That's how Salinger opens The Catcher in the Rye. It's one of the most famous quotes from the book. It touches on Charles Dickens and his largely autobiographical novel, David Copperfield. Dickens never wrote an autobiography. The closest he ever came was Copperfield, which contains several details from Dickens' youth. Of course, Holden isn't interested in all the trappings of autobiography--the requisite navel gazing. And, of course, the next 200-plus pages of Catcher is an exercise in just that, on a Holden Caulfield level.
For my birthday last year, I received a box-set of The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1-3. Basically, these three volumes include a selection of interviews with some of the most famous writers of the twentieth century. In the introduction to the first volume, Philip Gourevitch writes about the process of a Paris Review interview, which strays a great deal from the normal journalistic approach. There is no attempt to surprise of "catch" the interviewee. It is a collaborative process, conducted over several seasons, sometimes years. The writer being interviewed is given several attempts to edit and revise his/her statements in the interview. The results are illuminating portraits of the writer's thoughts about the life and the craft of fiction, poetry, theater, biography, essay, whatever.
The first volume of the series contains interviews with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joan Didion. Rather than try to capture the essence of the interviews in this little post, I'm simply going to give you a smattering of some of the pearls of wisdom and truth displayed by the interview subjects:
I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won't accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses--which is sad because they're my favorite flower. I can't allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won't travel on a plane with two nuns. Won't begin or end anything on a Friday. It's endless, the things I can't and won't. But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.
--Truman Capote
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
--Ernest Hemingway
I think it's awfully dangerous to give general advice. I think the best one can do for a young poet is to criticize in detail a particular poem of his. Argue it with him if necessary; give him your opinion, and if there are any generalizations to be made, let him do them himself. I've found that different people have different ways of working and things come to them in different ways. You're never sure when you're uttering a statement that's generally valid for all poets or when it's something that only applies to yourself. I think nothing is worse than to try to form people in your own image.
--T. S. Eliot
It was stated by Paul Engle--the founder of the Writers' Workshop at Iowa. He told me that, if the workshop ever got a building of its own, these words should be inscribed over the entrance: Don't take it all so seriously.
--Kurt Vonnegut
Although a novel takes place in the larger world there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal--even if you don't know it while you're doing it. I realized some years after A Book of Common Prayer was finished that it was about my anticipating Quintana's growing up. It wrote it around 1975, so she would have been nine, but I was already anticipating separation and actually working through that ahead of time. So novels are also about things you're afraid you can't deal with.
-Joan Didion
Just last week a friend and I went to visit a wonderful lady I know in Quebec. She's seventy-four or seventy-five. And she didn't say this to me but she said to my friend, Alice, I'd like to ask my neighbor who has the big house next door to dinner, and she's so nice, but she'd be bound to ask Elizabeth what she does and if Elizabeth said she wrote poetry, the poor woman wouldn't say another word all evening! This is awful, you know, and I think no matter how modest you think you feel or how minor you think you are, there must be an awful core of ego somewhere for you to set yourself up to write poetry. I've never felt it, but it must be there.
--Elizabeth Bishop
This is the end of this blog post.
--Saint Marty
Confessions of Saint Marty
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