business. I think the people who write for the theater should be in the theater, and not just sit in some place and write it. I do not understand how they could do it without whatever it is that makes a dramatic event.

Question: What do you think of one of your stories being performed before you today? G. P.: I think, as long I do not have to do it, I am delighted. I like seeing things, I am just not good at doing them.

Question: One thing that readers remark about your ﬁction is some sense of optimism that comes for instance with the character Faith — the humor and an optimistic view of life. Some critics locate this in your experience as a Jew, some locate it in your experience as a

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woman, or as an immigrant, or in an immigrant family. These are all positions of alterity, and so I want to ask two questions: Do you have a sense of your optimistic spirit being located in any particular position, or any combination of positions? And could you say something about the relationship between alterity and optimism? G. P.: I am not all that optimistic in general. I am specifically optimistic but not generally optimistic. I think a lot of it comes from the position of my family and their attitude. Talking about being Jewish and all that; when I was a kid, my father had certain kinds of different attitudes with some people. I remember we used to travel, we tried and go to see New England. My parents wanted to see all of America, which they were in love with already. They wanted to see everything, and they never did. But they did go north towards New England and travel; and what they used to do is they would stop in the evening and try to get a place to sleep; and very often my father who was a rather short Jewish Russian guy, with an accent and so on, would come down after going to the house, and he looked at us in the car, and he would say, “They don’t like us here either;“ and so the whole car would begin to laugh. So there was very little rage about it, or whatever it was. I just grew up thinking these other people were quite crazy and stupid, not to like a wonderful little family like ours. I think, things like that really affect your character more than what you read in newspapers. Being of a generation that had saved itself by coming here very early, like in the early 1900’s, is very different from the generation that suffered the holocaust, and came here later.

Question: What does it mean for you to be a Jew today in America? G. P.: Well, I often do not know what that means because the country is very big. When I’m a Jew in New York, I am one person but when I am a Jew in Vermont I am another person. Jew in New York, I am a Jew among Jews. I do not even have to think about it, that is who I am, and that is the way it is. In Vermont, I have to enhance myself, I have to find my sisters and brothers [...] I am more self-conscious as a Jew in New England than I am in New York. I attend to it by being a member of the community which means money, and attending services sometimes, not too much. My parents were totally agnostic; my father was enragedly anti-religious; he would not even step into a synagogue. But on the other hand, he allowed me to take my grand-mother there. But the self-hating Jew business that was brought up in New York by many people was not something to think about because there was nothing like that in my family. It was just a simple young couple about nineteen, twenty years old who left Russia and who ran away from the orthodoxy of the Jews and who were very anti-religious and very Jewish. That is who they were and that is the way it was.

Question: Talking about your parents, I was wondering whether your parents were Zionists? G. P.: No, they were socialists. They had both been imprisoned in Russia as socialists, when they were nineteen years old, in Siberia and everything. My grandmother’s children were socialist, Zionist, a different kind of socialist, anarchist and communist — her five children.

Question: In 94, we invited A. S. Byatt at the university of Angers, and one question came to the floor about what kind of reader she was addressing, and she said Henry James. G. P.: Some people are crazy!

Question: Do you address yourself, or a certain type of reader? G. P.: I think some stories are different than others. Sometimes I write a story for someone. After ‘Wants’ I have a story called ‘Debts’, and I wrote that story for my

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friend Lucia, because it is about her family; so that is why I wrote it for; and everybody else in the world. I would like everybody to read. I just hope to speak a little bit for my friends and my old lady buddies sometimes.

Question: You have often said that to write a story, you need two stories which you put together and you create, not your plot because you say that you don’t like plots, but your story. What are the two stories in ‘Wants’? Grace Paley: Let me think about that. I think the story really is about time, it’s a time story. I am really making this up, because I said that we have these two stories, but I don’t say it before I write it. I say it after I have written it, when I see it actually has two stories. I think there are two stories that I put together, but it is particularly true in longer stories.

Question: Is Faith your narrator in this story? G. P.: I didn’t mean it to be. It could have been but I have a few stories in which it is ambiguous: it could be Faith and it could not be.

Question: I noted that several ﬁgures are used in ‘Wants’. For instance, the narrator had been married for twenty seven years, and this fact is repeated two times over. In Edith Wharton’s book, the change in New York occurred within twenty seven years as well, and the narrator had kept this book for eighteen years. The narrator’s ex-husband may get a sail boat eighteen foot long... G. P.: I like a good reader! Well, look, one of the nicest things about writing is play. A lot of that is play. You can take what meaning you want out of it. Certain things are accurate: I was sitting on the steps of the library, and my ex-husband to whom I had been married for twenty seven years did pass. After that, it’s all invention, but the numbers are part of fun. It’s kind of a serious story about time I think, and how it went like nothing, you know, the tree grew, the husband’s gone... Many of you have already noticed that about time I’m sure. But the numbers are just sheer fun, because this kind of story has to have some play; there has to be some joy in life for God’s sake! In this series of numbers there is only one accuracy: the fact that I had been married for twenty seven years. Everything else after that was just pulling numbers out of a hat!

Question: Really? Because twenty seven is nine multiplied by three, and eighteen is two times nine, and the price you pay for your book in the library... G. P.: It just goes to show that as a person who failed math constantly, there’s an approach that could have been used with me; doing it on a more unconscious way probably would have passed. […] I want to thank all of you, for your thoughtfulness about this subject which is the Jewish culture and literature, and everything that hangs of the edge of it— and I think I do. So thanks a lot, and thanks to you, and you, and you...

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Barbara Kingsolver - b. 1955

Bénédicte Meillon

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by Bénédicte Meillon, October 20, 2002, First published in JSSE n°41, 2003.

1 Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky. Her college education in Indiana and Arizona developed her interests as a scientist. She mostly studied ecology and biology, in which she received her Masters of Science degree, while simultaneously taking creative writing classes. She gradually became a full-time fiction writer after having covered a broad range of professions, including copy editor, housecleaner, X-ray technician, archaeologist, biological researcher and translator of medical documents, and scientific journalist. She has lived in the Congo and the Caribbean in her childhood, and later in France and Greece. These experiences abroad together with her Cherokee origins have paved the way for her deep involvement in politics. Barbara Kingsolver claims to be a “political artist”, which shows through her highly multicultural writing and the historical background that permeates her fiction. She now lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and two daughters, and they spend a lot of time as a family on a farm in Southern Appalachia. Her writing includes one collection of poems, a non-fictional account of women’s role in the Arizona mine strike of 1983, three books of essays, one collection of short stories and five novels. Both her scientific vision of the world and a syncretic form of mysticism underlie all her writings, expressing concern for how we create stories about who we are as individuals, as members of a community, and as part of the cosmos.

Bénédicte MEILLON: Why write only one collection of short stories and so many more novels? Barbara KINGSOLVER: I guess the answer to that question is that I am long-winded, maybe. Because several times I have begun short stories that turned into novels. It’s very hard for me to be succinct. I can write a short essay, but with fiction I love a broader canvas, I love to take on very large subjects. I think it may have to do with the fact that my work is driven by theme. My point of origin is theme, rather than

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character or plot, and short stories are plot-driven. I very rarely begin with a plot in mind. I begin with a theme in mind and then I begin constructing the plot to service the theme, to carry the theme, and that method doesn’t lend itself very well to short stories, unless I begin with a very miniscule theme. It happens sometimes that I’ll just think of a perfect little plot that makes a fine short story, and I have written a lot of short stories since Homeland. That collection was the accumulation of probably close to ten years of writing short stories. And early in my career, I wrote short stories a lot. Before my official career, early on, when I was beginning to think about myself as a writer, I tended to write a lot of short stories because it was less intimidating. It’s a good place to begin, as a writer, and it’s also a good place to learn. You can try a lot of different points of view, a lot of different voices, a lot of different settings without investing so much. I have continued to write short stories and I have an accumulation. I have maybe half a collection now. I thought that Prodigal Summer was going to be a collection of short stories, but three stories took over, and then they started interacting, and then the next thing I knew they were a novel!

B.M.: So what would the composition differences be? Are there elements that belong to the short story and not to the novel? B.K.: Well, to generalize, I think a short story is driven by plot and a novel is driven by character. A short story doesn’t really give you room for a full characterization, whereas a novel requires a great deal of characterization, to sustain your interest and to compel you through the entire story. So I would say that they have reverse importance. In a short story, plot is more important than character, and in a novel the reverse, although everything has to be there but it’s a question of what is primary.

B.M.: And although also the modern – or contemporary – short story tends to be without a plot? B.K.: True. That’s true. They appear plotless. I would say that in the case of the… oh, what is it called that school of… Now I can’t think of it in English! … The Bobby Ann Mason and Raymond Carver school of… of… I’ll think of it later. Anyway, there’s a style of short story that came to prominence in the 80’s, I think. It was sort of like post-modern realism and kind of the K-Mart short story. Those appear to be plotless, but I would say they are incident-driven. They are about things that happen even though it might not necessarily add up to what we would classically call a plot, with the climax, and dénouement and all that. They’re still driven by incident much more than by character.

B.M.: And do you think that short stories such as “Stone Dreams” or “Jump Up Day” are very accessible to the average reader? B.K.: “Jump Up Day”… that’s interesting you should choose that one. I guess I’m tempted to ask you why that’s less accessible.

B.M.: Because of magic realism. And because I’m not sure the average reader would know what to make of such a story. B. K.: Oh? Maybe, although it didn’t strike me that way. I built it the same way I always build… I tend to build short stories the way I build novels. I work a lot on the architecture of the plot and the characterization, so for me the symbols were all in place, the plot is all in place. But it’s true it does require perhaps a larger suspension of disbelief than something more sort of… quotidian.

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B.M.: And maybe a lot more analysis too? B.K.: Maybe, yes. Yes, I think people read short stories in very different ways. I think a lot of people just read it page by page and then when they’re finished, they’re finished. And then they say oh, O. K. that was nice.

B.M.: And how do you feel about people reading your short stories like this? B.K.: I can’t do that. I always want to understand what I’ve just read, and that’s why I’m very picky about short stories. I really dislike most short stories that I read, most short stories that are published I find very unsatisfying. I think there is a kind of prototype of what I call TheNew-Yorker story, that isn’t really going anywhere. And I just look and look for the last page that’s not there and that will sort of wrap it up and mean something. I like fiction to mean something. Well, anyone would guess that, because of what I write. But every reader’s different, obviously. Obviously a lot of people like that sort of story.

B.M.: So how far would the ideal reader interpret the stories for you? B.K.: Oh I could never say that. I don’t think there is an ideal reader – except the one who writes me to say, “I’ve read The Poisonwood Bible four times!” That’s of course the ideal reader, someone who really pays such close attention they get everything, they get every symbol, they get every nuance, they don’t miss anything. But, I don’t write only for the people who are going to read my books four times. Good heavens! I couldn’t, because there aren’t so many readers with that much energy. I don’t want to place so much expectation on the reader. I’m just happy for any reader to derive what they will. If someone wants to read just for entertainment, I hope that I can entertain them. I have a commitment to accessibility, I think partly because of where I came from as a person. I came from a class of people who were not readers of literature, who read newspapers maybe, or… the Sears Catalogue, but who never read great novels. And I think about those people when I’m writing, I want them to be able to read my novels and to take whatever they want from the story. I really insist that there is no wrong way to read my books. I mean, I’ve said that a lot before – except holding a book upside down, that’s really a wrong way!

B.M.: When you wrote “Fault Lines” and “Secret Animals” – B.K.: Ah, O.K. You’ve found those…

B.M.: Why write two sequels? Why write two sequels and not two new short stories with new characters in them? B.K.: Why not? I had reread Homeland, and I was thinking about those characters, and it just crossed my mind as a sort of artistic challenge, to imagine all those different characters in that whole strange collection of… situations, to move them ten years forward and to see where they were. I like to do that, even though I always insist I won’t write a sequel to a novel, mainly because so many people ask for it, and, that’s not a reason to say “No,” but I have to say it because people ask. It doesn’t interest me to invest so much time – the years it takes to write a novel – in doing something that I’ve already done. But a short story’s different. If you take a set of characters and move them ten years forward in time, you have a whole new short story. And it’s only going to take a few days, or at most a few weeks to write the story. It’s not like giving my life back to Turtle or something. So I guess I did it just for fun, and to see where it would lead. And I even had this idea that I might do an entire collection of Homeland stories ten years later. I still might, I’ve considered it. It’s not out of the question.

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B.M.: I personally felt that these two stories were almost trying to make more explicit what was already implicit in the ﬁrst two. B.K.: That’s interesting… that’s very interesting. I didn’t necessarily think that. I thought that they were about different questions. But you know, if that’s your interpretation, you’re welcome to it!

B.M.: What would the vocation of the short story be, in post-modern society? B.K.: Vocation? Oh, that’s a hard question! What’s the vocation of literature in general? I think in general it’s to take the people out of their own lives and to create empathy and to expand the imagination, to inform, to amuse, to disturb in certain ways that people need to be disturbed. There are certain things on that list the novel does better. A novel does a much better job, I think, in taking people out of their lives because you have time to go deeper into it. You really become engaged with these characters and you start thinking about them. When you have to put the book down and go to work, you still think about them; and I’m convinced that that’s the reason why novels are much more popular than short stories. I think people want to leave their lives when they read. It’s a little vacation somehow from the cares of your day. So maybe a short story doesn’t do that so well. But it can certainly do a lot of the other things on that list. It can inform, it can amuse, it can stretch your imagination, and in some ways, I think a short story can be more experimental. I think that there’s a reason why some of the most imaginative creations in literature – such as Kafka’s Metamorphosis – are short. No one could follow that cockroach for a whole year! Right? But because of the brevity you can take people farther, in some ways.

B.M.: Yes, and you probably don’t really leave these characters either, especially when they’re open-ended. B.K.: Yes!

B.M.: Most of your short stories are pretty open-ended. B.K.: I think most short stories are open… I mean very few short stories kill everybody at the end, and say, “The End.” So that’s true too, maybe it’s something you carry with you. I always feel when I’m writing – I’ve never really analyzed this or even said it aloud – but when I’m writing, I feel like a perfect short story is like a perfect song. You know, the song you hear on the radio that just makes you want to sing along. It just says something perfectly, and the melody is just exactly right, and it ends, and you say, “Bravo!” That’s what I aspire to in a short story: just that piece of music that will be very satisfying somehow.

B.M.: And how would you compare the short story with myth? B.K.: Well… you might think that a short is related to a fable, or a myth. But in our tradition, in our Western tradition, they’re really not. If you read Native American myths, or Aesop’s fables – I guess Aesop’s fables come a little closer – they have a plot and they have a climax and someone changes, someone learns his lesson. So I suppose there is some similarity, except that it lacks art. A fable lacks the craft and the beauty of artifice that shields the most obvious aspects of the moral of the story. It doesn’t bang you over the head with the moral of the story. It suggests to you that you find your own moral. But the myths that I read from aboriginal cultures – and I’ve read a lot of them because of the kind of writing I do, I’m really interested in mythology – and they don’t generally resemble Aesop’s fables or the modern short story at all. Usually no one learns any lesson. Someone gets away with murder and

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they don’t really teach. African stories are that way and Native American stories are that way. Nobody learns a lesson. And it leaves you sort of befuddled if you’ve grown up cutting your teeth on Aesop’s fables. You want this tidy morality, and they don’t offer it. They tend to be much more open-ended. They tend to explain what is, more than they tell you what should be, I guess, in terms of how people behave. That’s my impression. They tend to create some imaginary scenario explaining why the sun rises and sets the way it does. Or how the world began, and how everything got here on the back of a turtle. And they’re also often tales of extraordinary bravery or tales of extraordinary treachery or cowardice, or something that, I guess, sort of makes us look at ourselves, helps us look at ourselves, helps us laugh at ourselves. And so, a short story can do those things also. But I’m not convinced that the modern short story has its roots in either place. I don’t really know. You would know more than that, you’re the scholar!

B.M.: And do you think eventually the short story could replace what the myth used to do for people, its function? B.K.: I think novels are more likely to do that. I really do. I think people look more to novels for the weight of… Mythology has weight. Mythology tells the big stories. Whether it does it well or poorly, it tells you how we got here and why the sun rises. I think we’re asking different questions now, because science has really replaced mythology for the empirical questions. Now we tend to be asking more questions about the world created by humans, and relationships between people, relationships between people and our place, or our work, or our bosses, or our children. And I think novels provide these answers for us.

B.M.: How far do you intentionally include a mythic dimension to your short stories? B.K.: Oh! I include everything. That’s why it’s so hard for me to write short stories. I just keep wanting to throw more stuff in, it’s hard for me to rein myself in!

B.M.: Are you familiar with Chaos theories? B.K.: Chaos theory, yes.

B.M.: Is that part of “Stone Dreams” at all? B.K.: Well, it’s interesting, because I was thinking a lot about… let me think. See, I haven’t read “Stone Dreams” for… ten years.

B.M.: It’s beautiful. B.K.: Oh! Thank you, you like it?

B.M.: I love it. B.K.: Let me think about it… let me remember it. “Stone Dreams” is the story in which… a woman sort of runs away with her daughter and… with her lover, and…

B.M.: With her lover, and it’s implied in the end that she’s decided to leave both, her lover and her husband. B.K.: Yes, and her husband. And what was the last line? Something like, “You and me, that’s enough.” Her daughter…

B.M.: “When it was over [the crashing of the petriﬁed forest], there would be only Julie and me left standing in the desert, not looking back.” And there was this whole parallel with – I think – Lot’s wife… You know it’s this story where she goes to the Petriﬁed Forest and “they

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looked like… it reminded me of this Biblical disaster era” “a bunch of toppled-over women, etc.” B.K.: Right. And she’s really coming to terms with the reality of what… She’s trying to use another man for escape and she understands that she’s just going to be Lot’s wife if she does. That the only way to do it is just on her own with her daughter. Yes, and her daughter had tucked the note in her pocket and she finds it in a really inopportune moment.

B.M.: Yes, You remember? B.K.: O.K. Now I do remember. Yes. You see when I was in graduate school in evolutionary biology, that’s when I really read a lot about Chaos theory. And so, there may have been some of that on my mind. I was certainly familiar with it. It’s hard to answer a question like that so long after the fact because I don’t remember exactly what was in my mind when I was writing it. There’s always an imprint. I think everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever read – including the Bible, including Chaos theories – leaves its imprint on my work. Some of it is probably subconscious but once it’s pointed out I say “Oh yes, that’s there.” It’s funny that – I mean, this is a little digression but – a lot of people said, after ThePoisonwood Bible was published, “Oh! Was this a sort of revisiting of Little Women?” because there were four daughters. And I had to think about it because, of course, I didn’t intend that. I wasn’t thinking “Oh I’ll set out to do – what do you call it – a revisitive Little Women. I didn’t start out that way. If I was going to rewrite anything…

B.M.: Why in the Congo then? B.K.: …it would have been Heart of Darkness, right, exactly. Why snakes, you know, why… that? And besides every dynamic is different. You know, they loved their daddy they loved their mommy. He was away at the war being good, being virtuous. None of it matched but I thought “Well Little Women was my favourite, favourite novel when I was in fourth grade and I adored it and I still think about Jo March sometimes.” So it was in there. So it may have had some influence on the creation of a blonde prissy daughter and the tomboy daughter! But, you know, everything… everything you read informs everything you write in some way, if you have a good memory.

B.M.: Right. Although in a case such as “Stone Dreams” you actually quote and integrate into your short story Robert Southey – B.K.: Oh yes, that’s right.

B.M.: Nietzsche, Jung, Freud… B.K.: Right, that’s right.

B.M.: All these are quoted, so there seems to – B.K.: Yes, so it was more conscious. Yes.

B.M.: And there seems to be some dialogic play between the literature of other authors and your own short story in the making sense of what’s going on for the characters. B.K.: Yes, exactly. Yes. I’m sure I was reading all those things at the time. That’s probably why, although sometimes my writing does direct my reading. When I’m creating a certain character then I’ll go and find books that he would be reading, and I’ll sort of use that to inform the conversation.

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B.M.: With Adah in The Poisonwood Bible, for example, did you read a lot of psychoanalytical – B.K.: I read psychology, I read a lot of medical literature about that particular kind of brain damage and case histories of people who have that sort of brain damage, so that I can understand how that kind of mind would work.

B.M.: Right, and in reality such a mind could have been just suffering from such psychosomatic disease? B.K.: Well, in my imaginary world, it did. Such things can happen, I read enough to convince myself it could happen, it could be possible. It can be possible that development can be arrested in a certain way. And this whole sort of crawling rehabilitation is something my… I have a relative who’s involved in that and he talked to me a lot about it, and he told me how he would work and how he would do it. And that’s something sort of new. So I’m not sure it existed at the time Adah would have encountered it. Maybe it did, I must have looked that up. I try really hard to avoid anachronisms. That was the hardest thing about The Poisonwood Bible!

B.M.: Are you not afraid that sometimes the very accessible aspects of your novels will make you an “auteur grand public”? You know… somehow implying – B.K.: Yes, commercial rather than literary.

B.M.: Yes, yes, exactly. B.K.: I don’t worry about that. It seems silly to me to worry about that. I just make sure that I work very hard on the craft, and make certain that it is literature, that every book I write is a novel that you could read four times, and still glean more from each time. Commercial fiction you would never read twice. Nobody would read a mystery twice because you read it to find out what happens, so once you know what happens you’re done. I know that… well, I try to construct compelling plots. They aren’t that simple. You don’t read to find out what happens, you read – I hope – because you want to be there, because it’s a place you enjoy going and visiting, and characters that you like to listen to and you want to understand. So as long as I make certain that the literary quality is in place, it doesn’t bother me at all that lots of people want to read my book. On the contrary, it’s just the opposite. I’m amazed and very pleased that my work is popular. I know that there are some writers – artists of all types – who say, “Well if you’re that popular you can’t really be good”, but I think that’s sour grapes! To refer to a myth, to a fable. I think that’s ridiculous. I would never aspire to obscurity. That goes against everything I believe in. Plus it’s a waste of paper, a waste of good trees!

B.M.: So, to go back to what you were saying, would you say that your short stories are more literary than your novels are? B.K.: Probably. I think other people would say that, perhaps because they’re less accessible.

B.M.: Right, right… B.K.: If less accessible means more literary, then, yes. I don’t think they are in terms of what I put into them. I don’t tend to think of them that way, but they’re certainly… well, they’re perhaps more obscure. It takes more effort to understand them, let’s put it that way. But that’s how short stories are. When you tell your publisher you’ve got a book of short stories, they say, “Oh, really? That’s nice.” But they don’t jump up and down and say, “Hurray!” because they know it’s not going to be a bestseller. Short

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stories don’t – at least in the U.S., I don’t know how it is here… A lot of people write them, but not a lot of people read them. You know it’s sort of… the literary community writes them for each other. I think a very large reason for it in the United States is the prevalence of Master of Fine Arts programs. There are a lot of these programs where people who want to be writers go, and they spend two or three years getting their degree. What they do during that time is write short stories, and ideally they publish those short stories. So there are all of these literary magazines. In a certain way it’s a supply-and-demand thing. There’s this industry for producing short stories so there has to be a market for publishing them. And then other M.F.A students read them. It’s artificial in a certain way because once those students graduate, they don’t go on writing short stories. If they’re going to make a living as a writer they write novels. And otherwise they get a job as a professor or a chef or something… something else! But nobody except Raymond Carver ever made a living of writing short stories, I would guess. It’s about like poetry. It’s not lucrative. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it should be this way, but it is. Nobody in America makes a living as a poet, by writing poetry. You might supplement your income as a professor of poetry by going out and giving poetry readings, but that’s a different thing. That’s performance; it’s not just writing. Nobody sits in a studio and sells enough poems to pay the rent. Because Americans don’t buy poems because they don’t want to read them. Not enough Americans, anyway. And I don’t know why because we’re famous for having a short attention span!

B.M.: But maybe that’s it too, maybe it’s not that much a question of short attention span when you’re reading poetry and a short story – B.K.: It takes a lot of work. It’s hard to understand.

B.M.: It takes a lot of work. So if you’re looking for entertainment – and easy entertainment – B.K.: It’s much farther from TV, that’s right. You have to do a lot of the work; that’s absolutely true. I just want to ask you now, did you see that I edited The Best American Short-Stories?

B.M: No. B.K.: Oh, O.K. This was last year. It came out this year but it was 2001. So that involved reading hundreds of short stories and then collect… You know about The Best American Short Stories?

B.M.: I read your essay in Small Wonder, “What Good is a Story” and was that – B.K.: That was adapted from the introduction that I wrote to The Best American Short Stories.

B.M.: Oh, all right. B.K.: And that was interesting because it had been a long time since I just really devoted myself to reading short stories, so for a period of my life I just read short stories and it was interesting. It really helped me define for myself what makes a good short story. I think that’s something I changed in the essay. I made it less specifically about short stories. But the introduction to the book was just specifically what I think about the short story… what makes a good short story, and why it works when it does. And, boy! I read so many stories I just didn’t care for, that didn’t move me! The great majority of them, which had been of course pre-selected by the series editor – she had to read, theoretically, every short story published in North America in the

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whole year, and then she winnowed that down to a few hundred. And then I read all of those and for most of them, when I finished I was just exactly the same person as when I started. Even though I did try to extract what the author wanted to give me. But my conclusion was in a lot of cases that the author himself didn’t know what he wanted to give me. And… well, that’s just lazy!

B.M.: You wrote in that essay that what really made a good short story – which I totally agree with – is the way it will bring you to a new truth, or make you see a truth that you probably already saw, but not exactly – B.K.: In a new way.

B.M.: Yes, in a new way. B.K.: Yes, it gives you something…it leaves you a something in your hand. B.M: And don’t you think the novel is much more didactic about this in that it can lead the reader on to understanding much more what new truth or what new angle?

B.M.: It can do a lot. It can explore a lot more new truths. I think it does ultimately the same thing. It should wash you up on a different shore when you’ve finished. But a short story just has time to give you one little thing, just one, really. When I teach M.F.A students, – they’re writing short stories – what I’m always telling them is, “First of all, please, figure out what it is you want to tell me in the short story. And second of all, if it’s five things, pick one, and throw out the rest,” because it won’t succeed if it tries to do five different truths, some of which might be contrary to each other! So yes, I think of this little gem. A story can give you a gem whereas a novel can lead you through a wilderness and show you many different aspects of the wilderness and make it known to you, help you understand it so it doesn’t frighten you. It has time to do all that. B.M.: And also sometimes the characters voice their own explanations, of how to reread the Bible, for example – B.K.: Exactly. Whereas a short story could never do that, it would just be too obvious. Yes. You don’t have time to… in a novel you can lay down all this material in which you can leave direct themes, and it doesn’t seem so conspicuous.

B.M.: In French I speak of “la nouvelle-oxymore” to speak of your short stories, because I compare your short stories to oxymora. Does that make any sense to you? B.K.: Well, it does…I suppose I deserve it because my titles are so often oxymora – deliberate oxymora – or if not oxymora, at least they create cognitive dissonance. I think that’s how I prefer to think of it. If I’m not outright contradicting myself I’m at least attempting to create some cognitive dissonance in a title. I do it specifically because I think it will catch your attention.

B.M.: Sure. B.K.: And it just grates a little bit so it’s not so forgettable. Although people invariably get my titles mixed up because they have that cognitive dissonance. Just like my name, people try to make it into something that makes sense, so they always say “Kingslover” because it makes more sense to love a king than to solve one. And I mean, not because of that, but it’s the same kind of thing. My titles are combinations of words that don’t quite make sense together and so they’re troubling a little bit. And they also lead you into the same troubling dissonance within the short story. Yes and I guess my short story titles are the same: “Stone Dreams”, doesn’t make sense. A dream is filmy and the stone is hard. The title “Homeland” I really don’t like. It’s the only title of all my books that I didn’t choose. The title story I chose. That story that’s called “Homeland” in this collection is the one I wanted to be the title story, but

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when I wrote it, I called it “The Waterbug’s Children” which is disturbing. It’s a Kingsolver title.

B.M.: Yes. B.K.: Yes. But I was a new author at the time, I didn’t have any power and when I submitted the manuscript they said “Pfff! This won’t work! People hate bugs and they don’t like children! So you just have to make a new title,” and they suggested to call this “Homeland.” But I don’t like it. It says nothing. Well, I don’t hate it, but to me it’s disagreeably mild. It does say something, and I conceded to use it because it does sort of tie the collection together. I think it does work as a title because what seems to connect all the stories is that all these people are trying to find their place… They’re trying to find a place for themselves within a context of upheaval. So it’s an O.K. title, but it’s not my title, and I’ve never really liked it. I wish in the translation it could have a different title! But I don’t know how that goes…

B.M.: I’m trying to think…because this one translation was already done by Guillemette Belleteste. B.K.: Oh, really?

B.M.: She has as a matter of fact translated “Homeland” and “Jump Up Day.” B.K.: Oh! She has? Those two stories?

B.M.: Yes, which are my favourite, I think, with “Stone Dreams” and – B.K.: Oh! Well, oh thank you, they’re my favourites too.

B.M.: …and “Blueprints,” maybe. B.K.: “Blueprints,” yes.

B.M.: Did you have Baudelaire in mind when you wrote “Stone Dreams”? For the title? B.K.: No.

B.M.: Because it is the beginning of the ﬁrst line of “Ode à la Beauté”: “Rêves de pierres”… B.K.: Oh! No. I can honestly say that was not in my mind.

B.M.: Right. I never thought about it. I was hinted by someone else, “This is Baudelaire,” and I thought, “This is right,” but then I was ﬁnding it hard to make sense of this. B.K.: It doesn’t make sense, right, it doesn’t connect.

B.M.: Only, that I was thinking, “Well, it would be funny because I am also exploring from a discursive-mode point of view how far short stories are short stories. How far they are narratives and not poetry. And it’s very ambiguous where to draw the line between short stories and poetry. B.K.: It is. Oh, it’s so true.

B.M.: And Baudelaire was this man saying, “I have this dream of ‘petits poèmes en prose,’” which are very close to short stories, again. B.K.: It’s true. But if you work hard enough you can connect anything!

B.M.: Yes, yes, that’s for sure…

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Tobias Wolff - b. 1945

John H. E. Paine

EDITOR'S NOTE

Interviewed by JHE Paine, May 2003, First published in present issue

1 Tobias Wolff has steadily earned distinction over the last two decades and more as the author of carefully crafted and highly nuanced short fiction whose lineage, as he indicates here, can be traced back through the work of Raymond Carver, Katherine Anne Porter, and Ernest Hemingway to the fiction of Anton Chekhov (His introduction to a collection of Chekhov stories [A Doctor's Visit, 1988] contains some of the most perceptive commentary available on Chekhov as a writer of short stories). He is also an insightful reader of the other “kind” of story (those of Tolstoy and Flannery O'Connor, for example) and an alert observer of contemporary fiction.

2 Among Wolff's work are three collections of short stories, In the Garden of North American Martyrs (1981), Back in the World (1986), and The Night in Question (1996). His novella The Barracks Thief (1984) won the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also written two highly regarded memoirs, This Boy's Life (1989) and In Pharaoh's Army (1993). Since 1997, Wolff has taught English at Stanford University and has continued to publish short stories, mostly in The New Yorker. He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2001. His novel Old School appeared in late 2003. Tobias Wolff's fiction, though widely recognized as among the best being written in the United States today, has received relatively little critical attention. More complete examination of his work is overdue.

3 Our interview took place in late May 2003 in Rome, where he was concluding a year- long sabbatical leave. The Wolff stories referred to here all are included in The Night in Question.

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JP: Your characters, many of them, seem to share a longing, a yearning for a lost wholeness that was perhaps never there, but should have been there. Could you respond? TW: A friend of mine and I were once in a conversation with young writers, and one of them asked him what he thought good fiction is, and he said, “well, the beginning of it is that someone wants something”. We all want something. Most of us live with the sense that we have not completed ourselves. There is work always to be done, some final part of ourselves to be filled in, that we think of as being our true destiny.

JP: I guess I was thinking of that sort of Romantic sense of a lost world, either Wordsworthian longing, or as I was thinking yesterday as I visited the Keats-Shelley House, the nightingale ode, losing that dream, that vision, losing that song and coming back to your self, that sense of loss. TW: It certainly is our human lot to feel that way. It may be there is something in particular about Americans feeling that, because of the extravant expectations that so many of us began with, the sense of limitless possibility. At the end of Gatsby, Fitzgerald writes of the “fresh green breast of the new world as it once appeared to Dutch sailors' eyes”--and the sense of the diminishment of that promise. Americans feel that about their country, and to a certain extent about themselves. As you grow up, you begin to recognize that there are compromises inherent in being alive in this world, the things you give up, the little pieces of yourself you have to give up to get by. It's a humanizing process, this necessary negotiation with the world. But it also engenders a longing in us for the pristine state we imagine we once lived in. Actually, it's just that we really hadn't begun the trip yet. And innocence is not always necessarily a virtue either. I think of Graham Green's novels, where the innocents are always the ones who do the most damage.

JP: Pascal's Pensée, “the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of” seems appropriate to many of your characters, not only to Wiley in “The Life of the Body”. Would you say that it applies to them? TW: One of the things I notice more and more in others, and I am sure that it is true of myself too, is how little we seem to understand our own motivations. This has always been a ripe subject for fiction and especially for satire. We act out of promptings that we hardly know we are receiving. And to the extent that we can apprehend why we do what we do, we try to dignify it by some kind of ethical system, or perhaps by saying in our most honest moments that the heart has its reasons that reason does not understand. That distance between the supposition of why you are doing what you are doing and the shadowy reality of it is the loam of fiction. That terrain, that's exactly where fiction writers work. You wouldn't be interested in writing about somebody who actually understood why he did what he did and acted completely logically. That's why a writer like, say, Ayn Rand, doesn't hold on to us after we reach maturity. Her characters, especially her heroes, act logically and in concert with their ideas of why they are acting, and there is something in us, as we get older, that knows this is not humanly possible. And we get more interested in that more confusing, ambiguous ground that all of us occupy.

JP: Question of influence: “Hemingway, ﬁrst and last”, you have said. TW: Well, one should never say “first and last,” because last isn't here yet. But I love Hemingway, love him and of course resent him as well. And get angry with him. But when I talk about his influence I'm not talking simply about admiration. I'm talking

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about the effects he's had on us as writers that we may not even be aware of. When you walk into a room the furniture is set up in a certain way that forces you to sit in a certain configuration. Well, he's one of the guys who changed all the furniture around in the room before we got there. In that sense he's more influential for most writers than, say, Joyce, who didn't change the language of writing the way Hemingway did. I have a new novel coming out in November. Hemingway plays a part in it. Writing it sent me back to his work, and I learned all over again how beautiful a story writer he was, and how tender, and how, if I may say so, almost feminine in their understandings and their tenderness so many of those stories are. And they're not as the common image would have them, not hairy-chested, rather the opposite. Almost all of them are about vulnerability and being wounded and incomplete, hurt. I could go on all day about this. You rarely find the tough tone that he's parodied for. “Big Two Hearted River” presents a man on the verge of completely falling apart. For Nick, fishing isn't a macho activity. It's a rite, a set of orderly steps by which he pulls himself together. The fragility of the mind that haunts that story is unmistakable, and I think that's the extraordinary effect of Hemingway's best work -- the fragility of our being, how easily we break. He captures that in a language that is fresh and true. I was first attracted to him as a boy because he seemed to me to exemplify a masculine self-sufficiency, and I imposed that on what I was reading without actually getting at the truth of what I was reading. He made it possible for people to do that, especially in his later work, as we all know, by his inadvertent self-parody and posing. But his real greatness has outlived all that.

JP: I have been reminded again and again, in reading your stories and interviews, of Henry James's “The Art of Fiction,” though one rarely makes this connection in speaking of your work. James's admonition that “catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous force keeps Fiction upon her feet” seems to apply aptly to your stories. TW: Well, that would be nice if it did. I can hardly improve on that. How do you persuade a reader to enter your world and to believe in it, and assent to it? I am not a writer who wants to remind his readers that after all this is just a story and that the characters are just letters on a page, or to rebuke the reader for having the naiveté to believe in the world I am creating. I want to bring the reader into the world I have made and I want him to believe in it, and in order to do that you have to do exactly what James is talking about. You have to somehow make the reader feel, even as the reader is disarmed and unsettled, that at the deepest level there is something familiar here. He's saying that we share, however different we are, a recognition of how things happen. Eliot said that James had a mind “too fine to be violated by an idea.” What he meant was that James was free of any palpable design on us. Which isn’t to say that he did not mean to put us to the test, as Isabel Archer is put to the test. The Portrait of a Lady is about the strange paradox that for free will to mean anything, we have to honor the choices we make once we have made them. Otherwise we are reduced to creatures of whim and not free at all, just pulled by desire. Isabel's decision to stay with Osmond is outrageous to us because it seems to be a choice to be a victim. But for that great freedom that she had been given at the beginning to really have depth,

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for that freedom to be acted out in the world, the choice that the freedom gave her has to be honored. It's an extraordinary paradox, and a profound one, yet you never feel it as an insistent thing, you never feel it as a program, as an idea by itself, outside the web of relationships in the novel and the way the novel moves in the recognizable yet strange reality of the story as it unfolds. James has caught more than one writer in his web. Cynthia Ozick, of course, has wonderful things to say about James and about his influence on her. And she had to struggle in some ways to strike out on her own, as we all do. We all have some father or mother that we have to get out of the clutches of in order to become the writer that we are going to be.

JP: Referring to Chekhov, you have written that “if he could not write at length, he would write at depth, making every detail suggest others, capturing a moment of someone's life in such a way that we intuitively trace that life beyond the story, drawing the circle from the arc.” This brings to mind for me another passage from James, in which he relates the anecdote of the English novelist who, having glimpsed through a doorway in Paris a household of young Protestants at table, is able from this “direct personal impression” to produce the “reality” of her story. It is that sort of negative capability, “the power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern,” as James has it, that you seem to deploy in creating your ﬁctions, and you seem to demand the same sort of active-receptive power on the part of your readers. TW: One of the things that I am at home with in Chekhov is the degree to which he trusts his reader to travel beyond the given, to collaborate with him in the making of his stories, and this is most evident of course in his endings. Chekhov was doing something very different from what, say, Tolstoy was doing. Tolstoy wrote a short story like a novel, and there was a sense of finality to his conclusions. Writers still operate, to speak roughly, from those two kinds of impulses in writing stories. Flannery O'Connor had a Tolstoyan sense of how to write a story. You've got Mrs. May in “Greenfield” with that bull goring her at the end, it's like a pietá, we're supposed to see it that way. All her stories have that finality about them -- Mrs. Turpin looking up into the sky in “Revelation,” coming to a realization that her virtues are not the most important thing about her, and that even those will be burnt away, and the very people whom she has despised will be leading the parade into heaven, and they'll be out of step and messing up the parade, and that's the way it is. There is a wonderful conclusiveness to that ending, which you would never find in a Chekhov story, where the sense of the characters, their relationship to what is happening, is very tentative and ambiguous. However, you can feel within the whole tenor of the story, rather than something that happens in the way of an insight or a decisive event right at the end, that something may indeed may have moved that character just a degree or two, but she will end up in a very different place at the end of her journey because of what’s taken place. Sometimes Chekhov’s stories are content simply to catch a moment of human life that tells us something about ourselves. It can be a medical student drawing the skeleton of his mistress on her skin so he can study it for an exam. With the strange way he objectifies her, you can see right away that he's already moving on and she is going to be discarded. She is simply another of his objects of study, but the story never says that, it just shows it happening.

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Chekhov was an intellectually vibrant man, full of ideas. These animate his stories, but they never become evident, as they will in a Tolstoy story or a Flannery O'Connor story. She is a descendant of Tolstoy, whereas Katherine Anne Porter writes in the tradition of Chekhov. Porter's conclusions are much more tentative than Flannery O'Connor's. She could be taxed, I suppose, by the reader who doesn't like Chekhov with the same kind of refusal to make an ending of great finality. Sometimes her endings have great lyrical beauty, as in “Flowering Judas”, but there is tremendous irony embedded in Laura's situations, and the insights that people have when they do have them in those stories aren't necessarily anything they can act on. Indeed, they can become a further problem to deal with, an unwelcome burden of knowledge.

JP: This brings me around to a question about “moral fiction.” With what you've said just now about Tolstoy and O'Connor, one certainly sees you in the tradition of Chekhov and Katherine Anne Porter, but a lot of readers find Flannery O'Connor's moral certainty a considerable consolation. I gather you would affirm that the fiction you write is moral fiction, but it may strike some readers too close for comfort. Your stories don't have the kind of satisfying allegory that O'Connor is nearly always writing. TB: Yes, but let me say too that I really love her work. When I first discovered her, it was a revelation to me that someone could do this sort of thing in fiction. I am not drawn to do it that way myself, but it is an extraordinary thing, and it does come from genuine conviction, and is always saved by that strange sense of humor of hers. There's even something a little funny about Mrs. May getting gored at the end of “Greenfield”--it shouldn't be funny, but it is, and she knows it. There is a spiritual mischievousness in her. It saves the fiction from becoming completely programmatic. Sometimes, though, I do feel her thumb on the scales.

JP: There's that utter conviction about her, there's no doubt. I mean, even in Pascal, “the heart has its reasons…”, there's a ﬁne sense of the ambiguity of the human condition. We don't know. Flannery O’Connor is missing that, and Tolstoy, as you have already said, is missing it as well. TW: Her characters can doubt, but you always feel that there is something beyond doubt outside that is guiding them. There is a hand on them that is guiding them. I recall that verse of the Psalm, “Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me”. Well, that's the situation with her characters. It's like Parker in “Parker's Back,” he cannot get away, he tries to run away like Jonah on a ship, he flees, and yet he cannot escape the necessity of taking on this image that he finally ends up with, being scourged and crucified at the end by his own wife. Everything he does moves him closer and closer, and that is the situation of the characters, they are fleeing and yet they still approach, and there's always the sense of the reality that makes this happen, and about that she has no doubt at all. It is both a great strength and a weakness. I suppose it's always that way, isn't it, whatever is best about a writer is also what some readers will balk at.

JP: Lying, in your stories, can be redemptive or destructive. One lies because “the world is not enough,” you have remarked. Then again, one of my students remarked that in “The Life of the Body” and elsewhere, we are reminded that the worst lies may be those we tell ourselves. TW: Yes, that's pretty fair. It's something that for better or for worse seems to show up in my work again and again, this obsession with the various evolutions of misrepresentation and evasion that amounts to falsehood, that we are, I think, more or less continually engaged in. You can't live in this world with a completely truthful

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apprehension of it all. It's built into our very natures to filter, ameliorate, deny, edit. In the Four Quartets, Eliot says, “mankind cannot bear very much reality”. That's true. So what are the mechanisms by which we arrange to live in this world on terms comfortable to ourselves? That can amount to a kind of corruption, it can also amount to a kind of necessary accommodation. Now that's the most fundamental thing I am talking about, and then others of us obviously indulge it to a degree that it becomes corruption. Storytelling is not really what I would call a lie. When the understanding is present between people that something is a story, then you are excused, you get a reprieve. But oddly enough, it's just at those times that we are allowed some of our most profound visions of the truth, just when we have all agreed that what's being said is not actually true, that's when at some level our guard goes down in a way that we can see things as they are. When we watch KingLear, we know we are watching a play, and that these people have cars outside and that during the break they are going to call somebody on the cell phone, all that sort of thing. We know it's a play written some four hundred years ago, we know Shakespeare cribbed it from another source and changed things, yet when we are watching this play, there are moments when the truth itself is in front of us.

JP: The material conditions of literature are changing. Hypertext, multimedia, and the increasing predominance of telecommunications may mean “the end of literature as we know it”. For J. Hillis Miller, “The concept of literature in the West has been inextricably tied to Cartesian notions of selfhood, to the regime of print, to Western-style democracies and notions of the nation-state, and to the right of free speech within such democracies” [Speech Acts in Literature, 157]. Given this state of affairs, what would you see as the future of literature in the new century? TW: I'm not a prophet, so I won't try to be, and I really don't know, but people's interest in literature doesn't seem to have flagged all that much. It’s often pointed out that in the glory days there were 2000 slick commercial magazines that were publishing short stories on a regular basis. But if you go back and look at the stories that were in those journals, they really weren't very good, most of them. They were genre stories, written so that people would know what they were going to get when they picked it up, the way you know what kind of hamburger you are going to get when you go to McDonald's. There's a consolation in that, and there's nothing illegitimate about it, but the impulse and the kind of talent that went into that has simply moved over, first to radio and then to television. It was really just a kind of verbal television. At any given time in our literary history only a few writers have been writing fiction of quality and something that would be likely to have legs, something we would want to read years and years later. At any given time, work of the first quality is at a premium. I have not seen any falling off, really. We always venerate the giants, but we don't know who the giants of this age will be. And they will no doubt give fevers of anxiety to another generation of young writers, as Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Flannery O'Connor and others have done to us. The question of hypertext, though, I don't know where that's going. I think it will not have a displacing effect on what we have traditionally called literature. Literature will, I think, have a parallel existence with it. Robert Coover has been talking up hypertext for years now, indeed for about twenty years, and what's happened with

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it? It’s grown in sophistication with the technology that allows people to become interactive in the devising of plots. But it hasn't in the remotest way affected the writing of serious literature, as far as I can tell. Every ten years or so, John Barth goes back and revisits that early essay of his on “The Literature of Exhaustion”. In his most recent one, he talked about hypertext more or less in this way: “You know, if you want to have a dinner at your house and have all sorts of people come into the kitchen and throw something in the pot, that's fine, but when you come to my house, you don't come into my kitchen and put anything into my pot. I will cook, and I will serve you a good meal, but it's mine to cook and nobody else’s.” That's the way it is for most writers. You may call it vanity, but they want the experience of singular authorship. Part of the encounter with literature is the encounter with a singular consciousness that has a particular take on life. It's an indispensable satisfaction. As for the book: print technology, as I am not by any means the first to say, was itself a tremendous technological leap forward. We still haven't surpassed it. The book is in many ways a much more sophisticated thing than the computer in terms of our ability to move around in it easily, its portability, its interest as an object. There are all kinds of ways in which the book still remains at the cutting edge. I can barely read newspaper articles on a computer screen, let alone a book. Maybe it's my acculturation, but that technology has been around for a long time now, and it hasn’t come close to replacing the book.

JP: Coming to the end of a year-long stay in Rome, living and working outside your usual American context, has your view of life in America changed, and your view of your own role as an artist in America? TW: Inevitably, when you get away from your own country, you become more alert to its oddities. When our oldest son, Michael, went off to Russia after high school, he taught English in a little grade school near the Finnish border for several months, and then he taught in a slum school in Nairobi. When he came back to Palo Alto he was just sort of gawking, he hadn't been back to the States in a year, and of course Palo Alto is quintessentially the States, in its most prosperous incarnation, and he was looking around and saying how people talk about Russia or Africa as exotic places, but that Palo Alto is the most exotic place in the world. And it is. You get a sense of the exoticism of our culture, the extraordinary oddities that it is allowed to cultivate, its prosperity, its ability to isolate itself. Yes, you become very aware of that, working away. I couldn't live permanently out of the country, it's my medium, the water I swim in. But I've loved working abroad. We have on different occasions left the States for a year or so. We've lived in Mexico, in Germany, in Rome, and it's great to negotiate another language, but you are not really in touch with it the way you are with English, you're not getting a lot of it, you are living in a kind of a bubble of alienness. There's no way not to, unless you were raised in this country, and had complete access to the currents that are around you and know what's going on. I feel that I have that in the States (maybe I don't entirely, but I feel that I do). Over here I know I don't, and so I am in a bubble, and this is a very productive thing for one's writing. I couldn't do it forever, but it's great as a kind of respite.

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JP: In a recent class that I taught in contemporary ﬁction, we came to The Night in Question after reading Don DeLillo's White Noise. The varied and animated reactions to both your work and to DeLillo's were quite striking. It seemed as though DeLillo strikes deep chords in our public or collective psyche, whereas your work resonates in our private selves, is far more personal. What do you think of this characterization, and how would you place your work, and DeLillo's, in American writing today? TW: Well, I wouldn't begin to “place” my work, because I really don't have a sense of it. I like DeLillo's work, especially that book. He's made himself a very assiduous and expert student of the details of momentary American life. He is able to mimic all kinds of languages--corporate language, technological language, the language of academia--to great and often hilarious effect. In my own work I suppose there is a kind of personal focus, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit the extent to which this is not necessarily a completely conscious choice of mine to write in this way. It's just the way I write. I guess he writes about what interests him, as I write about what interests me. I remember reading something of John Barth's years ago in the New York Times Book Review, where he talked about the fact that he himself doesn't really much like fiction that's about fiction, self-reflexive, so-called postmodern fiction, that his great heroes are Scott and Dickens, and he said that's the kind of book he'd really like to write, but whenever he sits down to start writing one of those, he ends up with another novel by John Barth. So nature asserts itself, in spite of conscious intention, and I suspect something like that is going on with me. My writing does not proceed from conscious theory, or from a sense of hierarchy about which are the best kinds of fiction to write. I love Chekhov and Tolstoy, and I like Nabokov and Hemingway, I like Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Anne Porter, and I don't feel any need to make a totem pole out of our literature. I don't think it is profitably read that way.

JP: It seems to me that you expose yourself fairly regularly, programmatically to the ﬁction that is around you, and yet you continue to ride your own horse. TW: Well, I hope I do. I don't know if I have any choice at this point.

JP: Sense of place in Tobias Wolff's ﬁction seems to involve varieties of the American landscape: the northwest, the southwest and southern California, the northeast, and even the south, for military bases at any rate, and of course America's Vietnam. How would you deﬁne sense of place in your work, compared, say, to the work of regionally “located” writers like Eudora Welty in Mississippi or John McGahern and others in Ireland? TW: Well, those writers have had the advantage, if that is what it is, of living in the same place for a really long time, and I did not have that. I grew up a nomad, really, and lived all over the country, and that's my curse and my blessing, I guess.

JP: I came across Raymond Carver sort of answering this question, and he said most of his stories are set indoors anyway! TW: Ha! That's a good answer, that's pure Ray. Someone pointed out to me, and I had never thought of it this way, that a lot of my stories take place in cars, or at least begin in cars. This Boy's Life begins in a car and ends in a car. And maybe that's my place, the car, because I was forever being moved from place to place to place, and so in a sense my place was the inside of a Nash Rambler.

JP: A number of my students had read This Boy's Life in another class before coming to your stories in The Night in Question, none of which they had read previously. In fact, in the childhood/adolescent stories (“Firelight”, “Flyboys”, “Powder”) they kept calling the narrator

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“Toby”. Is this chore of keeping memoir and ﬁction distinct perhaps an obstacle for your readers? TW: It may be. I don't rightly know what to do about it. I mean, I'm drawn to writing about kids, I like writing about kids, because they are all potential, they are still becoming, they are not finished yet. I like watching something happen that may be one of those things that fills in a little more of the blank. But as for the problem of reading, I understand it, but it isn't something I have much of an answer for, except that I myself need to know, when I am writing it, whether something is memoir or fiction. And I know that in a story like 'Firelight”, in The Night in Question - the story of a boy and his mother looking at houses in Seattle when they first arrive—that there is a thread of autobiography in there, no question about it. But the events I actually describe happening in this story didn't happen, and I would never have been comfortable calling that a memoir. I would have felt dishonest. It's shaped like a story, formed like a story, in a way that the chapters of This Boy's Life are not. It's really an artifact of invention, a piece of fiction. I have to keep that straight. I can't pretend to myself, though, that all my readers are going to keep it straight. Sometimes writers deliberately blur that line for their own purposes. I think Hemingway often does. Or William Maxwell, in his novel So Long, See You Tomorrow. If you look at the biographical information given on the back of the novel, you see that it points precisely to the information we learn about the narrator in the novel. He even at one point uses the expression, “this novel, this memoir, whatever it is, that I am writing”, but he calls it a novel on the cover and it is a novel, a made-up thing. Writers frequently use this trust of the reader. Readers like to identify, like to think that the character they are reading about is actually the writer. And Maxwell is using that to draw you into this experience. As long as you identify something as fiction, I think you're off the hook, you're not asking for special treatment.

JP: The Night in Question begins with a faked death (“Mortals” in which a former IRS man has phoned his own obituary in to the local newspaper), and ends with an all-too-real death (“Bullet in the Brain”). I am reminded of the quotation from Victor Hugo, ”We are all under sentence of death, with indeﬁnite reprieve”. The world according to Tobias Wolff, and I recall here Raymond Carver's suggestion that 'Every…writer makes the world over according to his own speciﬁcations” [Fires, 13], includes an acute awareness of mortality as a regular preoccupation, though without adopting a morbid tone. Do you feel this is part of your made-over world? TW: Yes, especially in that book, hence the title, “the night in question”, which is certainly a hint that mortality is at issue. That night is always in question, and how we live in relation to it. A story can serve as a kind of memento mori. The Death of Ivan Illych is a classic memento mori, a reminder to the reader that he is going to die and he'd better get his life straight. It's inevitable that those questions will enter into a writer's work at the point in life when he no longer has that youthful sense of immortality.

JP: Different take, maybe, on the same question. There is an on-line review of The Night in Question from gialloWeb that describes these stories as all turning around solitude. TW: I suppose that's true. I think that's probably the pole around which most fiction turns. I remember a line in Wright Morris's book The Territory Ahead, when he is wondering why Thomas Wolfe, while extremely interesting to teenage boys, ceases to be interesting to them when they get older. He said the reason boys like Thomas Wolfe is that he writes about loneliness, which is a condition of adolescence, but not

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about solitude, which is the condition of man. It's a beautiful, subtle distinction. We are all more or less solitary, and we live our lives trying both to break out of it and to maintain it; it is both necessary to us and terrifying to us. There is a continual flux in our natures. It's another of the things that fiction lives by.

JP: And finally, I would like to ask you to react to this: Tobias Wolff in interviews: “I think that art is a redemptive activity” [Alaska Quarterly Review 9, 1990] “Stories have the power…to suddenly fill us with the knowledge of other lives and with the importance of those lives to the people who lead them. And in that way, yes, I write to change people”. [Passion and Craft, ed. Lyons and Oliver, 1998] Rainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”: “…for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life”. Most of the stories in The Night in Question carry this appeal, in one sense or another. However, Raymond Carver, in a 1983 interview [Fires, 215-16], to the question of whether his writing will change anybody, replies that he had expected to change after experiencing works of high art, Rilke's poems among them, “but then I found out soon enough that my life was not going to change at all”. He suggests instead that “[art] does not have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it, and the different kind of pleasure that's taken in reading something that's durable and made to last, as well as beautiful in and for itself. Something that throws off these sparks--a persistent and steady glow, however dim”. How do we heed Rilke's appeal, and yours? TW: I think that's a really interesting question. Let's talk about Ray for a minute, what he says there. I agree with him that poems don't need to change anybody, literature doesn't need to change anybody, in order for it to have worth. As he says, the ferocious pleasure we take in it is a sufficient justification. For example, what do we demand of a piano sonata by Mozart? Do we demand that it change us after we listen to it? It isn't enough that it just be the beautiful thing that it is? However, I think art does change us, even the Mozart sonata. I think we are changed by the experience of beauty, by the experience of a profound emotion so artistically formed that it becomes an experience of the generosity of life. I think maybe the problem is in the word “change”, that we generally consider to mean some kind of instantaneous revolution in character. I think a change can be an opening up, a receptiveness to life, an escape from the prison of the self for a while. That's a change. Now, I would say that in Ray's case the change actually has to do with a revolution of character, of an almost melodramatic kind, because though he says, “I soon learned that my life wasn't going to change”, that isn't true. His life did change. And it changed in large part because of his art, the art that he practiced and the art that he received. Ray was not the same person when he died as when I met him. He had changed. The beautiful stories, the generous stories he wrote, the very writing of those stories deepened him, changed him, made him larger than he had been. He was an enthusiastic reader, always giving me books that he thought I absolutely needed to read. He had very little patience with books that were tricky, or cute, or purely ironic. He was hungry for something else, for the kinds of things that could change you when you read them. And he was changed greatly. The world he grew up in was rough--I know that world, I partly grew up in it myself. How did he escape its

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brutalizing influence to become the kind of person he finally turned out to be? A large part of it had to do with his reading and writing, no question about it. It was characteristically modest of him to beg off any grand claims for his writing or for literature itself. But the evidence suggests to me that the opposite is true, that his own case illustrates that it does have this power. It certainly has in my own life. I would testify without hesitation that the experience of literature has changed me and continues to change me.

Journal of the Short Story in English, 41 | Autumn 2003