288
PARTISAN REVIEW
Williams:
I think William Faulkner certainly did, like in "A Rose For
Emily."
Int.:
How would you describe your writing style?
Williams:
I don't write in the stripped, bare style that one often
encounters nowadays. I can write in a style that's so simple you
wouldn't believe it. But that style doesn't suit me. Actually, I write in
several different styles, but the ideal style is the conversational. I can't
write without cadence. I have
to
hear the sound first.
Int.:
Does your state of mind affect the plays as you write them?
Williams:
Yes, it does, completely. I don 't follow a conscious, intellec–
tual framework when I write. I discover the playas I write it, and it
usually takes a year and a half to two to finish it. These young kids
today knock them out so fast! It's very enviable. I don 't know how
they do it.
Int.:
Yes, but they don 't knock out great ones.
Williams:
I don't know about that. I never really know
when
I have a
play. I just hope. It's maybe two years later I'll realize how good a
play is.
Int.:
How do you begin a play?
Williams:
I begin it-you don't really want to know that, do you?
hahaha! I don't want you to examine the methods of my work too
closely because it will make my writing self-conscious; I just don 't
like to scrutinize them that closely.
Int.:
So you allow yourself a lot of latitude in terms of what your play is
going to be?
Williams:
Oh, yes. Any little thing in mind of somebody, a word,
something someone says or something-anything certainly, some
German name, an innuendo, and I us.ually work in an exploratory
draft and then I have a good idea of what I'm doing. Then I write a
second draft and usually a third and sometimes I've written maybe
six or seven. There is no such thing as a process of doing writing.
Int.:
When you deal will. symbols like that you're not aware of ...
Williams:
Of it being a process? I don't plan what I do, it happens. I
read over each day's work then I become more conscious of what I'm
doing with it, you know, what direction it should go in.
Int.:
Are you ever conscious of what impact a play might have on the
public?
Williams:
Never at all. The public is so under-educable.
Int.:
That includes critics?
Williams:
Well, certainly critics. They can praise to high heavens an
inferior work and make absolutely merciless ridicule of something
much superior. So, how can you possibly predict which way they are
