Annotations for Program: Panel Discussion

LAUGHTER

Are there any comments from the members of the panel up here? Anyone who has anything to say objecting to or supporting anything that's been said? Mr. Ellison, would you have anything to say to Mr. Frohock's comments?

Only that I would return again to the specific novel as found in France as against I'd found the United States. And I will have to paraphrase Mr. André Malraux when he says that there's little to discover about the nature of French society. It's well documented from Balzac on, so much so that Malraux could turn his attention to the more abstract predicament of man.

But he didn't just write about man in the abstract. The condition-- I mean man's fate is about and is well documented by his depiction of Shanghai and of revolutionary action. And in fact, someone has pointed out that Malraux is such a good writer that one doesn't feel that this is China seen through the eyes of a European, but that it is China.

However, I do agree with Mr. Frohock that the problem of man is at another level, an abstraction the same. But then, that gives me real hope, because I can write about the predicament of negro characters in the south, let us say, and still speak, if I do it well enough, to those people who are looking at the condition of man, the predicament of man, in its most abstract sense.

Thank you. Mr. Simenon, would you--

Just INAUDIBLE

Would you pull that towards you?

is to explain, when I said behind 99% of the novelist hides a bashful essayist or poet, that the term poet here is in a sense, in the pejorative sense, as we employ it very often in France, we mean poet not as Hemingway, or Steinbeck, or Faulkner, but, for example, as Truman Capote is, that means in a sense of aestheticism, you know? That is to explain nothing against the poor novelist.

Mr. Hyman, would you speak to this human condition?

Well, I'd sooner hear Mr. O'Connor on this since the novel, the 20th century novel, he buried last night seems to have revived this evening.

Mr. O'Connor?

I'm afraid I've got very little to say, ladies and gentlemen, except that in case that in the portion of the audience which remains, there is a young writer who wants to write novels or short stories. Do let me explain to him that it's not as serious as all that.

Applause

When I hear all these ponderous words pouring forth-- and I know they mean so much and all the rest of it-- I think of the village idiot in an Irish village who was seen after he had left school, hurling his three schoolbooks into the stream. With the first one he said, "Whereas." And then, he said, "In as much." And then, he hurled the third book in and said, "In so far."

Well, I had a feeling, listening to these two masters of literature, Mr. Simenon, Mr. Ellison, tonight, that I was listening to the story of INAUDIBLE, who was suffering in the interests of the community. And again, I felt all the time like that man that Boswell describes, who said to Dr. Johnson that he himself was very interested in philosophy at one time. But cheerfulness would keep breaking through.

LAUGHTER

Mr. West?

Applause

That makes it very difficult, indeed, to go on being serious. But the only thing which I must say really appalls me very much indeed in this discussion is the phrase "an American reality." To think that after a century of the horrors of nationalism, we should start pegging out national areas of reality is so appalling that I can hardly bear to think of it.

It does seem the ultimate in the decay of the idea of Christendom, which has taken place in the last 1,000 years that you could come even to be provincial in your conceptions of reality. I had hoped that we had gone forward to that from that, that we were only concerned with the reality of human beings with which human beings have to deal, that we had gone away from those small, small conceptions of local pictures. All right.

Applause

I don't know, but I'll say, Does anyone up on the stage want to speak about this?

Yes, I do.

Applause

It's all very well to engage in wit. But the novel, Mr. O'Connor, is a very serious concern. I must speak specifically,

LAUGHTER

because I feel that that the role is a dedicated one, perhaps because I come to it from a background of music and whatnot, in which all of this was something new to discover.

But I know without having so many great writers behind me-- that is, writers handling the same reality, using the same folklore, in fact, telling some of the same stories, having developed a theme-- that it's quite difficult to seize a part of reality, yes, an American reality, specifically American reality. I don't think it has its value because it's American. And I'm not selling any brand of nationalism.

But it just happens to be a fact. This is the way men live now at this particular time under these particular circumstances. You cannot get away from it. The novel is not an abstract instrument. I will say this, that I believe that in a sense, human life during this particular historical period is of a hope. Otherwise, comparative literature would make no sense, and we'd all be talking in vacuums. But I was very glad that Mr. Frohock pointed out that I owe a great deal to André Malraux.

There is this also to be said, that Malraux's great novels, at least a part of his great novels, turn to mock him now, because he was seeking for that abstract political reality, which was not based upon the customs of a specific people. I don't see how you can get away from it. It's not out of a desire to know-- I mean to sell a phony conception of nationalism. I reject that. I've suffered from it.

But I don't think you can know other people until you know yourself. I don't think that we can understand other peoples until we understand ourselves. I don't think we would send Jimmy Byrnes to enter the U.N. if we understood ourselves, because certainly, he won't understand other people.

Applause

So this is, after all, very serious. And if we're going to discuss ideas, let's discuss ideas. Are we going to crack jokes? I know a few good ones.

Laughter and applause

I think--

Mr. O'Connor?

My question to Mr. Ellison is, why should the devil have all the tunes?

Well, you dance to yours. I'll have to dance to mine.

Mr. West, would you-- all right. Fine. Are there any questions from the audience to be addressed to the speakers or anyone on the panel? If you'll raise your hands rather higher than last evening, it's easier for the men with the microphones to see them. Please, would you wait until-- speak into the microphone.

I have been interested in the fact that so much emphasis has been laid upon the novel as a means of exploration of man, as giving us the knowledge of man. Now, if one followed the argument of monsieur Simenon, for instance, could we ask the question, what will happen to the novel if its essence is the knowledge of man when psychology, and history, and sociology become popularized? Is there not some danger in placing the essence of the novel in the knowledge of man? And what do you mean by knowledge in that sense?

Yes. I think I understand. I am not absolutely sure. But what I mean is that it's not the business of the novelist to discuss conscientiously sociology, or psychology, or any techniques we may discuss anywhere. He has to put as much humanity in his work. And if it's sociology or psychology in it, it must be unconscious. You understand what I mean?

If you start a novel with the idea of exposing some theory, some theories, you will write a wrong novel, absolutely a bad, bad novel. But if you start with just man, and you follow man, you will have a novel. And maybe it will be psychology in it, and even philosophy, and everything. But you don't have to expose it. Do you know what I mean? It's something absolutely different.

It's like Mr. INAUDIBLE who was making prose without knowing it. Everybody makes prose every day. And everybody makes psychology every day, but not the same way that Mr. INAUDIBLE, for example, will start a novel with a trained thought. Today, I will treat the man who did a bad confession to his priest, and then he proved some theory. He proved nothing, and he did always a bad novel. That's what I try to explain.

Applause

And-- I'm sorry. And it gave me the occasion to answer at the same time at Mr. O'Connor, because when he asked to have moral or something of this kind in a novel, it's exactly the same thing. We have a proverb in France who said that you can't do art with good intentions. It's impossible.

Moral may come later, or it may be moral in your work, but you don't start to moralize the people who start to be-- to do a novel there. Michelangelo did not his 16 by religion but to make a novel there. And it was the same for every painter and every artist, moral that's come later. It comes maybe in your work, but not voluntarily. That's the question.

Applause

Is there a question over in this part of the audience? Here is one up forward.

I'd like to ask Mr. West and Mr. Ellison why they think the novel isn't being sold and read today and whether it is because the novels are so sad, or because the novels are so sad, because people aren't buying them anymore.

I don't remember ever having said that people weren't buying novels or reading them. That must be somebody else, I think. They are, so far as bulk is concerned, reading, I think, more than they ever did before. There's a literate public which never existed before, which I don't think has much use for novels, which has a great bulk of literature supplied to it, which is rather overwhelming in comparison to the novel and makes it look as if the novel was less being sold and read less than it was. But I don't-- I think that's an optical illusion and not one which statistics support.

Mr. Ellison, this question was also addressed to you.

Well, some novels aren't being read. Let us put it that way. Most new novels aren't being read. The great successes, I think, are novels which have been made available through the paperback editions. I think that there has been a falling off in the interest in the novel. And it is true.

I think Mr. Sloan could probably substantiate this, that there has been a greater interest in non-fiction recently in terms of new books. Maybe it's because of the crisis, a sense of crisis, which we have now. And perhaps it's because some of the sense of-- the romantic sense of the possibility has gone out of the novels written by most of us younger writers who have just come out of the war and who don't feel too optimistic about things.

But I think it's the nature of man to-- and here, I guess I'm using "man" in that capitalized sense, international and everything. It's his nature to refuse to die. He cannot live with the absurd. He cannot live with chaos. And he, while he might not come to the novel expecting to be shown a pretty picture, he does expect from it that sense of triumph, that sense of struggling and to dominate reality, which can make a tragedy, a tragic action, a very exhilarating experience, simply because by reducing this chaos to an artistic form, we are justified. We are saved somehow.

Thank you, Mr. Ellison. This subject of publication and who's reading novels and who isn't is in great part the subject of tomorrow evening. And I want now to resist the temptation to ask Mr. Sloan to speak of it now, and we'll call this a fortunate transition to tomorrow's evening and adjourn at this point.

Applause