286
PARTISAN REVIEW
Williams:
Yes.
Int.:
And at the end of the day you had worked very hard and then you
would cruise and he said he cruised with you.
Williams:
He did indeed. Our youth was rather proper, to the extent we
could make it so. Ha! Ha! Hal
Int.:
He said that you were very handsone, very good-looking and you
had a cataract in your walled eye which you corrected when you got
money.
Williams:
It
didn't quite correct it; it's still walled and my eyes are still
very sensitive.
Int.:
Why do magazines create these stories about you? The sensational
stories about your sex life? Do you play up that sort of thing?
Williams:
Those stories are spurious. These interviewers ignore every–
thing of a serious nature and just play up an event and exaggerate
anything they can find that is of an embarassing nature. That isn 't
good. That's embarassing for my family; I have a family-I have a
mother who reads-her eyesight is better than mine. My sister is
exposed to reports of these stories even though she's a mental invalid.
She's very alert and she gets these reports. My brother is trying to
make it in politics, you know, these things are very harmful to him;
they are embarassing to me. For instance, in New Orleans I got to use
the athletic club; if too much shit gets around about me, I ain't
gonna be welcomed there, you know. I notice the way I'm received at
hotels, you know, and at restaurants, I can't afford to play up to that
sort of thing.
Int.:
But don 't you use the principle of exaggeration in your work?
Williams:
My work, yes.
r
can do that, I don't mind doing that.
Int.:
Do you find it's poetic justice that an artist has to be hounded by
inaccuracies as a result of his creative exaggeration?
Williams:
I don 't think he should be, no. I think that a lot of artists are
not. In France, Genet is not
a~d
in America, Henry Miller is not. It
seems to be an American form, an American thing to do that. There
are a great number of eccentric people in England. And they 're not
put down as they are in America. People . are more tolerant of
eccentricity in England, where it is a tradition.'
If
I had my preferred
place to live it wou ld be England, but they would have to push it
down a little towards the South, you know?
Int.:
In art you exaggerate in order to create emphasis.
Williams:
I exaggerate because I don't like to write realistically; it
doesn't interes t me very much.
Int.:
But you don 't think the public has the same desire not to deal with
things realistically or factually when they deal with you?
