Gateway to ideas; 9; Each to the Other

Gateway to ideas. Gateway to ideas. A new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading. Today's program. Each to the other is moderated by Anne Fremantle noted author and critic. This discussion is going to be about American writers abroad especially in Paris because of the two people I have with me tonight live very much in France and both have had their books translated into French and do translations themselves. I have with me here tonight as the widow of Eugene journalists the founder and editor of translation magazine and more recently the translator of five books by Natalie sorrow. Who is one of the most best known of the young French writers of what is called a

new novel the novel home with not only Senator or Mary or Jonas toured the United States and visited many universities in the spring of 964. My other guest is Maurice novelist a magazine writer His latest novel The paper war was published back not five of his nine novels have been translated into French and published in France. He lives part of each year in France with his Swedish wife marries herself the author of the bestselling of Hiroshima which has been translated into 28 languages. So you see we have two internationalists people who live on both sides of the pond. Mrs. Jonas I heard you talking recently with some young writers and they were just you were discussing whether the post World War 1 and post World War 2 and present day generations of any great writers of expatriate writers differed that much to find them very different from your memory.

My impression of the young men who were there that night and. As I remember James Jones was one of them. There was another American writer who has since declared that he was leaving France it was going to Africa. The last question was that they found life. Great in Paris today. Then we had found it in my time which I should perhaps recall dates from 1927. I myself came to Paris in 1999 but transition was founded in 1927 and from the standpoint of writing and. American writers that is the period that I know best day is today but I don't know why. I don't know why of course it was an exciting moment because if you remember I shall repeat myself again and say that at that moment there was a sort of

ascendant rendezvous in Paris extraordinarily gifted people from many many countries Joyce from Ireland Stravinsky from Russia because circumspectly in Kandinsky from Russia and then others many others whose name Hemingway from America. From America Sylvia beachhead had been to a bookshop. They came and went. Julian Green and Julian Green. Yes. His autobiography has just come out. It has yes. And I think it's very interesting that there have been one could say it's just a slew of other biographies by famous French writers which is a theory of mine there. It fits Fitzgerald's books have an in some

way encouraged French writers to be autobiographical. After all Fitzgerald's books were more or less journals and naturally there's a great tradition of authors writing journals going back to gun couldn't before but they seem to have been the hiatus of the. Beginning of this century and since the war I think you'll agree that there are a great number of these autobiographies some of which are very interest and have been these things like the Hemingway book that's just come out about his years in Paris and it's autobiographical. That's autobiographical. Yes yes and I think that this sort of autobiographical writing has is one of the Mac influences that is being felt in France. I wonder if you think this is the book I've been cared about all my life very much and that is the moon and it's the 50th anniversary of the groom and justice Yeah there's been

published a book which I think has been so entranced by the way things are. And I wonder if there are not a lot of inferences like that from one country to another that people have been reading much more instance the America the French have been reading the American autobiographies wouldn't you say. Yes just yes. I haven't read part of this book but seems to me almost an echo you know 50 years which was a really wonderful book with great books. I'm not astounded that you should say that that word was no autobiographical writing during that period because there was a very venerable old gentleman who died in 1951 I believe. Practically nothing but he wrote a series of journal. Let's take what narrow is the gate I believe is the translation that was extremely graphic but they were autobiographical novels I think modest means that they went straight after the

900 journals. That's true at the same time. See the difference is interesting it's not a good person to pick because he is an American but I think have been many many more what about American contacts. Yes yes yes. And that's selling in America very much came out recently there and is doing very well recently just and I think it has incidentally acknowledged to American literature. Sutter's great creator himself I think has definitely been influenced by the process to say this generation. Yes

perhaps too but the time element in just passes I think has. What about that strange book which is called The Garden it was selling as a paperback in America. I was very recently a French book about Virginia. Yes it is most interesting about some family that was crazy about family that lived entirely under the influence of the Indian I forget the name of that it was translated as the Gaga night yes that was that was fascinating to listen had on one French. Yes I mean that sort of thing. In fact when it first came out I asked myself if Americans would really. Be able to enter into the Roman romanticism of a book like that about themselves. But it seemed to be selling better when it's already in paperback in the States

and the romantic about Europe and I think I get that the Europeans are romantic about. Yeah I mean you know I mean when I say for instance that I was born and brought up in Kentucky. I see French people as and even those who ask me how to spell it. It seems strange to them and excuse me to get back to the question which you just don't like. Between you the difference between the two generations of American Fascists don't you think that the generation that symbolized Hemingway and the people around Hemingway they came to Europe and specifically to Paris in search of something. American search for. What you were supposed to have to guess which goes back to

James and before James. The people in Paris now it seems to me are not in the same way looking for something that it is. The situation has changed and as fast literature is concerned America is is influencing your peers and I think also Europe hasn't got it any more for instance what's very much now in France is America I think Zen is the Far East is Japan the enormous effect of the Japanese literature directly after the war there was a flurry of Japanese novels that there still is then as about then movement of the inference the beat generation is much in the Indian novels or Indian films. I don't think Europe has the same position it's become what it really is it's more a peninsula on the edge of Asia. And I remember that you say that having two of the great number of universities last year was not in the south and seen with what passionate interest students sat at her feet to listen

to her talk of. And talk of the new novel and talk of her ideas on the subject of the new novel. I'm afraid that I don't quite share your opinion of the disappearance of Europe in the preoccupations of the American student. On the contrary I think that they have opened a window towards the east and how right and how good that it should be that way but I think too that they're very weary of a certain stereotype of the NIE which is beginning to flood. Really the market and anything that would show them another way attracts and interests them and they are interested in the new novel are very much interested in the image and it's something fresh and this is not only in what we used to call the effete East. I found the same situation in

the University of Wisconsin and in Louisville Kentucky and she even went to California Texas and SoCal and everywhere found great interest. I don't think she began to think that Natalie appeals particularly to the generation that goes for. The unconventional searches. This is the universal appeal in America I don't think of books etc. to the point where you say that I don't know what it's like to what could be don't forget that what could be meant by a universal appeal. Don't forget that I was practically shown to Americans by Europeans Exactly. I remember when I was going to use books today. When you think of those three young men that

were found in a Biba down in Mississippi and then when you would think of like you noticed in August 0 the intruder in the dust. Particularly I'm thinking of the ingredients are they seem really universal don't know what they do. Yes I do. Yes interesting. Creation is not an indicator neck and you know the same thing is happening elsewhere but it was a very strange phenomena that fuckwit was published first thing on you before you got it right and how do you know anything about it practically unknown in America for a long time until it was reprinted in the forties. That's right. After the laughter Whereas in France the music underneath and he was he was very much a member Charles Morgan being absolutely overwhelmed by him in 1997. But in my own feeling I think he stands head and shoulders over all of the others. I agree with you I think he's had more influence on us than any other

writer about any friends to give me a break I usually interact with a guy just to click and in every way. And I think he's he's in progress he says influence has gone far beyond French literature. I think he's even in France and Johnson's come outta things to him the way he did it to magic here. He had his hand on the pulse of something that was so imminent and so tragically imminent any film. The tragedy of it and he was able to communicate it in such extraordinary language that the whole atmosphere that surrounded it it's one that I know very well. For instance I was brought up in it and I think it's the authenticity of that that strikes people lives and there is no posing there's no exhibitionism there's nothing but absolutely intense feeling. What about plays the one city in which he the situation in America. I do think that that is a following of

what made him play called Terry sectors disrespectful to do in this respect. No doubt. The. Prophet has greatly. Gauged Sartre costs and the folk there has had a particular appeal to America as well as on the tree. Do you think you need good writers who came here in order to live better. People like Richard Wright and liberation. Do you think they've influenced French writing considerably. And Richard Wright was extremely friendly close terms with both Simone de Beauvoir and that's where you saw a great deal of both of them. I would like to ask one more question is What do you think the future what do you think this vote AVM these crosscurrents was

useful or do you think that coming to the end of their usefulness after impact. It's about a hundred years from the beginning. I'm sure they'll go cos they must go along has. Cost. Literature develops differently in different countries. We have an enormous amount to learn from the writers and so I think yes. Well thank you very much indeed. My guess of being last with us the founder and editor of the transitional magazine and more recently the translator of Natalie Sato and Adam Maurice novelist a magazine writer whose latest novel The paper war was fought back now. We're now moving across the pond. And my guest in America is Mr. Richard Howard a well-known translator and critic. He's published a book of poems called quantities and expects to have a second book of poetry published in the near future. One

of the people he translates is one of the new writers and he's also very friendly with another Lisa wrote and as we've been talking about them in Paris I'd very much like to ask Mr. Richard what he thinks about now that Lisa wrote in and the New Wave writers but I'm not going to say all I think about them but I will say something about what I think about them in relation to America or America what we want. When you and I last saw each other was at a luncheon for Natalie and I remember even then. We spoke to her about the American book she liked and had read and I've often talked to Alan about those books and I should say in the first place that Natalie unlike most French writers except J and maybe Michelle knows English beautifully speaks it so well doesn't she studied Oxford. But the other two did not have that same opportunity and also read English perfectly whereas a

much more typically speaks not a word of English and prefers not to even approach it in texts. But I'm always startled when encountering these very gifted and highly developed idiosyncratic writers to discover the vulgarity of their response to American literature they read the writers who are the most. Widely known the best selling and the most immediately translated into French of course. But they have rarely explored further whereas an American writer at the same level of personal development who has written let us say for five books found his voice and managed to produce already the beginnings of a literature usually has gone much further into French literature and has looked around for the kind of writer who would correspond or respond to his own needs and requirements much more intimately and immediately a writer an American writer like thought in wilder Glenway Wescott. On the one hand or

to speak of newer writers I would say young American novelists like Susan Sontag and James Merrill have really explored French literature much more thoroughly and much more personally so that on the one hand they have examined not only the body of classical French literature but the new literature. In both a critical and a a kind of winnowing or sifting sense. In order to find that writer or group of writers who will be of use to them in what they're doing I don't feel that about someone like Peter who has written a preface to Styron's book The Fire Next Time in Paris and who has the or more e ack who has made declarations about Lolita or even even Natalie who is very fond of Salinger and who when I asked her what it was that she liked so much about that beyond the obvious excellences and appeals of that writer she I really think think she was hard put

to say much more than that he seemed so American because he was so successful. And I'm afraid I myself will resist that and I'm always a little disappointed in my my French friends and the writers who in their own language I admire so much for their complacency in dealing with our literature. I quite agree with you I think that viddy insular. If one could talk about a country's biggest fans being its It is very amusing with Matty McCarthy. Because now she's at the embassy the American Embassy in Paris and when she went to America she's going to have think about it when she went to Paris. She was most beautifully written with a modern French writers and even the magazine writers and the French would not reciprocal a six and the whole that is true except Holden and now of course recently she's been translated a great deal on the group with such a success but it was very funny because lots of French people who should have known better have asked who is met him. Yes there's one exception to that fact to that situation and I do think you should mention it which

is that Miss McCarthy had written several very pungent and demanding studies of the novel in which she thoroughly put down what she considers an unfortunate development in the contemporary scene in France and the French novelists often were merely protecting their own and felt very strongly that they were not eager to welcome among themselves someone who disapproved so. Cleverly of what they were doing when I don't like Gray felt I wish it was dislike from knowledge All right. I think it was largely abysmally ignorant. Yes it is largely absolutely right. But there I know at least two occasions where it was the other. Yes well I think that's forgivable after all writers can consolidate each other that's a perfect way to determine situation. They invariably do and very often do but I think that for not to be aware of something so important as Miss McCarthy is unforgivable in any French writer and I'm sure it isn't true of Natalie sorrow or of agreeing

that it certainly is true of some of them. I wonder if there is really now any particular country that influences any other I think that the old fashioned the old fashioned way of having to say that the Russians influenced the French so much. We have this enormous influence of Russia in the Championship or you have the enormous influence of English literature on American literature. I don't think this is so much the days that kind of each to the other one country no there is there has been in the last 30 years a flow of technical influences especially in prose literature from France to America. Which isn't ultimately of the highest interest or importance but nevertheless students for instance especially students of writing. If you attend one of those depressing things called a novel seminar you discover that the students want to know what the quote

unquote is they want to be sure they're not writing one if they are writing one and that's a way of being influenced by the new novel too is not exact and I find that often people in America read the books of bitter or even this young man who is a kind of synthetic amalgam of all of these writers together not so much in order to be influenced or looking for something but curious to see how someone else has handled certain technical problems. I think in America there's no there's no telling where that will lead I'd like to mention two examples of American literature in recent American literature. Three I can think of where the work of complicated and profound European writers has had a strong effect. One is in a novel published I think last year just now appearing in paper.

Call the benefactor by Susan Sontag a brilliant and disturbing novel which had a confused often baffled responses from from critics and readers but nevertheless a great deal of serious attention. I reviewed the book myself once so I won't talk too much about it except to say that it did seem to me to have been made possible by. A thorough assimilation of the approaches of European literature all European literature from the 19th century on. But it was not a book that was written out of a standard American experience confronted squarely which is usually all we ask. It was something more and I don't think that that book and its difficult valuable subject matter could have been undertaken without a thorough grounding in the French novel from stand right through. I don't take I don't think is terribly interested in except in this curious via negativa that we mention that she at least has examined it and knows enough to

discard it. And that in itself is a kind of what do you either to not believe. Well there's a new book coming out by a very gifted American poet a novelist named James Merrill whose earlier novelist or rather was just the book I describe the American experience confront it head on and experience a rather unusual one it was about an extremely wealthy family and. It's a book I often recommend to European friends to find out how the rich really live in America because it's written with a kind of authority and it's just an astonishing book. And Meryl has written three volumes of poetry and several plays. But now he is about to publish. He will be publishing this winter really an amazing book which could not have been written without complete assimilation of the techniques started perhaps initiated by and carried through men like Peter and Rob. The novel is in the form of the papers left by young dad professor who has been traveling in Greece and although they are bound together as a book sometimes they're

upside down. Many words are crossed out but left legible so that you can see the words even though they're crossed out. And it's really up to the reader to compose the novel even though it's all there and of course Mr. Merrill has done an absolutely brilliant job of combining and preparing his work so that even though it may seem chaotic and hesitant there is a very strong thematic approach but this is something that. The way for this is been prepared by Bhutto or by even a man. I don't know if you've heard of him or not name Mark supporter who wrote a book that was published here last year called composition number 1 a book. It came in a box and the reader was after shuffle the pages as he would have like a concrete pipe dream a little like that. Yes and I had the curious experience of translating that book and although it had not a large success here except the scandal that was attendant upon its preposterous appearance I found that actually Mr support is a very clever and good writer and although that book is something of a trick it's also a

real experience in with a plastic sensibility behind it and even that has influence Mister marrow. Again perhaps negatively there he decided not to write a book on separate prose poem pages but there is among young American writers a definite response to the kind of technical experimentation and exploration that has been going on in France in Germany as well. Wouldn't you say perhaps we are coming to the end of our talk but I think it might be perhaps a combination to say that perhaps the enormous creativity of the Americans can learn from the techniques of you know certain I'd be delighted to say. I would hope that that is the case it is not always so easy to be able to learn if one of the hardest things to be able to do in there is even harder to create. There is a firm bastion of resistance to learning as well as welcoming. Weve been discussing each to the other French and the American

influences in literature at the present time and before the present time and my guests have been the last. Mr Morris and Mr Richard Howard were three of them well versed in the subject we have been discussing. You have been listening to gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's programme. Each to the other has presented. RICHARD HOWARD poet translator and critic Mario showed us translator and author and for many years associated with the literary magazine transition and Ira Morris novelist and resident for many years in France. The moderator was and Fremantle noted author and critic. To extend the dimensions of today's program for you a list of the books mentioned in the discussion as well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared. You may obtain a copy from your local library or by writing to gateway to ideas. Post Office

Box 6 for 1 Grand Central Station New York and PS enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope gateway to ideas is produced for national educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation. The programs are prepared by the National Book Committee and the American Library Association in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters technical production by Riverside radio WRVA in New York City. This is the national educational radio network.