The diction changes, the tone changes, as if Edgar is gradually possessed by his memory. To me the more interesting change has to do with the voice of the major narrator, the protagonist, Edgar, who as he recalls more and more of his childhood, as he passes from infancy to youth, takes on the voice of an articulate child. So there is an ongoing change and shift in the forms of voice. Another advantage of those voiced intrusions is to provide a kind of beat or a caesura in the ongoing narrative I thought that was a good thing to do. You always try to find ways to break down the distinction between fiction and actuality. I composed these to read as if they were spoken into a tape recorder. My idea was to lend that voice verisimilitude by dropping in some oral-historic statements by other members of the family. Now the basic convention of World’s Fair is that it is memoir: that is what it pretends to be in the voice of the protagonist. The statements people make about their own lives to oral historians have a certain form that I think I have figured out. In the past few years I’ve been interested in the work of the so-called oral historians. Is it difficult to shift from one to the other? In World’s Fair you make a very interesting shift: writing from the points of view of Rose and Donald and Aunt Frances and then the protagonist. Twelve days! If it wasn’t God it was crass exhibitionism. That’s proof God spoke to them-if proof is needed. Stendhal wrote Charterhouse of Parma in twelve days. But Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks. I imagine He just decided, Well, this one’s been paying his dues, so let’s give him a bonus book. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book.ĭid you feel as though He were speaking to you as you wrote things down? It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. I don’t think anything I’ve written has been done in under six or eight drafts. How much tinkering do you actually do when you get down to nonhousehold work-a novel, say? I had been trying to write the perfect absence note. I can’t believe this.” She took the pad and pencil and dashed something off. There was a pile of crumpled pages on the floor, and my wife was saying, “I can’t believe this. This went on until I heard a horn blowing outside. I tore that sheet off, and started again. and then I thought, No, that’s not right, obviously it’s my daughter Caroline. So I wrote down the date and I started, Dear Mrs. I was having my breakfast one morning when she appeared with her lunch box, her rain slicker, and everything, and she said, “I need an absence note for the teacher and the bus is coming in a few minutes.” She gave me a pad and a pencil even as a child she was very thoughtful. It was my daughter, Caroline, who was then in the second or third grade. What I was thinking of was a note I had to write to the teacher when one of my children missed a day of school. You once told me that the most difficult thing for a writer to write was a simple household note to someone coming to collect the laundry, or instructions to a cook. The fact that a large audience was listening during the interview seemed not to discomfit him in the slightest. His expression is perhaps quizzical (described by The New York Times as “elfin”), yet it is instantly apparent that a great deal of thought has been put into what he is about to say. Yet, though his voice is soft, it is distinctive and demands attention. They are included with their answers at the end of this interview.Īt first meeting, Doctorow gives the impression of being somewhat retiring in manner. After the flurry caused by this exchange had died down, the questions from the audience were more germane. A befuddled lady in the fifth row asked, “What made you write about the firestorm in Dresden?” With the patience of one who has taught at a number of institutions (Sarah Lawrence, Princeton, Yale Drama School, and New York University, among others), Doctorow politely informed his questioner that she probably had Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in mind, and that the Dresden firestorm had been done “so beautifully” there was little reason for anyone else to try. Actually, the first question from the floor suggested that the public forum might not be the best place for such an interview. The audience was invited to ask questions at the end of the formal interview. After a short introduction, Doctorow and his interviewer came out and sat facing each other in two chairs at center stage. An audience of about five hundred was on hand. Doctorow is one of the first in this series conducted in public-which it was, under the auspices of The Poetry Center, in the main auditorium of New York City’s famed cultural spa, the 92nd Street YMHA. This interview on the craft of writing with E. Interviewed by George Plimpton Issue 101, Winter 1986
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