210
PA RTISAN REVIEW
observing the observer. After all I did have that happy streak with
The
Armies
0/
The Night.
There was fun in that book, but the fun was to
observe the observer. An ideal example of the technique. It doesn't always
work that well. Still, there's a lovely remark of Trotsky's I go back to over
and over again . He said sometimes the only way you can tell the truth is by a
comparison of the lies. If you're listening to two liars telling tales, you may
never be able to find out who is lying the most. But you can come closer to a
sense of reality by the relations between those mysteries. You see, we may
never know, for instance, what the truth of one human is, or another, but
we can know a lot about the relations between them . We may be confused
by two terribly complicated people but we are able to say with greater
certainty, "They hate each other," or "Isn't it extraordinary how they love
each other?" because we can feel the relation between the mysteries . So, by
the same token , when I write, I try to do that. I try to set up a relation
between mysteries where I am that relation as the writing voice.
Int:
This is why I think, although you probably won't agree with me , that the
kind of work you've been doing outside of the novel per se, which would
exclude the novel-history and the novel-biography, is more significant in
terms of your own ambitions than the novel.
Mazier:
No. Maybe not for the future. You know there was an unhappy
newspaper story which had just enough truth to be awful, that I was getting
a million dollars for a novel, do you know about that?
Int:
The Little, Brown contract?
Mazier :
Yes. Well, you know, everybody said, "Isn't that shameful.
Ridiculous the way publishers are jacking up the prices." So forth. No one
takes into account that Little, Brown is one publishing firm that has been
around for many years . The contract is for a novel large in scope. The
writing is going to take anywhere from five to seven years and I'm to deliver
anything from five to seven hundred thousand words which may end as one
novel or can break down to two, three, four, or five novels. We don't know
at this point. What Little, Brown
is
doing, which I think is exceptional and
splendid for a publisher to do, is they're giving me a chance to try to write
that big book I've been braying about to America for the last fifteen years.
And I'm going to find out. I can promise you that I've rarely been as scared
in my literary life. Finally I will have no excuse . I'll either be able to do
something that's large and good, it should be, you know, given all this
hoopla, be halfway as good as
Remembrance a/Things Past
if it's going to
be any good at all . In other words, we've set the bar high.
Int:
I hope it's not as dull as
Remembrance a/Things Past.
Mazier:
That isn't too dull a book . I'd settle for it to be as good and as dull. At
any rate, I'm so much involved in the problem of writing a novel now that I
