278
PARTISAN REVIEW
know, hahahal
It
doesn 't take that much imagination to discover
that kind of character.
Int.:
How did you get along with Paul Newman?
Williams:
I never had a real conversation with Newman. He just didn 't
like me. I'd go to his dressing room and say hello. We just never got
to know each other, I guess. I do think that he is a liberal-whatever
that means. He supports the right causes, but I don 't think he'd lay
his life on the line for a cause. He's not like Marlon Brando, who is
inscrutable. Although I hardly know him as well as Newman, I felt
there was a deep person behind him, an inscrutable person.
Int.:
Newman seems to be gifted with youth, like Dorian Grey.
Williams:
Oh, he's much tougher than Dorian Grey, who was a
romantic figure out of old soft-headed Oscar Wilde's imagination.
Wilde was a great wit but a sentimentalist. I have a great definition
of sentimentalist! A sentimentalist is somebody who will not cross
the English Channel to avoid going to Reading Jail. Shit, you don't
learn anything in jail! There is nothing I want to learn in jail!
Int.:
Don't you think "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was worth it? Or
"De Profundis"?
Williams:
Nol Any fool would have crossed the Channel! But the Irish
are a strange lot, aren't they? You just can't win against those
establishment people. Wilde should have known that. He didn't
have a chance! Not on those grounds (he roars with savage laughter).
Wilde was the biggest fool of his time! He was a wit and a fool at
once, and it was this paradox that made him an important figure.
But his letters are his greatest work, his masterpiece, just as D.H.
Lawrence's letters are his best work. Lawrence had a very intense
view of life. Sometimes this intensity can keep you from the emotion
itself, keep you from inside of the feeling, you know. Sometimes
when I feel very intense about somebody it makes me impotent, I get
terrified.
~
Int.:
Is sex a big part of your life now?
Williams:
Occasionally I want sex, but it's not an obsession the way it
used to be. Fortunately, I've passed the time-hahahal-in my life
when I concerned myself too much with those matters! I occasionally
want sex but I don't let it bother me. I find it useful in my work.
Int.:
You put it in your work?
Williams:
Yes, I don't n eed all that activity anymore.
Int.:
How did you come to write a play about D.H. Lawrence?
Williams:
I went to Taos, New Mexico in 1939
to
meet all the people
who knew him. His wife, Frieda, especially made a deep impression
on me. I started writing the end of a long play about Lawrence. The
