Q: Then what does frighten you?
A: The thought that I might lose my sense of humor. Become a mind without a soul, start down the path to madness, and thereby, as the Zen riddle runs, spend the rest of a ruined life listening to the sound of one hand clapping.
Q: What shocks you? If anything?
A: Deliberate cruelty. Cruelty for its own sake, verbal or physical. Murder. Capital punishment. Child-beaters. Animal-baiters.
Once, long ago, I discovered that my best friend, aged eighteen, was having a fully realized love affair with his stepmother. At the time I was shocked; needless to add, I’m not now, and thinking back, can see that it was probably a positive benefit to them both. Since then, I’ve never been surprised, not to say shocked, by any sexual-moral arrangement. If so, I’d have to lead the parade of our nation’s million-upon-million hypocrites.
Q: It is now six years since you published In Cold Blood. What have you been working on since then?
A: Published as a book a long short story, “The Thanksgiving Visitor.” Collaborated on a film, Trilogy, based on three of my short stories (“A Christmas Memory,” “Miriam,” “Among the Paths to Eden”); made a documentary film about capital punishment, Death Row U.S.A., which was commissioned by ABC but never shown in this country (others, yes; Canada, for one) for reasons still mysterious and unexplained. Have also recently completed a screenplay of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—a nearly perfect short novel (or, really, long short story), but hell to dramatize because it consists almost entirely of long-ago exposition and, as it were, offstage scenes. Personally, I like my adaptation, but the producers, Paramount Pictures, are of a different opinion; my pity to whoever attempts a rewrite.
It took five years to write In Cold Blood, and a year to recover—if recovery is the word; not a day passes that some aspect of that experience doesn’t shadow my mind.
However, prior to beginning In Cold Blood, in fact soon after finishing Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1957, I began to prepare the notes and structure for an ambitious novel then entitled, and entitled now, Answered Prayers, which derives from a remark of St. Theresa’s: “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” I think that’s true: no matter what desires are requited, they are always replaced by another.
It’s like those racing greyhounds and the mechanical rabbit—one can never catch it. It makes for the worst and best in life. I remember a friend at Robert Kennedy’s funeral, someone very close to him, and she said: “It was such a hot day. Sweltering. And there was the grave waiting in the grass under this great cool green tree. And suddenly I envied him. Envied him all that green peacefulness. I thought, Bless you, Bobby, you don’t have to fight anymore. You’re safe.”
Answered Prayers is complicated technically and much the longest work I’ve done—indeed, triple the length of all my other books combined. During the past year or so I’ve been under great pressure to finish it; but literature has its own life, and insists on dancing to its own measure. Answered Prayers is like a wheel with a dozen spokes; the fuel that spins the wheel is an extraordinary young woman who has had fifty affairs, could have married virtually anyone, but for twelve years has loved an “older” man who can’t marry because he is married, and won’t divorce because he expects, with reasonable cause, to be the next President of the United States.
Q: If you hadn’t decided on writing, a creative life, what would you have done?
A: Become a lawyer. I often considered it, and many lawyers, including one attorney general and a Supreme Court justice, have told me I would have made a first-class trial lawyer, though my voice, often described as “high and childish” (among other things), might have been a detriment.
Also, I wouldn’t have minded being kept, but no one has ever wanted to keep me—not more than a week or so.
Q: Do you take any form of exercise?
A: Yes. Massage.
Q: Can you cook?
A: Not for company. For myself, I always dish up the same cuisine. Crackers and cream of tomato soup. Or a baked potato stuffed with fresh caviar.
Q: If Reader’s Digest ever commissioned from you an “Unforgettable Character” article, whom would you write about?
A: God forbid that such a degrading assignment should ever come my way. But if it did—ahem, let’s see. Robert Frost, America’s Poet Laureate, was fairly memorable. An old bastard, if ever there was one. I met him when I was eighteen; apparently he didn’t consider me a sufficiently humble worshiper at the altar of his ego. Anyway, by writing a scurrilous letter to Harold Ross, the late editor of The New Yorker, where I was then employed, he got me fired from my first and last time-clock job. Perhaps he did me a favor; because then I sat down and wrote my first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
As a child, I lived until I was ten or so with an elderly spinster relative in a rural, remote part of Alabama. Miss Sook Faulk. She herself was not more than twelve years old mentally, which is what accounted for her purity, timidity, her strange, unexpected wisdom. I have written two stories about her, “A Christmas Memory” and “The Thanksgiving Visitor”—both of which were filmed for television with Geraldine Page portraying Miss Faulk with an uncanny beauty and accuracy.
Miss Page is rather unforgettable, come to consider: a Jekyll and Hyde; Dr. Jekyll on stage, Mr. Hyde off. It is purely a matter of appearance; she has better legs than Dietrich and as an actress can project an illusion of infinite allure—but in private she insists, Lord knows why, in disguising herself under witchlike wigs and costumes of consummate eccentricity.
Of course, I don’t care much for actresses or actors. A friend, I can’t remember just now who, said, “All actresses are more than women, and all actors are less than men.” A half-true observation; still, true enough to be, in my opinion, the root cause of the prevailing theatrical neurosis. But the trouble with most actors (and actresses) is that they are dumb. And, in many instances, the dumbest are the most gifted. Sir John Gielgud, the kindest man alive, an incomparable technician, brilliant voice; but, alas, all his brains are in his voice. Marlon Brando. No actor of my generation possesses greater natural gifts; but none other has transported intellectual falsity to higher levels of hilarious pretension. Except, perhaps, Bob Dylan: a sophisticated musical (?) con man pretending to be a simple-hearted (?) revolutionary but sentimental hillbilly.
But enough of this question. It was stupid to start with.
Q: What is the most hopeful word in any language?
A: Love.
Q: And the most dangerous?
A: Love.
Q: Have you ever wanted to kill anybody?
A: Haven’t you? No? Cross your heart? Well, I still don’t believe you. Everybody at one time or another has wanted to kill someone. The true reason why many people commit suicide is because they are cowards who prefer to murder themselves rather than murder their tormentor. As for me, if desire had ever been transferred into action, I’d be right up there with Jack the Ripper. Anyway, it’s amusing to think about: the plotting, the planning, the surprise and regret imprinting the face of the villain-turned-victim. Very relaxing. Better than counting sheep.
Not long ago my doctor suggested that I adopt some healthier hobby other than wine-tasting and fornication. He asked if I could think of anything. I said, “Yes, murder.” He laughed, we both did, except I wasn’t laughing. Poor man, little did he know what a painful and perfect demise I’d planned for him when, after eight days abed with something closely resembling black cholera, he still refused to pay me a house call.
Q: What are your political interests?
A: I’ve known a few politicians whom I liked, and a more surrealist montage could not be imagined. Adlai Stevenson was a friend, and always a generous one; we were staying as guests in the same house when he died, and I remember watching a manservant pack his belongings, and then, when the suitcases were so pathetically filled, but still unclosed, I walked in and helped myself to one of his ties—a sort of sentimental theft, because the night before I’d complimented him on the tie and he’d promised to give it to me. On the other hand, I like Ronald Reagan, too. Many of my friends think I’m teasing them when I say that. I’m not. Though Governor Stevenson and Governor Reagan are quite different spirits, the latter shares with the former a modesty, an “I’m looking you in the eye and I mean what I say” directness that is rare enough among us folk, not to mention politicians.
I suppose New York’s Senator Jacob Javits and Governor Reagan, for purely reflex reasons, feel antipathetical toward each other. Actually, I think they would get along fine, and would make an interesting political combination. (Of course, the real reason I always speak well of Governor Reagan and Senator Javits is that I like both their wives, though they are even less alike than their husbands, Mrs. Javits being a lacquered but still untamed city urchin, a smoochy-voiced and sexy-eyed child-woman with
