 |
| Coffee Martini anyone? |
We always learn from
literary geniuses. I reproduce and interview to one of the most controversial
and colorful authors, Truman Capote.
Have a wonderful weekend
everyone!
INTERVIEWER
Do you read a great
deal?
CAPOTE
Too much. And anything,
including labels and recipes and advertisements. I have a passion for
newspapers—read all the New York dailies every day, and the Sunday editions,
and several foreign magazines too. The ones I don't buy I read standing at news
stands. I average about five books a week—the normal-length novel takes me
about two hours. I enjoy thrillers and would like someday to write one. Though
I prefer first-rate fiction, for the last few years my reading seems to have
been concentrated on letters and journals and biographies. It doesn't bother me
to read while I am writing—I mean, I don't suddenly find another writer's style
seeping out of my pen. Though once, during a lengthy spell of James, my own
sentences did get
awfully long.
INTERVIEWER
What writers have
influenced you the most?
CAPOTE
So far as I consciously
know, I've never been aware of direct literary influence, though several
critics have informed me that my early works owe a debt to Faulkner and Welty
and McCullers. Possibly. I'm a great admirer of all three; and Katherine Anne
Porter, too. Though I don't think, when really examined, that they have much in
common with each other, or me, except that we were all born in the South. Between
thirteen and sixteen are the ideal if not the only ages for succumbing to
Thomas Wolfe—he seemed to me a great genius then, and still does, though I
can't read a line of it now. Just as other youthful flames have guttered: Poe,
Dickens, Stevenson. I love them in memory, but find them unreadable. These are
the enthusiasms that remain constant: Flaubert, Turgenev, Chekhov, Jane Austen,
James, E. M. Forster, Maupassant, Rilke, Proust, Shaw, Willa Cather—oh the list
is too long, so I'll end with James Agee, a beautiful writer whose death over
two years ago was a real loss. Agee's work, by the way, was much influenced by
the films. I think most of the younger writers have learned and borrowed from
the visual, structural side of movie technique. I have.
INTERVIEWER
You've written for the
films, haven't you? What was that like?
CAPOTE
A lark. At least the
one picture I wrote, Beat the Devil, was tremendous fun. I
worked on it with John Huston while the picture was actually being made on
location in Italy. Sometimes scenes that were just about to be shot were
written right on the set. The cast were completely bewildered—sometimes even
Huston didn't seem to know what was going on. Naturally the scenes had to be
written out of a sequence, and there were peculiar moments when I was carrying
around in my head the only real outline of the so-called plot. You never saw
it? Oh, you should. It's a marvelous joke. Though I'm afraid the producer
didn't laugh. The hell with them. Whenever there's a revival I go to see it and
have a fine time.
Seriously, though, I
don't think a writer stands much chance of imposing himself on a film unless he
works in the warmest rapport with the director or is himself the director. It's
so much a director's medium that the movies have developed only one writer who,
working exclusively as a scenarist, could be called a film genius. I mean that
shy, delightful little peasant, Zavattini. What a visual sense! Eighty per cent
of the good Italian movies were made from Zavattini scripts—all of the De Sica
pictures, for instance. De Sica is a charming man, a gifted and deeply
sophisticated person; nevertheless he's mostly a megaphone for Zavattini, his
pictures are absolutely Zavattini's creations: every nuance, mood, every bit of
business is clearly indicated in Zavattini's scripts.
INTERVIEWER
What are some of your
writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?
CAPOTE
I am a completely
horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or
stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be
puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea
to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I
write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision,
also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can
become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a
semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me
beyond endurance.
INTERVIEWER
You seem to make a
distinction between writers who are stylists and writers who aren't. Which
writers would you call stylists and which not?
CAPOTE
What is style? And
“what” as the Zen Koan asks, “is the sound of one hand?” No one really knows;
yet either you know or
you don't. For myself, if you will excuse a rather cheap little image, I
suppose style is the mirror of an artist's sensibility—more so than the contentof
his work. To some degree all writers have style—Ronald Firbank, bless his
heart, had little else, and thank God he realized it. But the possession of
style, a style,
is often a hindrance, a negative force, not as it should be, and as it is—with,
say, E. M. Forster and Colette and Flaubert and Mark Twain and Hemingway and
Isak Dinesen—a reinforcement. Dreiser, for instance, has a style—but oh, Dio
buono! And Eugene O'Neill. And Faulkner, brilliant as he is. They
all seem to me triumphs over strong but negative styles, styles that do not
really add to the communication between writer and reader. Then there is the
styleless stylist—which is very difficult, very admirable, and always very popular: Graham Greene, Maugham,
Thornton Wilder, John Hersey, Willa Cather, Thurber, Sartre (remember, we'renot discussing
content), J. P. Marquand, and so on. But yes, there is such an animal as a nonstylist. Only
they're not writers; they're typists. Sweaty typists blacking up pounds of bond
paper with formless, eyeless, earless messages. Well, who are some of the
younger writers who seem to know that style exists? P. H. Newby, Françoise
Sagan, somewhat. Bill Styron, Flannery O'Connor—she has some fine moments, that
girl. James Merrill. William Goyen—if he'd stop being hysterical. J. D.
Salinger—especially in the colloquial tradition. Colin Wilson? Another typist.
INTERVIEWER
Can a writer learn
style?
CAPOTE
No, I don't think that
style is consciously arrived at, any more than one arrives at the color of
one's eyes. After all, your style is you.
At the end the personality of a writer has so much to do with the work. The
personality has to be humanly there. Personality is a debased word, I know, but
it's what I mean. The writer's individual humanity, his word or gesture toward
the world, has to appear almost like a character that makes contact with the
reader. If the personality is vague or confused or merely literary, ça
ne va pas. Faulkner, McCullers—they project their personality at
once.
INTERVIEWER
It is interesting that
your work has been so widely appreciated in France. Do you think style can be
translated?
CAPOTE
Why not? Provided the
author and the translator are artistic twins.
For the complete interview click here: The Paris Review
*****
Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.
Copyright © 2012 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All
rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment