HARD IS THE GOOD (THE ART OF FICTION, NO. 9)

GEORGES SIMENON

Just one piece of general advice from a writer has been very useful to me. It was from Colette. I was writing short stories for Le Matin, and Colette  was literary editor at that time. I remember I gave her two short stories and she returned them and I tried again and tried again. Finally she said, “Look, it is too literary, always too literary.” So I followed her advice. It’s what I do when I write, the main job when I rewrite.

INTERVIEWER

What do you mean by “too literary”? What do you cut out, certain kinds of words?

SIMENON

Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence—cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.

INTERVIEWER

Is that the nature of most of your revision?

SIMENON

Almost all of it.

INTERVIEWER

It’s not revising the plot pattern?

SIMENON

Oh, I never touch anything of that kind. Sometimes I’ve changed the names while writing: a woman will be Helen in the first chapter and Charlotte in the second, you know; so in revising I straighten this out. And then, cut, cut, cut.

INTERVIEWER

Is there anything else you can say to beginning writers?

SIMENON

Writing is considered a profession, and I don’t think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy.

 

Note:  Yesterday evening I was reading in an online literary magazine the poem written by the daughter of an old acquaintance.  The subject was sex and the poem contained the line: "Her calves say/mid and west, which is where we are, her body/ as smooth and forgiving as the land outside."  We talked about it over dinner -- we hadn't seen our mutual friend for a long time and we're naturally curious about her life -- and we agreed that the poem was terrible (the description of the girl's calves is forced and absurd; the land simile is forced and phony), which made me recall my own bad and abandoned poetry and how certain fields require very rare and specific talents, i.e., diligence isn't enough.  This isn't intended, by the way, as commentary on the dam-building beavers above, photographed last year in a part of England where they were thought to be extinct for centuries.  Beavers are industrious and diligent, of course, but are also enormously talented.  Another friend of mine, a world expert on dams, once showed me a couple of slides he was planning to use in an exam-essay question.  Previewing the assignment for me, he queried:  "Beaver dams:  Monumental or bucolic?"  I answered "Both" and received a verbal "A."  "Paris Express" was the U.S. title of the 1952 British film adaptation of Georges Simenon's 1938 novel "L'Homme qui regardait passer les Trains," which was originally released in the U.S. under its English translation title "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By."  It's supposed to be a terrific movie version of Simenon's "roman dur" and features an early performance by the 20-year old Anouk Aimée.

Rolling Stones: Take It Or Leave It (Link) 

Sandwiching

English sandwich (British Sandwich Week Contest entry)

INTERVIEWER

     Do you think that an elliptical method like that* has a function other than, as you say, suggesting the tautness and spareness of a particular situation?

MR  GREEN

     I don't know, I suppose the more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in -- not true of taking the filling out of a sandwich, of course -- but if one kept a diary, one wouldn't want a minute-to-minute catalogue of one's dreadful day.

American sandwich from Carnegie Delicatessen, New York City

*  Reader Note:   Terry Southern's interview with the English novelist Henry Green (the excerpt here concerns Green's second novel, Living, and its notable omission of definite articles throughout the text), which was published in the Summer 1958  issue (No. 19) of the Paris Review, remains one of the most enjoyable, amusing and enlightening artifacts of Green's remarkable career.  It is anthologized in the collection of previously unpublished Henry Green writings called Surviving.  The interview can also be found online Here.

Terry Southern photographed by Stanley Kubrick near Shepperton Studios, Surrey, 1962, during the production of Dr. Strangelove

           The Paris Review interview is well worth reading and re-reading.  Like all of Green's work, you don't and can't take it all in at once, although the comment I've selected, about suiting style to subject matter, is pretty straightforward.  Some of us are a lot more skilled at this than others.  The other day I tried to write about something that recently caused me to be enervated at a time when I was extremely tired.  In other words, I had been shocked semi-awake by an unpleasant event and I tried to convey this by writing a series of overlong, edgy-seeming sentences, which I normally wouldn't do.  I think I was trying to convey fatigue and anxiety in the way Ray Davies did by elongating lines and pauses in Tired Of Waiting For You, although my mood felt distinctly more Kurt Cobain-desperate.  I'm not sure my effort succeeded, but at least I expelled, briefly,  the demon experience from my body. 

Talk Talk (Mark Hollis, l.)

           Green's comment about sandwiches reminded me of  something that happened to Caroline during the 1980s when she was working as a publicist for the fine London band, Talk Talk.  Caroline's job involved devising and executing public relations campaigns for rock groups, including soliciting and arranging  press articles and reviews.  This often involved long days of back-to-back interviews at the record company for the acts, who were usually exhausted from the daily grind of performing and constant travel. One day, Caroline ordered an extra-special "New York-style lunch" to be delivered to EMI Records' Manhattan offices  from the famous Carnegie Delicatessen.   When Carnegie's trademark offerings arrived, Mark Hollis, Talk Talk's soft-spoken and mild-mannered composer and singer, became noticeably agitated at the sight of the sandwich monuments in the way one might imagine a just-unblindfolded Druid acting when coming into view of Stonehenge and thinking "this means curtains for Gareth" or something like that.  Mark is an exceedingly polite person, but he knew his own mind and intentions, and Caroline noticed him begin quietly and deliberately to deconstruct Carnegie's work by removing and discarding about 9/10th of the sandwich's fillings.  When she asked him what on earth he was doing, he replied that he was making the New York sandwich into an English sandwich.  
 

Stray Cats


          Several months later when the Stray Cats, a New York band who had gone to England to achieve enormous success, returned in triumph to the U.S., one of the first things they enjoyed during a record company visit was a Carnegie Deli sandwich luncheon.  The group liked England quite a bit and they were highly appreciative both of their UK success and their British fans. They said that English sandwiches were another thing altogether, however.  They were, in their view, lacking in just about everything except for miniscule portions of green-tinged roast beef, soggy lettuce and bread that seemed cottony and unpalatable.  These criticisms mirrored earlier ones of The Ramones, another group Caroline worked with at the beginning of their career.  When that band returned from their first U.K. junket, they complained that the milk they were served contained floating debris and the Coca-Cola tasted funny.  I would like to think that Henry Green, the author of  Living,  would have appreciated The Ramones for their humor and their radical, simplified approach to writing and performing music in order to achieve maximum impact.  

        The very best record company party I ever attended was a "listening party" celebrating the release of the the group's second album, The Ramones Leave Home.  The party was held in an over-crowded New York recording studio near Washington Square and featured Carnegie Deli sandwiches, Veuve Clicquot champagne and, of course, the new Ramones record, a great one that in the best American tradition "moved the ball forward."

The Ramones

Henry Green