Writers' Table Talk
SUNDEL, ALFRED
Writers' Table Talk The Writer Observed. By Harvey Breit. World. 284 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Alfred Sundel Contributor to "Perspective,'' "Western Review," "Retort" Those who recall Harvey...
...What might have been accomplished if greater length had been allowed in deserving instances is another matter...
...Time and time again, the novelist louses up his work with jargons and special knowledge...
...Then I was arrogant and lost...
...People like him around, but he's of no use...
...William Faulkner: "The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country...
...To wit: Arthur Koestler: "The required reading of modern authors at your universities is extremely interesting and healthy...
...Dylan Thomas: "I should be what I was ...twenty years ago...
...Reviewed by Alfred Sundel Contributor to "Perspective,'' "Western Review," "Retort" Those who recall Harvey Breit's interviews with authors which appeared in the New York Times Book Review over a recent period of years will easily recognize a selection of them under this binding...
...While he has clearly brought taste and ingenuity to his task, inviting too close a scrutiny can only make the reader more aware of the severe limitations imposed...
...After all, a job well done is a job well done, and these talks stand up well in that light...
...Like a hometown parade, the old familiar faces come by: down-to-earth Carl Sandburg, Truman (the Child) Capote, mysterious Henry Green, self-abnegating Albert Schweitzer, erudite Arnold Toynbee, and the tough younger-generation spokesmen, Norman Mailer and James Jones-close to 60 all told...
...Dylan Thomas clowns, and Hemingway is here to bore us with his inevitable olf-the-wrist gab on fishing and inability to face up to his own fame...
...T. S. Eliot talks of football...
...And yet you can't eschew it...
...He's like a fine dog...
...Norman Mailer: "In the past, a novelist could create a world view, a whole thing in itself...
...In a long introduction, Breit raises the where-does-journalism-leave - off - and - literature - begin question, making his gambit in an apparent bid for literary recognition...
...Averaging less than 900 words, the talks were very limited in form and scope, combining features of the brief profile with an interlocutor's prodding for reportable remarks...
...It's better to fail that way than to ignore this condition and keep on in some little cubbyhole...
...Now I am humble and found...
...If a writer really wants to be serious, he has to become intellectual, and yet nothing is harder...
...Others have taken these interviews more seriously...
...The majority have their views on writing tapped or trapped out of them, along with some idle chatter...
...It is different today because knowledge is broken down, departmentalized...
...Of the impressive array of writers given the opportunity of sympathetic presentation to a large audience, only a few have taken advantage of it...
...They are further restricted to English, Irish and American writers...
Vol. 39 • March 1956 • No. 13
