454
PARTISAN REVIEW
MS:
Do you mean in how it applies to me? Well I
have
had a very
stylish flat. But no, I've never really lived in high style, Ijust left big
space, or made a group of sitting spaces in a corner, that sort of
thing. At the moment I don't live in style, I've got a slum. But it's
awfully nice inside. No, I still think there's no living a really stylish
social life, arranging everything, doing the flowers, having people to
dinner, sitting them in their proper order, and being a writer: of
course you can't do that. I've never met anyone who could do the
two. Somehow, you go into a house and you know it's an artist's
house, without them trying, you just know. There's no way of keep–
ing tidy or anything, for instance.
SF:
You said earlier that you don't write realism. What would you
call it?
MS:
I don't know what it is. It's certainly not realistic, you would
never say that they were realistic novels, although I do try to get an
accurate background. Realism has come to mean something rather
stark, anyway it's a category of literature that doesn't really mean
"the real." Social realism, for instance, is what Russian writers like
to do, are forced to do.
SF:
Would you call what you were doing in
The Driver's Seat
that kind
of realism-is that what you meant when the narrator says he has no
idea what Lise is thinking, were you just trying to say
what happened]
MS:
Yes, God knows. In that book it wasn't for the author to say.
There's always an unseen presence in novels, even if they're written
in the first person, and that unseen presence is the author who's
writing it. The personality of the narrator who begins at one place
rather than in another, for instance, and that's me. And you have to
change this every time, because if not you're just doing the same
book over and over again. For that novel it was from the point of
view of someone who doesn't know what anyone is thinking, but
who can see, who can observe. Another novel might be from the
point of view of the characters' thoughts: you're either God, or
you're a fly on the wall, or you're something else; it doesn't matter.
But you have to take a position before you begin. That's the most
difficult part of a novel: finding the tone, deciding who the unseen,
invisible narrator
is,
and what role he's going to play for this par–
ticular book. You've got to consider then the theme, and what type
of narration will best fit that theme and technique. I've got to think
about this quite a lot before I begin. But once having begun, you've
really got to stick to it, and be consistent. That's the most important
thing.
