‘What about the others?’
‘Crane wrote two fine stories. ‘The Open Boat’ and ‘The —Blue Hotel’. The last one is the better.’
‘And what happened to him?’
‘He died. That’s simple. He was dying from the start.’
‘But the other two?’
‘They both lived to be old men but they did not get any wiser as they got older. I don’t know what they really wanted. You see we make our writers into something very strange.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘We destroy them in many ways. First, economically. They make money. It is only by hazard that a writer makes money although good books always make money eventually. Then our writers when they have made some money increase their standard of living and they are caught. They have to write to keep up their establishments, their wives, and so on, and they write slop. It is slop not on purpose but because it is hurried. Because they write when there is nothing to say or no water in the well. Because they are ambitious. Then, once they have betrayed themselves, they justify it and you get more slop.
‘Or else they read the critics. If they believe the critics when they say they are great then they must believe them when they say they are rotten and they lose confidence. At present we have two good writers who cannot write because they have lost confidence through reading critics. If they wrote, sometimes it would be good and sometimes not so good and sometimes it would be quite bad, but the good would get out. But they have read the critics and they must write masterpieces. The masterpieces the critics said they wrote. They weren’t masterpieces, of course. They were just quite good books. So now they cannot write at all. The critics have made them impotent.’
‘Who are these writers?’
‘Their names would mean nothing to you and by now they may have written, become frightened, and be impotent again.’
‘But what is it that happens to American writers? Be definite.’
‘I was not here in the old days so I cannot tell you about them, but now there are various things. At a certain age the men writers change into Old Mother Hubbard. The women writers become Joan of Arc without the fighting. They become leaders. It doesn’t matter who they lead. If they do not have followers they invent them. It is useless for those selected as followers to protest. They are accused of disloyalty. Oh, hell. There are too many things happen to them. That is one thing. The others try to save their souls with what they write. That is an easy way out. Others are ruined by the first money, the first praise, the first attack, the first time they find they cannot write, or the first time they cannot do anything else, or else they get frightened and join organizations that do their thinking for them. Or they do not know what they want. Henry James wanted to make money. He never did, of course.’
‘And you?’
‘I am interested in other things. I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.’
‘And what do you want?’
‘To write as well as I can and learn as I go along. At the same time I have my life which I enjoy and which is a damned good life.’
‘Hunting kudu?’
‘Yes. Hunting kudu and many other things.’
‘What other things?’
‘Plenty of other things.’
‘And you know what you want?’
‘Yes.’
‘You really like to do this, what you do now, this silliness of kudu?’
‘Just as much as I like to be in the Prado.’
‘One is not better than the other?’
‘One is as necessary as the other. There are other things, too.’
‘Naturally. There must be. But this sort of thing means something to you, really?’
‘Truly.’
‘And you know what you want?’
‘Absolutely, and I get it all the time.’
‘But it takes money.’
‘I could always make money, and besides I have been very lucky.’
‘Then you are happy?’
‘Except when I think of other people.’
‘Then you think of other people?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘But you do nothing for them?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Maybe a little.’
‘Do you think your writing is worth doing — as an end in itself?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You are sure?’
‘Very sure.’
‘That must be very pleasant.’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘It is the one altogether pleasant thing about it.’
‘This is getting awfully serious,’ my wife said.
‘It’s a damned serious subject.’
‘You see, he is really serious about something,’ Kandisky said. ‘I knew he must be serious on something besides kudu.’
‘The reason everyone now tries to avoid it, to deny that it is important, to make it seem. vain to try to do it, is because it is so difficult. Too many factors must combine to make it possible.’
‘What is this now?’
‘The kind of writing that can be done. How far prose can be carried if anyone is serious enough and has luck. There is a fourth and fifth dimension that can be gotten.’
‘You believe it?’
‘I know it.’
‘And if a writer can get this?’
‘Then nothing else matters. It is more important than anything he can do. The chances are, of course, that he will fail. But there is a chance that he succeeds.’
‘But that is poetry you are talking about.’
‘No. It is much more difficult than poetry. It is a prose that has never been written. But it can be written, without tricks and without cheating. With nothing that will go bad afterwards.’
‘And why has it not been written?’
‘Because there are too many factors. First, there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. The discipline of Flaubert. Then there must be the conception of what it can be and an absolute conscience as unchanging as the standard meter in Paris, to prevent faking. Then the writer must be intelligent and disinterested and above all he must survive. Try to get all these in one person and have him come through all the influences that press on a writer. The hardest thing, because time is so short, is for him to survive and get his work done. But I would like us to have such a writer and to read what he would write. What do you say? Should we talk about something else?’
‘It is interesting what you say. Naturally I do not agree with everything.’
‘Naturally.’
‘What about a gimlet?’ Pop asked. ‘Don’t you think a gimlet might help?’
‘Tell me first what are the things, the actual, concrete things that harm a writer?’
I was tired of the conversation which was becoming an interview. So I would make it an interview and finish it. The necessity to put a thousand intangibles into a sentence, now, before lunch, was too bloody.
‘Politics, women, drink, money, ambition. And the lack of politics, women, drink, money and ambition,’ I said profoundly.
‘He’s getting much too easy now,’ Pop said.
‘But drink. I do not understand about that. That has always seemed silly to me. I understand it as a weakness.’
‘It is a way of ending a day. It has great benefits. Don’t you ever want to change your ideas?’
‘Let’s have one,’ Pop said. ‘M’Wendi!’
Pop never drank before lunch except as a mistake and I knew he was trying to help me out.
‘Let’s all have a gimlet,’ I said.
‘I never drink,’ Kandisky said. ‘I will go to the lorry and fetch some fresh butter for lunch. It is fresh from Kandoa, unsalted. Very good. To-night we will have a special dish of Viennese dessert. My cook has learned to make it very well.’
He went off and my wife said: ‘You were getting awfully profound. What was that about all these women?’
‘What women?’
‘When you were talking about women.’
‘The hell with them,’ I said. ‘Those are the ones you get involved with when you’re drunk.’
‘So that’s what you do.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t get involved with people when I’m drunk.’
‘Come, come,’ said Pop. ‘We’re none of us ever drunk. My God, that man can talk.’
‘He didn’t have a chance to talk after B’wana M’Kumba started.’
‘I did have verbal dysentery,’ I said.
‘What about his lorry? Can we tow it in without ruining ours?’
‘I think so,’ Pop said. ‘When ours comes back from Handeni.’
At lunch under the green fly of the dining-tent, in the shade of a big tree, the wind blowing, the fresh butter much admired, Grant’s gazelle chops, mashed potatoes, green corn, and then mixed fruit for dessert, Kandisky told us why the East Indians were taking the country over.
‘You see, during the war they sent the Indian troops to fight here. To keep them out of India because they feared another mutiny. They promised the Aga Khan that because they fought in Africa, Indians could come freely to settle and for business afterwards. They cannot break that promise and now the Indians have taken the country over from the Europeans. They live on nothing and they send all the money back to India. When they have made enough to go home they leave, bringing out their poor relations to take over from them and continue to exploit the country.’
Pop said nothing. He would not argue with a guest at table.
‘It is the Aga Khan,’ Kandisky said. ‘You are an American. You know nothing of these combinations.’
‘Were you with Von Lettow?’ Pop asked him. ‘From the start,’ Kandisky said. ‘Until the end.’
‘He was a great fighter,’ Pop said. ‘I have
