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PARTISAN REVIEW
form , and language , and ultimately , perhaps, it will be your style which
will have the most influence. I think that you ' ve abandoned the novel in
recent years, even though you still consider the novel the highest form of
art, ofcom'munication , because you see that it 's out of the center of history ,
and that what you've done since
Armies
is to try to move into the center of
history and stay there , to try to impose form on things that are moving so
fast and appear so chaotic that you not only are present at the making of
history , but you ' re making it over.
Mazier:
Well , certainly in
Armies
I was trying to, I was trying to bring a
consciousness to America about the war in Vietnam through personifying
one reasonably complicated middle-aged man caught up in the peace
movement and not altogether willingly . I think the effect of the book was to
make resistance to the war in Vietnam a little more human to people who
were still supporting the war. So , yes , I think the book did have a political
effect. Maybe it tended to strengthen the side opposed to the war in
Vietnam. OK , but, you know , that 's not going to mean much in 30 or 40
years .
Int:
Not the subject but the form you impose on the subject, the style. That is
what I am saying is the significant thing , although you have been criticized
of/ate forth is very thing. Critics say that you have an interlocking system of
metaphors that you impose on all of your work ; that everything you write
about now is seen in terms of this metaphysical war of God and Devil for
possession of mankind and that instead of allowing your style to arise from
your subject you impose your style on the subject.
Mazier:
I think that is their profound resentment that I have a philosophy
which is coherent , and they don't . I think that is what they hate.
If!
were a
Catholic, if! were Graham Greene , and a devout and somewhat troubled
Catholic , and everything I wrote revolved around Catholicism, nobody
would argue for a minute . They would say , " He is a Catholic, " so why can ' t
they say of me , " He is an existentialist"? I mean , I don't know Graham
Greene, but I would like to think it is possible my ideas are as deeply
imbedded in me as his faith is in him. Is that wholly inconceivable?
Int:
That 's a rhetorical question. But doesn ' t there need to be a dialectic
going on between your vision and the subjects to which you attach it ,
namely the major political events of the 1960s and '70s?
Mazier:
But I don't write about everything in politics for just that reason. Not
everything appeals to me equally. I spent last summer down in Washington
going to the Senate hearings . I thought maybe I would do something for
Atlantic
on Watergate- we had a loose working agreement that I might do
something. At the end of the summer I called Bob Manning and said, "I
don't know if there 's anything I can bring to it that would be mine. "
You
