Has the sexual kick in literature reached a peak? Will it not now decline?
I am completely indifferent to the social aspect of this or any other group activity. Historically, the pornographic record set by the ancients still remains unbroken. Artistically, the dirtier typewriters try to get, the more conventional and corny their products become, e.g. such novels as Millers Thumb and Tailors Spasm.
What is your attitude toward modem violence?
I abhor the brutality of all brutes, white or black, brown or red. I despise red knaves and pink fools.
Reflecting on your life, what have been its truly significant moments?
Every moment, practically. Yesterday's letter from a reader in Russia, the capture of an undescribed butterfly last year, learning to ride a bicycle in 1909.
How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?
I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.
If you were writing your own obituary, what would you stress or emphasize as your contribution to literature, to the climate of opinion (an and esthetics) of the last 50 years?
In my case the afterglow of a recent work (say, Ada, finished last Christmas) mingles at once with the hazy aurora of a new task. My next book, dawning as it does in ideal tint and tone, seems for the moment better than anything I wrote before. What I am trying to emphasize is a special thrill of anticipation which by its very nature cannot be treated necrologically.
What books have you enjoyed lately?
I seldom experience nowadays the spinal twinge which is the only valid reaction to a new piece of great poetry — such as, for example, Richard Wilbur's «Complaint», a poem about his marvelous duchess (Phoenix Bookshop edition, 1968).
12
In early June, 1969, Philip Oakes sent me a series of Questions on behalf of The Sunday Times, London. I happened to be greatly annoyed by the editorial liberties that periodicals in other countries had been taking with material 1 had supplied. When he arrived on June 15, I gave him my written answers accompanied by the following note.
When preparing interviews I invariably write out my replies (and sometimes additional questions) taking great care to make them as concise as possible. My replies represent unpublished material, should be printed verbatim and in toto, and copyrighted in my name. Answers may be rearranged in whatever order the interviewer or the editor wishes: for example, they may be split, with insertion of the questioner's comments or bits of descriptive matter (but none of the latter material may be ascribed to me). Unprepared remarks, quips, etc., may come from me during the actual colloquy but may not be published without my approval. The article will be shown to me before publication so as to avoid factual errors (e.g., in names, dates, etc.).
Mr. Oakes' article appeared in The Sunday Times on June 22, 1969.
As a distinguished entomologist and novelist do you find that your two main preoccupations condition, restrict, or refine your view of the world?
What world? Whose world? If we mean the average world of the average newspaper reader in Liverpool, Livorno, or Vilno, then we are dealing in trivial generalities. If, on the other hand, an artist invents his own world, as I think I do, then how can he be said to influence his own understanding of what he has created himself? As soon as we start defining such terms as «the writer», «the world», «the novel», and so on, we slip into a solipsismal abyss where general ideas dissolve. As to butterflies — well, my taxonomic papers on lepidoptera were published mainly in the nineteen forties, and can be of interest to only a few specialists in certain groups of American butterflies. In itself, an aurelian's passion is not a particularly unusual sickness; but it stands outside the limits of a novelist's world, and I can prove this by the fact that whenever I allude to butterflies in my novels, no matter how diligently I rework the stuff, it remains pale and false and does not really express what I want it to express — what, indeed, it can only express in the special scientific terms of my entomological papers. The butterfly that lives forever on its type-labeled pin and in its U. D. («original description») in a scientific journal dies a messy death in the fumes of the arty gush. However — not to let your question go completely unanswered I must admit that in one sense the entomological satellite does impinge upon my novelistic globe. This is when certain place-names are mentioned. Thus if I hear or read the words «Alp Grum, Engadine» the normal observer within me may force me to imagine the belvedere of a tiny hotel on its 2000-meter-tall perch and mowers working along a path that winds down to a toy railway; but what I see first of all and above all is the Yellow-handed Ringlet settled with folded wings on the flower that those damned scythes are about to behead.
What was the most amusing item you recently found in the papers?
That bit about Mr. E. Pound, a venerable fraud, making a «sentimental visit» to his alma mater in Clinton, New York, and being given a standing ovation by the commencement audience — consisting, apparently, of morons and madmen.
Have you seen the cinema version of your Laughter in the Dark?
I have. Nicol Williamson is, of course, an admirable actor, and some of the sequences are very good. The scene with the water-ski girl, gulping and giggling, is exceptionally successful. But 1 was appalled by the commonplace quality of the sexual passages. I would like to say something about that. Cliches and conventions breed remarkably fast. They occur as readily in the primitive jollities of the jungle as in the civilized obligatory scenes of our theater. In former times Greek masks must have set many a Greek dentition on edge. In recent films, including Laughter in the Dark, the porno grapple has already become a cliche though the device is but half-a-dozen years old. I would have been sorry that Tony Richardson should have followed that trite trend, had it not given me the opportunity to form and formulate the following important notion: theatrical acting, in the course of the last centuries, has led to incredible refinements of stylized pantomine in the representation of, say, a person eating, or getting deliciously drunk, or looking for his spectacles, or making a proposal of marriage. Not so in regard to the imitation of the sexual act which on the stage has absolutely no tradition behind it. The Swedes and we have 10 start from scratch and what I have witnessed up to now on the screen — the blotchy male shoulder, the false howls of bliss, the four or five mingled feet — all of it is primitive, commonplace, conventional, and therefore disgusting. The lack of art and style in these paltry copulations is particularly brought into evidence by their clashing with the marvelously high level of acting in virtually all other imitations of natural gestures on our stage and screen. This is an attractive topic to ponder further, and directors should take notice of it.
When you are writing your novels, you have a remarkable sense of history and period, although the situations in which your characters are involved reflect perennial dilemmas. Do you feel that any given time creates special problems which interest you as a writer?
We should define, should we not, what we mean by «history». If «history» means a «written account of events» (and that is about all Clio can claim), then let us inquire who actually — what scribes, what secretaries — took it down and how qualified they were for the job. I am inclined to guess that a big part of «history» (the unnatural history of man — not the naive testimony of rocks) has been modified by mediocre writers and prejudiced observers. We know that police states {e.g., the Soviets) have actually snipped out and destroyed such past events in old books as did not conform to the falsehoods of the present. But even the most talented and conscientious historian may err. In other words, I do not believe that «history» exists apart from the historian. If I try to select a keeper of records, I think it safer (for my comfort, at least) to choose my own self. But nothing recorded or thought up by myself can create any special «problems» in the sense you suggest.