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August 4, Evening Part One
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8:59
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LAUGHTER
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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0:05
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We had expected that one of the speakers last night would be Miss Katherine Anne Porter. She, however, has been ill. We have been expecting day-by-day, as have she and her physician, that she would be well enough to come right up until this afternoon when an emissary from the conference called at her request and prepared to help her get started from New York-- from Washington here. But she-- though she was willing to come and have the show go on, in true tradition of the theater, our agent there thought that was too much of a hardship for her, that she still with a fever should not be subjected to the trip.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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0:56
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The program tomorrow night will continue as announced last night. One of the speakers will be Miss Hilda Livingston, who represents the New American Library which publishes successfully large numbers of paperback books. The other speaker will be Mr. William Sloan, editorial vice-president of Funk & Wagnalls, who has had great experience in the publication of I don't know what column, but non-paperback books.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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1:29
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This will be followed by, I trust, a rousing panel discussion by all the members of the panel, this being a chance for authors to argue over some of the matters that the publishers will bring up. One of the themes I know in advance from talking to the speakers will be the problem of just what does money have to do with what the contemporary novel is? And this, of course, has always been a problem and is one now, and has many ramifications at the moment.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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1:59
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And the editorial policy, whether or not it's free-- as free to choose and follow various art forms as it used to be-- will be the subject at that point. Tonight, the two talks are, again, by authors-- novelists-- as last evening, and the subjects we will deal with later.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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2:24
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I want to take the time of the conference this evening for about five or six minutes to summarize what went on last evening, because the panel discussion after the two speeches and after the commentary by Professor Frohock on the two speeches will probably include some of the matters brought up last night and not fully dealt with. Mr. Hyman, speaking last evening on some trends in the novel, pointed out three unattractive trends.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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2:54
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First, what he calls self-parody, finding certain writers-- Hemingway, Faulkner, and others-- writing now in their what he presented as their later days writing rehashes of earlier works and doing an inferior job. The second unattractive trend he noticed was what he called the disguises of love, taking the title from a novel by Robie Macaulay, in which he dealt with the problem of heterosexual-- homosexual love being presented as heterosexual love. The third trend which he found unattractive was what he called pseudo fictions, the kind of thing the recent novel-- essentially, The Life of Scott Fitzgerald and Mr. Hershey's The Wall and such works of that sort.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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3:38
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Among the hopeful trends Mr. Hyman noted was a tendency for fiction to begin to merge naturalism with myth and ritual, and the second thing that he felt was an attractive trend and cause for hope was more concentration on the experience of the individual as actor, not just as spectator, and as a real participant in things. And third-- among the third attractive trend that he sees is more interest in form-- more effective interest in form-- and coupled with this, what he called "moral imagination."
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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4:20
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In commenting on Mr. Hyman's speech, Mr. West had a great many things to say, and I will only touch on these things. And this is my impression of his response to Mr. Hyman's paper. When it came to the matter of the unattractive trend number one-- self-parody-- Mr. West's point was that this is not new, that this has happened with many novelists, and he cited an example of Conrad writing in The Rover work inferior to his earlier work, and in one sense, one might say a parody of it.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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4:52
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In dealing with the second unattractive trend Mr. Hyman noted, the so-called disguises of love, Mr. Hyman suggested that it might not-- Mr. West, I'm sorry-- suggests that it might not be a total loss to have novels dealing with homosexuality, especially if converted in the fiction to seem to be heterosexual love, because there may be a different feeling now from that in the 19th century on the individual part. Not about sex and sexual perversion, but the feeling of entrapment in general, and that the homosexual may feel this lack of freedom and this box he is in, and that this may be a device for appealing to a larger audience using this aberration as a symbol of a larger thing that is more widespread in the population and of more interest to readers in general.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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5:43
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As for pseudo fictions-- real events dressed up, real episodes, real series of events dressed up as novels-- Mr. West's point again, I think, was that we have had these for some time and perhaps they will always be with us. He castigated Mr. Hyman somewhat for the statement about myth and ritual, when Mr. Hyman turned to his hopeful trends. I take it-- and this is a great risk of putting words in a speaker's mouth in these rather abrupt summaries-- but Mr. West's point seemed to be that it was very hard to develop a myth in a society as confused as ours without a central core out of which myths grew in the past. And he didn't see this-- I believe he did not see this as such a hopeful trend.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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6:34
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Mr. O'Connor's speech in general suggested that much that we think of as contemporary in contemporary fiction is not pleasant to Mr. O'Connor. He felt, first of all, that much of modern fiction is too subjective. And he said that from the time of Proust to the present, things have been too subjective in fiction too often, and that Proust, following Bergson's theories, had not examined reality sufficiently. And that, in connection with this subjectivity, there was too much Freud and Jung in modern writers, making them often rather mechanically following systems that they didn't understand and which may have been Mr. O'Connor's opinion false in the first place.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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7:26
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He went on to say that there's too much in modern fiction of elaborate metaphors, so that a character, such as Bloom and Joyce's Ulysses, is not free to act as a human being would, but he has no choices. He must follow out his metaphorical function as one of simultaneously a character in early 20th century Dublin, and in Homer's Odyssey. Mr. O'Connor felt that it is time to return to reality in fiction, and he cited the 19th century as a point when this had reached its peak in the novel.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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8:04
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Mr. Weston, commenting on this speech, said that first, among other things, that he didn't feel that Proust was too subjective. That Proust did deal with reality, and dealt with it effectively. Mr. West doesn't seem to disagree with Mr. O'Connor about the excessive use of metaphor in fiction. Mr. O'Connor had objected to Kafka, and I take it Mr. West shares in this objection, but I don't think he wanted to cut out these elaborate metaphors-- the biggest example being Joyce, for example-- as much as Mr. O'Connor did.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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8:40
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And I don't think that Mr. West felt last evening that the novel could return very readily to the 19th century. That perhaps it had to go on, for better or for worse. The panel in general last evening discussed the questions of what is reality, and this question remains unsettled.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part One
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0:00
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8:40
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August 4 Panel Discussion
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Program |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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17:29
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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.
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Anthony West |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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17:54
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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.
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Anthony West |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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26:30
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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.
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Anthony West |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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16:08
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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17:22
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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18:25
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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18:36
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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21:51
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:04
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Laughter and applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:50
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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?
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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24:57
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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25:49
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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26:01
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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.
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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29:40
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Applause
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Audience |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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12:23
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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?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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14:34
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Thank you. Mr. Simenon, would you--
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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14:38
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Would you pull that towards you?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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15:21
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Mr. Hyman, would you speak to this human condition?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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15:42
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Mr. O'Connor?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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17:20
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Mr. West?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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18:28
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I don't know, but I'll say Does anyone up on the stage want to speak about this?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:16
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Mr. O'Connor?
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:28
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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.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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25:54
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Is there a question over in this part of the audience? Here is one up forward.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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27:12
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Mr. Ellison, this question was also addressed to you.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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29:20
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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.
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Carvel Collins |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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15:44
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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.
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Frank O'Connor |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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16:12
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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.
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Frank O'Connor |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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16:46
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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.
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Frank O'Connor |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:16
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I think--
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Frank O'Connor |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:17
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INAUDIBLE to Mr. Ellison is, why should the devil have all the tunes?
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Frank O'Connor |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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14:36
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Just INAUDIBLE
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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14:41
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--is to explain, when I said behind 99% of the novelist hides a bashful essayist or poet, the term poet here is 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 T
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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23:30
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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?
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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23:59
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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.
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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24:27
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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.
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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25:01
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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.
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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25:24
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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.
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George Simenon |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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12:23
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29:40
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August 4 Panel Discussion
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Program |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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12:41
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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13:19
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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13:59
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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18:32
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Yes, I do.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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18:39
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It's all very well to engage in wit. But the novel, Mr. O'Connor, is a very serious concern. I must be specifically, because I feel that that the role is a dedicated one, perhaps because I come to it from a background of music and whatnot, and which all of this was something new to discover.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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19:25
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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20:08
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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20:49
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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21:29
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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 Burns to enter the UN if we understood ourselves, because certainly, he won't understand other people.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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21:55
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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22:23
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Well, you dance to yours. I'll have to dance to mine.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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27:17
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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27:45
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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28:23
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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.
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Ralph Ellison |
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August 4, Evening Part Three
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15:27
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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.
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Stanley Hyman |