Alice Walker Interview, 12 October 2000 - C_4001_01_01_acc_20191119
00:00:07
Where are you coming from?
00:00:12
I'm coming from the Rosie O'Donnell show and followed by a really nice walk around Washington Square Park where I used to walk when I lived on that square. Yes, and I went and I looked at the building and I couldn't even remember walking in and out of the door. So strange.
00:00:33
This was the late 60s when you were in there?
00:00:35
Yes. I was living with my boyfriend who I later married in his dorm room in the NYU student housing which is right on the park and we looked out over the tree top so she was very nice.
00:00:51
It's strange because we've lived down the village for a long time and it's been a lot of time since we went outside and was very young around Washington Square Park and then down to Washington Square Village which we still all the time. Which would have struck in fact as we're leading to the late 60s.
00:01:06
We were probably passing each other all the time if you know it. I'm going to go wash my hands because I've been falling off. Do you know where the restroom is?
00:01:31
It's probably right there.
00:01:38
Okay, be right back.
00:01:41
When was your daughter born again?
00:01:42
She always says I forget. 69.
00:01:43
69? So she was even a little bit younger than my son.
00:01:44
How old is your son?
00:01:48
He was born in 67.
00:01:49
Oh yeah.
00:02:00
Again, we used to be down there a lot. It suddenly crossed my mind. We might have actually passed past. Anyway, I was curious as a…
00:02:07
Cheers.
00:02:09
Cheers.
00:02:10
We survived it all.
00:02:17
Survived a lot as a matter of fact.
00:02:20
Yeah.
00:02:22
So I think about those early days in 1970. We were next door to that house that flew up on West 11th Street where the weathermen had their explosion. They were bombed out of our house that very day in fact.
00:02:26
Oh my goodness.
00:02:28
The wall just fell down from our building.
00:02:29
Wow.
00:02:30
Terrible. It was sort of like the end of the 60s.
00:02:31
Really?
00:02:34
Yeah. Right next door. Next door. To the so-called bomb factory.
00:02:46
Wow. I bet that was a shock.
00:02:55
It was a shock for my wife and for Dustin Hoffman's wife. They were both outside the building when it just blew up in their face. She just picked up our sign at nursery school and it was literally the end of the 60s and the end of a lot of... Well, not to get a one digression, but I must say the event itself then and thereafter had a strong effect not only on my family but also the people in the neighborhood.
00:03:14
Oh, I imagine.
00:03:19
About the 60s, there were so many of us. If we weren't radical, we certainly were borderline radical. After that, there was a lot of second thinking about whether the violence had any justification at all. Their mission when they blew up the house accidentally was to blow up the library at Columbia University. But you've gone through so much of this.
00:03:39
Yeah. The violence is not going to work. I mean, I don't care who's doing it. There's just no end to it. But that must have been such a shock because home is where you feel so safe.
00:03:55
Well, that's part of it. It's your home and your private home. But that's what I was looking to. It's a strong theme in your work. I mean, your opposition to violence has been a little closer to the people I'm talking to.
00:04:13
Well, yeah, I know in my own life what suffering it causes. And in a way, it just isn't radical enough. Violence is not radical enough.
00:04:24
And not radical enough. What about social change?
00:04:27
Well, actually, love is more radical than violence. And it's more subversive generally. And it's harder to do. And that's why people would rather have violence.
00:04:35
It's easier to pick up a gun or a bomb.
00:04:44
Much easier than actually coming to love somebody. Or just to be compassionate. It takes a lot more courage.
00:05:01
Let me also say this. It's sometimes hard to understand when I read your work the fact that you can love people who have been violent, brutal, perhaps even evil. I mean, you talk, for example, about your grandfather who was a devil, you say, in some way. And yet you...
00:05:08
I adored him.
00:05:09
Well, you say, not only forgive him, I guess, but you adored him.
00:05:14
I adored him. I adored him. And I still do.
00:05:18
How is that possible?
00:05:19
It's possible because he was a devil before I knew him. It was a lot harder to forgive my father, whom I knew, you know, in his devil-ness.
00:05:29
I see.
00:05:39
But with my grandfather. And that taught me that people do change. And they change radically. Because the man that used to shoot his gun at my grandmother and chase her through the cornfields was not the man I knew. The man I knew was very mellow, very thoughtful, very cornfields was not the man I knew. The man I knew was very mellow, very thoughtful, very loving of me, very happy to have me around, and very civil to her. So this was someone that I knew about almost as a... That earlier part, almost as a legend. And... that I knew about almost as a... That earlier part, almost as a legend. And…
00:06:13
You'd heard the stories before this.
00:06:18
Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, yes. And they were told with such gusto, which was shocking to me. Even as a child. I mean, I couldn't really laugh, I have to say, because I loved my grandmother. And so in the telling of a story about her being chased by this wild man, who was an alcoholic, I didn't understand that either for many years. He was an alcoholic. And alcoholism had actually come into our family through our Irish line, the Irish, Scottish Irish drunkards, overseers. Which is another story about just how you get certain traits in your family. Anyway... But I loved her. She was a really sweet, long suffering, patient, good cooking woman. And so when people were laughing at her fear, I felt a chill. It was a real fear, obviously. Oh, absolutely. It was real. So I feel that I was born partly to heal that, to look at it and to see who they both were in essence. And I think who he was in essence, non-alcoholic and non-crazy and non-violent, was a basically thoughtful person. And a gentle person.
00:07:47
And he was the role model for Mr. Herbert?
00:07:53
Yes.
00:08:02
Well, it's very interesting. I find it a lot that you seemingly not only forgive but also love. And I suppose just moving ahead to the new book, which obviously to me is inspired by your marriage, which was terribly happy, you say, and then over and being friends and whatever, it's hard to comprehend that, I guess.
00:08:25
He's a very good man. He's a very, very good person. So it's not really hard. And I think what's really hard is just that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with them anymore. And your life is calling you somewhere else. And that's pretty much what happened on top of just being really exhausted from being in the situation that we were in. It was too much. We should have known better. But we didn't. We were young and we thought that we could really... And we did. We changed Mississippi a lot. Especially my former husband and his colleagues. They saw that a lot of the desegregation, new laws were enforced. They represented people like... People who really reminded me so much of my parents and grandparents, really poor people, for the first time had someone to defend them. So it took its toll. But there's no blame. And that's what you...
00:09:35
Well, this is the question, I guess. Why isn't there blame?
00:09:44
It's because everybody gets really tired. And I have learned in my own life that...
00:09:51
Going back to your grandfather for a moment, with him I suppose it wasn't a matter of being tired but partly it was a matter of the...
00:11:09
Drunk.
00:11:18
Well, yes, but I was going to say also the acceptance, the traditionalness that this was an allowable approach in those times in that situation.
00:11:31
Well, it was because he had no other outlet for this kind of anger. If he had been angry at the white people who were actually the basic oppressors, he would have been killed right away. And he knew that. And so his anger got twisted and it was the very extremely remarkable African American man who was able to see what that was, that you had to be very careful not to misdirect the anger. If you were angry at the abuse of the overseer, the boss, whoever he was, to find some other way to deal with it rather than hurting your family. This is a very difficult thing.
00:12:18
And it was true in your father's day as well as your grandfather's day.
00:12:29
Oh yes, right. And some people handled it, you know, there were a few men who were known to be men who, no matter what, they never abused their family. Never. And they were of course really looked up to.
00:12:37
Have you been here before?
00:12:38
Never. What do you recommend?
00:12:44
Everything.
00:12:59
Oh good, okay.
00:13:11
Except for the spicy fried shrimp, oh boy, that's the one loser on the menu.
00:13:17
Okay, alright.
00:13:22
I just want to emphasize the specials that we have today because we recommend the CNC scallops that we serve with a celery root puree that's been emulsified with white wine and then olive oil so it has a consistency of creaminess, a little cream sauce, but it's not as heavy.
00:13:26
Did you say scallops?
00:13:31
Scallops, yeah.
00:13:32
Oh, that sounds very good.
00:13:33
We have a lot of beans and a kind of nest of chanterelle and shiitake mushrooms that are sauteed together.
00:13:35
I think I want that.
00:13:40
It's wonderful.
00:13:41
Yeah.
00:13:42
We also have a house-made veal, braised chanel and ravioli. Not in that case, though.
00:13:43
I'll stop.
00:13:44
Well, you can go out there.
00:13:49
No, but I should stop.
00:13:52
Scallops as well.
00:13:55
Scallops as well. Excellent. Shall I start you two with some salads perhaps? Green salad?
00:13:58
Well, does this come with some kind of vegetables that you said?
00:14:03
Just the beans and the mushroom combination.
00:14:05
Oh, yeah. Okay. If you have a small green salad, that would be good.
00:14:06
Anything else you drink an iced tea?
00:14:13
Iced tea would be good.
00:14:18
Yeah.
00:14:19
I got to start with the water.
00:14:20
Anyway, the new book, I realize that some of the stories go back to the earlier, mid-80s than today.
00:14:32
Yes.
00:14:39
What provoked you to do it now? What brought it together with you?
00:14:43
Well, you know, it was sitting on my desk for a while, all except the last story. And I was not going to publish it. And I was in Hawaii, and I was talking to a friend, and she said, I'm really waiting for your next book. And I said, well, it's there on my desk. And she said, what? This was Mililani Trask. I don't know if you know any Hawaiian politics, but she is a very fierce defender of the rights of Hawaiian people. And it started with thinking about completing it and how to complete it and what the significance of it is, you know. And I saw that in writing the memoir about my marriage, the other stories seem to be growing out of it. They represent, in a way, the freedoms and the difficulties that I encounter after leaving that marriage, which have been such a cocoon in many ways.
00:15:53
The marriage was.
00:16:00
The marriage was, because the man that I had married had been so, you know, just very protective and very present and very loyal in many ways, you know, just very dependable. And so after that marriage and after, for him it was impossible to maintain a friendship, which as an Aquarian, friendship is first. It comes before marriage even, you know. But anyway, so the stories I could see represented the freedom, but also some of the terrors, you know, of being outside of a marriage that had been very cocoon-like, at least in its early stages.
00:16:41
Did you ever think about connecting the characters and keeping the same names of the characters, whether factual or not, and make it more novelistic?
00:16:47
No, no, because I thought about doing that and then it didn't feel right. I wanted it to be just more the way it was.
00:16:58
Are they different people, would you say?
00:17:04
Some of them are, but of course some of them aren't.
00:18:44
Olive oil as well, is that also restorative?
00:18:48
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And the little things that we do for each other when we love each other can have such healing. I mean, and you never really know sometimes where that's going to happen. I mean, who would think that the fact that someone liked the way you smelled when you had oiled yourself with olive oil, loved the way you looked shiny with olive oil, I mean, you know, how would you know that that would be such a healing thing, that you would suddenly feel seen, accepted, loved, natural, you know, that someone could see you and love you in your naturalness? And what an increase then in the degree of intimacy you would have with such a person. I mean, just that little thing, such a wonderful thing. So that was part of why I wanted to write these stories like this.
00:19:52
The first story came last?
00:19:53
Later, in any case. It did, because you know, it came after, you mean the memoir, the little one?
00:20:14
Yes.
00:20:25
Yeah, it came, yes, I think so, except for The Brotherhood of the Saved, that came absolutely last. Because I, by then, was ready to transform all of this into a story that was just fiction, just art, but with the spirits of my parents and my spirit in it, as we might have been had we done these things.
00:20:43
Could you describe what the, admittedly there are somewhat, there are different characters along the way, but sort of the arc of the characters, how they would change from 1984, or whatever the first one was, till now, in your eyes, is there really a big change?
00:21:00
A big change?
00:21:05
It's a change in, you know, how they grow, and how they perceive the world. I'm thinking now, let's see, of Suni and Anne, who in the 60s were in love with the same man. One was married to him, and the other one wanted to be with him, and then they had this whole thing with, you know, doing the 60s thing, where you all go off together, you, the other woman, the man, and the baby. You're speaking from experience, right?
00:21:49
Oh yeah. I mean, we tried everything, it was just so amazing. And then years later, you look back on that, and it's, you know, it was crazy. I mean, it was, but really good crazy. I mean, I don't mean, you know, it's a good thing to have done, because we were trying to see if we could do this, you know, this transformation that always had failed around us. We'd never seen anybody do that. We'd never known anybody who, you know, if you fell in love with someone's husband, and then you, you know, talked to the wife, and she said, well, maybe we can all work this out, and, you know, it's all very, you know. But then years later, they come back around, and they're older, and they realize that, you know, whatever they were working out with this man, they've done it, and now they're free. I mean, they're free, and they're going on to do something else. So one of them is, you know, going to listen to Guru Mai, and loves that life, the meditative life and the guru life. And the other one is telling about this young man who has appeared out of nowhere, and that she is having a wonderful time with, and it's a platonic relationship. I mean, you know, they just go on.
00:23:20
In any case, you haven't thought about publishing the book for a while.
00:23:30
It was sitting there.
00:23:38
It was sitting there.
00:23:45
Oh, and then the other thought was that I'm not sure I want to keep writing. I think that I feel like this is the end of a 30-year cycle, and it's a really good time for me to think about what I want to do for the other 30 years.
00:23:53
Really?
00:23:56
Yes.
00:24:04
In fact, you started writing 30 years ago. You started publishing 30 years ago.
00:24:08
Yeah, and it's been quite a while. So I felt that part of this is to sort of complete that cycle, and it really does.
00:24:15
It was published in 1970, so actually this is your...
00:24:16
And then before that, it was the 68th, my first poetry.
00:24:19
Yeah, so it's 30 years.
00:24:20
So it is 30 years.
00:24:22
Yeah, amazing. I mean, that's a lot of writing.
00:24:31
It's different a lot.
00:24:41
Yeah.
00:24:47
So I spend a lot of time now studying the Dharma, and I'm just really happy sitting contemplating. What is the thing inside now? What is the real internal imperative now? Because I don't want to be doing something that no longer really moves me, and I want to be sure that whatever is coming next is as essential as what I feel has gone before. I mean, everything that I have written in my life has felt really... I feel like I had no choice.
00:25:25
No choice?
00:25:28
No choice, yeah. And I have to say, I like that. I like that feeling, and I don't want to enter another cycle of writing because I know the commitment it takes without feeling that. So I'm just going to see.
00:25:56
You used the expression, no choice, but somebody came across one of the books where you said you called yourself a medium. I was wondering whether you feel that as well.
00:26:08
Well, what I was trying to convey... There's not this thing about channeling or no work, just sitting there. I mean, it all takes a lot of work. But what I was trying to convey was that, especially in The Color Purple, and to some degree in The Temple of My Familiar, I really fell into a kind of grace. I really felt I was in a kind of grace that permitted me to faithfully create what was really real about these people. And it felt like mediumship. It felt so... It just felt like they were there.
00:27:13
Was The Color Purple handed down to you?
00:27:16
It's not like it's handed down, but it feels like my ancestors were just really happy. Just really happy and really there. And I woke with them and I slept with them. And I just felt like... You know, just this absolute feeling of being lucky in that connection, that being able to feel them. I actually felt like both their child and in some ways their servant, because I felt like I changed my life entirely in order to hear. I was living here in New York and I went there. I lived for a while in the country. So I could really hear them.
00:27:59
Was there a moment when you were swimming?
00:28:03
Yeah, I was in New York.
00:28:05
Keep people with The Color Purple for a moment. I think you said at what point that it came while you were swimming, while you were running. It sounded quite almost mystical to me.
00:28:19
It was. I was so happy.
00:28:27
Could you go back and remember the actual moment when it began?
00:28:32
I think I was in New York. I was an editor at Ms. Magazine for a while. And I guess the unconscious was trying to work it out, because I had a dream in which I had bought a little tiny house in Park Slope. This was after I had left the big house with my former husband and I tried to live in a little apartment on Garfield Place. I bought a tiny little house. It was like 12 feet wide. It was a sliver of a house in Park Slope. And I was commuting back and forth. I had this dream in which I went down to the basement of my house. It's interesting because Jung had a dream like this, but mine is different of course. I went down to the basement of my house and discovered a door to a sub-basement, which I didn't know was there. And I went down there and it was just filled with people making things. And they were people I had never... I didn't know them. They all seemed to be South American. And they were all speaking Spanish. So I think that that particular dream eventually led to the Temple of my Familiar, where the people are Spanish-speaking and South American. But I think I knew that the deeper layer of my consciousness was trying very much to emerge. And then I started to hear snippets of dialogue between Shug and Albert, Shug and Sealy.
00:30:29
As members of your family or as characters?
00:30:31
As characters. No, not members of my family and not characters. Spirits really of themselves.
00:30:39
With names attached to them?
00:30:46
Not yet, no. Just a way of speaking. A tone of voice, an attitude. And I realized that they didn't really get through here. I could hear little snippets, almost like a radio, where you just pass by and you hear a little slogan or something. But that in order to get it really clearly and whole, I would have to be somewhere else. So I moved.
00:31:18
Actually, you were not swimming or running through a field when you thought it was boring?
00:31:23
Well, it started here, but then when I got there, that's when it really happened. Running through the fields, swimming, because they had all of the time, they had all of my attention. Absolutely. They really...
00:31:38
I mean, it's about serving your art.
00:31:41
Well, it's about knowing when to serve the art, I guess, whether it's just a delusion or a creative act that you have. And I think the foundation of it was love. I loved my grandparents and I loved my parents. It just was heartbreaking to think that somehow they wouldn't survive. I mean, who they were, the way they sounded. They wouldn't survive in a form that was really thankful to them and loving of them and not interested in caricature.
00:32:23
Only through art they could survive?
00:32:25
I think so, yeah.
00:32:26
Once you began to become very fast?
00:32:29
Yes, I did.
00:32:32
You heard it wrong?
00:32:34
Yes. And I wrote it almost like dictation.
00:32:39
That was part of why I read that, and why I thought the medium thing struck me again, as if you're possessed, in a sense.
00:32:52
Well, inspired. I didn't feel possessed. I just felt far possessed by love, maybe. But I remember there was an article in the New York Times Magazine section after it was published. And they actually photographed some of the pages of my notebook. I just had a little spiral notebook. Because you can see that it is just exactly, you know, it's just exactly. And that goes back, though, to being in a family where I had to hide things. I mean, I couldn't, I had to keep a lot in my mind. I mean, I don't, you know, it feels magical, but it really, when I thought about it, it was from a habit of really letting things form in my mind.
00:33:42
It was more practical than magical, maybe.
00:33:43
More practical. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:33:47
And the stories themselves, some of them came from your family's life.
00:33:55
These stories?
00:33:56
Yeah. Well, the stories in the Color Purple, for example.
00:34:03
Well, vaguely, what is more true to say is that it's the, it's more like the spirit. I mean, I didn't point to real facts exactly, often. Maybe a few. Like, for instance, my grandmother did have two children who died before she married my grandfather. Now, this had been, you know, part of the story of their relationship. But because I loved her, I wanted her to have her own children, so I just created some for her. And because she never went anywhere, I sent her, you know, off to travel. And, I mean, it's, it was so wonderful.
00:34:53
You were able to give more lives to her.
00:34:56
I just gave them adventure and, you know, travel and clothes and money. And, you know, I just gave them everything I could give them.
00:35:17
And your mother didn't actually get to read Color Purple. She was sick.
00:35:22
She was sick. She liked the movie, though. She liked the movie.
00:35:28
But anyway, you were saying that Color Purple and the Temple were the two books that you felt that about, that they came?
00:35:36
Yeah. Very strongly. So they're connected in that way, and it's even more full-blown in The Temple of My Familiar because often I was writing about people that I, you know, had no experience with in the flesh. I mean, I'd read things. I visited countries.
00:36:16
You said a while ago that, for about the 30 years, could you live without writing?
00:36:26
I didn't tell. I've always resisted the belief that, you know, whatever it is that you do, you have to do it always. And also I just want the feeling of freedom, you know, so that if there is more writing, if there's another cycle, you know, that starts, or if there's even one more book, it'll feel like a gift, you know, to me. It'll feel like, you know, great, I'm still connected. And it won't feel like, you know, labor, which I'm not really into. I mean, I work hard, but I wanted to feel that, I wanted to be more than just writing a book. I wanted to mean that I'm connected to creation, basically.
00:37:37
Well, you've produced a lot since Color Purple.
00:37:55
And always, in a way, you know, kind of tottering around in surprise, you know.
00:38:10
I mean, just really...
00:38:13
I don't know how many people know this, but there's actually a real ecstatic side to writing when you really are in the current, you know, with the rest of creativity in the world. Even when it's really horrible, like writing about, writing possessing the secret of joy, which was very difficult, I was so happy that I was allowed to write it.
00:38:36
Oh, can you imagine?
00:38:40
Can you imagine?And all that had gone into making it possible for me to see it, and to feel it, you know, and to be able to look at it without just running like, you know, a really very disturbed person that I was.
00:38:56
The best part is the actual writing of it?
00:38:59
Yes, oh, everything else is very far down the line. Like fame, success, wide readership, all those factors.
00:39:05
Like fame, success, wide readership. Yeah. You'll find this easily.
00:39:20
When you met Langston Hughes, what was fame to me? It seemed too far away, even in content play.
00:39:26
Well, it wasn't too long thereafter, when fame descended or ascended on you.
00:39:28
I don't think I noticed. My family always say, Mom, you are so oblivious, you never notice anything.
00:39:34
But it's true, I mean...
00:39:38
Well, the telephone rang more, there was more mail.
00:39:52
Well, there was mail, oh God, yes.
00:39:54
You know, I had to move to a bigger house and all that. But, yeah, it's, you know, when you're writing it and it's going well, and you really hear the people and you know that they're alive, well, you know, it's kind of like giving birth.
00:40:12
Really. It's sort of funny, a number of women who are novels that I've talked to have said something similar in Buggy the Bird. A number of male novelists and playwrights that I've talked to regard the creative act almost as if it were carpentry. Something like, for one, Athol Fugard is going on, a great letter. He gets out his tools, his utensils, and he sits there.
00:40:25
Wow.
00:40:31
And then there's Arthur Miller's another one, creating a table.
00:40:34
Right.
00:40:36
I don't find women I've talked to ever use such metaphors at all.
00:40:38
It's so organic when it's really working well.
00:40:41
Well, there's a basic difference between men and women, right?
00:40:46
Men and women artists.
00:40:56
Very interesting.
00:41:02
Well, maybe somewhere there's a woman who's creating a table which will turn into a novel, I suppose.
00:41:07
And I understand the love of craft, you know, I mean, that's also a joy. But what I like is when you get the craft and you kind of, you know, you know you have it.
00:41:12
You can write a sentence that does what it needs to do. And then you just, you know, go. I mean, it's like jazz. I mean, it's just like, you know, it just has a life.
00:41:27
Well, I'll just say, beginning with Color Purple, you wrote the rules. You aren't supposed to write a novel like that.
00:41:35
Oh, who cares?
00:41:37
Of course. But I mean, the craft is there, but it's your own adventure.
00:41:46
Right, yeah. Oh, and that's the joy. To create books that are just totally, you know, what they are. I mean, you know, they dictate everything. And, you know, I've tried to write a book that was used in Wednesday before. So I've probably thought about a week or two before I came over. I reread that piece in the Times Magazine some years ago by David Bradley. And I realized, I guess the date was 1984, he actually wrote it before the movie.
00:42:27
Yeah, oh yeah.
00:42:30
Could you picture what he would have written if he had seen the movie?
00:42:32
Oh, God.
00:42:37
Well, as you know, I got really wrecked over the cold.
00:42:40
Oh, yeah, sure.
00:42:41
And answered, you know, but still he would have made so much more out of it.
00:42:49
I'm surprised he never, maybe he did, in fact, come back.
00:43:01
Yeah. That's a subject.
00:43:13
Certainly what my surmise is that the book, the test of the book, including the prizes, changed your life. But then the movie also did that, don't you think?
00:43:23
Well, yeah, and it took a while to really get my legs back, you know.
00:43:39
You're welcome.
00:43:50
Because my life had been so quiet and, you know, I would write these books and go out on tour and then I'd come home and that would be it. I mean, I'd be right back into my life. And with the movie, there was a period of much more intense scrutiny and I was aware of all of the controversy. And it's just, you know, you just feel like something is kind of yanking on you when you know that there are people out there sort of discussing something that you did with just you and the people that you're creating.
00:44:21
You were happy with it.
00:44:24
Yeah.
00:44:27
You've changed your mind several times about the movie though, too. Reading that book you wrote about it seems to have changed you.
00:44:31
Yeah, well, I didn't like it at first because, among other things, it's like…
00:44:34
Well, it wasn't exactly the book.
00:44:53
No, no, but it never is. And I really, you know, I'm at peace with that, actually. And I also continue to really love Steven because I think it took a lot of love on his part as well as courage to actually do it. And I really think that we did, all of us working together, you know, on something that for many of those people was completely foreign. I think we did a really good job. Oh, yum.
00:45:23
Doesn't that look good?
00:45:36
Do you still want the radish I take away?
00:45:38
I don't want anything like that. Oh, this just looks great.
00:45:40
How about your publishers actually come in here?
00:45:51
Really?
00:45:57
They're in the neighborhood.
00:46:01
Oh.
00:46:18
When was the last time you saw the movie?
00:46:19
Oh, years ago. However, people in my family watch it a lot. I think still. Every once in a while, anyway.
00:46:22
It makes me cry.
00:46:25
The movie does, yeah.
00:46:31
Yeah, every time I see it.
00:46:45
The one and only time it did.
00:46:50
I really, it's a very moving film.
00:46:56
Oh, what a good choice.
00:46:58
And even though it wasn't a screenplay, it doesn't.
00:47:05
Well, some of it is because the man who wrote the screenplay would come and say, Oh, Alice, what about this? But no, it's not mine. I mean, I have my, the one that I publish is mine. And you know, I feel that because I was able to publish both the book and my own version of the screenplay, I feel better about the movie because I think for me, so much about life is about learning. It's lessons and things that you can learn from events. You can't control how they come out.
Alice Walker Interview, 12 October 2000 - C_4001_02_01_acc_20191119
00:00:30
For a class on film, to use that film and the book and the screenplay, just to really show how these things work and how they can be changed.
00:00:49
I suppose how all three, book, screenplay, and movie all work and exist.
00:00:59
Pardon?
00:01:01
That book, screenplay, and movie can all exist independently.
00:01:05
Yeah.
00:01:06
Which are you very interested in?
00:01:10
Because, you know, I know some people have a problem with this but I was never, I didn't feel threatened by collaboration. I was excited by it. I thought that, it amused me to see how people, to see people's take on certain things. And I kind of knew we were creating something different. And I guess what I really was concerned about was that it keep all the heart and the spirit.
00:01:54
I'm still sorry that Mr. is not embraced at the end, that he's outside.
00:02:01
I was going to say one of the most moving things about the book you wrote about the movie was your letter to Danny Glover.
00:02:09
Oh.
00:02:10
In which you said and how much you, not only did, but also learned about your grandfather.
00:02:18
Yeah.
00:02:19
He did a really fine thing there for me, Danny.
00:02:23
I just saw him and he made a film of Hoosman and Lena.
00:02:32
Yes. How was it?
00:02:34
It was very good.
00:02:35
Good.
00:02:36
Very different from other versions. It was him many times on stage and the other movie. But he's such a good actor.
00:02:41
Yes. And he's a very good person.
00:02:43
Meridian, whichever book from the movie is here, never made.
00:02:55
One day. I hope. Because I think it would be really good for people, especially the younger people, to see the civil rights movement and the people who made it from that personal point of view, and that real... I think what most people, when they think of the civil rights movement, it's all about external exterior actions. But what about all of us, really? What about the girls who were just coming to life at that time and understanding what was happening and what the possibility was for a different kind of life? What about the young men who were beaten up so badly or who were killed? What about their love relationships, their relationships with their parents? And when I was writing it, I was really very conscious of wanting to leave a record of the interior life.
00:04:14
Not just… Because I figured we'd all see enough bar hoses and dogs and police and Bull Connor. But we wouldn't see those little acts of heroism, like people literally standing up to Thompson's tank. There was a tank in Mississippi when we moved there. There was the mayor of the town, Mayor Thompson, bought a tank to use against us and he painted it white. And the people just basically faced it and he eventually had to do away with it.
00:04:50
Didn't you feel the danger that you were in? The actual threat of it all?
00:04:56
Me? Did I feel it? Oh, yes. Absolutely. But you know what? It was preferable to feeling afraid in the North and not being able to go home, which is what happened to most of my siblings. They left. I was the last. That was the youngest. And the whole time I lived in Mississippi, my brothers, I have five brothers, one of them has recently died, they never came to see me. Too afraid, really. The terror, the absolute terror.
00:05:51
Their fear wasn't around that. I think that their fear was just, you know, as black men in Mississippi.
00:06:27
What's that about? Learning from adversity. And it seems to me that a lot of the art has come out of adversity.
00:06:44
Yeah. I think that happens to many people. And you know, I think it's another kind of gift that sometimes when you're wounded or you have such incredible suffering, you know, your people are, you know, put in concentration camps, your people are lynched, your people are, you know, disappeared. You know, what do you do with it?
00:07:22
What do you do with it? You know, if you can't make art, what are you going to do?
00:07:28
Well, sometimes you put away the closet.
00:07:30
Well, or you kill yourself or you, you know, you abuse people, you, you know.
00:07:36
I know a number of people whose parents were hollering about victims of one way or another who somehow never talked about it. They find out, this one actress that I knew, she's a good friend of my son's, found out much later in life that her father was survived in the situation that he never told her.
00:07:54
Just bottled it up.
00:07:57
Yeah. Yeah
00:08:02
They could have told her in different ways.
00:08:05
But now I wonder why, I mean in his mind, I wonder why he felt he couldn't tell her. Shame?
00:08:15
Well, it has many possibilities. Shame is one of them, but refusal to sort of face it, confront it, refusal to say, consider how it might have changed his life, and it probably did. I don't know. But shame and embarrassment would be probably high on the list, I don't know.
00:08:42
And maybe a degree of disbelief still that it could have happened. I remember when I was, you know, going around talking about female genital mutilation, especially in London, where they had recently, they were trying to pass a law to stop it from happening in London. And I remember an African woman once saying to me that she was upset because I was working on this. She said because now every time somebody sees an African woman on the street, this is what they'll be thinking. And, you know, how embarrassing and how, and humiliating, and it is, you know. However, so I said to her, well, what is the alternative? You know, what is the alternative? And we just sat there, you know, with that between us because, you know, the alternative is that you do nothing and then every African woman you see, or so many that you see, will have been wounded as children and nobody will have said a thing about it and it'll just keep going on.
00:10:05
I would think it would be things like that that keep you writing, that that inspired a book. And I suppose other times it would come across to me.
00:10:17
Maybe. Maybe, but I'm not sure because, you know, maybe what's being born is something that's not so interested in adversity. Or maybe what's being born is something that wants to just go and be with the adversity and not write about it. You know, just be the person who's there to hold somebody. I mean, that's important. And sometimes I think that's where writing is leading, which is fine. You know, just drop the pen and grab the person.
00:10:54
Laughter.
00:10:56
How could you relate your poetry to your fiction? Are they connected to the whole world?
00:11:16
You know, they are. I mean, I realized I was reading in Chicago a couple of nights ago and I decided, you know, I was going to read from the new book and read some of the section from my young husband. And I was thinking, well, you know, I'm going to go back and read some love poems from Her Blue Body, Everything We Know to just show people, you know, to be able to talk about love, you know. And I went back and I realized that I had written many poems while I was actually in all those conditions I described later in the book, you know, in the memoir. And they were in poetry. You know, the depression. I mean, there's a poem that goes, your soul shines like the side of a fish. Come live in me again. Each day I walk along the edges of the tall rocks. Something like that. That was out of the deepest depression. I mean, it was just trying to live in that environment.
00:12:29
At what point in your life is that what you're talking about?
00:12:34
In Mississippi. Yeah, sorry.
00:12:37
Okay.
00:12:38
So, yes, I mean, they, I was, and I was telling this audience that the poetry often comes first and it sends the signal. It's like a little flag that says, you know, this is a place that has, who knows what it has, but, you know, it's a place to be marked. And I was surprised to see how, you know, even when I thought I was, quote, just writing poetry, I was also marking these places that needed to be looked at more.
00:13:16
Okay. When you're writing a novel or a story, do you stop writing poetry?
00:13:28
Hmm. Well, you know, you can't really do that. I mean, it's, I mean, I can't. Because of all of them, poetry is the most free. I mean, it just chooses its own time. And I just hope I'm there to get it. So sometimes, but you know, less, yes, less. That doesn't happen as much when I'm writing a novel. Because I'm really so present for what's happening in the novel, you know. Although sometimes the characters write poetry. See?
00:14:12
Which is also your poetry.
00:14:14
Right. It sneaks in because it's there.
00:14:32
What did you talk about in Rosie O'Donnell's show today?
00:14:45
It went so fast. Oh, she loved the Mae West quote.
00:14:53
I was going to ask about that.
00:14:55
And I said to her, well, you know, I love large women with attitude.
00:15:00
So she's at, here, here.
00:15:03
She gave you a hug, right?
00:15:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:15:06
I was kind of surprised what Mae West was doing there.
00:15:09
Oh, don't you love Mae West?
00:15:10
Yeah, I've come to like her.
00:15:11
I do. I think she's great. And I love her especially for these one-liners, you know.
00:15:21
And anyway, I was saying to Rosie that, you know, it's so easy to get trapped in your reputation. And you have to really learn how to step out of it. And I said, for instance, you know, there are many people who have the reputation for always looking young. And then they clutch that. And by the time they're 90, they're still trying to look, you know, 30 or 20 or whatever. And it's just so obvious that it's a trap. It's a trap. And it makes you miss then all of the other stages, you know, which are just as amazing as the young stage, you know, really. The thing about the Mae West quote is I thought of it as kind of like a cultural signpost. And then also the reference to Mary Tyler Moore several times as you were watching Mary Tyler Moore's show.
00:16:19
I thought that was kind of interesting and unusual.
00:16:22
And then there was a reference to the movie The Bridges of Madison County where she said you love her.
00:16:28
I didn't love it the second time.
00:16:31
That's impossible. Mary Tyler Moore maybe.
00:16:34
Oh yeah, no, I like Mary Tyler Moore. But, you know, that was all we had. That's it. There wasn't a lot of diversion in Mississippi.
00:16:47
Well, there were books.
00:16:49
I read them.
00:16:51
What did you read?
00:16:53
Oh God, everything. I mean, I guess my favorite writer of all time is Tolstoy. And I read him wherever I was, certainly in Mississippi. And it was there that I started really discovering and reading a lot of black writers. A lot of black writers, African American writers. When I was there I was reading, I discovered Their Eyes Were Watching God. And Kane by Jean Toomer. Kane, C-A-N-E, Kane. And, I don't know, we were big readers. Both of us.
00:17:38
Oh yeah, I mean I, when I was a, why? You'd have to ask Howard Zinn. When I was a student at Spelman, right after my freshman year I went to Russia. And I was so innocent I didn't really know hardly what was going on. So when I came back I took this course with Howard Zinn who was teaching Russian literature and language. Not that he spoke it really, but he had a few words and he very generously taught them to us. I don't know, I mean I used to think that Russian writers would just... I mean what they could do is just almost unbelievable. You know, I mean in creating worlds, societies, human anguish, passion. And Tolstoy is just a master. He's a master at all of this. So, you know, I was reading him very early, is my point, and loving him very early.
00:18:56
Well I guess the surprise is that his book seems so different from yours.
00:19:04
Yeah.
00:19:06
In fact I couldn't think of almost anything more, well I think it was something more. Is there a connection at all? I mean, how do you put towards the land, the people, and the land that connects you?
00:19:21
Well, I think the thing is I really fell in love with Tolstoy himself in the same way that I love my grandfather. They were so much alike. Which is again ironic because he was Count Tolstoy, my grandfather was a poor farmer. But in terms of how they grew, they're very similar. Tolstoy was really a rogue and a devil when he was young. And in fact, you know, one of the sadder things about him is that he raped some of the Serbs, the women who lived on basically his plantation. I mean, and he was just a dissolute, irresponsible, head of a person as a young man. And then he started seeing how it all goes, what life is. And he grew and grew and grew until he became this old man who didn't want to own anything, you know, didn't want to be married.
00:20:38
And died alone?
00:20:40
No, I'm not finished.
00:20:42
And died alone?
00:20:44
And died alone, trying to get away, you know.
00:20:48
Run away from home.
00:20:50
Yeah, actually I see that though as, did you know that when people are dying they often try to run away? I mean that they often say, I gotta get out, and they try to go out.
00:21:01
Haven't thought about it.
00:21:03
They do.
00:21:04
I mean I've been kind of getting very interested in dying and death and how we can be as a society more, you know, human about it, really.
00:21:16
Human what? Human.
00:21:18
Human, you know, which is to say people shouldn't die by themselves unless they just insist, you know, that there should be a community. I mean I'm really getting more interested in hospice work and things like that. Anyway, so, I feel like his, you know, he had enough strength to leave home, get out there, and get on the railway station. And that that was actually part of his dying. He was trying to get out, he was trying to leave. It's lovely.
00:21:54
Anyway, I love him because he could see that he was the whole spectrum, you know. And he was able to write about the whole spectrum from the point of view of someone who had done some really despicable things. Maybe I just like rascals.
00:22:42
And your grandfather was a storyteller too.
00:22:45
My father also.
00:22:48
It runs in the family?
00:22:49
I think so, yeah.
00:22:55
How do you figure that? Is this partly a substitute for other entertainment?
00:22:59
No television.
00:23:02
What about radio though in the early days?
00:23:05
Yeah, but we didn't have much radio. I don't think we even had a radio for years and years. And no television, which was such a blessing.
00:23:15
Oh, I'm so glad. It's interesting though, you know, I was in the Amazon in May. I've been studying plant medicines.
00:23:27
You were in the Amazon?
00:23:28
The Amazon.
00:23:29
Not Amazon.com, the Amazon.
00:23:30
The Amazon, yeah, yeah. I have all bites everywhere.
00:23:36
What were you doing?
00:23:37
I was studying plant medicines and entheogens. These are medicines that change your consciousness. It's like peyote. But this particular one is called ayahuasca. It's a plant that is a teaching plant, and it's been used by indigenous people in the Amazon for everything. I mean, they use it for psychological healing, for physical healing, for everything.
00:24:05
What were you there for?
00:24:08
To study it.
00:24:09
Just to study it?
00:24:10
You know, studying with a shaman who uses it is his work. What it does is it makes you have visions. So you have these incredible visions, and it's very much like being taught by a person. I mean, it's a remarkable, incredible, unbelievable transformation. Anyway, so my point is though that the people refer to this, the visions that you have, as the television of the jungle.
00:24:46
You don't have to plug it in or anything.
00:24:47
Isn't that great? I mean, it's true. I mean, there you sit, and even if your eyes are wide open, you only see your internal vision.
00:24:57
What kind of vision did you have? Can you describe it?
00:25:01
Oh, I can't. I can't. I mean, I will one day maybe, but I can't. It's partly because it's a... Well, you know, what I'm learning is that the indigenous take on everything is just so different from the Western thought. For instance, one of my favorite books is Black Elk Speaks, you know, that book. And in there, Black Elk talks about this vision that he had, you know, that everybody, they had a whole part of their culture revolved around people having visions and being guided by them. So he had this great vision, and it actually foretold, you know, the destruction of his people and all of that. But what I got from that was the other thing that he said, which is that when you are given a vision, and it's not great in terms of, you know, bigger than anybody else's, it's your great. I mean, it's like, you know, even if it's this big, it's a little bigger than, you know, so your little great vision. You have to act it out. You have to create it so that people can see it and use it. And that's how you keep it going. You can't keep it for yourself. So, I don't know the form that my vision needs to be shared.
00:26:47
And these drugs might be used for medicinal purposes?
00:26:50
They are. They are. Always. Yeah. Because they're so hard. They taste so horrible. They make you vomit so much.
00:27:00
They better do some good for you.
00:27:04
You couldn't be recreational if you tried, believe me.
00:27:13
Have you been to the Amazon before?
00:27:15
No. And I probably will never go again. It was a very difficult trip. But now I have so much empathy. I used to just really not have much feeling for the people who settle in the Amazon, you know, because they're usually poor people driven out of the cities and they farm. They cut down the forest and they make these little farms and they don't last. I mean, you just see mile after mile after mile after mile of desolation. And having been in the actual Amazon, in the forest, my heart is so moved by the thought of these people coming out of the cities being given, you know, let's say 20 acres of land to clear with a machete. And they have to try to, you know, grow bananas. Because it is just like, have you been in the rain forest? Oh, it's just like, whew. I mean, I was in it. And it's never quiet. It's never quiet. And at night the frogs are so loud, it's like you're living right by a train station.
00:28:42
I never thought of that.
00:28:49
Do you tend to write about it at all?
00:28:51
What?
00:28:52
Do you intend to write about your trip?
00:28:53
No. In a way, it feels so good to keep things for myself.
00:28:59
I just read the piece that you wrote for the Times about meditation.
00:29:03
Oh.
00:29:04
It came the other day. I was very impressed.
00:29:06
You meditate?
00:29:07
No.
00:29:08
We probably shouldn't talk about that because we're going to go a separate way, but it was in the point of interest of you.
00:29:13
Should I meditate?
00:29:14
Yes. Definitely.
00:29:17
What would it do for me?
00:29:18
Oh.
00:29:33
How often do you meditate?
00:29:36
I'm looking at the...
00:29:38
Oh, I see.
00:29:41
I'm looking at the liveliness of your eyes. And I think it would do a lot. Because... I mean, you're obviously really alive anyway. But meditation sort of fuels that. It helps it to really, you know, stay steady. And it gives you a little time each day to duck out so you can recharge that. So I recommend it. Tell them Alice sent you.
00:30:23
Exercise doesn't work the same way, does it?
00:30:25
No. No. Nothing does. And actually, I'm so interested in talking about meditation at every opportunity because you know, violence and drugs are both, in my opinion, really obsolete. I mean, they're just obsolete. I mean, they don't go anywhere. And they cost money and they cost...
00:30:51
Can't get rid of them.
00:30:52
I mean, they're just, you know... But meditation is totally just you and your breath. And unless people start charging you for breathing, you can always afford it. So I really... It's just such an amazing gift that we've gotten from India, basically, in a way. India and Asia.
00:31:17
Do you hate anyone?
00:31:19
No. Nobody.
00:31:22
Quickly, just like that? No.
00:31:23
No, I know I don't.
00:31:24
You don't?
00:31:25
Do you?
00:31:26
Oh, sure.
00:31:27
Really?
00:31:28
Yeah.
00:31:29
Really?
00:31:30
In varying degrees.
00:31:31
Why?
00:31:34
Well, on two levels. People on a level of, say, Adolf Hitler, and people in my personal life who have done injustices to me or people who are close to me.
00:31:47
What was the last?
00:31:48
People in my life who have done injustices of one sort or another to me or people who are close to me. And maybe it's not really hate, but it's pretty close to it.
00:31:57
Yeah.
00:31:58
And you don't forget.
00:31:59
Yeah, I understand.
00:32:00
You think about it all the time, but you don't forget.
00:32:01
I know.
00:32:02
It's interesting. You said right away.
00:32:04
I know I don't. No, no, no.
00:32:06
Have you always felt that way?
00:32:07
Maybe so.
00:32:08
No, I think I...
00:32:09
Not when you were in Mississippi. No.
00:32:11
I think I've hated people. I think I have. But, you see, I can't really remember who. I mean, it's... I just…
00:32:17
One of the more interesting political things the world, I think, was the... What happened in South Africa when they allowed all these terrible criminals to come out. If they confessed, and if they truly confessed, and they can measure the truth in a confession, they were given amnesty. But wait a minute.
00:32:39
I know. I know. And I don't think it's going to work that well either.
00:32:44
Well, I don't think it will. And how do you know what they really are?
00:32:47
Yeah. I mean, it's too deep. It really is too deep. I mean, but that's not to say the people can't, you know, evolve beyond their hatred.
00:33:01
Some can.
00:33:03
Yeah. And I… I want them not to hate. Because... You know, when I saw that film, did you see that film about the... In South Africa, you know, about the tribunals? I mean, it's called Hard Days, Night into Day. It's about the... What do you call it?
00:33:40
Amnesty trials.
00:33:41
Yeah, right. Okay. So I went to see this film because, you know, I felt like Tutu, Desmond Tutu, understood what he was talking about. And he had the spiritual maturity to pull it off himself.
00:33:58
Okay.
00:34:00
But all those other people don't have that. And they haven't had the practice. You have to practice. You have to really practice. So I went to see this film and sure enough, you know, there are these people in all stages of grief, you know, pain and everything. And so, okay, so there are these people who kill people. And they've done awful things. They've, you know, beaten up people. They put, you know, black people in vans and naked and freezing and driven 700 miles until they die, you know, just from being beaten and being bounced up and down.
00:34:38
You know, just... There's a scene of the people who had shot and killed some people because they were inspired by Mississippi Burning, you know, the civil rights workers who were killed. They saw that movie. They decided they wanted to do that. However... They're pathetic. I mean, that's the answer. I mean, you know, I mean, I just can't hate people who just don't have a clue. There is no happiness in being that way, the way that they are. I mean, they will be miserable as long as they act like that. And I can't hate them. It's like seeing somebody who's just, I don't know, mangled physically. I couldn't hate them because they're mangled. And it's an emotional mangling.
00:35:33
Even those people who never fully recognized what they did?
00:35:38
Especially those... Especially. Also Mel, you know what? I know in this culture people think that this is the only lifetime we are here. I don't think so.
00:35:58
You don't think so? You're telling me something. It's my only lifetime.
00:36:05
Well, it's your only lifetime as you.
00:36:08
You're coming back?
00:36:10
I don't think we ever go anywhere.
00:36:13
What happens after we die?
00:36:17
What?
00:36:18
What happens after we die?
00:36:21
Who knows? I mean, I'm not saying I know a thing about what really happens, but I just think... Well, that line from Voltaire, you know, where he says that people always, you know, talk about how weird it would be if you come back more than once. It's pretty weird that you come here once.
00:36:42
It sure is. We don't know how, why, or when.
00:36:47
So I think because we now understand about recycling, you know, like, this could be the tears of Mary, of Jesus' mother, you know. This could be her... This could be, as they say, Cleopatra's bathwater. Because it's all, you know…
00:37:10
Don't drink it.
00:37:12
But I just have this feeling that there is a kind of recycling that happens to everything, and that nothing really goes anywhere. So therefore, you know, people are working out different things, and, you know, I just... I don't know. I feel lighter, not carrying hatred.
00:37:47
But you still want to live the life you have to the fullest, don't you?
00:37:50
Hmm?
00:37:51
You still want to live the life that you have to the fullest, don't you?
00:37:54
Oh, yeah.
00:37:55
Yeah.
00:37:56
And I do.
00:37:57
Yeah. And I, you know, I never thought I'd reach this age. I mean, I thought I would be dead by 30, either from suicide or assassination or homicide or, you know, something. So, the last 26 years have felt like, you know, just a miracle.
00:38:34
When you were a kid, did you have any idea about what you...
00:38:40
I mean, I know you were writing very early. I guess you had any idea that you would do what you're doing now?
00:38:46
No. None. Nobody knew anything about, you know, writers. I thought I might be a scientist or play the piano or something or sing.
00:39:00
Do you sing?
00:39:02
To my dog. But I'm thinking about singing. Because you know what I think? I think that we should be singing more. I think that the way that people now feel that singing is all about making a CD.
00:39:21
You've got to make your CD.
00:39:24
No, singing has to be about singing. And I love Mexico. I go there a lot. One of the things I love is that people still sing. I mean, they're just walking along, you know, doing what they do. And every once in a while, somebody will just start singing. So, I'm thinking maybe I'll join a chorus or something, you know, and I'll sing.
00:39:52
You live in California?
00:39:54
In Berkeley.
00:39:55
In Berkeley?
00:39:56
Yeah. If I start singing, I mean... Yeah, who would care? I mean, you know, I could sing. I feel very at home there is what I'm saying. I'm just really very happy about that. Having lived in the South and New York, this is home now. Yes.
00:40:23
Where's your daughter now?
00:40:25
In Berkeley.
00:40:26
Yeah, she's moved there. I like having her near. So, where do you live? You still live in that house that was almost…
00:40:40
We moved one block away to 10th Street. We've been there for many years now.
00:40:45
So, this is your neighborhood?
00:40:46
I just moved off the curb around 11th or 10th. I've always been there. I was fascinated by the fact that in our house many years ago, there was a time when Jane and Paul Bowles both lived there on different floors.
00:41:01
Really?
00:41:02
And Dashiell Hammett lived downstairs at the same time. Many years later, Marcel Duchamp lived there. So, it was just filled with sort of echoes of artists who lived there. It's true of the whole neighborhood, in fact.
00:41:12
Great.
00:41:14
You feel it sometimes.
00:41:15
Good. Yeah. And when you go out to be in the country, where do you go?
00:41:21
We have a house in Maine on an island, but it's so far away we only go there maybe twice a year. We were just up there at that school, you know, for a week.
00:41:29
Very, very important.
00:41:31
But there are no electric lights, just gas lights.
00:41:33
Good. Wonderful. Perfect.
00:41:36
What about you? Where do you go?
00:41:38
Mendocino, which is...
00:41:39
Where do you live?
00:41:40
Well, it's about three hours north of San Francisco. And I live up in the hills. And when I bought the land, there was just a falling down little shack, and I pulled it up on its foundation, and that became my studio. And then later I built a house. And I garden, and I grow lots of things to eat. And I'm never happier than when I'm there after about ten days. After ten days of seeing almost nobody, just me and my dog. It seems to me that I'm clearer, I mean, just really clearer in myself, and much more able to work on something, you know, than I am in any other location. And I also dream really well there. Do you dream well in Maine?
00:42:48
Sometimes, yeah.
00:42:50
Good.
00:42:52
Got the fog horn going outside usually.
00:42:59
Do you still write long hand?
00:43:02
You know what, I have to confess, after fighting the laptop, I finally gave up.
00:43:12
And you use a computer?
00:43:13
Yes.
00:43:15
I think you have to, I don't know.
00:43:18
But you know what I also like? I like it that you can make the print bigger. Because, you know, now you really need to, you can make the print bigger and you can make it darker, so it's easier to read, and I really like that.
00:43:35
Move things around.
00:43:37
Move things around, yeah. I was really attached to those legal pads, though. That was another wonderful thing about my marriage, that my husband was a lawyer, he's still a lawyer, I mean, he's not my husband, but he's a lawyer. And he would give me those pads, and nice long ones.
00:44:08
Today I own large, beautiful houses.
00:44:10
Yes.
00:44:12
And I was in a lot of compensation for the shacks in which I was raised.
00:44:16
Yes. I finally got that. I was saying, why do I have all these big old beautiful houses? And I felt guilty. And because I felt guilty, I kept inviting people to live in various parts, and that didn't work too well. So, now I know. And so I put one of them on the market. You need a nice house in Mexico, I got the perfect house for you.
00:44:42
Mexico.
00:44:45
Really beautiful.
00:44:52
When your mother was dying, she said, you're a little mess, ain't you? Still not quite clear what she meant, what you thought she meant by that.
00:45:04
Well, for one thing, it meant she was seeing me for the first time. The real me. Not the really super good girl. Because I have always been so polite and respectful.
00:45:22
You were the youngest, huh?
00:45:24
Youngest, yes. It was hard, I think, for my mother to ever, and because she wasn't an intellectual, it was hard for her to see that I was also subversive and rebellious. Because I could do it in such a way that she could miss it. You know what I mean? And I think on her deathbed, she got it. That all these years, she'd been dealing with someone who was who very much had her own mind, was loving of her and respectful, very much so, but not about to be led into any kind of backwardness. Out of that love. And by backwardness, I am referring to the love of the world. I am referring to her fundamentalism, which, you know, if I had continued to be the quote good girl that she thought she had, I would have, you know, gone, listened more to that message. I wasn't going to.
00:46:52
So, in a sense, the word master is a positive side to that.
00:46:55
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It means incorrigible. It's like you're going to actually live your life. Yes, mama. Exactly. You're going to have a nap later.
00:47:28
I sort of remembered, and I think this is before, when Whoopi Goldberg first did her show in New York, in my review of the play at the Times, I said that she should be in The Color Purple. This is very old-time. I remembered about a couple of years ago she did it.
Alice Walker Interview, 12 October 2000 - C_4002_01_01_acc_20191119 - C_4002_01_01_acc_20191119
00:00:00
That's great because someone did tell me, you know, I never heard of Whoopi Goldberg and this friend of Robert's when I was with Robert said to him and to me, you know, that there's this wonderful woman at the Rose Theater, you should go and see her, you know, because he knew we were looking down and I loved her immediately. So, you know, he could very well have read this and thought, you know. At the same time, I'm not sure if it was before or after San Francisco, but she did do these various monologues at that point. I guess I just read the book at the same time.
00:00:46
It is. I agree. Yeah.
00:00:48
So, much of my work has been about encountering what is absolutely taboo, not just wife beating and child molestation, but genital mutilation, interracial level, all of that. It's been very exciting to write about what hasn't been written and to understand that by doing that you are making a mirror for people. That's what you said. And I remember also a couple of years ago, I had an idea for a book called The Book of Life. It was a book that I wrote and I had a panel discussion with some women's theater group of women playwrights. And the question I raised to all the women was Suzanne Laurie Parks in Wendy, Washington, and others. I said, are there any subjects that are taboo for you as writers? Right.
00:01:34
Right
00:01:34
And Suzanne Laurie spoke up right away. She said, any time that I hear that a subject is taboo, she said, that's what I want to write about. Yes. And I thought, in a sense, that's almost what you were saying.
00:01:45
The great nature of the controversy over it makes you want to write about it. Is that your follow up?
00:01:53
Well, it's about liberation for me. It's about seeing an area in which people are not free and having such a strong instinct for freedom and wanting people to have it, that it's almost unbearable to know that somebody is not having at least the possibility.
00:02:11
So, yeah. And then if you add to that, that there are subjects that are literally taboo. I mean, they kill people in some countries who even talk about female genital mutilation.
00:02:28
And, for instance, did you know the first woman, black woman, the African woman in South Africa, who publicly declared that she had AIDS, was stoned to death by her community? See, I mean, so something like that, when you hear something like that, you think, my God, you cannot then let all the rest of the women in this country think that if they say they're sick, they're going to be stoned to death. You cannot. So immediately, that would, you know, however, I mean, I didn't have to because there are all these other people now who are just as shocked, just as upset, and in fact, you know, they re-educated the people in the community, and they've had a big education campaign in South Africa, and they now consider this woman, you know, a kind of hero because she did have the courage. I mean, she'd been infected by her husband. And then, you know, to gather her courage and say for the first AIDS Awareness Day they had, and to be stoned, I mean, isn't it just?
00:03:45
Is that the sort of thing that you might want to write about?
00:03:51
Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, you know, I feel, you know, it's just, it's just that, you know, I really do get it that I've been given something really precious, and I have to wait. I have to wait until I really know, you know, that it's time to use it. I can't just, and when it's clear that this is for me to do, then I, you know, I can act. And see, this is what meditation does for you. It makes you able to wait. Also, there's a danger, I suppose, in people wanting to use you. I think of that anecdote about, was it Ford? Which butcher used your picture? People try all kinds of things.
00:05:04
What are the things that come across?
00:05:07
Well, the most painful one, actually, is just the people who want me to endorse books, I mean, and blurb things. And I do a lot of them because they are very, you know, necessary and important, but sometimes I feel it's just too much. I mean, I can't read all the books. I can't see all the films. I can't, you know, I can't respond to all the requests for, you know, whatever. And I actually had to change my assistant from a woman who was completely accommodating, tried to be, you know, at my expense, to one who was able to just say, well, no, she can't do that. Because, as you know, the need is great, I mean, you know, for the change that we need to have happen. And when people feel like you can help it, I mean, you know, and you can't blame them for wanting you to help, but there's just so much of me or you or, you know, whoever. But it's also meaningful to those writers, for example, that you would, you know, in the same way with Oprah when she does put a book on her program, it automatically changes lives.
00:06:33
Exactly, yeah. I have such admiration for her. You know, I don't watch television, but, you know, you don't have to. She's such a force, you know. You can't miss her.
00:06:46
I mean, you can't miss her. And her impact has been, I think, really incredibly positive and, you know, miraculous. I mean, here she is, this woman from Mississippi, and, you know, I'm just amazed.
00:07:03
Are you walking on a book tour? Is this a book tour?
00:07:09
This is. I go to, I do a Barnes and Noble reading tonight, and then I go to Boston, and then I go home for the weekend, and then I go up to Seattle and Portland, L.A., another weekend at home, and then I go to the south.
00:07:27
What are you going to read today?
00:07:30
I don't know. I just got to wait until I get there and I feel how it feels, and then I'll know. Another thing meditation does, it makes you in the moment. You trust the moment.
00:07:45
That's a good lesson. Can you always trust the moment?
00:07:49
Well, it's the only thing you have.
00:07:51
Yeah.
00:07:55
I mean, someone might stand up and ask, you know, a very offensive question or something.
00:07:58
Oh, they have. Believe me. Doesn't matter.
00:08:03
You don't respond with meditation, do you?
00:08:06
I respond with whatever is in the moment for me, and sometimes they're shocked. And sometimes so am I.
00:08:13
Tell me something. Why pretend? Do you point to any of the incidents?
00:08:17
Oh, God. My memory's not that good. But it's just that, um.
00:08:23
Dessert if you prefer. We have cappuccinos, espresso, lattes, regular decaf coffins.
00:08:29
One special dessert.
00:08:31
I don't think so. Not for me.
00:08:32
They're very good if you like dessert.
00:08:33
The dessert special today is like espresso creme brulee with sambuco whipped cream with a fast-fry cookie. Coffee or tea?
00:08:45
Coffee or tea?
00:08:46
You're going to have anything?
00:08:47
I'll have coffee.
00:08:48
Okay, I'll have tea. Do you have herbal tea?
00:08:50
Peppermint and chamomile.
00:08:51
Good. Chamomile.
00:09:08
Anyway, can you think of an incident?
00:09:10
Oh. Worst incident. Oh.
00:09:21
Do you have any information about the incident?
00:09:26
Oh. I can't really. I mean, there's so many, you know, that seem borderline. But not so much anymore.
00:09:34
I mean, I think when people would get up and, you know, try to tell me that I should not have made a movie of The Color Purple, or that I should not be involved in trying to stop FGM. But the funny thing is that, you know, when you feel like you're living your life as close to the way, you know, you have to, I mean, just because of your own spirit, and you answer out of that, it takes away the sting of the hostility. I mean, in other words, my point is always that, you know, I am just being. And this is what you get. And there's nothing I can do about it. And you're free to not like it.
00:10:37
Well, what about the people out there, including critics, who would say, why didn't you write another Color Purple?
00:10:47
Oh, good grief. Why? That's like saying, why don't you have another child? One is plenty. Really.
00:10:57
You haven't been happy with your critics at all, have you?
00:11:02
I have not had really good ones, generally. I mean, I feel like most of what they say is so superficial and boring, and it's not about what I'm writing about. And so often I have to say I don't read them. I mean, because it's as if they're writing about somebody else. When I have had good critics, I've enjoyed them. I mean, I remember there was a woman, Deborah McDowell, that I liked a lot, because she would, her criticism was very thoughtful. She sort of had a holistic view and knew some of the history. But you know, I feel the honest truth is that I don't think critics can help me. I really don't. I mean, I feel like I'm really doing the best I can do with what I see my job here to be. I mean, I really am. And I'm doing it in the way that, I have to say it this way, that my ancestors really like. And that they're tougher on me than critics are. Much.
00:12:36
You mean my Aunt Sally?
00:12:38
Yeah.
00:12:39
Whoever she is in this story. I don't mean that even, because she was alive when she said that. But I mean that I feel very much accountable to literal ancestors. I mean, people who have been dead for the hour long, they've been dead. And that to maintain the connection that I feel with them, you know, I have to maintain a certain level of, I don't know, commitment, fidelity, truth. And beside that, the criticism is just so sometimes beside the point, I mean, really.
00:13:52
Not to mention how painful it is to realize that you just almost completely misunderstood.
00:13:58
Well, that's the worst I would say.
00:14:00
It's very hard. I mean, when I learned that there were people who actually read The Color Purple and thought I hated anybody.
00:14:11
Especially men, especially black women.
00:14:13
It was so difficult. I couldn't understand how they could feel that way. I really...
00:14:21
And also the implication of that was, you know, difficult because, and I've seen this lived out. I feel that because of that criticism, I have been cut off from a generation of young black men. And I think this is a tragedy because reading me could have helped them. And I know it. So it's very painful. You know, because they've been really taught and indoctrinated that, you know, I hate them and that's all there is to it. And why read somebody who hates you and da da da da da da. And so it's only been in the last, you know, I guess five or six years that that has really changed. And I'm getting a connection to, you know, young black men who read for themselves and think for themselves. And are not so swayed by the older men who are more threatened.
00:15:41
Well, that's a good sign.
00:15:42
It is. Yeah. Also, I think because I've been really involved in the Mumia Abu Jamal case, been trying to get him out and, you know, so young black men who are politicized around that issue, you know, actually get to see me, you know, being active and understanding of that situation. And so it's helpful.
00:16:29
Did you watch the debate last night?
00:16:31
No, I was in the. I did something and then I went out to eat. So we missed it. Do you see it? Yes.
00:16:42
Yes.
00:16:42
It was just brought to mind one moment in which something said about that that man who was his name was dragged to his death in Texas. The subject was brought up and Bush said with kind of a sort of a kind of a silly grin on his face. He said, well, he said, we're going to kill it. We're going to kill the three people who killed him. And big smile on his face like, you know, he's a madman.
00:17:05
He is. He's a madman.
00:17:07
What a response. You know, he killed somebody every two weeks. I mean, I was reading that somewhere.
00:17:11
That's the point. He's going to kill three more. Actually, only two out of three had it wrong.
00:17:15
But he would do it with a sort of like a we got him.
00:17:19
Yeah, no, no, that's really terrible.
00:17:23
Yeah, I'm really I would like Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be on the you know, to be heard.
00:17:38
You know, I think it's just absurd that we get to listen to these two people as if they're the only people to listen to.
00:17:44
They're not. Believe me. What's the interesting point?
00:17:47
If Nader was actually on that debate, I mean, he would. I mean, he never has a chance, of course, but he was like, pick up.
00:17:53
Imagine what it would be like just to have ideas that are different and views that are different.
00:17:58
Or a program. Exactly. And we're desperate for it. I mean, I mean, we deserve better. We deserve, you know, to hear all kinds of views. I mean, we're very varied as a country.
00:18:12
Why?
00:18:17
And I have to say, you know, I'm so I'm so moved by the fact that Nader just keeps going and he just keeps plugging away.
00:18:30
You know, the only future. There's no, you know, nothing there for him in a sense. But, you know, there is and it's for him and it's for all of us is to see that there is someone who represents us, because just as he's not permitted to speak in that forum, we aren't.
00:18:53
You know, and he makes us really see that. And that's really good.
00:19:00
All those people who really think we're living in a democracy.
00:19:05
I just wish Gore were a better person.
00:19:11
I know.
00:19:11
Sometimes I like him. You know, I mean, there's a way in which he's he can be very.
00:19:20
I'm sorry. I just I wanted to tell you that your story to hell with dying. I had a serious. I read it a hundred times.
00:19:33
You are so welcome.
00:19:35
I had a Mr. Sweet in my life. Bless you.
00:19:43
That all the time. I do. I get it often. I'm so glad. I love to see.
00:19:47
I know I even feel like I can identify maybe it's just because they come up to me.
00:19:52
But sometimes I feel I can tell the people who read my work because they seem a little freer. You know, they seem a little less burdened by, you know, the crap from. And I like that. I like that.
00:20:42
My son.
00:20:45
More.
00:20:52
This is a very interesting interview that you did with the woman I know, Eleanor Wachtell from the Canadian Broadcasting Company.
00:20:59
Did a telephone.
00:21:03
A couple of things. One was referred to your advantageous heritage, which we probably pretty much talked about. Sometimes you think that struggles about identity will never will never end. That was that. Do you mean that on a personal level as well as a.
00:21:26
I guess what I mean is that many people are unable to face their identity, and especially as it changes, it's not fixed. It changes. And so you you're you're asked to continually sort of reassess what it is.
00:21:43
Could you describe yourself now?
00:21:53
Well, a few of the things I know about myself is that I have a tri-racial. Tri-racial. Tri-racial. Black, white, Indian.
00:21:57
Yeah. African-American, Native American and Euro.
00:22:03
You know, the Scotch Irish part.
00:22:09
Probably tri-spiritual as well.
00:22:13
You know, I was raised as a Christian and, you know, now I love Buddhism and I love Earth religion.
00:22:26
You weren't Jewish when you were married to a Jewish man.
00:22:30
No.
00:22:31
No. That would have made it quad right.
00:22:34
That would have made it quite right. Exactly. And I also love both women and men and trees.
00:22:41
So that's three trees. They're all three. You can always hug a tree.
00:22:47
So and that's always changing. I mean, it's always it's always getting more. It's always, you know, it's very fluid.
00:22:57
And I think one of the reasons I love Buddhism is because one of its primary observations is that there is no self.
00:23:05
I mean, you know, that is just so we're all made up. We think there's a self. But if we sit long enough, another thing that meditation helps you with, you see that, you know, what you think of as yourself is always changing. It's always, you know, it's here and then it's not here. So that's what I meant. You know, just that, you know, the way other people see you, the way they need to classify you. People unfortunately just get stuck there trying to pin down something that's really always moving.
00:23:39
And always will move.
00:23:43
Yes, hopefully.
00:23:43
Because I find with myself that I love I love watching myself change. I love seeing that there's all there's more here. There's a bigger room to move into. There's and I don't know about you, but, you know, your dreams often will tell you that you're about to move into a bigger area. You know, in your what you can hold psychically and in your consciousness because you will start to dream about houses. And you'll be in a house and suddenly you'll go to through a door and there'll be a couple of rooms you never knew you had in your house.
00:24:23
Has this ever happened to you?
00:24:26
Yeah, as a matter of fact. And I wake up and I wonder where was that house?
00:24:34
You are the house. You are the house.
00:24:39
And some whole other area. Is this Freud?
00:24:54
No, this is just this is just paying a lot of attention to your growth. And understanding how your dreams are totally about you know what's going on.
00:25:04
I'll think on that.
00:25:08
Yeah, it's true.
00:25:22
But houses is not just because you want to get rid of our deadbeat tenant who doesn't pay any rent.
00:25:27
That's not what I dream about.
00:25:32
But houses is not because you want to get rid of a deadbeat tenant who pays nothing or hardly anything in rent.
00:25:38
You mean that's what you have literally literally.
00:25:41
So you think that you said you were dreaming about the house that dream about a house somewhat emptied house.
00:25:47
Well that's interesting. It's possible. It's possible. It's probably more personal. I think you're probably right. You never know.
00:26:12
Are you reading anything now? Any book at all recently?
00:26:21
Oh yeah. I'm always reading something. You know what the most wonderful book is by my Dharma teacher Jack Kornfield. And it's called After the Ecstasy the Laundry. It's wonderful.
00:27:07
Your ex-husband has read the book.
00:27:10
Oh yes. I've sent it before I would publish it of course.
00:27:13
What did he say?
00:27:15
He loved it. Poor thing. Oh I say that because you know he's just a dear person. It just ended. It just ended I say. That's all. Well you know it ended and then the friendship ended. And that's the hard part. And I think it was just too much on his part to maintain. I don't think he knew how. I don't think. I mean it didn't seem. You know when we were married his mother sat Shiva.
00:27:57
I don't know if that's in the notes but there seems to be more of a tolerance for just trying to cut things off.
00:28:08
And it doesn't work well. You know I mean it just doesn't. I think for him. I mean he is he he thought that emotionally it would be better and probably less painful or whatever. But I think after 20 years there is a sense that we both have of loss. You know because there there's nobody else on earth. That we can talk to about certain things that happened during the time that we were together there. Nobody.
00:29:01
Except you could talk about it in your writing in some way. Well you know I could. But you know what. When you don't have somebody who that you talk to that remembers. So you just kind of. You know it loses something even even in the writing. I mean I have written a lot and I think he he tends to he really love the folk language in Mississippi. He started talking like we used to see that we said well you actually sound more like a cracker. But he would you know he would talk the talk. And I think that was his way of trying to remember.
00:29:45
How was your time at Sarah Lawrence.
00:29:49
Well it was mixed. It was great for my writing because people understood what writing was. I loved you know my teachers. But it was extremely lonely. And I was you know probably the poorest student they'd ever had at the school. That was hard.
00:30:46
But you're saying I'm OK.
00:30:58
You are.
00:31:28
Ten eleven.
00:31:47
I had a book out last year a biography of Edward Albee.
00:31:50
Really. What's it called.
00:31:53
Edward Albee a singular journey. Simon Schuster wrote it.
00:31:56
You have a copy. I don't have with me.
00:31:59
I've done a number of books. That was the last one. Got very good reviews except in the New York Times.
00:32:06
Oh really.
00:32:06
Oh I was down in the country.
00:32:11
It's been a long time. Three and a half years on.
00:32:16
So what did you think after three years.
00:32:22
Well I began by liking his work and just found out so much more about his life. Among the playwrights incredibly interesting. And as in the title of Singular Life a singular journey a very lonely life in many ways. Adopted the age of two weeks and brought up by a very rich couple in Westchester and never never tracked down his natural parents. And so much of his work comes out of the life that he led up there in Westchester with his family.
00:32:45
Had no understanding of all at all. You know who he was and what he was what he wanted to write.
00:32:50
Gosh I had no idea but I dealt pretty deeply into it. It was not authorized but he was very cooperative. I've known him a long time. We talked just endlessly about his alcoholism. Just everything he wants.
00:33:05
Wow.
00:33:08
Imagine being that mind and that spirit in a house. In a house that nobody knew. That nobody knew what they had.
00:33:19
Well did they know what they had with you?
00:33:23
No. Come to think of it. No.
00:33:26
Maybe every artist is a singular journey. I think so. I think so.
00:33:32
Thanks a lot. Thank you. I appreciate it.
00:33:35
Well I will find that. I would like to read it. Because I found his work is very strange. Some of it is really wonderful and some of it I just am puzzled by. Some of it is puzzling. But also as I do point out in the book that almost all of it comes right out of his life.
00:33:51
Yes.
00:33:52
There is a certain twist to it. Somebody like Tennessee Williams you know how it comes out of his life.
00:33:59
You don't with all of it but in fact it all does.
00:34:02
I tend to be more trusting of work like that. Because I know that there is no choice.
00:34:08
You are dealing with the stuff. You are dealing with...
00:34:13
Well you have what you have. Talk about your family heritage. That is your heritage.
00:34:19
That is your material. Exactly. Right.
00:34:22
And it really is entrusted to you. I often marvel at the fact that I, coming from this little place in the countryside of Georgia, should actually end up at Sarah Lawrence as a place where I would start learning my craft. I mean how is that? Surely I am then expected by somebody who is all around me to do something with that. Not to honor this passage. Gosh. I don't think I would have made it.
00:35:12
Was that the first turning point? To Sarah Lawrence more than Spelman?
00:35:16
Oh I think Sarah Lawrence encouraged me because when I got there people, you know as Spelman I would say I am a writer. I am writing poetry. You can publish in the poetry magazine. But nobody really got how it is a passion. It is a hard thing. And at Sarah Lawrence with Muriel Rukeyser and Jane Cooper and all those people, it was, oh you are a writer. Great. Well here is a pen. I mean whatever.
00:35:46
Right. It just felt more like home in that way.
00:35:55
And they weren't afraid of my strangeness, whatever it was. I mean now that I am older I can see that when you encounter a young person who is somewhat strange, you know that there is a reason and that they are bringing whatever strange gift they are.
00:36:16
When you say strange, what do you think?
00:36:18
Well at Spelman I always felt I didn't fit at all anywhere. I mean I love poetry and books and music and I paid as much attention to Russian literature, Tolstoy for instance, as many of the other girls paid to make up and clothing and boys. So when I got to Sarah Lawrence I realized that everybody was already really what they were going to be. I mean they were just, the painters were painting, the writers were writing, the dancers were dancing, the singers were singing and nobody cared anything about makeup. Nobody wore any. Nobody cared very much about, I mean they had lovers but the lovers were not uppermost. The art was. And so to have teachers who accepted that and thought it was fine was so good for me.
00:37:22
And that's why in meditation when Muriel popped up I was really glad to see her. And I was glad to see that she was well. Because she and I, it's hard when you have nothing and people are helping you and if you have pride as well, which I always did, we would have battles.
00:37:50
So toward the end it wasn't as close as it had started out.
00:37:58
So it was great to see her and just to feel that that was completely healed.
00:38:05
In terms of work, the first novel came after Sarah Lawrence or during Sarah Lawrence?
00:38:09
After.
00:38:10
After, yeah.
00:38:19
Well I've enjoyed this very much more than I thought I would.
00:38:30
I do too.
00:38:32
Yeah, good.
00:38:34
Good to meet you.
00:38:36
Well, interviews aren't easy. I mean that's, having occasionally been on the other side of the fence.
00:38:50
Oh yeah, God, I was telling somebody how shortly after Martin Luther King was assassinated I went to interview Coretta. And first of all the machine, I thought it was working, I'm terrible with these things. And it had been running, running, running, and nothing was on it.
00:39:09
It's working.
00:39:10
And then I asked her a question which I thought was really important and I still think is important. It was about him dancing. Because he had a reputation for being a really good dancer, Martin Luther King Jr.
00:39:24
Martin Luther King Jr.
00:39:25
And she was offended I think, you know. And I think she really misunderstood my interest. I wasn't trying to make him appear frivolous. I was wanting to share this life that he had.
00:39:42
He was someone who had a lot of life, I mean a lot of spirit.
00:39:47
And it wasn't all quote spirituality. It was spirit in the sense of fun. He had a really great sense of humor. And legend had it he was also a great dancer. And I really thought that was so lovely.
00:40:05
It's also a wonderful antidote to somehow great people you assume somehow they're more or less than human.
00:40:11
I know and boring and dull and can't move, you know.
00:40:16
So yeah, I have been on the other side.
00:40:20
I was just reading the review today of the book about Einstein. I was just reading the review today of the book about Einstein. It's called Einstein in Love. About Einstein and the various women.
00:40:27
Really?
00:40:28
It's a serious book.
00:40:29
Oh fantastic.
00:40:30
He had a lot of lovers?
00:40:32
Fantastic. What's the name of this book?
00:40:34
It's called Einstein in Love.
00:40:38
Go Einstein.
00:40:41
He was terrible to women too.
00:40:43
Oh yeah, I'm sure he was.
00:40:45
He ditched his first wife to marry his second cousin. Had many affairs along the way. And he would do it with children. You name her.
00:40:53
Yeah, well there you have it.
00:40:55
Rascal.
00:40:57
It's close to a rascal.
00:41:05
You have your driver outside.
00:41:07
Yeah.
Interview with Bill Irwin, 8 February 1983
00:00:00
You got one deck you always bring with you?
00:00:16
This particular deck I like. I got one more from Vegas that's a new one, yeah, I like that one too.
00:00:24
These are antiques, these cards, isn't that funny?
00:00:26
They are.
00:00:27
[Inaudible]
00:00:28
[Inaudible]
00:00:29
[Inaudible]
00:00:33
[Inaudible]
00:00:44
[Inaudible]
00:00:49
[Inaudible]
00:00:51
Oh, you're making a trip.
00:00:52
Yes.
00:00:53
[Inaudible]
00:00:56
What's that, I'm sorry?
00:00:57
Plans failed around having a child at this point.
00:00:58
Plans have failed?
00:01:00
[Inaudible]
00:01:04
[Inaudible]
00:01:05
Are you going to see her too?
00:01:06
I hope so, in March, yeah.
00:01:07
Good. And one sister?
00:01:09
One sister.
00:01:11
We're starting out all right.
00:01:12
What's that?
00:01:13
We're starting out okay.
00:01:14
Okay.
00:01:15
[Inaudible]
00:01:23
You were excellent last night.
00:01:25
[Inaudible]
00:01:45
We can shut it off for a minute.
00:01:51
Give me 22 cards. You can turn them over.
00:01:54
Okay. Pull them out of anywhere, Kathy, or?
00:01:56
I think, but not all together.
00:01:57
Uh-huh.
00:01:58
Random.
00:01:59
Random.
00:02:25
Is that a special deck or?
00:02:28
Yeah, I don't know. Antique cards, she says. She reads these, and she's got another deck from Vegas.
00:03:08
You've had a few little plans fail. Relative-wise, not career-wise.
00:03:14
Mmm, yeah.
00:03:15
Yes. You've had a few little disappointments. Money has not been what it should be for you.
00:03:20
It's not been what?
00:03:21
As good as it should be.
00:03:24
Can't concur with you more.
00:03:27
Yes, oh good. Oh good. Now this is business. It's going to change for the better. You have a few people jealous of you. You've got to---you've got to find out.
00:03:36
Mhm, okay.
00:03:36
Par for the course though.
00:03:38
That's sudden good news and God's card. This is very good.
00:03:40
God's card is business?
00:03:41
Yes. Very good and that's good in around a month or two.
00:03:44
All right, good.
00:03:45
Definitely. Then a sandy-haired man older than you could be of help, whether he's an agent or whatever he is. He could be good, definitely. That's a big talk.
00:03:54
Big talk?
00:03:55
Are you signing a contract?
00:03:56
[Inaudible]
00:04:00
Don't know much about it yet.
00:04:00
Yeah. That's good.
00:04:01
No? It's going to turn out to be something good.
00:04:02
You think so?
00:04:03
Yeah. He's older.
00:04:04
Mhm, yeah, he is.
00:04:05
[Inaudible]
00:04:20
This one here?
00:04:21
That's right. You're moving. Are you moving to New York? Or the coast? It's a move.
00:04:25
Good question.
00:04:26
I don't think you're going to the coast.
00:04:28
No?
00:04:29
I think you'll make more here than any place.
00:04:30
Yeah, I think this is where---
00:04:31
[Inaudible]
00:04:41
Really?
00:04:42
Yeah.
00:04:45
[Inaudible]
00:05:01
Gonna hit! Yeah, that's what it looks like.
00:05:03
That's what it looks like. '83 is your year.
00:05:05
Ah, that's good.
00:05:06
Without doubt. I mean, it's going to be pretty good, definitely.
00:05:10
This one comes up outside of columns and it's a special one.
00:05:15
Yes. It came out very good.
00:05:17
Now let me do your business talent card. You see, the average person's business is a nine of diamonds, that's just a layman. But the person with talent like you have is a seven of clubs. That's how we can pull around back. It's like contract work, you know?
00:05:33
I see, I see.
00:05:37
That's how we can tell which is going to happen to you. The future is excellent. But it's taken a while to gel and now it's going to start and you're going to be surprised.
00:05:47
Yeah.
00:05:48
It's good news.
00:05:49
It is. It takes time, everything takes time. You have to catch on. Now, I need 20 cards from you. And then I'll circle them. So this is strictly business.
00:06:04
Strictly business?
00:06:05
Strictly business.
00:06:05
Yes.
00:06:06
Strictly.
00:06:57
That's good. It's a big talk, you may get some response from last night too.
00:07:01
Yeah? Oh, hope so.
00:07:02
I have a very strange feeling. Yeah. Very good. Two days to two weeks, good news. By the 28th of this month, things should be pleasant for you.
00:07:10
Yeah?
00:07:11
Yeah.
00:07:12
The 28th.
00:07:14
I don't know what that is; that's in the past so we'll let that one go. That's in the past. This is your heart's wish this year.
00:07:20
Heart's wish?
00:07:21
[Inaudible]
00:07:46
Mhm.
00:07:47
This is very good news, I think things are going to start for you! Yes. And this man here, you're very good for him. You are very good for him.
00:07:55
It's me again.
00:07:56
It's you again.
00:07:57
Again, you have little tempers here and there, disagreements every now and then. But in the end, excellent cards. And that's a big move. I think you're gonna start moving your residence. I mean, you gotta make up your mind where you want to be. You can't be Billy to Jack you know, it's no good for you?
00:08:13
Billy to Jack? You're right.
00:08:15
Really, it's a move. '83 is your chance to get ahead. So you have to do it. '82 was nothing. Look at this! And this is real good. '83 is very good for you, and that's all the good things around.
00:08:26
What did we just come up with there? Those last two.
00:08:29
Things are gonna happen by the 18th through the 28th of this month. Very good. March is terrific for you, you're going to be way ahead of the game. When is your trip in March? Or are you going in February?
00:08:37
Short trip in February to Minneapolis, and then a longer trip to San Francisco in March.
00:08:43
March, yeah. Comes out very good.
00:08:44
Comes out well?
00:08:45
Very good. Now are you a writer?
00:08:48
Yes.
00:08:49
[Inaudible]
00:08:51
Really?
00:08:52
Oh, yeah, that's terrific. And good---very good writer. Excellent, that's very difficult to do. Up to now, you've had very good cards. Now do you want to ask me anything? I think I see a very big improvement.
00:09:05
Do you?
00:09:06
Yeah, you haven't been getting the breaks. Just when you were going to hit, something always intercepted.
00:09:10
Uh-huh, uh-huh. It's worked out for the better, maybe, but---
00:09:13
I think so too.
00:09:15
But they're due now, maybe.
00:09:17
Slow but sure.
00:09:18
Do I want to ask you anything? Well... how about, uh... aside from success, about---
00:09:30
Happiness?
00:09:31
Yeah.
00:09:32
Marital?
00:09:33
Well, just call it a lightness of heart.
00:09:35
Okay. In other words, you wanna see if you're going to get your wish. Your heart's wish, I mean---
00:09:42
Yeah, maybe even know what my heart wishes is.
00:09:45
Yeah. 19 cards.
00:10:00
How long have you been reading cards?
00:10:02
A long time. My grandmother read cards; we're from Ireland, you know? Mary reads them, my kid. My mother read.
00:10:12
Do you use tarot cards, too, or---?
00:10:13
Yeah, but they're very sad. They come out very---they depress you. They're depressing. Very depressing.
00:10:36
Where's your family from in Ireland?
00:10:38
Galway.
00:10:39
Galway? I've been there once.
00:10:42
It's beautiful, huh?
00:10:43
Yeah, it's beautiful. I think that's 19.
00:10:52
You're undecided about what you want, at this point. And I think it has a lot to do with you're a little upset about money, too. Yeah, that doesn't add to your love life. It's in the cards again, this guy loves you. Your sister's in the cards. Oh, you're going to have a very good wife! '84, there's your wife.
00:11:13
Really? That's my wife?
00:11:15
Well, that's the only one in the deck that could be Chinese, or similar to that or whatever she is.
00:11:20
Okay.
00:11:20
Isn't that funny?
00:11:21
That is interesting.
00:11:22
Yeah. She came in very good.
00:11:23
Came in there, did you say, in '84?
00:11:25
No, she's very happy with you. But '84 will be better---there's a change around her, too. There's gotta be some kind of a change, definitely. This is a house later on. I think you want to buy a little house, settle down. You were undecided some time about your marriage.
00:11:43
Mhm.
00:11:44
You still are, that's very sad. What, are you thinking of separating or something? I'm so shocked!
00:11:57
Are you really, Kathy?
00:11:58
Yes.
00:11:59
I thought that's what the card says.
00:12:01
No, I am. I didn't think that I'd get a divorce in here.
00:12:05
Is that what you're getting?
00:12:09
You're not happy though, you're not happy. Now you're going to have to change, you know what I mean?
00:12:16
Uh-huh.
00:12:16
I never expected, no, I never expected to pull the divorce.
00:12:21
That one here?
00:12:22
Yeah, that's what it is. It's a very dramatic thing, you know. You've got to think about this before...
00:12:26
Oh, yeah, no I'm doing a lot of thinking.
00:12:30
Yeah, but you're not happy, you know.
00:12:31
Yeah. Mhm. That's what you're getting here.
00:12:33
Oh god, yeah. They're not good cards.
00:12:34
Did you go through a divorce, Kathy, ever?
00:12:36
Yes, several. It's heart rendering but it's sometimes for the better, if you can't make it together. I'm not seeing it that you're making it together now.
00:12:46
You're not seeing that?
00:12:48
No. She's unhappy, she doesn't see enough of you. That's one of the things. She's an unhappy girl. And then you're turning away from her, so that means you're not happy. You're not completely satisfied so it's ridiculous to carry it through. It leads up to you now. Give it a lot of thought, you know. But even if you give it a lot of thought, you're not going to stay with her.
00:13:12
Is that what you get?
00:13:14
Exactly what I get.
00:13:17
Because it's not your wish. It's is your wish, and it's---these cards are---not good cards. Plus it affects your health a little bit, and you can't do that. Yeah. Nourish, you're not allowed---it's not good for your aura. And you know, when you're torn like this it's no good. So you have to make up your mind one thing or the other. In '83 you have to decide what you want. You should know completely by May.
00:13:42
You think so?
00:13:43
That's what you get? This, uh, there was, at least at that point, there was some happiness for her, somewhere.
00:13:43
Yeah.
00:13:52
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of happiness. She too has changed a little bit. I mean, you know? I wouldn't dwell on it but if I were you I wouldn't---I wouldn't exactly stay with this.
00:14:04
Mhm, mhm.
00:14:09
Does she know this is the way you feel?
00:14:10
Yeah, we've been---
00:14:12
Discussing it.
00:14:13
Yeah, since Christmas.
00:14:17
It really threw me for a loop. I thought it was such a happy thing.
00:14:21
You what?
00:14:22
I thought it was such a happy marriage, I really did.
00:14:25
I know, when we used to come in here.
00:14:28
Yeah, it was a whole different scene. And I'm picking stuff up from you lately that you're not yourself, you know?
00:14:33
We haven't, we haven't seen each other.
00:14:35
Definitely not. Is there any other thing you want to ask me? That's troubling you?
00:14:42
Okay, Kathy, might as well go for gold, let's talk about a child. Or children.
00:14:52
Children. You can never have just one. That's children. Eleven cards.
00:15:09
I feel more responsibility on picking these cards than any of the previous ones.
00:15:12
Yeah.
00:15:14
Seems quite alike.
00:15:18
Does it help to know someone or is it even better, is it easier when you don't know someone at all?
00:15:22
No, it's the same thing.
00:15:23
Same thing.
00:15:30
Is there any J around you? That would be good for you. J or an M?
00:15:35
J or an M?
00:15:36
Yeah, in business. Or an R.
00:15:39
An R is good in business. J, M, R.
00:15:42
[Inaudible]
00:15:51
No. Although, my agent is the daughter of one of those---
00:15:55
Oh my goodness. That's interesting. Children. Later, much later.
00:16:02
Later?
00:16:04
This is how it works. Good results. You're married again. Marry another. American girl. Let me see how many children you'll have. It'll be a little while until you make up your mind what you want.
00:16:17
Mhm.
00:16:18
Definitely. See, this is definitely a divorce. Three children in the house. Very easy, if you think you can afford them, you better start working right now.
00:16:29
You better start right now. Definitely, that's your nerves, yeah. You gotta watch those nerves, yeah. The only thing troubling you is money. And that would be the only thing keeping you from having a child. I don't think your wife was anxious to have a child, was she?
00:16:42
Yes, she was.
00:16:44
At one point.
00:16:46
Yeah.
00:16:48
That's your wish.
00:16:49
That's the wish, there?
00:16:50
In other words, you have a child. Two children or three. But I know you'll have children, because I know you'd love to have a child. And you know somebody already? Another girl?
00:17:01
Mm, no.
00:17:02
Well then you're going to meet someone. She has brown hair.
00:17:06
Yeah?
00:17:10
Why are you blushing if you don't know anybody?
00:17:18
Sometimes you gotta play cards close to the chest.
00:17:22
Her cards.
00:17:24
Her cards.
00:17:26
Very good. Now let me see what's gonna happen in '83, for you. Just at random, we'll see '83. Around this I need 20 cards. This should be your year.
00:17:46
Yeah?
00:17:50
Definitely. Now I know why you need the trunk so much. They always call you the man with the trunk.
00:17:58
The man with the trunk? Who calls me that?
00:18:02
Oh, the kids.
00:18:04
Bobby's students?
00:18:06
Yeah, Faisel's brother.
00:18:08
Yeah, Joe. I know his name but he calls me the guy with the trunk.
00:18:16
Was Faisal lost last night?
00:18:18
No, Faisal's always spaced out.
00:18:20
That's his health.
00:18:25
It's nice and early. I think, you know, 9 o'clock is tremendous time.
00:18:29
Yeah, it's pretty early. Late, late night. I don't know why I never... This may be indicative of something. I'm having trouble counting them. 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13... 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
00:19:02
Let's do this shit.
00:19:04
83!
00:19:05
So far it's starting off good for you and that's a good sign. If it starts off bad, that's a bad sign.
00:19:11
Mmm.
00:19:13
Yeah, that's all good. Unexpected phone call you got at work. That's going to be good. That's your wife. That's unexpected call from her too. Definitely. She's unsure what she wants to do. This is you, God's card in '83. You've got to make up your mind this year. What you want. This is your trip.
00:19:32
Mmm.
00:19:33
You've got three trips ahead. All told. For now. This is that light man that might invite you to London or something. I mean, there is an overseas trip later.
00:19:44
Really?
00:19:45
I don't know whether it's to Hong Kong or London or where, but you're going to go overseas. Definitely. This is some very good news by June of this year. Very good. Definitely. This is a contract. Unexpected contract. Very few people bring in this contract, unless you're in show business or something, they never bring in this.
00:20:01
It's the contract.
00:20:03
Yes. It's excellent. That's your marriage. Well, that's a lawyer. Have you gone to a lawyer already? You're thinking about it, though.
00:20:11
Mm, no, not really.
00:20:15
This is a brand new young guy that can be very good for you. I don't know who he is. Oh, you know the man that worked with you last night. He was so good.
00:20:22
Mhm.
00:20:23
Yeah, one of those men.
00:20:24
Mhm, yeah, with the glasses.
00:20:27
This is a very good thing too. Don't lose him. This is the money card. You got the money card, finally, that's good. That's mom. Surprise. You're going to see her! Does she know it?
00:20:39
Eh, not for sure, yeah.
00:20:40
Let her know, let her know. Some good news by the 18th of this month. Very nervous. You know you're getting nervous, so you've got to stop. This is a nervous card.
00:20:48
It's a nervous card.
00:20:49
Yeah.
00:20:50
Yeah, we brought up that two---
00:20:51
Yeah---
00:20:52
---of hearts before.
00:20:53
You have to make up your mind what you want so that you don't get distraught, because you can't. You're not allowed. No, you can't. So just figure out what you want to do as soon as you can, instead of procrastinating.
00:21:06
Instead of procrastinating.
00:21:07
Yeah, that's what you're doing. And you have a hell of an '80s, man.
00:21:11
Good.
00:21:13
Let's make a lot of money. You have all kinds of money to give me. Give me, give me, give me. Give me the money, Bill.
00:21:22
I mean, I have put a little time in with Calico lately. Calico's Kathy's cat.
00:21:28
It's a money cat.
00:21:30
It's a money cat. It's a good cat. A nice cat.
00:21:32
Now cut the three for you. One more cut, three.
00:21:38
[Inaudible]
00:22:05
No gray?
00:22:07
No.
00:22:10
It's good---it's a good card.
00:22:11
Just might be able to swing something for you. But you'll be going overseas too. You'll be doing a lot of work.
00:22:17
Yeah.
00:22:17
Probably won't talk to us anymore. That's what's going to happen.
00:22:22
That's not going to happen, Kathy. As long as you've got some rooms open.
00:22:27
But your cards are terrific. You've got to believe me. And when something hits, you're going to come back and tell me. I know you will.
00:22:32
Oh yeah. I'll be here daily. Thanks!
00:22:35
Very good.
00:22:36
Well, that was---
00:22:38
Are you traveling after the 15th or the 13th in February?
00:22:41
After.
00:22:43
Do you have time to do a meeting hour sometime?
00:22:45
Gee, I don't, I've got somebody coming in.
00:22:46
Another time.
00:22:48
Oh yeah. Any day. Just that I've got this little girl---
00:22:51
Yeah, you've got somebody coming in. And what did you say, 82?
00:22:54
Yeah.
00:22:58
It may be the person's desire to be read. That's her strongest impetus, thing to work from, her strongest suit, so to speak. Did you ever read the book World of Wonders by Robertson Davies? Novel you should read sometime. It's about a magician, but he does all sorts of things like that. It's part of a trilogy by Davies. He's a Canadian novelist. Very funny writer.
00:23:29
I didn't know that at all. For a second I thought he was somebody who had written---
00:23:33
He's written novels and plays and also lots of other things as well, but mostly novels. And this is from a trilogy called the Deptford Trilogy. Fifth Business was the first. But it follows a whole group of people through America, Europe, and that particular one is about a magician who becomes a world-famous celebrity on the basis of his magic and mind reading.
00:23:53
I don't know about it all.
00:23:55
Somebody has the movie rights to it, and they're trying to film it.
00:23:59
The title of that book is that novel is---
00:24:03
World of Wonders. And actually, what's his name? The fellow who did The Seven Sense Solution, Nicholas Meyer, bought the rights to the whole trilogy and is making a movie called "Conjuring" based on the three books. If he can get the money.
00:24:17
That's an interesting project.
00:24:24
It's also funny. Kathy was saying, talking about an agent last night who called---
00:24:29
Your sandy-haired older man?
00:24:31
It's a woman. She's a woman.
00:24:34
Oh yeah, you mentioned her.
00:24:36
But not an American woman. Such an interesting blend of adventuresome statements. But also sort of coaxing through. Some of what little I know about carnival work, weight guessing and that kind of entertainment, have a lot to do with that psychology. Someone's straightforwardly telling you something and you just have to, I guess, trust it somehow.
00:25:15
But also somewhat changing it to suit one's response. With your wife, I gather she did.
00:25:20
Yes, she did. She changed that.
00:25:28
[Inaudible]
00:25:40
[Inaudible]
00:26:08
So I thought, ooh, Kathy, are you trying to tell me something? But I don't think she was. I think she was just sharing an old joke.
00:26:18
You watched the show last night first?
00:26:20
[Inaudible]
00:27:08
Things I did, too.
00:27:09
Such as what?
00:27:11
Michael's reaction to the Shakespeare, to Shakespeare used as a crucifix. Reaction shots of you, yeah, were suddenly very funny.
00:27:32
I'd like to talk to you about that sometime. Mike is an old, old friend. An actor, sort of an uneven development, but incredible. Difficult, the two of us together are difficult.
00:27:50
Maybe that's why it's so funny. There was a real antagonistic thing set up, which is so funny.
00:27:56
I just got a wonderful letter from him which sort of laid to rest a lot of tension, with some reflection. We just... thought differently of things, but... Different people in watching him, some of them just get it, just the right strokes. They had seen the other guy do it, but some poeple... it's almost a litmus test or something, you know some taste sour and some taste sweet or bitter, but very pronouncedly.
00:28:27
What did you think of his performance? Just off the cuff without any...
00:28:46
I was starting to feel my disattention of guilt and complexity of feeling. Because a lot of what he does is only... He can only be as good as the writing is. And I did most of the writing, and built everything around myself and created his persona in order to bounce off a little. It sort of troubles me a little.
00:29:10
I think it's quite good, and it set up that whole sort of threat which you need. You really felt that it was in fact a chase, which is why, for example, one thing that I did again last night is---is that trampoline going, it's not there, it's not in the way. A gag obviously didn't set up, but still, because of the good build-up---
00:29:37
The chase is really real with Michael chasing, I'll tell you. I'll tell you from my point of view, even watching it, there's a really ferocity there. It's like we worked on, it's a hard thing to do. But often what starts happening is people indicate, whcih totally falsifies the chase when he's running. It's, to me, like I better keep going.
00:30:03
So it's really there, which is why when you hide behind the piano that again it's a strong laugh, it's a hiding sanctuary.
00:30:11
Exactly. And Doug's sort of going out on a limb and then later...
00:30:18
Yeah, sure. Actually, that's something we all laughed at. A new and maybe stronger than I ever laughed at.
00:30:24
It's all a trick.
00:30:26
Don't come to this baby.
00:30:33
I'm trying to steal a few of George Carle's moves. I was going to call him today. I want to make sure he's going to be there for a while.
00:30:41
Have you met him at all?
00:30:44
Yeah. He shot the shit with me a couple times. Interesting little guy, and in some ways, he's a little self-conscious with each other, we don't have a whole lot to say, but... he's a really interesting character. A very good man. Probably be around, you'll want to see him.
00:31:07
Yeah, you should. I want to mention him to Pat.
00:31:12
How did your thing with Pat go?
00:31:14
He was a very nice, very gracious, very charming man. He was, to my relief, kept very general. Kathy's right on. Dark-haired older man, not gray.
00:31:28
He struck me as possibly sandy-haired.
00:31:32
Sandy-haired possibly.
00:31:40
Did he have a project at all that he was doing?
00:31:42
He's got a couple different things, but it's all very much down the line in due process. I guess he sized up is what I wanted to hear. I didn't want to be pressured into anything. Doing this musical, that---a young guy named Ken Robbins is creating a musical. It's an interesting premise, but I don't know anything about it and they don't really know much about me, I wouldn't say. Just between you and I, the public never really knows what's happening until it's on the stage. And I can tell you, we were supposed to be there once.
00:32:29
Is he sorry about that?
00:32:32
I think so. He's never become effusively apologetic, but he did, under my agent's pressure, he sent both Michael and Doug a $500 because of the scheduling mishap. That was the thing that came back to him. We can't just slide around after guys who have careers. I didn't want any money out of it but I would have been pissed, $1000 is an apology.
00:33:14
Money talks. Money talks.
00:33:19
Money does talk.
00:33:29
George works with a hat like this and he does great things with it, I haven't been able to really make one of these behave properly. *inauduible* for me is something that is funny, but it's not behavioral in the way that a hat like that is. Although actually his does not look like this grotesque. His is... Larry Kazomi works with a hat, the same design but it's a different shape, it's more---it's shallower. Very much in shape. Not like mine. I'll just backtrack. But my head's the wrong shape.
00:34:20
Turn your head.
00:34:22
Well, the hat has to be round. And my head's oblong. But George and Larry have to sort of cover their heads so that, uh, there's this, I don't know, it's more likely to fall right on the head.
00:35:00
Weight in it makes it much more regular.
00:35:07
Oh, it's heavy.
00:35:09
Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:12
It's big too.
00:35:13
It is big. I mean, it's big probably. Maybe it's too big. But the little thing that Larry does with this hat is that he and I used to do versions of an act together---tossing it like this like a Frisbee and then catching it.
00:35:43
It's nice, isn't it? It's a nice effect. He used to catch and throw four of them to me. He did this whole, from the top of the show, with his little red hat of my design. He came out in the middle of the show, "I can't find my red hat," and I'd be out in the audience and [loud clapping sound] It was great. So we did this whole long-distance dialogue, like, "C'mon brother, give me my red hat," and I said, "Well, try one of these," and I'd throw him three others. On a good day, with the wind permitting and the proper altitude, he'd catch all three. Red hat! On occassion, it's a very nice night, I tried to hit a better shot.
00:36:34
One of the things that seemed to, seemed to get better and better as I watched is the marionette that went across.
00:36:41
You know, that did get a lot better. In fact, it wasn't marionette. It wasn't marionette when I first did it.
00:36:48
Uh huh.
00:36:49
Fine. I'd like to find something somewhere between this hat and that. This one is just too flimsy.
00:37:50
Flimsy.
00:37:51
George Carle does hat moves too?
00:37:54
Yeah, his are, his is a hat like this and they have his own flavor. It's interesting, I was looking in the mirror thinking, in some ways we're kind of opposite. My character movement is very---a lot of it is down below, this low, and a lot of stillness up here, a lot of things going on down here. Or up here. He's very... about this tall, very short man. And his torso, in many ways stays very still, very, kind of, spree. I can't get this quality out. I've watched him twice.
00:38:46
Below the waist?
00:38:48
Well, it's a sprightliness even though he's... 20 years my senior. Maybe 10, 15 years my senior. I feel like in many ways he's got more bounce than I do in a lot of what he does.
00:39:07
[Whistle]
00:39:13
When he's been working his hat so long, it's just gorgeous. He, looking dead ahead at the audience, towards everyone, goes---
00:39:23
[Inaudible]
00:41:03
Do people really watch him though? I mean after the strippers or?
00:41:06
[Inaudible]
00:42:35
Oh, shoot.
00:42:48
There is really a nice height here, and there are a lot of stages, but there is a lot of height---and I think what's nice about this is you throw it up, and you pretty much know when it can come down and it gives you lots of time to do something. I'm working on something else that I can't get anywhere. Suspender gets stuck somewhere over the trousers. Throw the hat up, way up, fix the trousers just in time to catch it.
00:43:19
Jacket.
00:43:20
Oh yeah, the arm is caught in the jacket. Oh, shoot.
00:43:31
Oh, shoot.
00:43:32
[Tap dancing]
00:44:01
[Tap dancing and scatting]
00:44:20
I gotta get down to the basics. That's what I want to do in the workshop. I spend a lot more time, really discreetly, working with isolation. Isolating movement in different places.
00:44:38
[Tap dancing and scatting]
00:45:32
Do you write music?
00:45:35
Do I write?
00:45:36
Write music. Yeah, that song you sang. That little song.
00:45:38
[Inaudible]
00:45:48
That's where Kathy's technique became the most transparent.
00:46:00
[Tap dancing]
00:46:37
I'm getting my arms moving a lot. I'm dancing.
00:46:50
You watch Caesar on Saturday Night Live?
00:46:52
Yeah.
00:46:53
Dude---
00:46:54
I saw most of it. I didn't think it was very good at all.
00:46:55
I thought it was very sad. That's crazy.
00:46:57
I just wanted to... I missed the first part, it was the first couple minutes. Actually, what had the most going was I thought the beginning of what I saw, is Caesar just talking to them, in some bit---he does this routine with now becoming then, now becoming was, becoming gonna be.
00:47:28
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:47:29
Yeah, it was his book, yeah.
00:47:31
It's a little sentimental, but there's something behind it. What I thought was sad was the rest of the show. He was a victim of that show. What, the writing was awful, and I would guess if he knew it...
00:47:49
Whoever, Mel Brooks or whoever, in other words.
00:47:52
Yeah, yeah.
00:47:53
Because you rely on your stuff, I guess.
00:47:55
He's also much less than a lot of people, but it's true. He is caught in his era. It's very hard to...
00:48:05
Although, on the other hand, you see those, some of the tapes or whatever, the broadcasting, you can say, it's still terribly funny.
00:48:12
Well, they're terribly funny. They're terribly funny, but I think one of the reasons they're funny is because their, the sort of sensitivity in watching transports you to that time. And you're seeing it in that context where it's largely because of the writing, but partly because he wasn't sure how to do it.
00:48:34
It seems like he did the silent movie and also the, there was The German Professor.
00:48:41
Yes.
00:48:42
Neither of which were funny at all, and yet both of those appear very frequently over there. In other words, if you're writing a silent movie, it's funnier. And the other actors have fun, I think, over there. I mean, you may be right about the, you know, frozen or victim of time, but I think maybe---in different circumstances---
00:49:04
Yes. Well, the fact that he would have benefited from different circumstances and the circumstance seems to be illustrative of the fact that he did that show. I tell you what I find the saddest and broke my heart. Watching those old shows and Caesar's Hour and the one that came before The Admiral... he would be on for nearly 90 minutes, and you never got the feeling that he was struggling or he seemed to be coming out, and there, on Saturday Night Live, and much as any other host I've ever seen, including those cute little girls... I mean that's something. It's an indictment of something.
00:49:54
Did he and Eddie Murphy do anything earlier on? I know some---
00:49:57
They should've done something.
00:50:02
They should've. Well, when I tuned in, Eddie Murphy was standing next to him, and the rest of the cast looked like they had just met.
00:50:10
I was very touchy with Eddie Murphy, wanted to embrace him at the end.
00:50:15
It's one of those shows where he gave me a warning that he wasn't gonna be that good. He's wearing his dungarees besides.
00:50:23
He is, right?
00:50:24
He's wearing his dungarees, it's like, his leisure suit.
00:50:28
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:50:30
You didn't see his opening monologue.
00:50:31
No.
00:50:32
[Inaudible]
00:51:17
There's a little bit, you know, having come through what he's come through in his life and found this sort of mellowness of center, it doesn't entirely jive with what he does best, which is essentially going to be manic.
00:51:28
I know the professor was kind of like he was a little sedated.
00:51:37
That's a funny thing. Well, basically someone else who I always admired a lot was Alan Arkin, who also through Zen or whatever else has reached a certain, I haven't seen him in some years now, but reached a certain balance in his own mind. And he hasn't been as funny. He was really crazy in the early years off-Broadway and on Broadway.
00:51:59
Actually, I didn't see the best of him.
00:52:02
It's like the Second City things he was doing.
00:52:04
Right.
00:52:05
The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.
00:52:07
Sure, he was in a great movie, but he was really something.
00:52:09
And then that incredible part he played. Wait Till Dark. Bad guy.
00:52:21
[Inaudible]
00:52:34
It's not easy because they were working on this, the whole cast is involved in this film, and they can slowly see it and kind of go---
00:52:43
His best work, actually, was onstage, and at some point he decided he just was so terrified of working on stage, that he wouldn't do it anymore. He got physically sick at every performance. He couldn't do it. So you keep reading about him coming back.
00:52:58
He was coming back on stage.
00:53:00
That's what he said.
00:53:01
That's what he did best.
00:53:03
We've seen.
00:53:04
We've seen, yeah.
00:53:07
I saw him do something long ago, when, when, when, when Sesame Street first came out, when I was in college. I was kind of a fan of the show, it was new, something new to television. And he did a couple things with his wife, and they were not very good. It looked like they were trying to bring a Second City zaniness quality to a very packed, sentimental, scripted message piece. I was disappointed. It's a great disappointment to see somebody who you respect and admire do something less than, it's really scary. Scary to contemplate what to do next. Scary to contemplate disappointing people.
00:53:54
Which is why you'll never work again, right?
00:53:57
Oh. It wasn't that bad. I'll set up another reading, stat.
00:54:08
[tap dancing]
00:54:35
Sorry? Good to see you! Oh, no.
00:54:40
All right.
00:54:41
[Inaudible]
00:54:51
Well, I'm glad you watched.
00:54:54
Yeah.
00:54:56
Yeah, she show up yet?
00:54:57
Uh no, due any second.
00:54:58
Any second.
00:55:04
That's your tap class, I take it.
00:55:05
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:08
[Inaudible]
00:55:13
The turmoil!
00:55:18
[Inaudible]
00:55:29
[Inaudible]
00:56:12
[Tapping]
00:56:23
Caesar did a, we might have talked about it, a seminar over at the Museum of Broadcasting.
00:56:30
Yeah, you said about that. Did you go?
00:56:35
I couldn't get in. I did leave him a note.
00:56:37
I wonder how good that was, if you really verbalize it. Probably so much of what's good in the book really comes from Bill Davidson, prodding into the trivial. For all the fact that he was a member of his writing table, he's never really been a writer, or even a speaker. In fact, as he says, when he's himself he just can't verbalize anything.
00:57:01
You're right.
00:57:02
Perhaps if he did his lecture as a German professor, maybe that would be.
00:57:09
You know, when you talk about Arkin, I thought for a minute you were going to say Erwin Corey, who is somebody on occasion---I've never seen him live.
00:57:17
Somebody mentioned him the other day. Oh, it was the Caramansos.
00:57:21
Oh, yeah?
00:57:22
He came to see them in Brooklyn, I guess.
00:57:23
Really?
00:57:24
Yeah.
00:57:24
That's great.
00:57:25
They're talking about him.
00:57:27
I don't know. I thought some of his stuff was great. He got into Playboy Club bookings for a while. And one time I saw him on TV, looking Heffneroid. Although that may have been a projection of mine.
00:57:47
[Tap dancing]
Interview with Dorothy Gallagher, 4 April 2001 - Interview with Dorothy Gallagher, April 4, 2001 - 1
00:00:00
Going to a theatre-
00:00:00
He turned around. He was sitting at a table in front of me. And he said, Tresca? You're interested in Tresca? I said, yes. He said, what a subject. And after that, oh my God, this guy is fabulous. He can do it for me. He can give me an education. He can give me a wonderful book. And he did. It was thrilling. It was the most thrilling experience. And I also learned something I had not known, which was that I loved research. I always thought I hated research. I loved it. I loved it more than anything. I mean, it's like doing detective work, and it's just thrilling. And I worked on it for eight years. And it was a wonderful time for me.
00:00:03
And then he did stop
00:00:04
Yeah he did stop, of course
00:00:15
Anyway, the driver came at 7:30 in the morning? Or is coming at 7:30?
00:00:18
No, they came at 7.30. They, uh, went down to the Bowery at 7.30 this morning.
00:00:23
She wanted to know why 7:30, she told them to me last night
00:00:25
Well, I don't know who said 7.30. I didn't say 7.30.
00:00:30
Cause we went through this whole thing, and I said, I can't imagine anybody would-
00:00:33
And I asked the photographer, did you say 7.30? And he said, no! So there we were at 7.30, cold, windy.
00:00:43
One reason why I liked your book so much is that it reminded me-
00:00:46
Excuse me, what may I get for you?
00:00:48
May I have a vodka, Gibson, straight up, please?
00:00:50
Could I get a glass of white wine, please
00:00:51
Sure. Brutus Foussey, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot grigio…?
00:00:56
I'll take the grigio.
00:00:58
And then there was a piece of shit. Who is this piece of shit?
00:01:00
You said vodka, right?
00:01:00
[Laughs]
00:01:01
Vodka, please.
00:01:02
It's because so much of it reminded me of my own family. I mean, Aunt Willie was - not exact, but pretty close to my Aunt Ruth. My mother had four sisters and two brothers.
00:01:05
Do give Bob my regards when you talk.
00:01:08
When I run into him. So you burned the book, and that's the end of the story.
00:01:12
Yeah.
00:01:12
I burned the book.
00:01:13
You know, It was good enough to think, maybe it's about time I sat down and wrote about that.
00:01:16
Rutgers? University Press.
00:01:18
No… Rutgers University Press published it. Finally. They gave me, I think, $2,000. And then Knopf wanted their money back. They had given me maybe $7,500. They sent me, they sent me, uh, Dunning letters. So I went up to see the lawyer at Knopf. Don't put this, don't say that I said, fuck you. I said, you sue me. You do anything you want. You are not getting a goddamn penny of this $2,000. And they didn't. They dropped it.
00:01:19
[Laughs]
00:01:19
But now it's been done. It can't be done.
00:01:21
Oh, everybody can do it.
00:01:23
What made you finally do it?
00:01:25
What made me finally do it. Well, I didn't set out to do it. I didn't do- I didn't have the idea that I would do a book. But I had the idea I wanted to do the first piece. Because my parents' decline and dying had gone on for so long, for five years. And I, all the time, because it was my habit to do so, I made notes. And I put the notes away. I put them in a drawer and forgot about them after. And then about two and a half years later, I came across them. And I started looking at them. And I thought, oh, you know, maybe it was an impulsive thrift - "don't throw anything away".
00:02:01
And you found another publisher, it came out and got that review -
00:02:03
It came out and then it... Actually, it did come out in paper, too. Viking published it. A thousand copies or so in paper.
00:02:09
[laughing] Thrift? Thirft thrift
00:02:11
Thrift thrift, yeah - well, I've got this stuff. I've got to do something with it. But I still had, I think at that time, even two and a half years, three years later, I still had, I still was full of the feeling I had while they were still alive. I mean, now it's eight years, nine years since they died. And that's abated somewhat. But I did have this strong, strong feeling that was with me all the time, every day. And then I had these notes. And I decided I would try and give them some form and order.
00:02:12
And sell it to the movies, then.
00:02:15
I tried. I thought it would be a great story for one of these Italian guys. For De Niro or Al Pacino or... No, nobody wanted to do a costume drama. Warren Beatty. But he had already done Reds. No. No movies.
00:02:37
It's been a long time between books.
00:02:39
Yeah, it's a long time. I don't get very many ideas. [Laughs]
00:02:47
There were several that I wrote down [indiscernible]
00:02:53
Notes about your parents or about the rest of the family?
00:02:55
About my parents -- No, no. Nothing about the rest of my family. Just about what happened during the last five years of my parents' lives, yeah.
00:02:56
Juliet Stuart Poyntz.
00:02:58
Oh, yeah! Juliet Stuart Poyntz.
00:03:00
Dolores…
00:03:01
Faconti?
00:03:02
So I made some- I wanted to make order out of them. Out of total chaos.
00:03:02
Faconti.
00:03:03
Yeah. Oh. Juliet Stuart Poyntz. That's another very interesting story. Except the material isn't available. I have a lot of material. Juliet Stuart Poyntz was an early member of the American Communist Party. And she was the kind of party member they liked a lot. American-born, no foreign history, from the Midwest. I wrote a piece about her when Ben had Grand Street. I consolidated everything I knew about her from the Tresca book and put it in a piece in Grand Street. She disappeared. She was a party member. She was working for... She had been... She was recruited to do special work, as they call it. Recruited for the Russian intelligence, military intelligence, and worked for them for a number of years. And recruited, in fact, Elizabeth Bentley. And she disappeared in... And she went to... She was... Recalled... She was called to Moscow in 1937. And was not... Disappeared there. But did come back and came back quite upset. And dropped out of the party. Dropped out of the special work. And disappeared from her hotel room in... On 57th Street, the American Women's Association. West 57th Street. Sometime in 1938. Just disappeared. Never heard of again. Bowl of Jell-O on the table. Everything. Her passport, everything. Disappeared. It's a mystery. I thought I would do... Another mystery. Tresca's was a mystery. Tresca's death was a mystery. I like doing mysteries. Mysteries are terrific structures. And you can put anything in there. You can put everything in there in the frame of a mystery. But I... And I got a lot of material from everything that... From the FBI, from what was in the American archives. But then Soviet Union collapsed. And the file... And material began to be available in Russia. And I knew that what I needed to know was there. I couldn't get it. Her files are in military intelligence sections. And those files... Those Russian files have never been opened. I tried to get them. I tried to get people there to look. I can't get them. And since the Soviet Union collapsed, you can't do a book anymore without knowing what's in their files. So I didn't have enough.
00:03:10
Do you think you wrote it differently now than you would have if you had written it when they were alive, or -?
00:03:14
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I don't think I could write, at least the first story, I couldn't write again anymore. Because that emotion has abated. I mean, grief has lessened. Anger has lessened. So I couldn't do it again that way, anyway.
00:03:32
And the story about the story of the family, had you made notes on that?
00:03:36
Well, the stories about the family I had never, never written anything about. And never thought of writing anything about.
00:03:48
[to server?] Yeah. I'm too young! [laughs]
00:03:50
Close the bar.
00:03:51
Don't have my card.
00:03:55
I never thought of it, really, of doing any more.
00:04:01
It was Ben who said, you know, "you've got more stories. You've got another story." And I did another story. And Dick Poirier, who was editing Raritan at the time, was very interested in them. He published the first one. He published two more-- I think he published three in all.
00:04:17
First three in the book, actually?
00:04:19
I think it was the first three in the book, yeah. And by the time I'd done three, I, you know, I knew I could do a book.
00:04:27
Could we have some water, too, please?
00:04:28
Yes, sure.
00:04:29
Thank you.
00:04:35
Cheers.
00:04:36
Cheers.
00:04:37
Here's to success.
00:04:38
Thank you.
00:04:38
Well- you already have success with the book, I hear.
00:04:40
Not bad.
00:04:43
That was two nice reviews in the Times.
00:04:46
Two nice reviews in the Times. Nice reviews everywhere.
00:04:49
No more black hole.
00:04:51
Not this time, apparently. It's a black hole I'm used to.
00:04:54
We're all used to it! The writers get together… Black holes.
00:04:59
A black hole.
00:05:01
Publishers black holes - that's right.
00:05:03
Yeah. I was very lucky this time. I had a wonderful editor. I have a wonderful editor. And he did everything for the book, and I'm not used to that either. I'm not used to an editor really championing the book.
00:05:15
I want to get back to the book itself--
00:05:16
Yeah.
00:05:17
But mentioning editors, was Bob Gottlieb the first editor who turned down the other book?
00:05:22
Oh, yes.
00:05:22
Yeah, that's what I figured.
00:05:29
I remember-- we'll get back to-- he and I have had a long relationship, but when he was editor of New York, he published some of my pieces, and we got along just fine. We did get along fine. But sometime after my Ed Albee biography came out, I got a good review everywhere except the New York Times.
00:05:44
Oh, my God.
00:05:45
And the Sunday Times gave it a pretty good review, but a small review.
00:05:48
An in-brief?
00:05:49
Well, not in-brief, it was two columns, but it was in the summertime, and I considered it a really long effort that I went through.
00:05:50
Dolores Faconti is another story.
00:05:53
She...
00:05:54
How much of this do you want to know?
00:05:56
Yeah.
00:05:56
A couple weeks later, Simon and Schuster published the Esther Williams biography, and Bob reviewed it for the book review. A full page, or two pages, absolute rave review. And I ran into him sometime later, and I said, "Bob," I said, "Esther Williams?" And he said, "Well..." he said, "she's more important than Edward Albee." You know? Just dismissing it.
00:05:56
xI want to hear it.
00:05:58
Dolores Faconti was a U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. She was a girlfriend of a Mafia figure, Frank Garofalo. And he is connected with the murder of Tresca. When I was doing the Tresca book, I tried to get to her. She was still alive and living in New Jersey. And I tried many routes to get to her. She was... Through many people... I couldn't. She wouldn't respond. Yeah. She refused to respond. But she was always an extremely attractive figure. Literarily. And I... But... She's dead now, I'm sure.
00:06:17
Yes, Bob is very interested in popular culture.
00:06:21
Yes. He actually turned down the book, and it got that review, after-
00:06:25
Turned down the book, and it got a couple of really good reviews in the New York Review and in the Times.
00:06:33
Well, the Kaysen[?] Review was very good.
00:06:34
The Kaysen Review was very good, and Daniel Allen reviewed it in the New York Review. And… then it disappeared. Immediately disappeared.
00:06:44
But it disappeared.
00:06:46
But it-- and, no, and.
00:06:46
Well, here you're thinking about dealing with… I'm still again with these...
00:06:50
That's publishing for you. Any case, go back to the editor. This book, you said, he really was very good about it.
00:06:50
Yeah.
00:06:51
Melodramatic figures in the world scene. Melodramatic figures in the world scene. And now you do... just this family?
00:06:55
Oh, yeah. He's actually, he's a very old and dear friend, so I knew he wouldn't abandon me.
00:06:57
Just family. Yeah. Well, it was the origin of... Of everything. And at a certain... I mean... Doesn't everybody... When everybody... When all those large figures in your life are gone. And you're the one who's standing at the abyss. You're the generation of the abyss now. I mean... You... Everybody... Everybody... Who writes must have that impulse. In fact, they do. Bookstores are full of them.
00:07:03
But he was terrific. I mean, he really liked the book, and he really stood up for it, and he really tried to push it and promote it.
00:07:09
But, but, but the book grew. I mean, you didn't sit down and say "I'm going to write a lot of stories, and it'll all fit together, and it'll deal with my entire family, and this is gonna be a good one" -
00:07:17
No, it went story by story. They just came, once I started, you know, I thought I don't remember anything.But once you start typing, then it all, then it comes back.
00:07:26
Yeah. Which is one discouragement from doing it. That I've always felt
00:07:31
But listen...
00:07:31
Who wants another memoir? Who wants another--
00:07:32
Well, did you have to gather lots of, I mean, you do say you're quoting from that one.
00:07:33
Exactly. That's what I thought too. I said, who wants another memoir? And... What happened was... That I found a voice to do it in. The first... The first piece in the book which was... I wrote... I wrote... Three or four times. And each time it was about 150 pages. I didn't have the voice to do it in. I found the voice finally. I found the voice for anger, for love, for... That gave me the right distance. That... And then... Everything came. So... People do want another memoir. If you know... If you can figure out how to do it.
00:07:37
I had very little material. I had a couple of letters. I had my mother's letter to her typing teacher, and I had my cousin Meyer's autobiography.
00:07:47
Did that really exist?
00:07:48
That really exists.
00:07:49
I wondered whether you made that up, or -
00:07:50
No. it exists, it's a 90-page piece of work.
00:07:56
Not published -- turned down by Rob Gottlieb
00:07:56
Oh [laughs] probably.
00:07:59
It was 90, 100 pages, and I had read it at the time he did it, which is probably about 15, 20 years ago, and I put it away, too. I just had it in my, and then I came on it again, and I thought, my God, I can boil this down and boil it down and really have a something, and it's all, I mean, it's his, I added a few things here and a few things there to round it out, but it's all his.
00:08:14
And your father saved your mother from drowning?
00:08:17
Yes. He did.
00:08:19
[singing] One good deed.
00:08:20
[laughs] I'm sure he-
00:08:23
He's watching up there.
00:08:25
What do you think, in the end, the book is saying about your family?
00:08:25
[laughing] I know it.
00:08:27
You think he was sorry about… You know…
00:08:30
I don't know. That was much earlier. You mean, you think he's sorry now?
00:08:31
I don't know. I hope it's saying that they were, I mean, everybody is mythological in it to me. I mean, they were my gods when I was growing up, and I hope it's saying they were brave, they were quarrelsome, they were spectacular people, part of a spectacular generation. I hope it's saying I loved them, because I did. I loved them very much.
00:08:34
Well… I just think that one never really knows one's parents.
00:08:38
I really don't know them. I don't know what their private relation was. Even now. I really have no idea. I know that my mother loved my father. I don't know why. I don't know what they were like together alone. When all the doors were closed and the lights were off. No idea.
00:08:58
Would you have felt more freedom if it were a novel?
00:09:02
No. I don't know how to write fiction. No. No. But you know... It felt like fiction. Even though it wasn't. I mean once I found... Once... I heard the voice in my head... That told me how to tell the story. Then it was like fiction. Even though it wasn't.
00:09:05
Including your father?
00:09:08
Not, not at the end.
00:09:10
No.
00:09:10
I'm not sure from reading the book, the extent you felt it-
00:09:13
Yeah.
00:09:14
Yeah.
00:09:15
I, I, I was very angry at him at the end. We were very angry at each other, and, and we clashed as we had clashed all my life. And, um, although when I was a kid, I adored him, you know, one of those things.
00:09:22
I always remember one thing Vincent said when he began writing novels. He said what a relief it was. Because he didn't have to tell the truth anymore. When he was reviewing a movie it had to be factually correct. Where in a novel he could invent not just characters but rivers and countries if he felt like it.
00:09:31
Um, but I, yeah, and I hope it's, um, I don't know, people have read it as being a work of love and, of deep love, even though I know that I take a pretty snippy tone.
00:09:38
I don't think I could invent. I don't think I could invent whole cloth. No. I don't have that kind of imagination.
00:09:45
Yeah, well, it, it is apparent in some cases, particularly with your father -- and to a certain degree with your mother, though, it's clear in the end that you did have great love for her, but still, the portrait is, is not exactly, you know, an valentine.
00:09:48
All true.
00:09:49
Yeah. All true. It's all true.
00:09:57
No, it's not sentimental, and I, and I don't do sentimentals.
00:10:00
Did you read the Tresca book?
00:10:01
I wouldn't accuse you of sentimentality, no.
00:10:02
Some of it. I haven't finished it yet I read at it, I confess. I read the first and last chapters and then I was going into the middle of it. I felt it would make a great movie, is what I thought.
00:10:03
No.
00:10:04
But, um, but I think she would have been pleased with it. I mean, I think she, I think she would have been very proud and, and very pleased. And, um…
00:10:13
Reminds me of one line I wrote down about your - "Daddy and I are very proud of you, even if Daddy has never mentioned it" [laughing]
00:10:16
Anyway, when that came out, I guess you said that- in little piece in The Times, "Biography is a near-perfect form." You said, "biography allows you to draw close to a subject and also back away for an overview of his time, meaning Tresca.
00:10:21
[laughing]
00:10:24
Yeah, and they were funny. I mean, everybody was funny in my family. We all laughed a lot when we weren't fighting.
00:10:32
Did I say that?
00:10:33
You said that in a m--
00:10:34
When you weren't fighting?
00:10:34
That's good.
00:10:35
Yeah.
00:10:35
Well, in my family now, there's, those sisters, sometimes for decades, some of them didn't speak to one another.
00:10:35
mini-interview with The Times. It's good. But I was wondering: how about autobiography, and how that applies to it? "Biography allows you to draw close to a subject and also back away for an overview of his time." Now this is- I said biography, but it is Autobiography. Could you compare the two? How it-
00:10:41
Yeah.
00:10:42
Some of the children didn't speak to the parents. One, one cousin, in fact, never knew his mother died. Because they hadn't spoken for 20 years.
00:10:48
Really? That's serious.
00:10:49
Wars!
00:10:52
That's really serious.
00:10:52
You had wars, too, obviously, or, or private battles among, the various relatives.
00:10:56
Yeah. Yeah. It's inevitable. And it happens in, in all families. And they're--
00:11:02
Well, large families, anyway--
00:11:03
In all large families, yeah. But I, I have, I have a friend who hasn't spoken to her sister in 15 or 20 years. So it happens even in small families. Two children.
00:11:06
Well, I think that what I... Strove for was the kind of attachment that I brought to a biography.
00:11:15
I have this one cousin who stopped speaking to us when we didn't go to her husband's funeral. And then she got married two months later.
00:11:22
[laughs]
00:11:22
Attachment?
00:11:24
Detachment. Detachment, yeah. I wanted for my own family what I could do as a scholar, what I could do for a historical figure. I wanted to do the same thing. So you weren't researching it in the same way at all? No, it wasn't research, it was distance. It was the... In photography, I used to do a lot of photography. Oh, okay. And you talk about focusing on the middle distance or the far distance or the near distance. And I think I strove through the middle distance to get far enough away from the overwhelming effect of family. Just far enough away so that I could see them clearly. The kind of distance that history gives you. That time passing gives you. And have them in the focus. Have them... Yeah. Have them in the focus that you get in the middle distance. When the background is clear, the subject is clear, and the foreground is clear as well. I used to... I loved photography. I used to... I loved to be in the darkroom, and I loved... I loved walking around with a camera, because it gave you an aim when you were walking around. It was like, oh, there's a picture, there's a picture, there's a picture. It was a great pleasure to me, and I loved it, and I loved the actual development. And I... And I... And distance was everything. Up close was one thing. Middle distance, far distance, you... I mean, the things you could do were astonishingly different with the same piece of equipment.
00:11:25
You know, it's typical.
00:11:26
Did you go to the wedding?
00:11:27
No, Neither one. Never liked me, anyway. No loss.
00:11:29
Yeah, right - never liked her anyway.
00:11:32
No loss.
00:11:32
As I said, Lily was one character that came across rather vividly, partly because she reminded me of my aunt Ruth. But the stories about her selling the negligees and things? Door-to-door to prostitutes?
00:11:46
Yes, it was in the Depression--
00:11:47
True story?
00:11:48
True story. True story. I, before my time. But I, I was told, all of these things are things I was told about.
00:11:55
Told in the family.
00:11:55
Told in the family. Yeah. They were family stories. Except for the times when I was present. Later on, when I got a little older, everything is, is hearsay.
00:12:11
Well, this is a question, though.
00:12:13
Is it true?
00:12:14
What?
00:12:14
I mean, it's true as far as you know, but are all stories true as, as told by families?
00:12:20
Oh, not literally, perhaps, true, but, but in their essence, I think, true. People embroider, people change details. But, in essence, I think, it's not whole cloth.
00:12:32
I'm wondering, I won't get back to my family too much, but my, my uncle, legend, always had it, was a, was a, a boxer at some point. He ended up was cutting cloth somewhere in the garment district.
00:12:43
Yeah.
00:12:43
But he was actually close to being a Golden Glove boxer.
00:12:47
Yeah.
00:12:47
I accepted that on faith. But I, I, I've never seen a picture of him in a boxing ring, y'know? He's long dead now. But, that was a family legend.
00:12:56
Well, if they told it to you, it was true.
00:12:59
Okay.
00:12:59
Maybe he wasn't as good as they said. Maybe he didn't get that close to Golden Gloves
00:13:04
Well, if they told it to you, there was a, a good measure of truth in it, you'd say.
00:13:07
Yeah. I think so.
00:13:09
I mean, it's a question of how many, how many sales, I suppose, Lily actually made.
00:13:13
That's right. But my, but my mother claimed, and my mother was not, would not have said that she, she took over Lily's route when Lily went to California. did pretty well. She made a good living.
00:13:33
Were there any…. Suprises? Revelations? As you thought about your family, Or your own growing up, or…?
00:13:34
What did you leave out?
00:13:36
[Laughs]. Well, I stopped at a certain point. I mean, I stopped, I think, I stopped when the last member of my family died, which was… I stopped with my family. I mean, I didn't go on, I did, you know, I did some of my own life, but not very much, and I didn't do anything about, I didn't go on to my marriage to Ben, and I didn't go.
00:13:45
Revelations.
00:13:51
Your parents don't kiss. Is this a revelation?
00:13:55
[laughs] No, they didn't kiss, they never kissed in public. But you know, I think it was a reticence of that generation. There was very little public affection, very little, even in members of my family who were more affectionate in public than my parents, there wasn't that much of that. Revelations, you know, I think, I think the revelation to me was how much I had loved them.
00:14:00
You mentioned briefly an earlier marriage, but.
00:14:02
Yeah.
00:14:05
But I don't think I gave away too much for the store.
00:14:11
Jim Salter gave me a blurb, for which I was very grateful, and I asked him when he called me, I said, "did I tell too much?" and he said, "no, you didn't give away the store." So…
00:14:24
I left out --- what did I leave out?
00:14:28
Some great tragedy you left out of there
00:14:32
I don't think so.
00:14:34
Even your father?
00:14:35
Even my father, yeah. I mean, he was really some guy. He was something else.
00:14:36
I don't think so. I think I pretty much said what my family's life was about, and how, [sighs] and what… and what it gave me. Which is the title, of course.
00:14:42
I don't love him, from the book.
00:14:43
You didn't love him
00:14:44
Don't love him, yeah.
00:14:45
He was, he was, but I used to say when I was, when I was younger, "my father, he has integrity."
00:14:54
Would you like another?
00:14:56
No. "He has integrity." And I, and I was right. He had integrity in the sense that he was what he was and nobody-- and he made no concessions to anybody for what he was. And that wasn't an un-important thing to know, to learn. I mean, to, to have learned as a child, that you can be what you are, and get along in the world.
00:14:59
Your inheritance.
00:15:00
I mean, my, yes, my entire inheritance came, comes from there.
00:15:05
By inheritance, you don't mean money, property…
00:15:07
No, I mean, well, money--
00:15:09
Heritage.
00:15:09
I mean, heritage, yeah, and it, and it's centered on, and it, and it, the first story is about an actual inheritance, but I think everything is my, from them is my inheritance, and it's how I, how I know the world, or knew the world early on, anyway.
00:15:21
He ran a series of garages here? That was -
00:15:23
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He had a series of garages-
00:15:26
And they're all dead now?
00:15:27
They're all dead, yeah, they're all dead. My cousins are alive, but, uh, my last aunt died about three or four years ago.
00:15:27
And he would come home and your mother would run the garage, and not know what she-- [laughter] I mean, that's pretty strange.
00:15:32
I know it's strange. He, he would come, he worked 12-hour, 15-hour, 20-hour days, and he'd have to have a nap. So he always lived near the garage. And, um, he couldn't afford to have a helper. So he'd send my mother down. And she couldn't drive. I couldn't drive myself until I was 40 years old. I didn't know how to drive. Um, and the reason I didn't know how to drive is my father tried to teach me how to drive.
00:15:38
How did your father let himself get fooled by the, con-man. Was that a characteristic trait, or…?
00:15:43
Well, I think, I'm surprised, I was very surprised, at old age and infirmity, um, had some effect. The guy was, the guy knew what he was doing, and he knew how to get to my father, and the, and the, the sadness for me was, not only that he was giving everything to this guy, but that I didn't know how to get to my father. This guy knew how to do it. He knew how to flatter him, he knew how to play on his, on my father's greed, and, and, and miserliness. Um, he knew how, and also, also, the fact of the matter is, that if I'd had children, it would have been different. I think, if I'd had children, I, or my children, could have gotten to my father, and it wouldn't have happened. I think the fact that I denied him of grandchildren.
00:16:00
Always a mistake.
00:16:00
Always a mistake. Bigger mistake in this case. Uh, so he would send my father, my mother down to the garage. And, uh, she would watch. She would sit in the office and she would, and she would say, "Oh, well, just leave your car there. I can't get you. No, you can't get your car now. You have to wait till the boss comes home." It was quite amusing. And I don't think I told a story in the book of the time, uh, he had a goat. He took a goat in lieu of payment. Some farmer came in and parked his car and couldn't pay. And had a goat in the truck and couldn't pay. And my father took the goat and kept it in the toilet. And for several days that was a great attraction for my schoolmates and me, we would go and, and, and see the goat in the toilet.
00:16:43
Would your father have cared about grandchildren?
00:16:45
Oh, yeah. Very much.
00:16:49
Very, very much. He, um, at some point in my life, I called them to tell them that I'd gotten a good job, or I'd gotten a raise at work, and he's, and I, talking to my mother, and he, I heard him in the background say, I said, Mom, I've got good news, and she said, the kid's got good news, and he said, she's pregnant. So, yes, he cared.
00:16:56
An only kid, an only goat…
00:16:56
And I hope he fed it. I hope he didn't die. I don't know… if he fed it.
00:17:08
What about, uh, how do you pronounce your name? Szymborska?
00:17:15
Wisława Szymborska.
00:17:16
Yes. You liked her poetry very much.
00:17:19
Oh, I loved it. Yeah. And I'm not a reader of poetry. But it's so direct. It's like, I mean, it's like listening to somebody sitting across from you. It's beautiful, yeah, I loved it. And when I read it-
00:17:22
But, you know, when I think about it now, and not having children, I think about the fact that I was so much a daughter. I didn't -
00:17:33
Adored?
00:17:34
A daughter.
00:17:34
Not in Polish -?
00:17:35
A daughter.
00:17:35
A daughter. I didn't want to be other--
00:17:36
Not in Polish, no. When I read it, I thought, she has the same feelings about her family and death of family.
00:17:37
Only child?
00:17:38
Yeah, an only child. I didn't really want to bedisplaced as a daughter. It, I think is one aspect of, of not having children. Because I was a veryimportant child. I was the child.
00:17:50
She has a feeling I can draw on.
00:17:54
Unsentimental. And direct. And-- yet: deeply felt.
00:17:55
In such a large family
00:17:56
In such a large family. Well, my grandmother had nine or ten. My, and, but the next generation, my mother's generation, only had one or two.
00:18:04
Did you ever meet Ben's father?
00:18:05
It's amazing why that generation had so many, I mean that's…
00:18:06
No, he was dead. I'm really sorry about that. Did you know him?
00:18:09
They couldn't avoid it. I mean, they didn't have contraception. They didn't, uh
00:18:13
I was once in that house, I remember. Some Brendan Gill event.
00:18:16
And had a lot of sex.
00:18:16
Must have been quite an astonishing thing.
00:18:17
And, I guess, a lot of sex. At least nine or ten times. it would have been, they couldn't afford it if they had this
00:18:18
I was in that house, which was one of the most amazing houses I've ever, ever been in.
00:18:20
It's hard to imagine what this -- Grandparents, yeah, sure, but the idea that they couldn't afford it, yet they had this enormous family. On both sides, in fact.
00:18:21
[Laughs]. I am so sorry I didn't know his father. If I'd known his father, I think I would have, I would understand Ben better. I don't, I never met him. And his mother, I didn't meet his mother either. And I never saw the house.
00:18:28
Yeah.
00:18:29
Amazing.
00:18:30
Everybody in your family is dead? I mean, of your, of your parents' generation. Your aunts and uncles?
00:18:36
They're all dead. Yeah. Some cousins are, some cousins still alive. But yeah, that's about it.
00:18:38
You never saw the house? It's still there.
00:18:40
I know it's there, it had just been sold.
00:18:41
Yeah, they're all gone. Maybe I could write it, now.
00:18:43
With the royalties on your book, you can buy it back, right?
00:18:46
Yeah, that's--
00:18:46
Oh, right. [Laughs]
00:18:47
that's too much malevolence going on in my family [laughs]
00:18:49
Well, it's good material. Malevolence is, it's fun to work with.
00:18:51
What are you working on now?
00:18:52
I'm just doing short--
00:18:53
Good stories. But, but you didn't have lots of letters and journals and things like that to help you along?
00:18:54
You're not going to wait another ten years for a book, are you?
00:18:55
I hope not. I don't have another ten years. Just short pieces. I just did a piece on the vagina monologues for a guy, for Craig Raine. You know him? He's a poet. He runs a-
00:19:00
No.
00:19:01
Other people with memories, that would stimulate your memories?
00:19:08
No. In fact, I didn't want to ask my cousins. Because I knew that their memories would interfere with mine. And I wanted- and, uh, and they would differ from mine. Uh, and they would have a different take on what happened. And, um, I didn't want that. So I- I, so I just... I relied on mine.
00:19:10
Yeah I know the name, but-
00:19:11
He's a poet and an essayist. And he has a small magazine in England called Arate. He was a, he loved the first story. And he's been a wonderful champion of the book. And he asked me to go to the vagina monologues and write a piece for him. And I did. I went to the vagina monologues and wanted to run shrieking into the streets. And I'm doing a piece for the book review [sighs] now. I don't have another book.
00:19:26
What's the difference? I mean, in a sense, I have to say, all childhoods are different. I mean, it depends who's telling the story. Like, I was just reading the, this Margaret Travels book. I was going to write a piece about her. And the idea that she and her sister would have such divergent views of what the-
00:19:43
They don't speak, you know.
00:19:44
Yes, right. What the parents' life was like. Yeah. And I think that my brother, who's dead now, as well, my older brother - he and I were like, it was two separate childhoods. Our views towards our parents were totally different.
00:19:44
What's the piece for the Book Review?
00:19:45
I can't tell you!
00:19:46
Oh!
00:19:46
I'm not allowed to say.
00:19:48
Ok.
00:19:49
I mean, another piece - a review.
00:19:53
Oh, a review. A review of a book.
00:19:54
Yeah. You know we can't…. We're under an oath. We have to take an oath not to say. But I don't have another book. Although, this is what I'm thinking. There are the, the, the American Communist Party sent all its archive to Moscow. It's all in Moscow. It's all in Moscow. It is now on Microfilm and been sent back to the Library of Congress. What I want to do, what I would like somebody to pay me to do, is to go to the Library of Congress and troll through it. It's not indexed. It's all totally chaotic. I would like somebody to let me do that and pull a thread from it somewhere.
00:19:57
How much older was he?
00:19:58
Two years. It didn't matter. We'd sit there and we'd talk about, like, who's got different boyhoods, it was amazing.
00:20:04
Yeah.
00:20:04
Of course, you didn't have that by not having a sibling. So it wouldn't-
00:20:09
Yeah. No, I didn't have that.
00:20:11
But at least you have different points of view, I suppose, from other relatives and so on. I mean, in your mind anyway, you see that people might see them differently, or...?
00:20:18
Well, I have, I have, I have, I have alive, um, all my cousinsare alive. Um, and they, and one of my cousins, uh, was relieved, was, was, was, uh, my cousin Raheel's daughter was relieved because her mother was really a horror. But nobody in the family ever acknowledged how much she suffered because her mother was a horror. And she was relieved that she was relieved that-
00:20:46
Her mother, or your mother?
00:20:47
Her mother. Yeah. So she has something that, so when her children say to her, "was it really like that? Was your mother really like that?" She can say, "yes, this is what it was like."
00:20:52
Maybe so.
00:20:55
Write it down.
00:20:57
This is what I would like to do.
00:20:59
Tell Bob Gottlieb. Maybe he'd be interested. [Laughs]
00:21:02
One basic difference between our families is the politics.
00:21:03
Where is Bob Gottlieb these days and what is he doing? Not that I wish him well.
00:21:05
Oh, the politics.
00:21:05
Which was an essential element of your family. Could you talk about that, about how committed they were, or?
00:21:07
He's still just edits some books for Knopf and he writes about a dance for the Observer.
00:21:11
They were really committed. Um, I don't know if my mother was an actual party member, but my father was, at some point, probably in the 20s. He was not somebody who liked following orders, so I think by the 30s he had dropped out. He didn't like party discipline.
00:21:12
Right, he writes, this is an irony. A guy reviewed my book for the Observer on one page and on the back, on the other side of the page was Bob Gottlieb's reviewing some dance thing.
00:21:25
And he also writes these books, he's got a book about lyrics, Broadway lyrics, which got fantastic reviews in the New York Book Review- The New York Times Book Review, and other places.
00:21:33
Why did they join? Or what was their interest?
00:21:36
Well, you know, it was a generation of people who'd come from Russia, for whom Russia was hell. Uh, that being, being Jews in Russia was, uh, was really to, to suffer enormously in, in anti-Semitism and confinement in professions, confinement in the pale. Uh, very few, very few Jews escaped that, as Isaiah Berlin's thought parents escaped. But, um, and also to know something of the politics of revolution, to know something of the, of the, of the Polish Bund and, and the 1905 revolution, and to have a sense that things, that there was a, it was a time when people believed in utopias. And when they came here -
00:21:39
Sorry to hear that. And plastic purses. Let's not forget the plastic purses.
00:21:44
Actually, speaking of my Aunt Ruth, my wife and I gave him a couple of her plastic purses.
00:21:50
You gave Bob her plastic purses?
00:21:52
Yeah, when I was writing profiles in the New Yorker, we were getting rid of Aunt Ruth's estate. She died in a nursing home, and she had all these great purses, so I thought, well, Bob's kind of a friend-
00:22:01
I'm sorry to hear that.
00:22:01
So he has two of Aunt Ruth's [laughing] plastic purses. I'll get them back.
00:22:08
I think that grudges are enlivening. In my family- .
00:22:13
They sure are
00:22:13
Yeah. Yeah. And I was really glad to see that in my family, grudges never ended. People would die, and the surviving person would maintain the grudge. And it animated her life. And I intend to maintain this grudge against Bob Gottlieb-
00:22:27
that's good.
00:22:32
for the rest of my life.
00:22:33
Well, I think I probably will too, though in fact he did publish two profiles for me in the-
00:22:34
And what years were they coming here?
00:22:36
My mother came, they both came at the same time, before the First World War. My mother came just before the war broke out, and my father came a year or two before. And then, a few years later, was the revolution. Uh, which promised everything. Promised, uh, uh, heaven on earth. And many of their generation. Not your family?
00:22:37
I know, that mitigates
00:22:38
Mitigates a little bit. And I like Maria Tucci, but that's okay.
00:22:45
Yes, you know Ben used to go out with Maria Tucci?
00:22:47
Really?
00:22:47
Yes. She was his girlfriend. For a while.
00:22:51
Wow.
00:22:51
Small world.
00:22:53
But there are all levels of grudges, too, I think. Let us keep that in mind. There are grudges and grudges.
00:23:00
Yes, there are grudges and grudges. My grudge against Bob Gottlieb is, I think, on a fairly high level. I don't think I have any other grudges that match it.
00:23:06
No, this is, I'm really listening, because it's curious. My mother came at the same time, pretty much, and they were, in a sense, so relieved to be here, that they never looked back on Russia whatsoever. And my, my, my father, for example, he was really young, he must have been 12 or something. He immediately learned English so fast, that he never spoke with an accent his entire life.
00:23:13
That's good.
00:23:20
I haven't seen him lately.
00:23:21
Right, exactly.
00:23:23
And actually, whenever he'd left the New Yorker, I'd stopped writing for them, so that's something I guess.
00:23:24
Really?
00:23:25
Yeah. He just obliterated every bit of the past. When he finally went back to Russia, there was another- that's for my book. But, but, uh, it was a total break. And anything that would at all smack of an earlier country, they were not in- not any of them- they were not interested. Some of them would tell stories about it, but y'know-
00:23:28
Yeah.
00:23:31
What do you think of it now? The New Yorker.
00:23:34
It's somewhat better than it was in Tina Brown's day.
00:23:37
Yes, I think so, too.
00:23:38
He's done a good job - though he doesn't want me to write for him, so-
00:23:40
it's a different magazine. It's a young journalist magazine. And he's got a few young, he's got a few good people. Journalists. I think Philip Grave, which is very good, I think. John Lee Anderson is very good.
00:23:42
Yeah.
00:23:42
Whereas it seems to me that, at least in terms of the politics, it's quite different.
00:23:46
Yeah. There, there, there, there remained an identification with Russia, certainly, or that could- or it couldn't have happened.
00:23:52
Yeah.
00:23:53
Um, and…
00:23:53
But also, the feeling of wanting something more than what they found here, at that very time, or-
00:23:54
Do you know Elizabeth Colbert?
00:23:56
No, I don't. She's got a piece in this new one? I think, I saw - I didn't read it yet.
00:23:58
Yes. There was a great deal of hardship, as there was, I'm sure, for your family, when they came as, as, as children, practically. My mother was 14 or 15 when she came, my father was 16, or something like that, and they worked like dogs. But they spoke Russian, my mother and her sisters, but they can, and that identification with the language, um, and, and they spoke Russian, and they spoke Yiddish, and, um, and the, and we lived really in a, in, in a very circumscribed environment.Uh, we lived among people who, uh, whom they knew from the old country.
00:24:06
Well, I'd like to write for them again, but he's not interested, I guess he's…
00:24:11
Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:34
And, uh, this was around Harlem, wasn't it, in Manhattan?
00:24:35
There's an acknowledgement for Sergei...
00:24:37
We lived in Washington Heights, in the, well, first in the Bronx, then in Washington Heights. And, but, uh, our friends and all our relatives were, uh, it was a fairly, it was, it's a, it's a paradox, because it was a, it was a narrow world we lived in. And yet, uh, the stage on which, you know, life was to be played out was the international working class.
00:24:37
Sergei Dovlatov.
00:24:37
For his masterpiece, Ours? Now, come on. What is his masterpiece I've never heard of?
00:24:43
Did you ever read it?
00:24:43
Sergei de Vlatov was a young Russian émigré, fairly young Russian émigré, and the first I heard of him was Ben publishing him in Grand Street. He published, I think he published two pieces, one about his dog, Glasha, and another, I don't remember the other one, but eventually these pieces were collected in a book called Ours, and it was about his family, his Russian family. And, um, I really recommend it, you'd love it. I mean, maybe you'd love it, maybe you wouldn't. But he was a wonderful writer. He died young. He wrote this book, short pieces, and when I read this book, when I had been thinking about it, after I wrote the first piece about my father's mother's death, the con and death, um, and was thinking about going on, and I didn't know how to do it, and I didn't know how I could make the whole thing, everything, cohere. I read this book, and I go, yes, you don't have to make everything cohere, you can do short pieces, and these are wonderful, wonderful short pieces about a Russian family, and its emigration, um, and they're stories, and they're stories. You don't have to write a, a whole memoir from beginning to end. Break it out in stories.
00:24:59
Well, this is what, again, what a major difference.
00:25:01
Yeah.
00:25:04
And, and as a child, you used to read The Daily Worker?
00:25:06
Oh, yeah. Yes, we read The Daily Worker, then we read PM, then we read The Compass.
00:25:16
And, uh, yes, but they were only liberal papers. The Daily Worker was the real paper.
00:25:23
But you said you, you, at some point you said in the book that you didn't feel you were a red diaper baby, as such. I mean, it would mean that you were-
00:25:28
Did I say that?
00:25:29
I thought you said it. You were!
00:25:30
No, I was!
00:25:31
Very much so.
00:25:32
I mean, I don't like the expression.
00:25:34
I see.
00:25:34
But, uh, but certainly I fit into that category. It was nothing but red.
00:25:46
The expression of "red diaper baby" applied to grown people.
00:25:49
Mhm.
00:25:49
It's a little…
00:25:51
so not babies, essentially
00:25:52
Annoying, yeah.
00:25:56
It's very interesting that politics was such a, such a strong element.
00:26:00
Politics was a very, was, was, was a basic element. I mean, I couldn't, it was, it underlay everything. Everything was, everything was political. And everything was seen in that. For me, growing up, everything was, you know, was measured against its, uh, political ramifications. It was... I guess it was strange. I don't know.
00:26:19
I could see that, that's interesting.
00:26:21
And it's a wonderful, wonderful book, and if you can't find it, I'd be happy to lend you my copy.
00:26:26
I'll look it up. Tell me about, uh, is it Lily's husband Ben? Is that his name?
00:26:28
Well, it wasn't strange in some circles, but as I said, that would be very divergent from what, uh, what I remember.
00:26:33
Who?
00:26:33
Ben.
00:26:34
Yeah.
00:26:34
Ben who?
00:26:35
I mean, one of my grandfathers that was supposed to be the intellectual of the family, I mean, read the Daily Mirror. I mean, that was like, that's a step ahead. Some intellectual. It was a tabloid.
00:26:35
Lily's husband Ben.
00:26:36
Oh yeah, Ben, my husband, Lily, my Aunt Lily's husband was, was Ben.
00:26:40
Was he a strong character in your childhood, or just a…?
00:26:42
No, he was a, he was sort of a joke in the family, nobody took him seriously. But he had, he had grudges. And Ben's letter- Ben, Ben was a writer. Ben wrote, Ben thought of himself as a writer, he thought of himself - is it, can you hear, can this pick up, with all the background noise? you just pick up with all the background noise?
00:26:46
Yeah.
00:26:46
But I couldn't imagine having come across the Daily Worker, or anything.
00:26:50
In fact, I remember once, was it, at college? Our fraternity wanted to subscribe to the Daily Worker. It was a major incident on campus. And out of curiosity, they wanted to get it. And y'know, an incident.
00:27:02
Really? Where did you- where?
00:27:03
Middlebury College.
00:27:04
Oh, Middlebury.
00:27:05
Not a, not City College.
00:27:06
No, no.
00:27:06
Picks up the background, yes.
00:27:07
And then you'll have to filter through? Who's going to type this out?
00:27:08
I still, I, I have a cousin who still works for the party.
00:27:11
I do.
00:27:12
Oh, nightmare. You know, when I did Hannah's daughters, I came back with a whole lot of tapes. All my tapes, and I'd be, and I carried them everywhere. Then I had to go, and I, I would be very careful, I was afraid I would lose them, I would steal them. Then I went through the airport security thing, and I came, and they said, they swore it would not erase tapes.
00:27:13
Really?
00:27:14
Yes.
00:27:14
Is there a party?
00:27:16
Apparently, there's a party. I think it's a, a small party. I think it's a split party, but there is a party, and they put out a paper. And he works for whatever the paper is that they put out.
00:27:30
As a girl growing up, then, politics was an interest to you, more than many things? Were you reading a lot, or were you writing, or...?
00:27:35
Did it?
00:27:36
No, I wasn't writing, uh, and politics, I can't even say politics was of interest to me. Politics was there. Politics covered, colored everything. I was reading. I always read.
00:27:37
Well, I played the first two tapes when I came home, and they were blank. And I had two thoughts at the time. Well, they're blank. I can go back and redo all these interviews, or I can kill myself. And I thought, I couldn't go back and redo everything. I'd have to kill myself. Then I went on listening to the tapes, and most of them were fine. But the first two tapes were absolutely blank.
00:27:50
What were you reading?
00:27:52
Well, I don't, children's books, you know, Heidi. I think I read Heidi 25 or 30 times. [Laughs]
00:27:55
I think I read Heidi 25 or 30 times. [Laughs]
00:28:00
Real communist book.
00:28:01
Yeah. [Laughs]. There was a grandfather in Heidi, was very like - I hoped - very like my father.
00:28:07
I think I remember him from the movie.
00:28:10
Um, I read… we had a set of the - not the Book of Knowledge…. Book of Knowledge? It wasn't the Encyclopedia Britannica, it was the Book of Knowledge, with pictures, and with stories in them. It had, they had stories, they had fairy stories in them. And I read all the fairy stories in the Book of Knowledge. And many, many times over, I read them. And I love to read, anything, almost anything.
00:28:10
Was it the tape recorder, maybe?
00:28:11
I don't know. It was probably a tape recorder.
00:28:14
Let me tell you. What I think is the classic tape recorder story. My favorite tape recorder story. Joe Lelyveld, now the editor of the Times, when he was at the London Bureau, decided to do a piece on John Le Carré, went to interview him, drove all the way up to Cornwall, interviewed him, came back, and the tape didn't work. Called him, said "I'll have to do it again," saw him in London, did it again, came back.
00:28:35
He went back to London? His tape was blank?
00:28:37
Twice. Went back a third time. Finally, it worked the third time, and he wrote his piece for the Times magazine.
00:28:41
What did you think about writing at that point?
00:28:43
Oh, no, no.
00:28:44
You went to Hunter College and left after a couple years?
00:28:45
I left after two years.
00:28:45
What happened? Tape recorder?
00:28:47
He didn't know how to work a tape recorder. Now he's the editor of the Times. You figure it out.
00:28:48
Two years.
00:28:49
Yeah.
00:28:50
I liked boys a lot better than-
00:28:50
[Laughs]
00:28:51
I did a piece on John Le Carré a couple of months ago, and the first thing I asked him was, "is it true, this legendary story?" He said,"absolutely." He said, "my children thought that he was a spy, and he had no intention of tape recording anything." Three times, and he's the editor, well, you know.
00:28:52
What?
00:28:53
Boys better than school. [Laughs]. I couldn't do, I couldn't seem to do both.
00:29:00
Also, I didn't like, I never liked being in school. I never liked that, having to… I couldn't do it. I was bad at it.
00:29:07
Yeah.
00:29:07
So, it happens.
00:29:08
Well, technology is not-
00:29:10
And you traveled the country- I'm probably getting all the chronology wrong, but you traveled the country and lived in a commune somewhere? Is this later- that's much later?
00:29:11
When I do books, there's an actress friend of my son who transcribes everything for me.
00:29:16
But this, you're going to have to transcribe?
00:29:17
I- well, I don't do everything, but… a lot of tapes.
00:29:18
No! No, I never lived in a commune.
00:29:20
Isn't that what it said in the-?
00:29:21
I wouldn't - No! Are you sure you read this book?
00:29:21
I remember transcribing. Oh, my God, what a nightmare.
00:29:23
Another book.
00:29:24
[Laughs]
00:29:24
That's the advantage of doing a memoir, you see.
00:29:25
There was a point in which you traveled around America, though.
00:29:26
Yes. Nobody- you don't have to transcribe anything, no research.
00:29:27
Oh, I did. No - I didn't travel very much. I just went cross country with some friends. I would never have lived in the commune. A commune smacked to me of that, of silliness.
00:29:30
Make it up.
00:29:31
Make it up. [Laughs] No!
00:29:34
Do you keep a journal of things like that? No?
00:29:36
No. I never have. Sometimes I read something, and I read something, and I write it down, and I guess what's called a commonplace book. Just quotes. No, I keep no journal.
00:29:39
My understanding of politics was that it was hard and difficult. You didn't sit around having sex and smoking dope.
00:29:48
Then at some point you went to a career blazers agency.
00:29:50
Yes. [Laughs]
00:29:51
When did your title come? What did you think of that?
00:29:52
I got my first job at career blazers.
00:29:54
Did you really?
00:29:54
I remember them well
00:29:54
What title?
00:29:54
Title of the book.
00:29:56
Who was there?
00:29:56
It came with the first story.
00:29:57
I don't remember. I got a job at Newsweek Magazine through career blazes.
00:29:57
Just like that
00:29:57
How I Came Into My Inheritance. You know, I worked for Fan magazine. I'm extremely good on titles and blurbs. I can do them. They just come like that. It's my talent. My major coup for Fan magazine was, as I wrote in the book, when May Britt married Sammy Davis Jr. That was a touchy situation. And my title was, "Why I Married a Man Shorter Than I Am."
00:30:00
There was a woman who owned it called Adele Lewis or something like that, who was a crazy lady. And I know she was crazy because she was later institutionalized.
00:30:11
About what year are we talking about, here?
00:30:12
Well, I'm talking about, I must be talking about the mid-50s, early, late 50s. Maybe later, no, I left, no, no, I'm talking about the early 60s.
00:30:30
okay, I think it was about 1959 that I went to them.
00:30:35
Why I Ma-- Say it again?
00:30:36
"May Britt reveals, Why I Married a Man Shorter Than I Am"
00:30:37
And they were good, right?
00:30:38
I couldn't get a job out of the army with a master's degree in journalism. I couldn't get a job anywhere. I went to career blazers. They got me a job in Newsweek. And they got me a job at magazine management. I couldn't get a job anywhere. I went to career blazers. They got me a job in Newsweek. And they got me a job at magazine management. I couldn't get a job anywhere. I went to career blazers. They got me a job in Newsweek.
00:30:41
Shorter than I Am.
00:30:41
[Laughing] Yes.
00:30:42
Not Blacker than I am?
00:30:43
[Laughing] No.
00:30:45
Gotcha, and they got me a job at magazine management.
00:30:46
So, while you were making that up, I was interviewing Sammy Davis Jr. in this - they bought a-
00:30:47
All right, tell me about that.
00:30:49
Magazine management was wonderful.
00:30:49
Is that true?
00:30:50
You made up stories.
00:30:51
I made up stories. It was my first writing job, first time I ever had an inkling that I could write. I never thought about it before because I couldn't write papers for school. I was not very good at doing the assigned papers at school. But I was answering the phones at career blazers because they couldn't get me a job. They got me jobs, and I would get fired because I couldn't do anything.
00:30:51
Yeah, true. They bought a townhouse uptown. He was two hours late in the interview. Yeah. I was furious. Yeah. It was the first time I heard about CPT, Colored People's Time, as he referred to it as.
00:31:02
He said, "Oh, sorry, CPT" ?
00:31:04
"Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry."
00:31:06
Oh.
00:31:07
It was a wonderful interview when we finally sat down and talked. He couldn't have been nicer. He was great, actually.
00:31:10
Yeah.
00:31:11
But it was literally two hours late. I was just -
00:31:13
Where were you waiting?
00:31:15
Outside his apartment. I finally left. I was going to leave. It was like close to dark-
00:31:18
What kind of jobs?
00:31:18
Outside his apartment?
00:31:19
They would get me secretarial jobs. They would get me whatever kinds of low-level, unskilled jobs girls had at the time. But I didn't have any skills. I had no shorthand. My typing was horrible. I couldn't do a thing. But I kept coming back to them over and over again. And finally, they said, you know, okay, you could answer the phones here. We'll have a job for you. So I stayed there for a while. And I took down listings for jobs. And they said that any time a job came along I wanted to go try out for, I could go. They wanted to get rid of me. So I tried. I went for several interviews. And then the call came from Magazine Management. I said, "she'll be right there."
00:31:19
Yeah, I was just waiting. And he finally showed up. Breezing in. Had to do the story. And it was a very good story. That was when his autobiography came out.
00:31:28
Was he married?
00:31:30
Yes.
00:31:30
Did he hear married-
00:31:31
They were married and he had written, or, his autobiography had been written by this couple that wrote it. Called "Yes I Can."
00:31:38
Oh, yeah. I remember that.
00:31:39
What are their names? Their names…
00:31:41
Yeah, I remember that.
00:31:42
Sure. And he was actually a wonderful interview, in fact, but… Never waited longer for anything in my life, I don't think. Better to make it up.
00:31:52
[Laughing] Yeah.
00:31:52
I think so. Well, I think that's probably, I think, what I left here…
00:32:03
Well, yeah, your trip back five years after your parents died, you went back. You went to Romania.
00:32:06
"She'll be right there."
00:32:07
"She'll be right there."
00:32:07
Yes, I went to Romania. My friend Sylvia Plachy, the photographer, had an assignment in Romania. I don't know if it was an assignment. She's doing a book on Eastern Europe. And she's Hungarian and she knows that - And she goes back to Budapest very often and to Romania, especially to Transylvania, where they're Hungarian-speaking, quite a bit. And she said, "do you want to come with me?" And I said, "sure." And we went to Romania. Her mother was born in the Ukraine, not too far from where my mother was born, and we had this notion that we would somehow from Romania get to go to Ukraine. Turned out to be impossible. We just couldn't cross that border. Without- And also, everybody said, "don't go to the Ukraine. They'll steal your car. They'll rape you. They'll," you know, "bury you in the fields." So, and that was the year that the, while we were in Romania, the Ruble collapsed. So, things were really desperate. But, yes, we went to Romania and it was a revelation for me. And I would like to go back. I'd very much like to go back to Eastern Europe.
00:32:09
So, daffing your other hat - or, donning is the word.
00:32:12
Yeah. And I went over there and I almost didn't get the job.
00:32:17
I didn't get the job because they - almost didn't get it - because the editor was about a year or two younger than I was. She didn't like the idea of an older woman working for her. But somehow or other, I did my test story, which was about Steve McQueen. And I got the job. It was better than anybody else's test story. And then it was three years of sheer fun. We put, you know, we put out the entire magazine. We wrote it. We pasted it up. We did the columns. We, you know, we cut it, actually cut the galleys so they fit on the page, then counted the number of lines. So we knew how much we had to cut out of the story. It was the most fun I ever had. And then there was every, everybody in the office was fun.
00:33:12
Which, you actually weren't making up - I mean, were not interviewing people for stories and things.
00:33:16
No, the movie studios were not interested in us. They would give interviews to Photo Play and modern, modern, Modern Screen, but not to, not to us. No, we were nothing. We made it up.
00:33:22
But you didn't actually go to where your mother was from.
00:33:25
No, never got there. Nor did Sylvia. But, you know, close enough somehow.
00:33:33
So, then, I was interviewing for Newsweek at that very time.
00:33:34
Well, I wonder what it would tell you, honestly. My brother actually went back to the town where my father was born and grew up in, in Lithuania - Pumpénai Lithuania, he went back to it.
00:33:37
They gave you interviews.
00:33:39
Real interviews, without bylines, so nobody knew I did it anyway, so.
00:33:42
Good.
00:33:44
That's definitely served me right.
00:33:45
Yeah.
00:33:46
They were, they were fun years?
00:33:46
Yeah.
00:33:47
And found the mud huts and therefore decided his father-
00:33:48
Oh, they were so much fun. I never knew that work could be fun. It was my first inkling. And then from, and then, uh, and many people worked there. I mean, many, Mario Puzo worked there. Bruce [Jay Friedman] worked there. Um, there were-
00:33:48
Found the mud huts?
00:33:49
Well, kind of like it.
00:33:51
Something, it was still standing?
00:33:52
Similar, similar.
00:33:52
Yeah.
00:33:54
There was one still like it, he thought, and he decided his father was, therefore, a peasant. And he came back and, like, he was born a peasant and, therefore, and I said, our father was not a peasant in any sense of the word. He was, he was kind of, he was a, he was dapper. He was a dandy. He wasn't a peasant. My brother couldn't understand that. He was born a peasant and, therefore, he always had this sort of peasantry - I said "you've got it all wrong"
00:34:04
Was Mario Puzo working on the Godfather at the time?
00:34:06
He was working, yes. He said, Jesus, I gotta make some money. You know, maybe this will make me some money. Because he'd already published a novel called The Fortunate Pilgrim, which had gone down a black - which was the best novel - gone down a black hole
00:34:17
You know it's an unimaginable world they came from
00:34:19
which was one of his best novels. Talk about black holes.
00:34:20
Well, it is. I mean, actually, he was born there. It is. I must go back sometime, myself.
00:34:21
Right. But he, um, he was working on it then. Yeah, "I got to make some money, got to make some money." He was a gambler, so he needed money.
00:34:25
Really, we can't imagine. We can't imagine what life was like-
00:34:28
Just a generation ago.
00:34:29
Yeah, just a generation ago. The world.
00:34:30
And what if they hadn't come over?
00:34:32
And what if they hadn't, they'd be dead. And we wouldn't be here.
00:34:33
You weren't working on a novel at that point, right?
00:34:34
Yeah, that's fair. Or, if we were here, we'd be there.
00:34:35
Oh, no. No, no, never dreamed. I was working on nothing but interviews with movie stars, fake interviews with movie stars.
00:34:38
No, we wouldn't be there.
00:34:39
We wouldn't be here at all.
00:34:40
They would have been killed in the Second World War, not before.
00:34:43
Well, it's fiction, so.
00:34:44
Yeah.
00:34:44
Same category.
00:34:44
Well, in my case, they were flying from the Cossacks, I guess, is what it was.
00:34:45
And this led directly to your first book?
00:34:47
Yeah, yeah. But if they'd stayed longer…
00:34:49
No.
00:34:51
Indirectly to your first book?
00:34:52
My father actually wrote his autobiography.
00:34:53
No, no.
00:34:54
No kidding.
00:34:55
What's the transition from that to-
00:34:55
Yeah.
00:34:56
Redbook. I went to Redbook. Actually, I went to Modern Screen after that, and then I went to Redbook. I was married at the time, and my husband was a -
00:34:56
What sort of, where is it?
00:34:59
It's, it was published-
00:35:00
What is this? Water.
00:35:00
It's my water, you're having some and that's fine.
00:35:02
Thank you.
00:35:02
And it did fairly well. He self-published it and then Ballantine re-published it for him.
00:35:08
No kidding.
00:35:09
How many times have you been married?
00:35:09
It was called Chaia Sonia, and it was about his mother.
00:35:10
Twice? Three?
00:35:11
It was called what?
00:35:12
Chaia, C-H-A-I-A. Chaia Sonia, which is his mother's name.
00:35:13
Uh - three.
00:35:15
Uh… my then-husband was a friend of the features editor at Redbook. And the features editor at Redbook was having an affair with his secretary. A married person, actually. And nobody in the office would speak to his secretary. So he thought if he brought somebody in who was extrinsic to the office and didn't know all the details and didn't have any enmity toward his secretary, she would have a friend in the office. So I got a [laughs] so, I got a job on a respectable magazine.
00:35:16
Yeah.
00:35:18
Russian, immigrating to America, fleeing the Cossacks.
00:35:21
Yeah.
00:35:21
Going through Warsaw with him and his brother, leaving all the daughters behind to abandon them.
00:35:26
So you've got a great beginning.
00:35:28
He wrote his book.
00:35:29
I know.
00:35:30
But he made it up.
00:35:30
But you have - he made it up?
00:35:32
Well, no, partly. I mean, he reconstructed, reconstructed conversations. It was a good book, but it was, we always thought it was partly invention.
00:35:40
Well, you've got something to draw on.
00:35:42
Oh yeah.
00:35:44
How wonderful.
00:35:45
I always thought about cannibalizing his books [laughing].
00:35:47
Of course! I cannibalized my Uncle Meyer's autobiography.
00:35:50
Mmhm.
00:35:52
Yeah. Absolutely.
00:35:55
But who would be interested?
00:35:58
Now… somebody was interested. Somebody will be interested in yours.
00:36:00
And you edited it?
00:36:02
Even if Bob Gottlieb is not interested, there are people out there.
00:36:03
Yes. And then I was an editor in the features department. And Redbook was an odd magazine at that time. It was between, didn't you know Cy Chastler? Cy Chastler?
00:36:05
There are people out there.
00:36:06
Have you been traveling with the book at all? On a tour?
00:36:10
No. Nobody sent me on tour. We just to read locally. I've done radio. I've done News Day. I've done readings. I did a couple of readings. But, no, I haven't been traveling. I'm going to travel to Missoula, Montana. My stepdaughter has arranged a reading for me there.
00:36:17
I remember the name, but -
00:36:19
He was the editor. He was a very sweet man. He's dead now.
00:36:27
I'm running out.
00:36:32
He was very serious. And the articles it had, it was very serious. It was all very sort of sociological, liberal sociological. And they had, but they had to sell magazines too. So the sociology had to be somehow connected with sex. And somehow they managed. [laughs] I don't know how, but they managed it. And every once in a while they'd throw in something that had nothing to do with sex. But that wasn't what sold the magazine.
00:36:34
In Missoula?
00:36:34
[laughing] In Missoula.
00:36:35
They're interested.
00:36:36
Yeah.
00:36:37
But, you know, just one last thing. The odd thing about this book is that you recognized your relatives in it, but people who are Protestant from the Midwest say, "it was like you were writing about my family." That is an odd thing to me. I thought I was writing a very particular… I mean, so particular that there would be, nobody would identify with me.
00:37:01
But that's probably why, in fact.
00:37:02
Was Walter Goodman there then?
00:37:03
Maybe so. Maybe-
00:37:04
Yes. Yeah. Walter was there. And Sam Blum.
00:37:04
Particular to the genera, that people realize that there really are - in terms of the family rivalries and everything - that that really goes on all over the place.
00:37:07
Don't know Sam Blum, but Walter was a good friend over the years. In fact, I always remember when I was at Newsweek, he was both at Playboy and Redbook, which I thought was one of the great double hitters. I used to write play reviews about Playboy without bylines. He hired me as a theater critic way back.
00:37:16
Yeah.
00:37:22
Walt- yes.
00:37:22
It's been so gratifying. People have loved this book. Really, people love it. I'm - as I wrote each story, our friend Michael Train read it to Ben. So that each, and then, and then Ben, he would say, "oh, this is right, this is wrong." Ben was really - not that he had many suggestions, but he was my first editor on the book. But, we all thought it was so particular that, you know, maybe there'd be 15 or 20 people, maybe, like Tresca, there'd be 15 or 20 people who were interested.
00:37:23
How he doubled on both and also wrote about the House Un-American Activities Committee-
00:37:27
You know how? We were professionals. That's how.
00:37:30
Yeah, right. You needed money, so.
00:37:32
Yeah.
00:37:33
No, he's it's great about that.
00:37:34
Yeah. We could write about anything. Once you had, once you began working in journalism, you could write about anything.
00:37:42
How is Walter?
00:37:44
I haven't talked to him in a few weeks now. Last time I did, he didn't seem well. He never- unlike Maxine[?] - he never wants to talk about anything. About any problems or illnesses…
00:37:54
Is he working at all?
00:37:55
At home. He hasn't been in the office in a long time. He had a couple of notebooks that haven't run, In fact. I can't remember what his last piece was.
00:38:04
Is he not well?
00:38:05
Well, he didn't look, it must be a good two or three months ago he came in because he did not look well. And as always, I try to get him talking about anything and he, you talk about, you know, meeting us at the theater some night and he hasn't.
00:38:07
And if you write a musical like Fiddler on the Roof, it's gonna play in a small theater somewhere and no one's gonna come, right?
00:38:10
[Laughing] That's right. That's right.
00:38:13
I did not write Fiddler on the Roof. I wrote something…
00:38:18
I'm sorry to hear that.
00:38:18
And I surmised that he was not well, but he never verified that at all. I don't know.
00:38:18
No, but it is true sometimes.
00:38:19
...more severe than that.
00:38:21
Yeah, but sometimes the very specific can evoke all sorts of things.
00:38:23
I sent him my book and I didn't hear from him and I thought Walter must not be well.
00:38:25
Yeah, apparently so.
00:38:28
All happy families are alike, I dunno.
00:38:30
But no, but he was, he is, I mean, he has been a very good friend for many years. Yeah. Both he and his wife. Quite often went to the theater and dinner together and I feel guilty now as we're talking because I haven't called him. Feels like I don't wanna call him.
00:38:44
Yeah. Give him my regards, please. I love Walter. He was terrific. He was a lot of fun and he was always, I knew him for many years and didn't know him maybe for this for the last 10, 15 years. I haven't been in touch with him, but he did call me once to go to the theater and I couldn't go and then he didn't ask me again. Vincent [Canby] never took me to the theater. He took me twice. Vincent, why won't you take me? You know, we saw Vincent - this has nothing to do with anything - We saw Vincent almost every day for the last two years of his life. He could bear just so much company, but he would go to Citarella to buy dinner and he would stop on his way either to Citarella or on his way back from Citarella and spend an hour with us and then go home and cook his dinner. He wouldn't eat. He refused to eat.
00:38:44
Huh... "tell me a little bit about yourself." Is he interviewing her, too?
00:38:47
What'd you say?
00:38:48
The guy said "tell me a little bit about yourself." At the next table. Is he interviewing her?
00:38:56
I don't know.
00:38:59
Thank you.
00:39:01
Say it again, what was that?
00:39:03
He said, "tell me a little about yourself."
00:39:06
Oh.
00:39:14
Would you sign my book?
00:39:16
Oh, with pleasure.
00:39:16
Thank you. Oh, that is you. No?
00:39:21
Of course it's me.
00:39:23
And that's your mother's father?
00:39:23
Yeah.
00:39:24
At the end here?
00:39:24
Yeah. And Sylvia Plachy took this picture.
00:39:30
Well, and before you knew you'd about that.
00:39:31
Yeah. [paging through the book] Do you have a pen?
00:39:38
Yeah.
00:39:47
[paging through the book] Yeah, that's me. Sylvia, at the time, was thinking she would do a picture about middle-aged children and their elderly parents; to do a series for somebody. That never worked out. But all these pictures I now have, are now on my wall. And I took this one.
00:39:50
That's very sad.
00:39:51
Yeah. Oh, it was awful. It was awful. The man was, and he was, he had a wonderful niece. Ridgely, I mean, at the end took over.
00:40:00
How is Ben [Sonnenberg] doing?
00:40:02
Well, at his memorial, she was just wonderful.
00:40:06
She was wonderful.
00:40:07
I've never met her, but was just
00:40:08
She was-
00:40:08
Just devoted to him.
00:40:10
Yeah. She loved him and she took over the management of the last year of his life. And there was no one else. If she hadn't done it, there would have been no one else.
00:40:15
Where was this taken, the picture?
00:40:16
It was taken at my parents' house in Golden's Bridge. [Turning pages]
00:40:21
Well, that's a sad thing.
00:40:21
In a sense, you know, without her, he would have died alone, I guess.
00:40:24
In the end, I guess I have to say: I didn't know him that well, I suppose, but it seems to me that after Penelope [Gilliatt], that was really, uh…
00:40:34
Yeah. Yeah. Penelope was just-
00:40:35
Was it
00:40:36
Was it, yeah.
00:40:36
I remember seeing them, we had dinner one night in London with the sister and Vincent, I remember
00:40:42
Yeah.
00:40:43
I had seen her and I was there.
00:40:44
Yeah. Ben was devastated. It was awful. I mean, they were, Ben, they were very close.
00:40:49
When I was writing, Vincent was alive, and he was coming down, stopping by almost every day. But, you know, he had absolutely no interest. I would talk to him about it. He was, cancer is a terrible thing. It made him, it makes everybody, it shrinks everybody into their own skin.
00:41:02
He's doing okay. I mean, he's doing the same. The disease is stable and, you know, it's plain -
00:41:06
He's still writing whatever he wants to write.
00:41:08
Yeah. Yeah. He's, yeah, he's writing. He doesn't have the energy really to concentrate for very long, but he's, y'know, he's writing short things.
00:41:24
Anyway, back to Redbook, and then comes this book about a 99-year-old woman and her entire family. How did that come about?
00:41:24
He didn't want to know about the book? Is that-
00:41:25
No, he really, he and Ben would talk about movies.
00:41:30
And they would argue, and Vincent would be very testy.
00:41:32
I think Vincent was testy.
00:41:33
It was, it was an assignment from, I left Redbook in 1970, I think, and I really had no way to earn a living. I mean, I thought, what am I going to do? I have to get another job. And I didn't, there wasn't any other job. I couldn't get another job. I don't know what happened. But Cy Chester, this wonderful man, said, well, maybe we'll assign you a piece. That was my first writing assignment. And he assigned me a piece about some, a teacher in New Jersey who did something, I can't remember what she did. So, and they ran it, and they paid me for it, and they paid me an astonishing amount of money. They paid me $2,000. I couldn't believe it. And I said, well, I can do this.
00:41:45
But, um, illness just shrinks you into a world of your own.
00:41:46
He was a darling man.
00:42:00
It was good they finally, slowly, somehow appreciated him at the Times, but I begrudge the fact that years ago when, you know, Martin Segal, his editor, pushed him for a Pulitzer Prize, and somehow the Times did not give any backing for it.
00:42:14
Really?
00:42:14
Yeah. They should have.
00:42:16
Yeah, they should have.
00:42:16
As a film critic, he - without question he should have won a Pulitzer.
00:42:21
And his daily reviews were outstanding. Somebody who has to do daily reviews is pushed to the wall, and Vincent came through all the time.
00:42:24
For money.
00:42:26
For money. [Laughs]. So, for a number of years, I earned, I earned from Redbook $12,000 a year. I wrote three pieces a year, three or four, they raised $2,000 to maybe $3,000 after a while. And if I wrote three or four pieces a year, I could make my rent, and I have enough to live on. And I wrote for Redbook for a number of years. And one of the pieces they assigned me was this 99-year-old woman in Tacoma. So, I went out there, and I did this piece of it. And then an agent, no, he was an author, he was an editor at the defunct Thomas White Crowe Publishing Company. He called up and said, would I do a book about this woman and her family? Why not? I knew if I was going to go on, I had to do a book. It was time to do a book. So, I went out there, and I wrote a book, this book, Hannah's Daughters. Down the black hole.
00:42:31
And you read some of them now, I mean it's just…
00:42:34
You think anybody would be interested in a collection?
00:42:37
Oh, I always said that, sure. Absolutely.
00:42:42
Well, is the Times going to do anything about it?
00:42:44
No, they'll never do anything about it. At one point, Marvin Segal's son, who was at the Modern Museum, had talked about maybe doing some sort of collection, "Vincent on Directors" or something like that. But he was - Vince was never interested in doing it, and he should have been. But someone still should, I think.
00:43:01
Yeah.
00:43:02
Because he really was very, very influential in terms of…
00:43:06
Yes, he was.
00:43:07
…film through those years.
00:43:08
Yeah.
00:43:09
But… somebody should.
00:43:13
Yeah.
00:43:16
Okay.
00:43:20
We're done?
00:43:23
Unless you have something else to say?
00:43:24
No [Laughing]
00:43:24
About your family?
00:43:26
No, I think I'm finished. I think I'm finished with my family.
00:43:29
Would your father have read the book?
00:43:31
[whispered] I don't know.
00:43:34
You mother would have said, "your father likes it, but he hasn't told me that"
00:43:37
[Laughs] "Daddy li- I know that Daddy likes it, because he said something to somebody that you'd written a book, but..." No. He would never have said anything. And he wouldn't have been happy with his last, with his last, with the first story. He would not have been happy. But you know, I don't know. Who knows? I don't know. They're dead. I mean, I can do what I like with them.
00:43:41
Number one, number one.
00:43:44
One, black hole. Um, but that kept me, that kept me going for, kept me going for probably two years.
00:43:57
"In a more personal sense, I know more their history than I do of my own family. I have a stronger sense of their continuity." About that family, the afterword-
00:44:03
They were live, you said.
00:44:05
Yeah. They were alive. And now they're dead. And now I can do what I like with them.
00:44:07
Oh, that's from Hannah's Daughters. Where did you find the copy of Hannah's Daughters? Where did you find the copy of Hannah's Daughters? Well, it's true. It was true then. It's not true anymore.
00:44:08
Yeah. But now they're alive in your book again.
00:44:10
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. I meant to make them live.
00:44:15
Not true - okay.
00:44:17
I didn't know as much about my own family as I knew then. But it was, to know that I could do a book was really thrilling. Even though it wasn't a really written book, it was an interview book, and it was a, it was a sort of documentary, you know. That was thrilling, to actually produce a book. And, um.
00:44:17
Aunt Lily lives.
00:44:19
Aunt Lily lives. Aunt Sally lives, you've forgotten my Aunt Sally.
00:44:23
Aunt Sally lives.
00:44:25
Okay.
00:44:27
Okay.
00:44:42
So then you thought about another book.
00:44:44
Yeah, I thought about, that's right. And then One Night at Dinner. One Night at Dinner. One Night at Dinner. I had, I had been thinking about it for a long time. I said, I've got, this is the, what is the, what is the central theme of my life? It's politics. It has pervaded my life from the beginning until this moment, to this very moment, when I think of what position I should take on any issue. My reference is back there, even though I long ago rejected any Soviet view of the world, I still feel bound somehow to have a reference point. So I thought I've got to, I have to deal with this, I'm going to do another book. I have to deal with this political issue, and I'm also totally ignorant. I know nothing. I only know what I was told. I know actually nothing. So how am I going to do it? And then One Night at Dinner, somebody said the name of Carlo Tresca.
00:45:57
Had you heard the name before?
00:45:58
Never before. I had heard the name- they said two names. They said Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flitt. Now Elizabeth Gurley Flitt, whose name I did know, she was a heroine of my mother's. And a…
00:46:16
…switch this out….
00:46:18
And a figure in my childhood.
00:46:22
You want to turn over?
00:46:23
Uh, it's almost done.
00:46:25
So Tresca's name linked with Elizabeth Gurley Flitt's and the understanding that they have political differences. And something else was said about - Tresca was murdered. I thought - and an anarchist - I mean I knew how my family felt about anarchists. They were the, they were as much the enemy as, um, as the Tsar. Enemies of the revolution. But this, this could do it for me. And I went to the library, to the manuscript division, and I said, what do you have? And they, and as I was sitting there, looking at the stuff they brought me. You know Paul Average? Paul Average is the, is the historian of...
Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, 25 February 2002
00:00:00
N-no ice please
00:00:21
Oh oh....
00:00:23
Sorry
00:00:24
I'm just going to have to leave it there.
00:00:29
Anyway, perhaps if we could start talking about the new novel, first of all
00:00:32
Very well [laughter]
00:00:35
And the obvious question is, why Trujillo? Why now you go to the Dominican Republic after writing so many books about Peru?
00:00:44
Mmhm
00:00:44
I realize that one was about Brazil and so on....
00:00:48
Well, you know, this novel was born because in 1975, I went to the Dominican Republic for a film. And I stayed there almost eight months.
00:01:07
And during these months, I heard so many anecdotes, stories about Trujillo. And I also read some books about what was life in the Dominican Republic during those 31 years of the Trujillo regime.
00:01:28
And I was really fascinated, well, terrified and fascinated with the extremes that Trujillo reached. I think he went much more to the extremes that all Latin American dictatorships in violence, in corruption, and also in theatricalities.
00:02:00
I think he was a kind of showman, not only a very cruel and very shoot person, very corrupt, of course, but also a showman.
00:02:18
And in a way, you can say that during these 31 years, life in the Dominican Republic was a kind of national farce, an operatic farce, orchestrated by this man who had practically total control of people and could convert people in extras.... in the actors of a very sinister....show.
00:02:57
Well, that gave me the idea of the novel. Since then, since 1975, I ha-had the idea. And since then, I started to read and to interview people, take notes.
00:03:10
Had-had you ever met him in his lifetime?
00:03:12
No. Oh, no.
00:03:14
He was killed in '61 and the first time I went to the Dominican Republic was in '75.
00:03:22
Mhm. When did you start writing the book then?
00:03:25
It took me three years, more or less.
00:03:29
So I started, the book was published in Spanish two years ago. So five years ago. And I went many times to the Dominican Republic.
00:03:40
When I started to write the book, people were much more willing to talk.
00:03:48
All-I think the taboo was already finishing so people were much more open to...
00:03:57
Time had passed, in other words.
00:03:59
Yeah.
00:03:59
And not only the enemies, also, but the collaborators and the friends of the regime.
00:04:09
I had incredible conversations with people who worked with him and who still talked about Trujillo with a kind of religious respect, you know?
00:04:28
How close does the novel cue to the reality of the events?
00:04:34
It's a novel. It's not a history book.
00:04:37
So I took many, many liberties with history. But the only limitation that I imposed on myself was I'm not going to invent anything that couldn't have happened within the framework of what was life in the Dominican Republic. And I think I have respected this.
00:05:00
I have invented characters. The-Let's say the historic characters I have treated with the freedom that you treat invented characters. I have used historic characters for the invented characters.
00:05:17
But well what usually novelists do, eh?
00:05:22
I have respected the basic facts, you know? the basic facts. But I have changed and deformed many things in order to make more, let's say, persuasive the story.
00:05:40
But unlike what readers think, I have not exaggerated.
00:05:45
On the contrary, in certain cases, I have attenuated what was the violence during those years. Because I think the objective history is totally unbelievable. You can't really believe all the things that happened during those years.
00:06:10
And whether in fact or fiction, I guess we can't believe it.
00:06:14
Um--Urania and her father are the principal invented characters, yes? Is that
00:06:18
The what?
00:06:19
Urania and her father.
00:06:20
Urania and his father are invented characters.
00:06:24
Well, I suppose there were many Uranias in Trujillo's life, you know? But the character is invented.
00:06:35
Her father is invented, but it follows more or less a very close collaborator of Trujillo, who was, well, falling disgrace. And suddenly, as a Cerebrito Cabral, lost everything in just a few hours, you know? His money, his power, his friends, his prestigious life.
00:07:02
And that's something that Trujillo used to do systematically. Just to disseminate fear, insecurity among, among his own people.
00:07:20
It was a way to keep everybody on the alert, eh? And to encourage, how can I say, this kind of servility towards him.
00:07:44
He was very shoot. He was not a cultivated person. But he was, he knew very well human weaknesses. And he knew how to manipulate appetites. And he was very cold. Very cold in a very passionate country.
00:08:07
And he was convinced that everybody has a price, so that everybody could be corrupt. And what is terrible is that during those 31 years, he almost managed to prove that he was right. [laughter]
00:08:31
As is the case of many Latin American dictators. Well, many dictators, not only Latin Americans, hm?
00:08:38
How would you compare him to other dictators... his record compared...
00:08:42
I think, well, he had more or less all the common trends of a Latin American dictator but pushed to the extremes. In cruelty, I think he went far, far away from the rest. And in corruption too.
00:09:04
Maybe the big differences was that unlike, let's say, Somoza, or in the case of Peru, Fujimori, money had not this attraction, this abstract attraction.
00:09:20
Money did not?
00:09:21
No, no, no.
00:09:22
He was not interested in money. He used money, of course, because it was an instrument of corruption. But this was one of the big fights between him and his wife. His wife, yes. She was...
00:09:39
She was salting away money and switching things like that
00:09:43
Oh oh yeah-but hiding this from Trujillo, because Trujillo didn't want his family to take money outside the country.
00:09:52
Well, in the last two years, when he started to decline, you know, he forbidden that any Dominican took money abroad, you know? And if one tried to do it, well, he lost his property and his patrimony. So the family was sending money, but in a very discrete way, against Trujillo's will, you know?
00:10:22
And in his life, his sexual potency was an important thing.
00:10:25
Oh, essential.
00:10:27
Well, that's a common trend in Latin American dictators, eh? Africans too, you know? General Abacha. You remember how he died? [laughter]
00:10:37
But that was one of the first things that puzzled me in '75 when I was in the Dominican Republic. He went to bed with many women, but he went to bed with his minister's wives, for example.
00:11:01
And you got the impression that he did that, not only because he liked these ladies, but because it was a way to put his ministers at a test.
00:11:24
He wanted to know if they were ready to accept this kind of humiliation, the extreme humiliation in a machista country, you know?
00:11:37
That was the extreme humiliation for a Dominican, you know? And many ministers accepted and were prepared to play this, let's say, well, grotesque role. And they remained loyal to Trujillo even after the killing of Trujillo.
00:12:03
So this...so when I mean corruption, I am thinking things like this, you know?
00:12:07
Well, then certainly you have the father actually giving his daughter, which is sort of the only thing It's the first choice, not just the one.
00:12:13
Well, this is something that happened, you know? I had a very interesting conversation with one of his secretaries, Khalil Asha. Ashe. Khalil Ashe.
00:12:27
He's a very nice person. By the way, he was very kind. He organized a dinner for me with former Trujillistas. It was an unbelievable experience. And he told me, he told me, each time that El Jefe went in tourney by the interior, there were many fathers. Modest people, peasants who brought their daughters as a gift to the Jefe.
00:13:03
And the Jefe didn't know what to do with these girls because...And I said, but this is true, absolutely true. And they were very proud, you know? My daughter for the Jefe, for El Jefe. It was not only because they wanted favors in exchange, it was because it was a normal.
00:13:28
So the society was deeply, deeply corrupt by the system, you know? He was a kind of god. And so everything that touched the god was good, you know, was of value.
00:13:43
Sounds like something out of the Middle Ages. I mean king and...
00:13:45
Yeah.
00:13:46
Well, nothing of this is uncommon. I think this happens in all dictatorships, but not with the theatricality that happened with Trujillo. I think Trujillo had the opportunity, as he was a natural born actor, to make life a kind of big, big show in which he could materialize all his fantasies, his appetites. And he did these incredible things, you know?
00:14:23
He made his elder son, Ramfis, a colonel when Ramfis was nine years old, and a general when he was, I think, 12 or 13 with a military parade, you know? And ambassadors had to attend with tales, you know? And it was grotesque. And at the same time, the reality was very, how you say, submissive to this power.
00:14:53
Is there one reason why the people loved him so much?
00:14:58
Why people love dictators? This is not an exception. And this is not an exclusive trend of underdeveloped countries. The Germans were the most cultivated people in Europe, you know? The most cultivated people in Europe. And they loved Hitler. They really loved Hitler, you know? And the Italians were very cultivated too. And they had Mussolini, you know?
00:15:21
And I think this is what Popper called the attraction of the tribe. You want to be liberated of all responsibilities when you submit yourself to a dictator, someone who takes all the decisions for you. That, for many, many people, in spite of culture, in spite of knowledge, is a kind of relief, eh?
00:15:54
It's a big puzzle, eh? How...
00:15:57
I think you're saying in passing that one of his worst crimes, in a sense, was taking away the free will of the people.
00:16:02
I think so.
00:16:04
I think this is probably the worst crime in a dictatorship. You destroy these basic decency of people. And people became really very, very corrupt. They are prepared to accept everything, sometimes not for selfish reasons. On the contrary, they are prepared to become slaves, because a dictator is someone who takes responsibility for you.
00:16:45
What I try to show in the book is that a dictatorship can always be resisted at the beginning. It's always possible to resist, to put some frame to obstacles, to this increasing power. But what is terrible with dictators? And it's not only the case of Trujillo, you know? Look at Venezuela today, Chavez. Well, now Chavez is in decline. But for years, the Venezuelans, in spite...
00:17:18
Colombia had a story today, in fact.
00:17:19
Colombia had a story today in the paper about it. I was telling Colombia about holding back the rebels and all the Colombians.
00:17:27
Oh yeah well... But at least Colombia has a democratic tradition. But Venezuela is sad, because Venezuela has had so many dictatorships.
00:17:37
So Venezuelans know very well what a dictatorship is, you know?
00:17:41
The country has experienced grotesque dictatorships, Perez-Jimenez. And they were ready to accept the demagogue, like Chavez, you know?
00:17:51
I think they are reacting now, happily. But see, it's very sad. Argentina had Perón, a very civilized country, Argentina, with a high national education. And they accepted Perón, who was a grotesque demagogue, you know?
00:18:11
Well, in my country, it's very sad what has happened with Fujimori. He was so popular. He was so popular when he did the coup d'etat in 1992. He was very popular, you know?
00:18:26
The minority which resisted became very, very popular, no? People were seduced with the idea of the strong man, you know? This is deeply, I think, rooted in the human spirit. The democratic culture is very reduced, very superficial. You have to preserve it to keep it alive, because it can very easily be a regression. You don't know this in the United States, but this is the case in many very civilized and cultivated countries.
00:19:10
Given all of that, why did you want to become president of Peru?
00:19:13
Because I was an idiot, you know? [laughs]
00:19:16
I don't think there is another explanation [laughs]
00:19:19
No you know, there were circumstances. I thought that I could help. I was very naive [laughter] very naive.
00:19:32
But I learned a lot. It was a very instructive experience.
00:19:36
Okay. What if you had won?
00:19:38
Well, I would have tried to do what I promised, you know? I want to think that if I had won, there wouldn't have been a Montecinos running the country for 10 years, nor all the tremendous corruption and brutality of these last 10 years in Peru, you know? But who knows? Who knows?
00:20:04
Well, one serious question. If you had won, would you have written the books that you've written since you didn't win? I mean, for instance, this book in fact?
00:20:10
Yes. Well, for five years, I would have stopped writing novels. I would have written a lot of speeches, I suppose. But since the first moment, I understood that I was not a politician, that that was something that I was imposing on myself.
00:20:34
And I never thought, never, that I would quit literature. No. I always thought that this was a temporary experience, because exceptional conditions. And in a way, I was relieved when I lost the election, and I could go back to my books and my vocation.
00:21:03
Except that once you realized what Fujimura became, there must have been a great regret in your heart.. that you didn't become...
00:21:10
Yes, it was a great regret. Well, one of the reasons why I went into politics was because I thought that democracy was so fragile, so fragile, so weak, that could collapse. And that it would be such a tragedy. It was very, very important to try to save democracy, to preserve it, to reinforce it.
00:21:38
And when in 1992 came the coup. Of course I.... But it was not totally unexpected. This was coming up. This was coming up.
00:21:51
Otherwise, I wouldn't have been a candidate. Certainly not, no.
00:21:56
In writing this book, did you put any of yourself into your characterization of Balaguer?
00:22:03
If I put myself into...
00:22:05
Your characterization of Balaguer?
00:22:07
Well, not consciously, at least, no.
00:22:11
He's a fascinating character.
00:22:13
Was he really like that?
00:22:15
Well, I don't think I have been disloyal to what he really is. Maybe he's more complex. Maybe he's less complex than my character. I don't know.
00:22:28
But I had three long conversations with him when I was writing the novel, three. And he was so clever to evade difficult questions.
00:22:45
He was a kind of, how do you say in English, an anguilla.
00:22:50
Eel.
00:22:52
An eel. Ooh!
00:22:53
He was absolutely, um. And I said to him, Dr. Balaguer, you are a cultivated man. You have read a lot.
00:23:03
A poet!
00:23:04
You have written quite decently, you know?
00:23:10
How could you for 31 years serve with such loyalty and competence, you know, against us and live surrounded by criminals and by the worst kind of human being?
00:23:31
And he said to me, look, when I was young, I wanted to be a politician. I had many sisters to take care of. If I went into exile, I wouldn't have been a politician. And I wondered if I would have been able to support my sisters.
00:23:59
So the only way in which you could do politics during those days was with Trujillo. So that's what I did.
00:24:08
And since the beginning, I said I'm not going to do two things: I'm not going to participate in sexual orgies with Trujillo [laughter] and I'm not going to steal one dollar.
00:24:27
And he said to me, and I have done this. I have never steal one dollar, and I have never participated in a Trujillo orgy [laughter]
00:24:42
I said this is the secret of your power? [laughter]
00:24:45
Well. Well, you also say in passing that the phrase was never for any reason lose your composure was his motto.
00:24:48
That's right.
00:24:49
Never lose your composure. With all this happening around you?
00:24:50
Another wonderful phrase of Balaguer was in my five presidencies, corruption has arrived to the door of my office, but it has never entered my office. [laughter]
00:25:13
Well, he's a poor man. He has no money, only power. He has got tremendous power, but no, he's a no, I think it's only power. That was his only passion in life, you know?
00:25:25
It was such a quiet colorless. Withdrawn....
00:25:27
Oh, yeah, he was very quiet. He managed to fool Trujillo, which was very difficult, you know? He was put in the presidency because Trujillo said publicly to many collaborators, you know, Balaguer has no ambitions. [laughter]
00:25:48
That's the reason why he must be the president. He has no ambitions.
00:25:51
But he really did, though, didn't he?
00:25:53
Of course.
00:25:54
I think he had, but he was so clever. He knew that the last symptom of political ambition was the end of his career with Trujillo.
00:26:06
In direct contrast, you have your characterization of the, what's his name, Hugo Romero.
00:26:12
Yes.
00:26:13
Who should have been the leader of the revolution, and then suddenly he froze and was not able to. What is his story?
00:26:19
Well, I think it's a very, well, this is absolutely historic. It happens exactly like that. Pupo Roman was the chief of the army. The second in command after Trujillo, he was very powerful. He was married with Trujillo, no daughter, but a sobrina [interjection "niece"] a niece of Trujillo, Trujillo niece.
00:26:53
But he hated Trujillo because Trujillo humiliated him systematically, publicly.
00:26:59
He was a sewage, for example.
00:27:01
Yeah, exactly.
00:27:03
And he was in the conspiracy, and he was, well, he had the responsibility of the coup d'etat, the establishing of a military junta, to call elections, you know? He had the green lights of the United States, of the State Department.
00:27:23
But he wanted to see the corpse. He said that. I need to see the corpse.
00:27:31
But then he was paralyzed. And I don't think this was because he was a coward, because he was not a coward. He was very courageous during the three months in which Ramfis tortured him in an incredible way with doctors who resuscitated him in order to be tortured again, you know?
00:27:54
All testimonies are that he was very, very courageous during this incredible, you know, agony.
00:28:03
But he had Trujillo inside himself. Trujillo was there like a super ego. And I think that's what happened with millions of Dominicans. Trujillo was inside them, you know, and governing their instincts, their elementary fears. And that was horrendous, you know, the kind of mental slavery. And I think Pupo Roman is the best, is the emblematic case of this.
00:28:41
But the expectations were there. I mean, he had so many moments at the point of the assassination when he could have acted, could have done something. And he's just unable to...
00:28:50
He was unable because he was paralyzed. He was paralyzed because if you kill God, you became really so insecure and confused. And that's what happened to him, you know? God was dead.
00:29:09
What do you do in a world without God? He hated this God, but it was God, you know?
00:29:17
It's the only explanation because he knew perfectly well that he would pay, that he would be known, that he was in the conspiracy.
00:29:26
[inaudible]
00:29:27
Absolutely, there was no way to escape. But he tried to escape against all reason. A very pathetic, tragic case. Oh, I have respected. It's one of the episodes in which I have respected history more, you know?
00:29:46
Did you change your mind about Trujillo as you wrote the book at all? Did you get any different feelings about...
00:29:51
Oh, no, no, not at all.
00:29:54
What I try in the novel, because there is always a big danger when you write about a dictator. And it's that to present him not as a human being, but as a monster. Hitler was a monster. Stalin was a monster. Mao was a monster. Trujillo was a monster.
00:30:21
Actually, they were human beings. They were human beings. And they became monsters because a whole society was pushing them to be monsters, to be gods, you know?
00:30:36
And if a society converts you in a god, you become a monster. I think that's what was, for me, a very important goal, to describe Trujillo as a human being, to show that he was a human being transformed in this monstrous human being, but not only because his excesses, his appetites, but because this servilismo, service.
00:31:12
A [inaudible]
00:31:14
Servilismo, your servility. This object, subordination. This abdication to all kind of critical attitude towards power, towards. I think this responsibility of a society in the making of a dictator, I think, is much more important if you want to be near reality, than to present a dictator like a natural catastrophe.
00:31:56
I don't think that dictators are natural catastrophes. I think they are human choices in a given moment, in which the big, big responsibility is for society.
00:32:09
And in many cases, they walk into a vacuum, so to speak.
00:32:12
Yes.
00:32:14
I think that's one of the reasons why they become popular. They give order when there is chaos. And people want order when people is completely, well, that's what happened in Peru with Fujimori. Terrorism, hyperinflation, all this created such insecurity. Probably that's one reason to explain Chavez in Venezuela. It was chaos. It was instability. People felt so insecure. Well, that's what happened in the Dominican Republic too. Before Trujillo, there was a chaotic situation in which local lords were fighting among themselves. And there was no order, you know?
00:33:00
But if you want order, and only order, you produce Trujillo.
00:33:04
Or Hitler and you got the...
00:33:06
Yeah, exactly.
00:33:08
The autobahns are there.
00:33:09
Exactly. [laughs] Yes.
00:33:14
In any case, as a non-politician, as a writer, you've been able to do more about politics, would you say, through your writings?
00:33:22
Yes.
00:33:23
You've been able to do more and say more about political matters than if you were a politician yourself? I mean...
00:33:29
Well, I don't, well, it's difficult to answer this question because we don't know what is the real influence of literature in life.
00:33:38
I think there is an important influence of literature in life.
00:33:45
You don't think that it causes revolutions, though at all so the literature will not....
00:33:48
Well, I know that it's impossible to prove this influence.
00:33:53
But I don't believe that literature is only entertainment, even a very sophisticated entertainment. No, I think literature is something that transforms itself in behavior, in morals, in attitudes, in a very subtle way through the rivers. But I am convinced that what I am now is something that owes a lot to the great writers I have read. And that without these books and without these readings, I would be a poorer person than I am, more mediocre. My life would be much more restricted.
00:34:53
My vision, my horizon, my sensibility would be much more mediocre than what they are. Because the great writers I have read, you cannot prove this. But at least in one aspect, I think literature is extraordinarily influential on people's life, the critical attitude towards the real world.
00:35:24
I think if you can be contaminated by the great fictitious words of literature, you are much less prepared to accept the real world as it is. I think you are much more in a critical, even in a rebellious attitude towards the real world, towards reality.
00:35:51
And in this sense, I think literature is a very great, how can I say, a great instrument for dignity, for freedom. I think literature gives you all the time, very concrete demonstrations that the world is bad made. That the real world cannot really fulfill all the expectations.
00:36:27
But you said that half the people in Spain have never read a book.
00:36:31
No.
00:36:32
Well, never bought, have never bought a book.
00:36:36
That's the very depressing survey.
00:36:39
And probably true in many other countries.
00:36:41
Well, but this was a very serious survey made by the Association of Writers. And half of the Spaniards have never bought a book. But there is something to add to these statistics.
00:36:55
Libraries?
00:36:56
No, no.
00:36:58
Spain has 40 million people. And in Spain, Spaniards buy more or less the same numbers of books that all Hispanic America, which has 250 million people. So that gives you an idea of the big, big, big gap with Spain, which is not the first reading country in the world.
00:37:28
So the gap is really astronomical. It's very, very worrying.
00:37:35
Well, there is the important question, too. What people are reading?
00:37:38
Yes.
00:37:39
This is also. But this is more a serious problem in developed and civilized countries.
00:37:50
Because there is this paradox. In underdeveloped countries, few people read.
00:37:52
In underdeveloped countries, few people read. But usually, they read the good books. In Latin America, few people read by comparison with France or with England.
00:38:04
But what Latin Americans are reading until now are more or less the good writers.
00:38:10
The big problem is in the United States, in England, in France. When you look the bestseller lists, it becomes very depressing. Because they are reading, well, trash literature, purely entertaining literature. Why is that? Why is this?
00:38:27
Is it wrong to read trash, to read entertainment?
00:38:29
Oh, I think it's better to read good literature. I think it's much better to read, I don't know, Faulkner than Cretien.
00:38:44
Oh, I think it's much more entertaining. Of course, you have to make much more effort, much more intellectual effort. But the rewarding is much more richer, you know? Than that when you read trash.
00:39:00
I think the problem is of education and also the decline of the critics. Critics are not having the influence that they used to have.
00:39:15
You're also a critic.
00:39:16
Well, I am a novelist, but I do some.
00:39:19
You write criticism.
00:39:20
Si. Sometimes, yes. Yes, I like it. Yeah. I like it.
00:39:25
Do you have to like something to review it?
00:39:26
Yes.
00:39:27
Yes.
00:39:28
Oh, yes.
00:39:29
Only in exceptional circumstances I write against books. I write against ideas, but against poems or novels. I usually don't do it. I write when I am enthusiastic about something, you know?
00:39:47
I was curious. In one of your pieces, this was one about literature. You said you were defining words, Borgesian as an entry into a fantastical universe, Kafkaesque as the impetent feeling of the isolated individual, Orwellian, the terrible anguish generated by dictatorships.
00:40:08
Mhm
00:40:08
All very valid. But I was wondering, could you define what Vargas--Llo-Llosean would be?
00:40:14
Oh, well, I can answer with a Borges quotation. Say, when you look yourself at a mirror, you don't know how your face is. You don't know if you are handsome or very ugly. It's very difficult. You don't really know. I would like my books to have the same influence that the great writers that I admire, but I really don't know what my own books are, you know? I don't know. I cannot measure them with the minimal objectivity that I can value, books of others.
00:40:57
Well, could you say what you're trying to do in your...
00:40:59
Oh, yes. Yes.
00:41:01
I, well, as a novelist, what I want is to create a world that can be persuasive by itself, by its language, its mythology, the strength of its characters. When I went to defend certain ideas, cultural or political or social, I write essays or articles and fiction for me is something much more mysterious, something that is not depending on actuality, something that in my case always came from very deep images.
00:42:07
I always, as in the case of Trujillo, I have chosen themes to write novels about in a way in which my impression is that I am not so free to chosen them, that I've been chosen by these themes because something has happened to me or something has been there in my life that is pushing me towards certain themes and excluding others. And I have the impression when I write a novel that my whole personality is involved and not only reason but also unreason, not only knowledge but also irrational drives, you know, emotions.
00:42:52
And like what happened when I write an article or an essay in which I think that I have total rational control of what I am doing. No, when I write a novel, I try to open these doors of the inner part of the personality because I think probably the richest matter that is behind these themes come from the secret part of the personality, you know?
00:43:23
Does that mean they're in effect two different personalities or?
00:43:27
No, I think a rational, rationality is just an aspect of your personality. And I think this is the dominant factor when you write, at least this is my case when I write an article or when I write an essay.
00:43:44
But when I write fiction, and not only novels, plays too, I have the impression that my total personality is involved. Reason but also unreason.
00:43:56
Ideas but also instincts, intuitions, irrational drives, passions, and all this creates a kind of matter which is sometimes a surprise to myself, you know?
00:44:15
I discovered that I am returning to certain situations probably because there is some kind or trauma or something that is deeply hiden--hide-hidden--hide-- hidden in my life, which is behind my literary vocation.
00:44:43
I was partly thinking something along those lines when I asked before whether you changed your mind about Trujillo when you were writing the book. And I wondered, does the book change as you write it? Are you surprised by things that come up?
00:44:55
Oh, yes. Yes, I am.
00:44:58
Oh, yes.
00:44:58
Always the book, well, the novel is always different of what was my first idea of the novel, always. And sometimes very, very different, you know?
00:45:11
Even in the case of Trujillo, which I knew more or less what would be the structure, the trajectory of the story. At the end, for example, I never thought that Urania would become such an important character, maybe the most important character.
00:45:28
It was also a surprise for me the way in which Balaguer imposed himself and became almost as important as Trujillo, you know?
00:45:38
That's something that was happening without being planned, you know?
00:45:45
When you started, you had the three stories planned.
00:45:48
Yeah, I have a lot of, well, trajectories. That's what I need before I start writing, trajectories, a character that starts here and finishes here, and they cross and they cross in this way or another.
00:46:04
That gives me the basic assurance in order to start writing.
00:46:10
But then during the process, which is always fascinating and full of surprises, you know, things start to change because certain characters suddenly take a shape, you know, become more important presences. And others, on the contrary, decline and pass to the second role.
00:46:43
And all this is fascinating because I don't think I have 100% control of this, I mean rational control, you know. And that's what excites me more when I am writing a novel. This is really a great incentive, you know?
00:46:59
The other thing is here you're dealing with real historical characters.
00:47:02
Yes.
00:47:03
I mean, they're totally a work of the imagination. I mean, it's a work of the imagination, but it's not.
00:47:07
Well, in my case, there is never purely imagination. Even the novels in which I have been less, let's say, detached of personal experience to write, I think there is always a root with this in my memory and certain images that are the raw material are to fantasize, to imagine, you know?
00:47:33
I need this kind of personal involvement at the beginning. Then I think the story takes off. But at the beginning, I need this personal involvement with the story.
00:47:47
Does that mean that there's an autobiographical element in all the books?
00:47:50
Oh, I think there is an autobiographical element in all novels.
00:47:54
I think it's impossible to fantasize 100% on a story.
00:47:59
I think stories are, I think the point of departure is something that is deeply close to what your life is.
00:48:12
And then, of course, not the point of arrival is always very different. If not, I think it's a bad novel. But the beginning for me, well, maybe because that is my case, I don't think in any novel I've written, I have invented everything.
00:48:30
No.
00:48:31
And it's also true of Flaubert and Faulkner
00:48:33
Oh, of Flaubert and Fau-- except it's obvious.
00:48:36
I think all of the, maybe those writers are the writers I prefer because I feel so close to them in the way I create, I build my stories.
00:48:54
What are you reading now as a reader?
00:48:58
Well, I'm reading a lot of books because the novel I am writing. I am writing about Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin.
00:49:02
About what?
00:49:10
Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin. Flora Tristan was the grandmother of of Paul Gauguin, the painter.
00:49:15
A very interesting character, 19th century woman who was a social agitator. Very courageous, very idealistic, and with a tragic history.
00:49:35
And his personality was very similar to the--to her grandchild because Gauguin was, as her, so stubborn and also idealistic, you know.
00:49:53
They were looking for the paradise, different kind of paradises.
00:49:59
She wanted a paradise of social justice, of equality, no more discrimination of women, total equality. But it was a paradise, you know?
00:50:11
So she went into all the anarchist sects and she was a San Simonian, a San Simon follower, a Charles Fourier follower.
00:50:30
And finally, as she couldn't fit, you know, exactly in any of these movements and sects, you know, she created her own sect.
00:50:45
But it was this persecution of paradise. And I think Gauguin was the same you know. Gauguin went to La Martinique, to Panama, and then to Tahiti, and finally to the Marquesan Islands looking for the paradise.
00:51:06
Not a social paradise. He was not interested at all in social justice, on the contrary. [laughter]
00:51:12
But a paradise of beauty.
00:51:16
Beauty is something which was shared by the whole society. And he saw that this was impossible to reach in Europe because art, beauty had become in Europe a monopoly of a very small coterie of artists, collectors, critics.
00:51:35
And that art was completely cut from the common people. And he had this idea that only in primitive cultures, beauty was still as religion, as a common patrimony, a common expression.
00:51:56
And he went to look for this and looking for more primitive cultures. And as he didn't find it, he invented it in his paintings.
00:52:09
But the personalities of both were very, very close, you know?
00:52:13
Could you say where the idea for the book came from?
00:52:16
It came when I read. It came when I was young, a university student, and I read a book by Flora Tristan called Peregrinesiones de una Paria. Well, a French book, Peregrinesiones de un Paria. How do you say that? Pilgrims of a Paria?
00:52:35
Pilgrim of a Paria.
00:52:37
No, Peregrinaje.
00:52:39
Peregrinaje, pilgrim.
00:52:41
Pilgrimage of a Paria.
00:52:45
Fantastic book in which she tells about a year that she spent in Peru in 1830.
00:52:53
It's a fantastic description of what was a new Latin American republic still deeply contaminated by the colony from the perspective of a French, let's say, liberated woman.
00:53:10
And I became fascinated with her case, you know, because she decided in Arequipa, a southern Peruvian city, to change the world.
00:53:24
She decided there to declare war to this unjust world, which was discriminating women, treating women as second-class citizens. And it was a real declaration of war. And she started an incredible life.
00:53:44
For 10 years, she was fighting, you know, injustice. And in a crusade, a fantastic, from a moral point of view and from an intellectual point of view, it was a total political failure. But probably she was the first real feminist in Europe.
00:54:08
It sounds to me like the ideas gestate a long time. If this goes back to your school days, if Feast of the Goat goes back to 1975, you don't just suddenly invent an idea.
00:54:20
Oh, no. No, no, no.
00:54:21
I never write a novel with the first idea. No, no. This is something that should be making its way in a very, how can I say it, spontaneous way.
00:54:47
If this remains there and comes back and comes back with new images, and I discover that I had been more or less inventing something around these images, I start to take notes. And then I forget, and I do other things. But the idea is there, coming, taking shape little by little.
00:55:13
When I start writing a novel, actually, I have been working on the novel for many years.
00:55:19
How do you actually write? On a computer? Or..
00:55:22
I hand write first, and then I rewrite using the computer. But the first draft always by hand.
00:55:30
I started like this. This is the rhythm that I am accustomed to. And so first draft always hand write.
00:55:39
Mhm
00:55:41
At some point you said, in all great literary texts, often without their authors intending it, a seditious inclination is present.
00:55:52
Yes.
00:55:53
You said things like that quite a lot. But I was curious about the phrase, without intent, without the authors knowing--
00:55:58
Oh, because there are authors who are not in any way enthusiastic with the idea of changing the world? No. Balzac, for example, he was a real reactionary.
00:56:14
He wanted the world to remain as it was.
00:56:18
He didn't know what he was doing in effect?
00:56:20
Well, he didn't know that he was producing a very explosive image, which was tremendously critical of the real world. It was not his intention at all.
00:56:34
He was for the establishment. But I don't think there is a great fiction that is not an essential contradiction of the world as it is, you know?
00:56:49
I think if you produce a great, great novel, what you are producing is an alternative world, a kind of world that is not the real one because the real one is something that you are rejecting through this alternative world.
00:57:06
But I don't think this is an explicit mechanism which is pushing you, not at all.
00:57:13
And I think that is the richness of literature because these alternative worlds are this devastating criticism of the real world because they embrace all perspectives, all points of views, depending on the personality of authors, of the personal demons of authors, you know?
00:57:42
In some cases, yes. In some cases, you can say, yes, of course,
00:57:43
In some cases, you can say, yes, of course, there is an explicit critical attitude, or political or cultural. But I would say that in most cases, no. A writer is trying to materialize a vision or a dream without knowing that in this vision and in this dream, there is a very deep rejection of life as it is, of the world as it is, of humankind as it is.
00:58:23
For me, this is the great contribution of fiction, of the novel, to human progress.
00:58:31
And I think priests knew it before critical intellectuals. You know that the Inquisition forbade the novel for 300 years in Latin America.
00:58:45
I think they were very lucid. I think they understood very well this seditious consequence that fiction can have in the human spirit.
00:59:01
If you are too much contaminated with the idea of different worlds, perfect worlds, beautiful worlds, coherent worlds, and you are comparing this with the real world, the real world always loses the match, you know?
00:59:24
And this creates a kind of malaise? A kind of malaise in the mind that can be the point of departure of critical attitudes.
00:59:37
So that is the reason why an estate, an ideology, has the ambition of total control of society, of the mind, of behavior. Fiction becomes immediately under pressure, censored, controlled, forbidden. And in a way, they are right because fiction is a danger for total control. It's always escaping and demonstrating that the world is badly made, that the world could be different. Maybe not better, but different, you know?
01:00:24
And this is seditious. This is rebellious.
01:00:27
One of the curiosities of Trujillo in the book is the fact that he has such a dislike of the arts broadly, has no appreciation or understanding.
01:00:36
No, not only, only
01:00:40
Clothing, his dress.
01:00:43
The only time that he was interested in literature was when Balaguer was incorporated to the Academy and read this incredible discourse in which he compared Trujillo to God.
01:01:00
It was an ode to Trujillo.
01:01:02
Well, Trujillo was there. And Balaguer, in a very well-written piece, said, well, did the the Dominican Republic has survived? 400 years of catastrophes, of invasions, of civil wars, of hurricanes, earthquakes.
01:01:25
Because until 1930, God took care of our country. But in 1930, God said, well, it's enough. I'm going to give this responsibility to someone else. And so Trujillo took this responsibility. And Trujillo said many times that for the first time, he was really impressed with a literary text.
01:01:52
And I think he really believed that Balaguer was right when he said that he had taken this responsibility and he has replaced God with this responsibility to save the Dominican Republic of disintegration. [laughter]
01:02:10
But for the rest, he despised the literary fantasies of his wife. His wife published two books.
01:02:22
She didn't write them, though.
01:02:23
No, she didn't.
01:02:24
But she published a book of.
Interview with Stanley Kunitz, 24 April 2002
00:00:00
Have you lived here a long time?
00:00:04
Here since '77.
00:00:07
Mhm. Well, that's pretty long. For many years we lived on 11th street.
00:00:25
Yes, I remember when that happened. I was here. What year was that?
00:00:37
That was 1970.
00:00:39
I guess I wasn't here. We were in the other block.
00:00:43
Yeah, where were you?
00:00:43
Right toward, between 6th and 7th, yeah.
00:00:49
In any case, let's start with the poet's house, why you started the poet's house. This was back in the mid 80s?
00:00:57
That's a hard question.
00:01:01
You and Elizabeth Cray?
00:01:01
I would suppose it was in a way accidental. And the original impulse toward it came from Betty Cray.
00:01:25
Do you remember, did you know Betty?
00:01:29
I didn't know her but I...
00:01:29
Yes. And Betty, of course, lived for the poetry world and was, in a way, queen of all of it. She had an understanding of the need for poetry in our culture. And I've never met anyone like her in her efficiency about making that understanding public property. She could convince anyone to give a hundred thousand dollars the next day for the promotion of poetry as part of our American culture.
00:02:25
And I had been associated with Betty for a good many years in her various activities and she came down to see me with an idea. And her idea was very simple. She thought it was time for New York City to have a public library devoted solely to poetry. In other words, a poetry library. And it was amazing really to realize that New York didn't have one. It never occurred to me, actually.
00:03:33
There must have been poetry sections though in the various libraries.
00:03:37
There were poetry sections, but there wasn't a free-standing poetry library. And my response was of course we should have one, but it shouldn't be just an adjunct to any other organization or office. It should be a center of the life of poetry in our culture. And it should be a place, above all, that would be open to poets in particular and to the public in general. And a sort of communication center as well as a house of hospitality. That was my immediate response.
00:05:01
And she didn't have a name for it and I said it's not to be called a library. It should be called a, it should be called Poets House. And without an apostrophe because nobody owns poetry. It belongs to civilization. That was it.
00:05:31
Poetry, Poets as an adjective, not a possessive.
00:05:33
Yeah, nobody possesses poetry. Poetry posesses you, is another way of putting it. So that was the beginning.
00:05:44
And it started small.
00:05:46
Started small. It started with a meeting of all the available poets in the community in which we talked about it, what we hoped it would accomplish. And we had a money raising campaign. Got some pledges. Not a great fortune, but enough to start. And it's been rather fantastic since then in its operation and in its effectiveness. It has become really a national--I hate to think of it as an organization or an institution--but it is a communication center as far as...and a way to keep insisting that this country needs poetry and that it is an expression of our culture.
00:07:23
And that no country is great unless its poets agree that it is so. So in any sense that's pretty much what we started with.
00:07:39
Let me ask a silly question. Why do we need poetry?
00:07:43
Why do we need poetry? Because every great civilization has demonstrated the need for myth and poetry in the effectiveness of the state itself beyond power, beyond military strength, beyond commerce. What a great civilization needs to demonstrate is the power of what it stands for in terms of human dignity and freedom. And the word, the myth, is essential to the survival of civilization, and to the culmination of its powers. I think anyone who studies history would have to agree to that.
00:09:23
I mean, you say poetry you mean poetry. Not poetry in the sense of fiction being poetic, or anything else.
00:09:28
No, I mean poetry in the largest sense as a spiritual force. And I equate it with myth in that. Poetry and myth. The myth of a culture, the myth of a civilization, is what perpetuates the state as a state and as a power in the world.
00:09:59
It's right--at the same time, you said before that you don't think of yourself as a political poet in which politics hasn't been your territory.
00:10:09
Oh I'm intensely interested in politics, but I don't feel that I've been committed to writing political poetry if you define it narrowly. But I think my poems are political in the largest sense. In that they deal very much with the problems of the individual in relation to the state. And I have an essay, actually, on poet and state that I think expresses my feeling of how the poet is always, in a sense, an adversary of the state and yet absolutely essential to the survival of the state.
00:11:22
You've also said that the choice of being a poet was itself a political act.
00:11:27
Yes a political act. And I think it is also important to realize that one of the functions of the poet is as a citizen. And we tend to forget that.
00:11:47
It reminds me of Harold Pinter, who's a friend, who always says that he's a playwright but he's also a citizen.
00:11:58
I feel exactly the same way. I am very passionate about my politics. And it's not conservative. So.
00:12:08
Ok. I was interested that one purpose of the Poets House is to give poets a place to work and read. Can poets learn from other poets? And what do they learn?
00:12:22
Where else are they going to learn? It is largely from other poets that one begins to be a poet. You're not going to become a poet through learning prosody. That's certainly true. But through the energizing force of the word. That is essential to one's education. I think every poet begins by simply being enchanted by the sound of words. Like other poets, I remember walking, running rather, through the woods shouting new words that I had learned.
00:13:27
New words you may have learned from other poets.
00:13:31
I think that--so many poets have told me they did the same thing.
00:13:38
Aren't poets born? You were born a poet, weren't you?
00:13:43
They are born in the sense of what they are born with the capacity for becoming poets. But what fortune deals to them in their early days, their early years, is I think an important factor. Maybe more important than your genes. I think the sense of the natural world, for example, the delight in being alive, and the knowledge of one's mortality, are all involved in the making of the poet.
00:14:55
I believe above all, I suppose, in the web of creation. The sense that everything alive is interconnected and that the so-called natural world is ours. Now we belong to nature just as much as the bears and the locusts and the elephants and the horses. One doesn't learn that by being taught it. It's part of the, maybe the accident of fortune.
00:15:46
You've written, so I gather, often about mortality and I wonder if I can ask you a somewhat personal question. How much does the fact of your father's death, how much of that makes you a poet or made you a poet?
00:16:01
I think that was central to my sense of loss, my sense of yearning. You know Henry James' wonderful phrase in one of his letters when he says, "the port from which I set out was the port of my loneliness."
00:16:30
I was curious, going through your collected poems, I found a number of poems about suicides. It did strike me. And it was Rothko and Levy and...
00:16:43
In a way, that seemed perfectly natural to me. I had been with him just a few days before and there was an aura already about him that I felt.
00:17:02
Rothko's?
00:17:03
Yes.
00:17:05
We're getting far away from Poets House but can you understand suicide? What provokes people to--
00:17:12
Oh yes, yes. It's perfecty intelligible to me. It's not anything I would be inclined to do, maybe I'm speaking to early, but I love life too much.
00:17:29
I would say in your own life you've been the perfect antithesis to that, with a long life still going on.
00:17:38
But I could imagine why one would do it, and I don't consider it by any means to be a criminal act or a immoral act.
00:17:54
Well , except, would you agree these suicide bombers...
00:17:59
That's something else again. To kill others. And I'm a pacifist by conviction.
00:18:11
Right. But in terms of killing yourself, that's your own decision.
00:18:13
Yeah. Mhm. If you have to kill anybody, it should be yourself.
00:18:21
That's a good point. But from early on you decided to be a poet.
00:18:27
Very early, yes. And I was lucky in a way, aside from the misfortune of my talk of suicide, in that I had teachers who told me I was going to be a poet from the fourth grade on.
00:18:55
And you believed them.
00:18:56
Yeah. And I believed them. Yeah, I really did.
00:18:59
Well, teachers are important.
00:19:01
I have written about my fourth grade teacher who assigned a composition on the father of our country. And I worked very hard at it. And the next day, after turning it in, she appeared in class and she was glowing and she had one of the composition papers in her hand, and she said, "I'm going to read you something, starkly. It's like a poem." And she read my piece. And, and--the first sentence of which was, "George Washington was a tall, petite, handsome man."
00:20:00
Same block?
00:20:02
Tall, petite?
00:20:03
Tall, petite. You know, I just loved the sound of that word. And to her it was beautiful. And who knows why, but she thought so.
00:20:16
Have then you felt in your life that it's necessary to pass on such encouragement to others?
00:20:23
Mhm. Yes.
00:20:27
Stir the old pot, I guess.
00:20:30
And then I had a succession of teachers who told me that through the years, even in college.
00:20:39
I would have thought that, with the possible exception of being an actor, that being a poet was the most difficult occupation to sustain. To be a poet and to not--
00:20:51
Unless it's inseparable from your nature. And then there's no way of getting rid of it.
00:20:57
But obviously even people like Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams who had other occupations, presumably to sustain and survive their poetry. That would seem to be built into it just as actors go do something else, but you've been a poet all your life. Teaching, but yes.
00:21:00
Same block, between 5th and 6th, until our house blew up.
00:21:15
Yeah. Well, it is not always, say, in your permanent posession. You cannot count on being a poet every time you sit down at your desk with a pen in hand, or a pencil more likely.
00:21:37
Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't.
00:21:40
Sometimes it's very willful. Unpredictable.
00:21:44
Did you write a poem today? You did write a poem today?
00:21:48
No, I don't write a poem every day.
00:21:52
How often do you write a poem?
00:21:53
I have long intervals. I seem to work in cycles. I have a creative cycle and then I can be silent for days, for weeks, months, years even, during my lifetime. A lot has to do with circumstance.
00:22:21
What provokes you to write a poem?
00:22:23
I wish I knew.
00:22:29
It's usually a phrase, an image. It's a rhythm more than anything else. And I've always felt that poetry begins with sounds rather than with sense. And you ride on that rhythm until your own being takes possession of it. And really, the sound and the sense combine and then you have some sense of where you're going, aside from riding on that rhythm. But, to a large degree, I think the poem is more interested in perpetuating a flow of sound than it is of producing a meaning.
00:23:42
Sound comes first, meaning can come later. Do you still, when you write a poem, you speak it, you say it?
00:23:50
I say it, I say it, yeah. And I'm likely to use, use up fifty or seventy-five sheets of paper before I have a feeling that I'm really on my way to producing a poem.
00:24:12
Writing is rewriting.
00:24:13
You know, Cal Lowell used to say, "I don't write poems, I rewrite them. I revise them." And he actually did.
00:24:28
Do you go back and revise older poems too?
00:24:31
Not after I have determined that it's the best I can do. And I never publish a poem unless I believe that. You know, I have written ten times as many poems as I have published. I'm a very hard critic of my own work.
00:24:56
Do you keep those poems or do you dispose of them?
00:25:00
Oh, they're lying around or in my manuscript collection at Princeton, which, Princeton Public Library, who took over everything in my desk.
00:25:15
Cleaned up your desk? Put it in order?
00:25:19
Well, they brought, they sent a truck, and they had room and they wanted to fill the room. I gave them everthing I had.
00:25:29
Now, did you ever go down there and look up something? Would you ever go down there to look up something?
00:25:33
I've never been there, no. Never been to look at my own.
00:25:37
It's probably so neat and orderly.
00:25:41
I wouldn't want to, I don't want to. It's like looking at one's grave.
00:25:47
That's all the past. You're focusing on today. That makes sense. Do you go to Poets House, then?
00:25:57
Oh, yes. Mhm.
00:25:58
What do you do when you go to Poets House?
00:25:59
Oh, usually I'm there because there are important issues and they want to talk to me about it. So, I'm still very much concerned with what goes on at Poets House and feel very much a part of its day to day activities.
00:26:31
How do you feel about young poets today?
00:26:35
Pardon me?
00:26:35
How do you feel about young poets today?
00:26:36
I am pleasantly surprised. I think that poetry in this country today is amazingly active and good, much to my surprise. And if I compare it, as I have done in the past, with the poetry, let's say, in this country in the 19th century, there are extant anthologies, of course, from that period. And, except for a handful of poets, including great ones like Whitman and Dickinson, the work that was being published generally throughout, let's say, the whole 19th century, was mediocre beyond words at a general level.
00:28:03
Was it imitative of the English, then?
00:28:04
English, yes. We inherited our culture, we inherited our mythology. And we had nothing comparable to offer it its place.
00:28:15
Where as today it's alive and well-known.
00:28:19
Well, I often think, despite the academic system, the academic control of poetry, but there's no question in my mind that it's superior. And it may be superior in numbers to that of any other culture. Although I'm beginning to think that Poland is now the great country for poetry. There are so many really superb Polish poets. You know, it's accident in a way.
00:29:04
But if you spend enough years...One thing I was surprised at Poets House was so many small printings, privately printed things, people using their computers to print their poems. I mean, there's so much, really, proliferation of small publications of poetry, which I was not aware of before, and perhaps computers are the root of some of it.
00:29:27
Well, not for me. I'm not even computer savvy and I don't want to be.
00:29:35
Longhand. Not even a typewriter?
00:29:40
Mhm. I feel very old fashioned in that respect. Not in the poems, but in the technological aspect. I like the physical sense of--I worked with a pencil, first, on paper and, as I've already indicated to you, I produced sheet after sheet of paper and then whittled it down finally.
00:30:09
Do you go from pencil to pen? Is that the nature of transition, or...
00:30:13
Well, I go from pencil to pen and then to my old, battered Hermes. How many thousand? It's called Hermes 2000, yeah. Mhm.
00:30:33
Hard to get it repaired, probably.
00:30:37
Very. I've learned how to repair it myself. I do. I manage small repairs pretty well.
00:30:45
The moment I stopped using my electric typewriter was when I couldn't get it repaired anymore. I decided to use the computer.
00:30:51
I didn't realize that you couldn't repair.
00:30:55
Well, probably some place. I used to go to the one in the flat iron building and they closed. They decided to repair printers, instead.
00:31:03
I have acquired two electric typewriters in my life, and I never managed to become efficient with either one of them.
00:31:20
Do you write mostly here or in your summer place? Or is there no difference there.
00:31:25
Oh, there's no difference. I write both. Both places, yeah. And even when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing, so it doesn't make much difference.
00:31:39
Do you still have your garden up there?
00:31:42
I still have my garden up to me. Uh-huh. And to me it's a part of my creative life just as much as language is.
00:31:59
Part of your alliance with the natural world.
00:32:03
Yeah. Mhm. May I ask, what sort of piece are you thinking about, I mean, in terms of its direction or content?
00:32:19
Well, I want to do some sort of piece about Poets House and I missed most of the, sort of, celebrations in April, which is Poetry Month.
00:32:27
Oh, I wish you'd been there.
00:32:28
But I can reflect on that and then the idea that you talk about. You as the house poet. Would be really interesting. Why is April Poetry Month? It's the cruelest month as we know. Why is April Poetry Month? Do you know? Where did that choice ever come from?
00:32:48
I didn't quite catch that.
00:32:50
Why is April Poetry Month.
00:32:53
Oh, April, Poetry Month.
00:32:56
We know it's the cruelest month.
00:32:56
Well, so is poetry. Maybe that---I hadn't thought of that affinity. But obviously the springtime association is essential to understanding that.
00:33:17
What are the things they were looking forward to again at the Poetry House? Was there a walk across the bridge?
00:33:23
Yes. I think that's an imagative and beautiful ritual. I think of it as ritual.
00:33:32
Do you still go on that?
00:33:34
Oh yeah, I go. But I don't walk across the bridge. I'm in a car.
00:33:45
Well, that's the privileges of age.
00:33:47
I think so. One of the few I ask.
00:33:54
No other privileges of age?
00:34:00
Privileges of age are, I think that one has earned a certain degree of independence that one can do what one pleases. Even with one's work. And one isn't likely to be challenged in the way you are in your youth when you first publish your poems and get a response that is usually called diffidence.
00:34:43
You suffered from diffidence at one point. You outlived diffidence.
00:34:51
I think so. Not necessarily dislike of a poem. There are critics who are essentially negative for almost any poet or any poem that is not in a familiar track. And I think they have that privilege, too.
00:35:27
Did you have to read the cover review in the Times Book Review last Sunday of a book of poetry by, what's his name, Maria Ponsa. Is that her name? I thought that was a very strange review.
00:35:43
Yes, I read that. So did I.
00:35:47
It was very patronizing.
00:35:48
It somewhat surprised me in many, many ways. But after all, that's what a review is privileged to. And an editorial privilege.
00:36:08
But the rare time they would put a book of poetry on the front page, I would have expected they would have had a real poet or a student of poetry review it.
00:36:17
I didn't quite understand that.
00:36:20
This was like patronizing such a thing. Well, you folks out there might not understand what poetry is about, but you know, instead of roll up your sleeves, and...
00:36:31
I think it was the editorial handling of the poem that surprised me more than anything else. Not so much that the review was strange. It wasn't. It was obviously a very positive review.
00:36:51
Yes. Well, that's also the issue, that poets would suffer from not being reviewed by major institutions like the Times and the New York Review of Books and so on, and they'd be sliding in there. But that's always been--
00:37:07
Of course most poets, I think, feel that the Times is not as supportive of poetry as it should be. And I tend to agree with that.
00:37:22
Okay, I won't keep you too long.
00:37:27
I'm glad you're doing this piece, and I know that it means a great deal to Poets House and therefore to the perpetuaton of poetry in New York, which after all is the capital of poetry in the United States. And there are so many fine poets living in this city. I'm really amazing whenever I'm part of a gathering of poets, how superior they are to any comparable group that might have gathered here in any other period in our history. And I think nearly all poets feel that New York is the capital of the poetry world.
00:38:34
Are there many poets downtown here?
00:38:36
Pardon?
00:38:36
Are there many poets around here? Downtown here?
00:38:38
Yes. I don't know all of them but many of them meet me in the street and invent themselves or present themselves. Who knows what. But it's an extraordinary experience to be walking in the village here these days and the number of persons who greet you. And I don't think of myself as a public person but obviously poetry is part of the life in this village, as I guess it always has been, and it's the reason I came here in 1928, which is a long time ago.
00:39:34
Did you come to the village?
00:39:36
I came to the village immediately. And in fact I found a basement apartment on 9th street between 5th and 6th. I was paying $25 a month because I was in the back room with the basement and there was a noisy tenant in the front. The noise lasted all night, and one day I pounded on the door and, much to my amazement, the door opened and there was a bartender in his white jacket and he said, "Buddy, what's the trouble?" And I said, "I'm trying to sleep, that's the trouble." And I was working, and I had an office job. And he said, "Well, I don't know what I can do about the noise, but I tell you what: anytime you want a drink,"--this is a speakeasy, of course--"just come in. I'll be glad to give you anything you like." That was our agreement, and it worked out very well. And I slept better ever after.
00:41:12
And so I remember Marianne Moore used to live on 9th Street. Didn't she? And E.E. Cummings and Patchenplace and other poets.
00:41:21
Both of whom I got to know eventually. Both of them.
00:41:26
In our house on 10th Street, at one point, Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles both lived there.
00:41:31
Oh, that must have been interesting. What year was that?
00:41:36
This was in the late 40s, about '48, '49. They both lived there and Dashell Hammet lived in our apartment at that point. Did you know them at all?
00:41:46
The Bowles? No. No, I didn't. I'm sorry, I didn't.
00:41:52
But you did know Marianne Moore and E.E. Cummings.
00:41:55
Cummings I knew very well. He was a good friend. And Marianne Moore was one of the first to publish me in The Dial. I've ever been grateful for her. I'll tell you another story about her.
00:42:15
When I was in the Army, World War II, my last year in the army, '45, I received a communication from the Guggenheim Foundation that they were giving me a grant. And I couldn't imagine, because I'd never applied for it, why I was getting a grant. Eventually, I plucked up my nerve and did inquire. It turned out that Marianna Moore had, on her own initiative, applied for me, while I was in the service. That was a dear gift.
00:43:10
Very good.
00:43:12
Well, I think you've explored whatever you need to explore.
00:43:20
Would you mind signing here?
00:43:23
Yes. I wouldn't mind at all. Let me see. Do you have a pen?
00:43:31
Yes, right here.
00:43:52
Now, how do you like to be identified? Shall I? You're Mel Gussow.
00:43:59
Gussow. Yes.
00:44:00
I've often wondered how you pronounce your name. It is Gussow. U-S-S-O-W.
00:44:07
Right. And it's basically Russian derivation.
00:44:15
Probably with Gussoff. And it's one L.
00:44:17
M-E-L. One L.
00:44:19
I have to get my glasses. I think I'll go over to that table there where I'll be able to put it.
00:44:26
Okay.
00:48:09
And look at the Times to find the date.
00:48:13
I don't know what it is.
00:48:33
Thank you so much.
00:48:34
Oh, be sure to return your pen! I'm always acquiring pens.
00:48:40
Tell me, do you--Thank you so much--Do you shop at Jefferson market?
00:48:45
Yes, I do. Jefferson Market, Food Emporium. And the garden.
00:49:00
Well, thank you so much.
00:49:05
Well, thank you. Such a prime day. Bye now. Where do you live? You still live...