INTERVIEWER What did you first write? CAPOTE Short stories. And my more unswerving ambitions still revolve around this form. When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my…
Tag: Paris Review
INTERVIEWER What about the novel you’re writing while you’re here—have you been working on it a long time? …Is it unfair to ask you what it will be about? McCARTHY No, it’s very easy. It’s called The Group, and it’s about eight Vassar girls. It starts with the inauguration of…
INTERVIEWER I gather from what you said earlier that you don’t find the act of writing difficult. WAUGH I don’t find it easy. You see, there are always words going round in my head: Some people think in pictures, some in ideas. I think entirely in words. By the time…
INTERVIEWER Can working for the movies hurt your own writing? FAULKNER Nothing can injure a man’s writing if he’s a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there’s not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he…
INTERVIEWER Is emotional stability necessary to write well? You told me once that you could only write well when you were in love. Could you expound on that a bit more? HEMINGWAY What a question. But full marks for trying. You can write any time people will leave you alone…
INTERVIEWER You have said elsewhere that the authors you have learned most from were Jane Austen and Proust. What did you learn from Jane Austen technically? FORSTER I learned the possibilities of domestic humor. I was more ambitious than she was, of course; I tried to hitch it on to…
INTERVIEWER: E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command? NABOKOV: My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel, which I dislike; and anyway,…
INTERVIEWER: I was reading the confessions of a novelist on writing novels: “If you want to be true to reality, start lying about it.” What do you think? JOHN CHEEVER: Rubbish. For one thing the words “truth” and “reality” have no meaning at all unless they are fixed in a…