INTERVIEWER
How about yourself as a writer?
FAULKNER
If I had not existed, someone else would
have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us. Proof of that is
that there are about three candidates for the authorship of
Shakespeare’s plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no
importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing
new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the
same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years
longer, the publishers wouldn’t have needed anyone since.
INTERVIEWER
But even if there seems nothing more to be said, isn’t perhaps the individuality of the writer important?
FAULKNER
Very important to himself. Everybody else should be too busy with the work to care about the individuality.
INTERVIEWER
And your contemporaries?
FAULKNER
All of us failed to match our dream of
perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the
impossible. In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am
convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition
for an artist. That’s why he keeps on working, trying again; he believes
each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he
won’t, which is why this condition is healthy. Once he did it, once he
matched the work to the image, the dream, nothing would remain but to
cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection
into suicide. I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write
poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is
the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then
does he take up novel writing.
INTERVIEWER
Is there any possible formula to follow in order to be a good novelist?
FAULKNER
Ninety-nine percent talent ... ninety-nine
percent discipline ... ninety-nine percent work. He must never be
satisfied with what he does. It never is as good as it can be done.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother
just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be
better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t
know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is
completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from
anybody and everybody to get the work done.
INTERVIEWER
Do you mean the writer should be completely ruthless?
FAULKNER
The writer’s only responsibility is to his
art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream.
It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until
then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security,
happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his
mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any
number of old ladies.
INTERVIEWER
Then could the lack of security, happiness, honor, be an important factor in the artist’s creativity?
FAULKNER
No. They are important only to his peace and contentment, and art has no concern with peace and contentment.
INTERVIEWER
Then what would be the best environment for a writer?
FAULKNER
Art is not concerned with environment
either; it doesn’t care where it is. If you mean me, the best job that
was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my
opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him
perfect economic freedom; he’s free of fear and hunger; he has a roof
over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple
accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The
place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the
day to work. There’s enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to
participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain
standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps
the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to
him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would
call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names.
So the only environment the artist needs is
whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at
not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood
pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My
own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper,
tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου