SARA FRANKEL
455
SF:
You said earlier that you thought the essential thing in writing
was to be honest, for example to follow a particular character
through to his end-
MS:
To be honest about everything.
SF:
Do you see any contradiction between that kind of honesty and
the fact of writing novels, which are basically lies?
MS:
No, because having invented a character you have to be ab–
solutely honest
about
the character, without worrying that people
won't like it or that you're going too far. But if you're going to stick
absolutely to literal truth, there's no point in writing novels, or in
telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood, because Little Red
Riding Hood did not exist. Sooner or later you've got to realize that
your're working in a medium of parable, allegory, symbol-this is
symbolic
truth. Within that, you can do anything you like.
SF:
Then do you think symbolic truth is more important than literal
truth?
MS:
No, literal truth in a court of law is the most important. And for
everyday life, literal truth is absolutely indispensable, so we don't
fool each other, and trick each other-otherwise society can't go on .
But it isn't the only truth, otherwise nobody would read novels .
SF:
Then you don't see anything morally reprehensible in the way
novelists use reality to make stories-the way Fleur Talbot uses the
people around her for her own novel in
Loitering with Intent,
for exam–
ple?
MS:
No, because I think she was in a position where people just
came her way. She was already writing the story, and it was the sort
of situation I was talking about, when you're writing something and
people just seem to walk into your life. I've had that experience. But
she didn't use them literally, and she very much opposes what Sir
Quentin was doing, which was getting a literal autobiography and
calling it fiction.
She
was jazzing it up, to make it more interesting;
what disgusted her was that he was calling fiction autobiography,
and she understood the distinction between them. A good fiction
writer knows the distinction between fiction and truth better than
anyone else.
SF:
Do you read much contemporary fiction?
MS:
I do now, yes . I like Heinrich Boll a great deal, and I like
Sciascia, the Italian. I used to read a lot of Robbe-Grillet, and I get
anything of Graham Greene's, because he's a superb story-teller.
But younger people- I haven't read anything very much lately that
was very exciting. I like Cynthia Ozick, I think she's a very in-
