The reader's almanac; 6

It's time for the readers all men to act with one by our originally broadcast over station WNYC in New York and distributed by national educational radio. The readers Allman act is America's oldest consecutive book program. Here now is Mr. Bauer. How delightful Irish lass and no Brian has just published another book here in New York called a love object which has come from the house of Simon and Schuster. Mr. Brian has not come to New York for the publication of this book and therefore I am rebroadcast in the interview I did with her when she was last here something over a year ago. Whatever I said then of her as a writer is still true. And she is very much the same artful author she was then. Hence I venture to present my interview with her of her now next to last book. This is what we said then. When I was in England in 1962 I went one evening to the BBC to watch a television book still being recorded. The author being interviewed was a young Irish girl named Edna O'Brien who had published two novels in a country girls and the lonely girl. Neither of

which I must admit I had read or even heard. But what she said and the charm of which he said it interested me in her work. Later I met her and her husband and told her that I hope the lonely girl would be published in New York. And even that she might come over here after its publication because certainly her being here would rouse interest in the book. Well it was published here in 1963 but somehow it got lost in our crowded calendar of books and never again the audience it ought to have achieved a great pity because it was a beautifully written story fresh in its feeling warm and sensitive. But American audiences a few of them read the lonely girl got to know the story in another medium as O'Brien turned the story into the screenplay for the movie The Girl with the green eyes. It was a great success here as it was in other countries besides England as well. And now a third novel has been published here called August is a wicked month whose publishers are Simon and Schuster. They are resolved in America we'll hear more of Ed Noah

Brian a purpose to which I am more than pleased to lend a helping hand or or voice for the novel she has written is another most sensitively written story. The sentences smooth like cream on the tongue but musical too and stirring and vigorous. But the story has bitterness in it and guilt and some payment for that guilt has to be required. There is depth of meaning in the story below its agreeable surface. I suppose what I'm really saying is that the experience of reading any of Mr. Bryan's books is rewarding on several levels. So Mr. Ryan welcome to New York in the success that your third novel is having or is bound to have. I was confident you would make it over here though it did take an extra book and a movie to really bring it often. Yes I I think the movie with green eyes was you know people at least more than four people began to read books then it's a strange thing because on the whole when I go to the movies I never notice who

has written that there's never time you know it flies by. And and picture as indeed that picture was is a director's. It's not a writer's except sometimes a writer can't make you know a very perfect start. And then the director goes on from there. Yeah. I want to talk to you more about the script but first let's talk about this novel. But I do want to say that I know this is your first or second trip over here so I'm obligated to ask you what you think of New York I'd be thrown out of the union of interviewers if I failed to ask that question really no. Yes. Well I'm obligated to tell you that I feel more at home in New York than any other city I've ever been in when I was very young. My mother lived and grew up in New York you know not grew up she she worked you know and my parents were married in New York. And two of my family were born here. And but for an accident in that I had a drinking father. It would have been born in New York and all it was you know heard of it very much as a child and the books that I love most especially the

Great Gatsby one of the books I felt that I knew in New York before I came. But what I really am astonished by is so in the hotel and when we go to have your hair washed and when you want to have coffee people talk to you and not want to talk but they have much more in touch with books in the cinema and politics from their sort of counterparts in London. They really are you know in London as a great caution. What I like most here I suppose ever you have mixed races you have in formality and you have a inferiority complex Always which makes people more open. You know the English are protected by their class because dozens of years and they're closed. I also feel you know very safe. I have this need to feel safe the first evening I came there was no headboard in my hotel and I couldn't sleep because I need a headboard and I came down in the morning and I said to the man the bed must be like a womb I need a safe bed

with that power. He said You will have a we will have a say. Give it to me. Well I think this experience probably has been some measure aided by the hotel in which you are living after all the Algonquin has quite a reputation in New York. Oh it's lovely. I have a longing to come here stay in the Algonquin for three months and write a novel totally set in in New York you know in a street in New York are ordinarily a good idea and I hope Simon and Schuster are listening and that they will make it possible. Well my children would have to be brought along as well. They would have to write little sonnets. Your children are too. There you two boys yeah they're 11 and 9 and I had a card yesterday from one of them which said Dearest Mama I am thinking of you every hour of every minute. And I thought now is a literary style. He's our friend. Or is it to misprint. Speaking of your publishers your present publishers have done very well by you with a very handsome piece of bookmaking and generous advertisements and a rousing bit of to do in the newspapers

but understandable of course about your being here. But I do have to ask you this haven't they overdone it a bit and putting your picture on both the front and the back of the jacket. Ah well now this is a very touchy question. I think that they are marvelous I have changed publishers This is the third It's like a third marriage and I love them and I never before felt I had a publisher. I really didn't you know I they are marvelous the fact that they use the photograph I think has a very good photograph. It's accidental that it happens to be one of me you know I think it's catching sort of photograph and that it could be of of any real way. Maybe maybe they've all but it wouldn't be for me to say I felt embarrassed when I saw it. But that was a subjective reaction but I think that from their point of view it's very clear that if you're quite right it is a very striking photograph. My feeling when I first saw it was is this a girl that I saw in London and I think she's really too is it. Yeah me and he said you know I didn't think so no. You know

this is this is a capital G girl is a trip. Yeah and do you think looking at me am I the girl you saw in London in 1962. No you've changed too oh god. Yes I would say that I know one of the things about photographs. If you are a very changeable temperament posts any bunch of photographs taken 20 photographs in the same session that I have taken all differ completely I would expect that their national isn't remotely like. And that's temperament you know really Irish problem possibly. Oh and the Irish yes race is a temperament. You're not enthusiastic about the Irish. I'm not a very enthusiastic about the Irish. I love some people there but I think there are certain egomania and certain aggressiveness which the Irish have which worries me very much.

I notice in London sometimes when I give a party and I look at a hundred people there hardly is more than one or two Irish people there and the people I'm closest to the men I'm closest to are all without exception because I feel a warm but I don't feel with the Irish Sea I think Irish women and Jewish men make a very good I would have beautiful children. I mustn't forget how to go back to that picture because I want to say this is a very splendid photograph and the photographer ought to be known I wonder if you agree with that. Oh yes. Name is Horst T A P P E. I suppose it's pronounced tap topping. He's from Switzerland he lives invent day and every year he makes an excursion to London to photograph. I see says one right. And he goes to Berlin and he photographed Mr. Grass and he is I think extraordinary because what he does is to get so much of the mental quality of the person you know rather than have

them look pretty or not pretty. He does get you know most I mean when you said that there was an element of bitterness in August as a wicked man which I think there is this photograph in its own way as some of that bitterness. It has the look of someone who says I have been mangled it once. And next time I will only be half mad. Oh yes yes yes quite true. Well I'm more interested of course and what's inside those covers So let's talk about this book that you have here. August is a wicked month. It seems to me to be of a piece with your other books particularly with the lonely girl in that there are many beautiful 8 lyric scenes and moments because the theme is love. The essential emotion but there is more here since it is not merely a love story in which a kind of conventional happiness is arrived not at all. You do not ever I think sought for that never achieved it in any of your books have you.

I think not. I was thinking of happiness the other day and wondering was I ever you know happy. And then I thought of a moment once in Cornwall when I was with a lot of children and we went to visit two very elderly sort of doctor ladies who gave us last year's apples and some cooking sherry and we came away that all the children and I there was singing. What shall we do with a drunken sailor. And it was a beautiful sort of golden summer evening and I was. I heard myself saying to myself I am so happy. And I thought why and the answer. A reason was it was the first moment in my life that I had totally gone outside of myself and my own reality and fantasy and fears into what was happening. And I was completely unmindful of myself which was. You know that I think is happiness. As for pursuing happiness in a book I I don't think it's really relevant

when you say you know about love. I think the difference between this and the lonely girl the lonely girl was a love story in that it was an obsession. A young girl had put an older man and it was her kind of love It was what she knew. This is on a different level and are a different scale. But the hunger for love is not fixated to one man or to two men. It's sort of if you want to fulfill a blue hunger which covers everything I mean I went to that place. In fact in the south of France and felt more solitary I think that I have ever felt in my life that hot but merciless and everybody who seemed to be together men and women had other you know they were together because of six or because of money or because of boat. I mean you sometimes would see a very beautiful girl with gross man.

And you think well you know this girl does not love this man and doesn't from when you listen to what they say. And the hunger for love as I mean true love was exaggerated there. You know and that's why I have two children in fact in the novel there is one child why in the midst of the most fashionable or lurid events the character suddenly remembers her child as a as being the thing she loves most but also as being so whole summer and pure you know almost seems that love in the place is yours and thinking you know was parroted rather than. It wasn't even you know I don't think was parodied When people there many of the people feel that the word love to many people do in circles we all move in feel that it is unfashionable and that it's Square it's not whole you know and that's very

alarming. Well there was a lot of melodramatic rejection in the lonely girl of course and violence and drama building up to a beautifully handled scene at the end. But here in August is a wicked month of violence too. But off the scene merrily reported. I'm thinking of the death of the son of course. We see its effect upon Ellen and of course it's devastating. All the more so because we don't observe the death of Ellen's son on the road. When I want to ask you about that is why did you have it happen. Is it to punish Ellen for leaving a husband to precipitate a moral crisis. Well this is very interesting and I have avoided asking myself because as you know when you when you write you must and always do right instinctively and not analyze the reasons reason why you're writing. So I'm not sure I think you mentioned guilt that the

book was steeped in guilt and all good lapsed Roman Catholics. Such as I am and I have a deep sort of fundamental belief that you pay that you pay no matter what you do. But the thing about the child it was is a double thing. I have a constant obsession about violence you know violence moves with me no matter where I go if I'm in a bar and I hear two men talking loudly. I terrified that they will fight and in fact they do it. People know that you were that you were frightened of violence maybe is a great attraction towards it. So that was one thing. Especially as regards traffic to crossing the road especially here in New York or the road that's the one thing I don't like in New York when it says walk I start to walk suddenly it says don't walk. I'm in the middle of the road I don't know which way to turn. But I think. It was a you see a lot of women although they may love their children are not constituted to be mothers. This is a very important thing. This

girl is is is this Ellen. She loves her child but she knows that she is not a mother in the sense that she should be and she has enormous duplicity about this. Half of her life she says somewhere in the book she wanted to wander through the city for days or weeks or years at a time and cease to be a mother. And the other half of her life she wants to you know sit and watch her child while he's still asleep. She loves him very much. I think men always expect a need of their wives or their girls. A wife and mother. And there's a whole breed of women who are not like this. They want to be loved by men. But on a more that's a terrible word but on a more independent or equal level as opposed That's one reason. Another reason why I killed that child. It's a mixture of the guilt of not being good to him and the need to dispose of him.

And the third thing of conscience that if you do so wrong or if you sleep in the wrong bed. But you must be penalized for this. Either your child dies or you become pregnant or you contract. What's a court in this country. Gonorrhea something must happen. Yes. That's what I was thinking about of course and then let's go on a bit further then to Ellen was how shall I say degradation perhaps her infection by Bobby or lover. Now what is the rationale of that in terms of the story. We can admit it's facts upon her personally however powerful a handle as it is in the book I think I have a theory but I want to listen to yours first if only because you wrote. No no no the key thing here I want your theory. Well they are devoted to this point that since you give me a theory about the other. I think you've punished Allen as he degraded her made her loathe herself. So this is a very immoral story for all of its freedom act and language.

Eleanor had rebuked for her active rejection of her husband I come back to that thinking and that's the main that's the origin of the guild. She may be for a time what a blurb writer called her a new kind of woman one who was strip sex of every pretense and every illusion and I think that's pretty sweeping probably much too much so though there are certainly women like that. But I don't think you really approve of them. You've given Ellen such a bad time because she was once one who had stopped who had stripped sex of every pretense. That's your theory that's my theory. Well if it's true it's true in parts. I think all writing and all writers absolutely plunge into humiliation. Somebody w Jordan said to a young man it was a young man he said you will write well. And Stephen Spender said Why do you think my poems are good you know great eagle. And he said no but you are versed in the art of humiliation.

So I always find in my life and my books are somehow the result of my life the way everybody's books are. You don't write about the events but you write about the emotional effect of the events degradation. It seems to me to be very much part you know part of my girls. Now as for stripping sex I couldn't really decide about that. I don't know that I try to write more. Honestly and more direct plea than most other people especially women. You know I'm not interested in softening it or filling in with a lot of other prose. I'd like it to be you know like a branch of a tree on which there is no leaf already bare and Bony and that's it. And that's why I think the book because it's so condensed has an effect that it is very modern whatever. I forget the other word you used the things why she

contracted the disease. I heard once that there was such a thing as phantom gonorrhea. Just as there is phantom pregnancy and I was very interested in this and thought. Now if a girl. Who knows she cannot become pregnant because you know she's taken the pill or she's something. And if she's consumed with guilt then phantom gonorrhea is the next thing. Instead of phantom pregnancy. But you did say something that I wanted to or yes you said because she has left her husband that that's why she's so guilty goes much deeper than that. That's one of the things along the way. But one is concern about I think it goes straight back into childhood and religion. And she says somewhere you know once she was the nurse going to her room to her tower of ivory and

House of Gold. Now tower of ivory is in the litany that we used to say as children you know is to the Virgin Mary. And there's a great again clash and contradiction in one that I think love virginity and think you're like loving white dresses or white orchids. I think it's sort of a marvelous state. And also I suppose love being loved by a man. So there's constantly the back of remaining a virgin. We are becoming its opposite and I think that's why the girl had to punish herself. We've spoken of the freedom of act and language in this book. Others have done so the same to be sure. I wonder if you feel that the freedom which writer do nowadays have results in a greater depth or added meaning is a virtue. It's a very big question because there are some people who obviously abuse

the freedom writers have and right in our you want to intrude certain sensational paragraphs into books for the sake of sensation and that's bad. I think I would have written this book 10 years ago perhaps if I was the same age as I am now which is 32 regardless of what the social climate was. I think you know a writer must write what he has to or what she has to at home alone in a room ignoring whether there is freedom or whether there isn't freedom. And afterwards when the book comes out into the world let the world decide. I don't think it's a question really that touches should concern a writer in his most important and private moment which is writing. By the way whence came the title I think is a very happy choice and it's a selling title of course. I think I was going to call it. August is the month because and then when I saw it I was like I thought August is that we could say we could month place

right as a very not a happy title but it's a very well chosen title indeed. Can I tell you a lovely new title I have got my next novel is called casualties of peace and in a book of postage stamps in between the stamps there are appeals for the blind and it says Give generously. Ninety three out of every hundred blind persons in Britain are casualties of peace. It's a very striking phrase and beautiful and we're all casualties of peace in our middle of the night anguish drinking tea and being sad. We are happy you readers you've heard it here first. That's the title of the next novel one novel that you're going to write next. But at present I must say that my project is to get as many people to read. August is a wicked month as possible which happens I dare say to coincide with your hope and the publisher's full intention. So thank you and O'Brien for this chance to meet you again and to talk with you about a single day well-handled unmoving book this was a rebroadcast of my interview with Brian

and when she was last in New York but presented now on the occasion of her publication of a book of short stories called the love object that you will I hope want to know about. I know it will provide what I wish for all of my listeners. Good reading to you the readers Allman ACAS produced by Warren Bauer and is originally broadcast by station WNYC in New York. The programs are made available to this station by national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.