“In such circumstances, I sometimes think that only the residual strength of the dead beings inside me gives me power to survive at all. By that I mean both the accumulated weight of the generations succeeding one another and, as well, from the first of times when names held their objects fast and light shone among us in miracles of discovery, the immortal presence of that original and heroic actor who saw that the world had been given him to play in without remorse or fear.”
It’s clearly the original and heroic actor of whom I had no inkling at the time I began the book who provides the unheroic actor in the railroad station.
LT: This would be a good place to end, at the end of the novel, but I have the alphabet questions I initially planned to ask.
HM: Ask them all, go ahead.
LT: “A” for art world. In Cigarettes there’s quite a lot about the art world.
HM: That question could have a very long answer — I was married to Niki de Saint Phalle, and I’ve known artists all my life. I’ve been friends with people in the group on both sides — dealers, editors of art magazines, and so forth. I really have no particular insight or attachment other than that.
LT: “B,” beauty, there’s an elegance, a beauty to your writing.
HM: Beauty is something which moves in after the point of works of art have been lost.
LT: “C,” Cigarettes the title. Why that title?
HM: The question, “Why is the book called Cigarettes?” is a question that should be asked.
LT: “D” is dreams. Do you use them directly?
HM: Occasionally. I think that Phoebe’s egg hallucination is a dream I had. And the chapter called “The Otiose Creator” in The Conversions was a dream of Niki de Saint Phalle.
LT: “E”—we’ve gone over this — exile.
HM: Yes, though I’ve never been exiled.
LT: “F,” fantasy, father, fake, any of those?
HM: That’s a very interesting grouping you’ve made. More about you than about me, perhaps.
LT: “G” is games and genius.
HM: Games yes, genius no.
LT: You use games, you don’t care about genius?
HM: No comment, please.
LT: “H,” horses.
HM: A very good letter. I don’t want to find out why but — I love horses. I used to love playing them. My second job, when I was 19, was walking hots at Suffolk Downs.
LT: “I,” insurance, a scam in Cigarettes.
HM: People are very much concerned in Cigarettes with keeping control, and that’s got to do with assurance, which is the English name for insurance, and also with taking out insurance, like Allan’s wanting the woman to have an orgasm before he does being “money in the bank.” They’re all into that. To go back to what you said about money, it shows that money isn’t just what happens with the money — it happens in all the other things they do.
LT: “J,” jokes and jealousy.
HM: Jealousy is no joke. Jealousy is a bad joke. Jealousy is an unspeakable emotion.
LT: Many of the relationships in Cigarettes, for instance, between Morris and his sister, Irene, and between the two sisters, Pauline and Maud, depict that unspeakable emotion.
HM: Jealousy is hateful and very hard to deal with and I think it’s probably more unspeakable in a man than it is in a woman.
LT: Why?
HM: Sexual jealousy, that is. I don’t think I can stand going into it.
LT: “K” for Kafka. Especially because of Tlooth.
HM: Not The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium? I had an epigraph from Kafka at the beginning. He’s finally being read in a way he deserves — one of the most explosively stimulating, funny and unclassifiable writers that’s ever lived. And the tremendous effort to make thoroughgoing interpretations of his books, which was the way he was read when I first came into contact with it — treating his work as allegory to my mind sprang from that terrifying ambiguity.
LT: For “L,” lines, as in 20 Lines a Day.
HM: Twenty lines a day keeps the dustbin away.
LT: “M,” memory.
HM: Memory is an irresistible fiction.
LT: And then for “O,” “P,” and “R,” the OuLiPo, Perec, and Roussel. “Q” is quizzes.
HM: I thought it was Queneau. Queneau’s the only living “writing father” I ever had; and the OuLiPo is my writing home in France; and Perec — Perec is irreplaceable.
LT: “S,” sexual difference. In Cigarettes, Louisa, the mother of Lewis, is afraid of men, they’re incomprehensible to her. And in the chapter “Priscilla and Walter,” Priscilla talks about men’s fear of women. This fear may be one of the themes of the book.
HM: I think that’s true and it seems undeniably true that men are terrified of women and women are terrified of men. The reasons aren’t the same, but they’re compelling on both sides and totally imaginary. Although, in the case of women’s fear of men, men have gone out of their way to provide a lot of evidence for that fear.
LT: “T,” translation.
HM: Ahhh. Vaste sujet! Maybe writing is never anything else but translation — ultimately, a translation which cannot be identified.
LT: “V,” vice and virtue.
HM: That makes me feel comfortably 18th-century.
LT: In Cigarettes, people want to do good sometimes, worry about it, but feel they’re doing wrong. There’s an interplay of good and bad — not great evil. Maybe there’s a better “V” we can think of.
HM: No, it’s a very interesting one and, after all, that’s what came to your mind. In all four novels, virtue is wishful and vice is a misinterpretation of reality. A misinterpretation of what’s there.