32
PARTISAN REVIEW
Donoso:
Surely, but you see, again, my main interest
is
in objects .
This is something which interests me a huge amount: how things,
for me or in my writing, are terribly-how can I put it?
-transpar–
ent,
and suddenly lead on to other things . I remember when
Coro–
nation
came out in England, somebody called it an "over-furnished
novel," which I rather like. Certainly, my stuff is
terrifically
over–
furnished! But it's over-furnished to a point, I think. It's over–
furnished to the point that Dickens is over-furnished. I think that
Edmund Wilson talks about the importance in Dickens of the physi–
cal world and how this physical world becomes a menacing pres–
ence, how objects take on a menacing presence which means
something, which gives an atmosphere to his books that speaks for
itself. This is what I want to do with things.
Christ:
Like William Carlos Williams saying that there are no ideas
except in things?
Donoso:
In things . Yes, that's right. You will notice, for instance, in
my novels that I will never - except in
Coronation,
and that was a
bad mistake - be rational. I will have no rational characters who
will talk about generalities . The mistake with the narrator of
Coro–
nation
was that the omniscient narrator explains things. And that
some of the characters explain themselves to readers. Again, I
have nothing in particular against this method, though it is not
now in fashion; but I don't carry it to its extreme and I don't use
it. It seems like an accident and it does not satisfy me. Not be–
cause it is not "controlled," but because it is not literary; that is to
say, not discovered in the process of writing, but an unconscious
and uncritical habit which came from reading novels and not
really sorting out what I had read .
Christ:
You are critical, always, in the choice of names for your char–
acters. Do you keep lists as James did?
Donoso:
No, I don't. Funnily enough, in that matter, I'm very pre–
cise. I don't fiddle about at all! This is one of the things I'm best
at: the choosing of names. My naming is not done the way of,
say, Evelyn Waugh, or Dickens, or James even; but the names do
have meaning, they generate an aura. And that is important for
me. But I generally don't beat about the bush; I just go and grab
something.
Christ:
What about Maya in
This Sunday?
I get a reference to Greek
mythology, to the Indian culture of the Americas, to the veil
of illusion.
Donoso:
Somehow, the terrible thing is that reality is prior to litera–
ture, and somehow reality
is
literature, in fact. Because the whole
