On the Road
McCarthy, Abigail
"Without art we do not know ourselves or anyone else. Only art penetrates what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides--the seeming realities o/ this world."-Saul Bellow...
...It is the rare American who can respond to the names of characters like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, let alone those from Moby Dick or the Bible...
...Traveling for my last book I shared a network panel one night with the author of a sex manual and with Truman Capote, the latter complete with straw hat, lisp and waspish comments on Washington, offered in a friendly effort to make my segment "better television...
...It was a bewildering swing along the gamut of those who set America's values...
...Those charged with selecting prospective Nieman fellows say that it is a rare young journalist these days whose leisure reading includes anything beyond the latest investigative book, or fast-paced reportage disguised as fiction...
...A polite, sometimes not so polite, duel develop (s...
...When they say they do not read novels, they also mean that they do not read drama, poetry, short story, essay, even biography in its literary form...
...No Trollope, no Dickens, no Galsworthy, no Faulkner, not even Wilder for them--or even Saul Bellow, whom 1 have quoted above...
...In these days of conglomerates no author seems to be very clear as to how many books the publisher wants him or her to sell...
...Then abruptly he raises a hand, stops you in midsentence as you try to expatiate on fiction as distinguished from nonfiction, the true novel as distinguished from the roman ?, cle/, holds the book up to the camera, takes a quick look to be sure of the title, repeats it, thanks you and off you go, wondering if the surely confused audience can distinguish between your book and those written in incarceration by the perpetrators of Watergate-or will want to...
...The next show was with Pat Boone, positive, upbeat, confident in his rebirth and the stern requirements of literal Bible Christianity...
...More often than not, however, you have annoyed the interviewer--who has already assured you that he never reads novels (taxi drivers tell you the same thing on the way to the studio)--and he or she bores in, sure that somehow you are going to break down and admit to something about Tongsun Park...
...Experienced interviewers have a way of handling the problem...
...9 . . The true impressions, our persistent intuitions, will, without art, be hidden from us and we will be left with nothing but a 'terminology for practical ends which we falsely call !ife' (Proust) ." Commonweal: 489...
...For all the writer knows, the book is a "loss leader--five to one store, one to a customer...
...There is a zany quality to my life these days since I am engaged in the questionable process known as "pushing a book...
...Saul Bellow in his acceptance speech for the Nobel prize...
...The trick is to say, "Ah, I am glad you ON THE ROAD ABIGAIL MeCARTHY asked me t h a t - - i t reminds me of the scene in my book in which Jeff--he's the TV commentator, you know - - i s having lunch in the Senate dining room . . ." and away you go, hoping wildly that you may interest at least one reader out there...
...None of the simplicities of the commerce of another day seems to apply...
...If so, is it not true that, as Bellow continued in his speech, we as a people have lost sight of "another reality, the genuine o n e . . . ? This other reality is always sending us hints, which, without art, we can't receive...
...Circles: A Washington Story--The Editors], and am obligated by my contract to do a "reasonable" amount of promotion...
...In my case, since I come from Washington, related questions range from the most personal questions about my private life to ones about Rosalynn Carter's South American trip or the doings of Tongsun Park, suspect South Korean operator on the Washington scene...
...Publicity directors may care about "pushing the book" but warehousers seem to be totally indifferent...
...No one seems to know what a reasonable amount is...
...I have, as one unfeeling interviewer put it, "committed a novel...
...As I travel this time I am becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which most of the value-setters are more and more indifferent to, if not hostile to, art in its literary form...
...Nine times out of ten I, like many another writer, have been met at talk shows by a hostile or distressed producer who says that the book only arrived that morning, no one with the show has had time to read it, but that they will ask some "related" questions...
...Despite the hazards, I have taken to the road with a will because I enjoy the new impressions, the behindthe-scenes look at the media, the encounters with other writers, the look of America on the move in Chicago, Boston, New York, Minneapolis-the occasional rare new friend...
...there is a mysterious ratio of books to tax losses, to pulpwood purchases, to heaven knows what...
...Henry Fairlie has written recently that we in America have lost our common sources of allusion...
Vol. 104 • August 1977 • No. 16
