A clumsy question and Faulkner’s powerful answer
“But as—about reading, any experience the writer has ever suffered is going to influence what he does” – William Faulkner
60 years old William Faulkner had some clues on the importance of his works and what would be his legacy when he accepted to be the first writer in residence at the University of Virginia. He wrote while he was there but he also had a lot to say. For his interviews and seminars he even accepted to read again some of his works, something uncommon for him who believed authors had no need to revisit their own books.
The two stays in 1957 and 1958 generated a lot of content, both from the author and the academics. In the website dedicated for this period it’s possible to hear Faulkner talking art, literature and even his hesitations towards cinema.
In one of these lectures Faulkner reads excerpts from “The sound and the fury”, his favorite. Of course, such a statement wouldn’t go unnoticed and a participant asked him the reasons for this:
Unidentified participant: What is the reason that this book from which you read is your favorite [novel]?
William Faulkner: I think that—that no writer is ever quite satisfied with—with the book. That's why he writes another one. That he is trying to put on paper something that is going to be a little better than anybody else has put on paper up to date, and this is my favorite one because I worked the hardest on it, not to accomplish what I hoped to do with it, but I anguished and—and raged over it more than over any other to try to make something out of it, that it was impossible for—for me to do. It's the same feeling that the parent may have toward the—the incorrigible or the abnormal child, maybe.
Echoing the position of Anne Marie-Willis about how the world can influence ourselves, William Faulkner points the importance of the most indirect activities for the artist development:
Unidentified participant: Your books have been compared to Bach's fugues. Do you objectively plan out that they're going to have that [...] effect or does it just come naturally?
William Faulkner: Well, it's—it's not quite planned because probably I am not capable of that, but I think that there's too much work goes into—to any book to call it a natural process. But as—about reading, any experience the writer has ever suffered is going to influence what he does, and that is not only what he's read, but the music he's heard, the pictures he's seen, and it wasn't that I went to Bach to—to get myself out of a—a—a jam in the work, but probably what I had heard of Bach—at the moment when I needed to use counterpoint, there it was.
For Jorge Luís Borges the accident that risked his literature would also be denying the meaning of his life if his fears proved real. This passion followed by a profound sense of meaningfulness is also present in Faulkner’s words while answering to a clumsy question:
Unidentified participant: Do you think—what I'm trying[...] . [audience laughter] [...]. Do you—do you think before you write or do you write— [audience laughter]
William Faulkner: Well, I'm glad you stopped there. Thank you. [audience laughter] Did—I think I know what you mean by the stimulus. It's—you're alive in the world. You see man. You have an insatiable curiosity about him, but more than that you have an admiration for him. He is frail and fragile, a web of flesh and bone and mostly water. He's flung willy nilly into a ramshackle universe stuck together with electricity. [audience laughter] The problems he faces are always a little bigger than he is, and yet, amazingly enough, he copes with them, not individually but—but as a race. He endures. He's outlasted dinosaurs. He's outlasted atom bombs. He'll outlast communism. Simply because there's some part in him that keeps him from ever knowing that he's whipped, I suppose. That as frail as he is, he—he lives up to his codes of behavior. He shows compassion when there's no reason why he should. He's braver than he should be. He's more honest. The writer is—is so interested, he sees this as so amazing and—and you might say so beautiful. Anyway, it—it's so moving to him that he wants to put it down on paper or in music or on canvas, that he simply wants to isolate one of these instances in which man—frail, foolish man—has acted miles above his head in some amusing or dramatic or tragic way. Anyway, some gallant way. That, I suppose, is the incentive to write, apart from it being fun. I sort of believe that is the reason that people are artists. It's—it's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do. You're never bored. You never reach satiation.
Complement your reading with this text by one of the greatest female brazilian writers, Lygia Fagundes Telles, on the role of the writer.
The interview as a tool for aspiring writers
The interview, at least from my utilitarian experience, became an important tool to find directives and discussions that could pass unnoticed by me.
If you, like me, try to write literature, then the lack of people with whom to discuss your efforts is probably a constant. I know that the internet exists to deal with this, but here I’m talking about a more helpful contact that also provides relevant content. Some time ago I discovered that the interviews given by other writers could be a midterm between talk and a more profound reading. There’s this certain informality of the dialogue, but also a lot of good content if you know where to find these interviews. All of this in a shorter format and without making you read an entire book about one theme at a time.
Rascunho literary newspaper and book
The usefulness that I see in interviews is the reason for why I share some interviews here, like the one of Lygia Fagundes Telles or Borges. Recently I won a copy from Rascunho’s book with the best interviews published by them. I’ve read this book so fast that know I can only go after the second volume.
However, both the preface signed by Luís Henrique Pellanda, the book organizer, and my experience reading interviews called my attention to an essential factor that sometimes can go unnoticed: the interviewer. It is not rare to see an interview ruined by lack of ability. In a good interview the knowledge and questions chosen by the interviewer should work together to allow the most interesting answers from the interviewed.
Roland Barthes already questioned the limits between the author and his works and this also applies to writer’s interviews. The content of the answer must be seen with some distance and that’s why I consider it a different contact than that allowed by books and essays, even when it’s an interview via e-mail. On interviews a lot of writers are hesitant to comment their own books or the avoid to give too many details about characters and creative processes. They make it clear: the interview’s communication shouldn’t complement the written work. Beyond that we must bear in mind the instantaneity of the interview and the difference between the written and the oral answer, even when transcribed.
The interview, at least from my utilitarian experience, became an important tool to find directives and discussions that could pass unnoticed by me. Clearly, the format, that is usually short, contribute to certain limitations in the approach deepness, although this aspect can be managed outside the interview genre. As a tool it’s a less impersonal reading to be arranged between studies and other harder readings. However, even with the utility I pointed here, I suspect that this is only a minor use of this kind of text.
On being a great writer and how almost dying made Borges try short stories
“Not because I think my own stuff particularly good, but because I know that I can't get along without writing. If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no?” - Jorge Luís Borges
Jorge Luís Borges is one of those big names in literature who should need no introduction. In his books I found the recurrence of themes like time, infinity, labyrinths and the doppelganger. Expert in ancient english literature and philosophy, many of his book cast doubt over the border between fiction and non fiction, between the realism and the fantastic.
The love for reading that is clear even in his writings found limitations in his progressive blindness. However, it wasn't enough to hinder his habit of reading and writing even when he was already very debilitated in July of 1966, five years after receiving his first big premiation, the Formentor Prize. In this date he gave an interview to the writer and translator Ronald Christ published by The Paris Review.
His stories are short, complex and profoundly philosophical and granted him the title of the”writer who writes for writers”. But as he tells in the interview, it was only after an almost death experience, due to an accident at the Christmas of 1938, that he first tried to write short stories:
“Yes, I was very timid because when I was young I thought of myself as a poet. So I thought, “If I write a story, everybody will know I'm an outsider, that I am intruding in forbidden ground.” Then I had an accident. You can feel the scar. If you touch my head here, you will see. Feel all those mountains, bumps? Then I spent a fortnight in a hospital. I had nightmares and sleeplessness—insomnia. After that they told me that I had been in danger, well, of dying, that it was really a wonderful thing that the operation had been successful. I began to fear for my mental integrity—I said, “Maybe I can't write anymore.” Then my life would have been practically over because literature is very important to me. Not because I think my own stuff particularly good, but because I know that I can't get along without writing. If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no? Then I thought I would try my hand at writing an article or a poem. But I thought, “I have written hundreds of articles and poems. If I can't do it, then I'll know at once that I am done for, that everything is over with me.” So I thought I'd try my hand at something I hadn't done: If I couldn't do it, there would be nothing strange about it because why should I write short stories?”
Even after this extreme start he rememorate the acceptance of his books in an account that made me remember the way he deals with numerology and mathematic in his books. When “History of eternity” was released he still had no idea that in the future his works would be translated to dozens of languages and even the sales of 37 copies left him surprised and touched:
“At first I wanted to find every single one of the buyers to apologize because of the book and also to thank them for what they had done. There is an explanation for that. If you think of thirty-seven people—those people are real, I mean every one of them has a face of his own, a family, he lives on his own particular street. Why, if you sell, say two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast—I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people—perhaps thirty-seven are too many, perhaps seventeen would have been better or even seven—but still thirty-seven are still within the scope of one's imagination.”
During all the interview Borges speaks a lot through quotations, refering to positions that ilustrates his own views, quoting the authors and sometimes even the book where he read that. It's this way that he merge his ideas with the words of other writers to tell what he considers essential to write a great book:
“I think that Mark Twain was one of the really great writers, but I think he was rather unaware of the fact. But perhaps in order to write a really great book, you must be rather unaware of the fact. You can slave away at it and change every adjective to some other adjective, but perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes. I remember what Bernard Shaw said, that as to style, a writer has as much style as his conviction will give him and not more. Shaw thought that the idea of a game of style was quite nonsensical, quite meaningless. He thought of Bunyan, for example, as a great writer because he was convinced of what he was saying. If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his readers to believe it.”
In this interview Jorge Luís Borges also talks about his studies of ancient english and nordic literature, comments what he considers essential to poetry and to fantastic literature. The writer for writers manages to be a remarkable presence even outside his work. After reading books like “The Aleph” and “Ficciones” I can only recommend kep recommending him everywhere.
I also talked here about an interview from the brazilian writer Lygia Fagundes Telles who met Borges in person. In this interview she also speaks about her last encounter with the argentinian writer before his death.
Reference: Full Borges interview.