SARA FRANKEL
457
MS:
I think it's good to have to justify your work to the public,
because it's the public who buys it, reads it.
If
the book is not itself
justification enough then I suppose an explanation doesn't hurt. It
depends which public , and my own reading public is a largely
literary one; it isn't the great big vast reading public, or the paper–
back readers. But there's a certain point at which if people don't
understand your work , you can't concede anything to them, you
can't explain. They have to take it or leave it.
If
they really get an–
noyed I offer them their money back.
SF:
Are there anyone or two of your books that you look back on
with particular pleasure?
MS:
Well I'm always really rather absorbed with the book I'm
writing at the moment-it's much the most important thing to me,
and my whole life
fills
with it, there are potentials for that book in
everything I see. So it tends to be the one I'm working on that I like
the best .
SF:
In
The Comforters,
Caroline Rose mentions at one point that she's
writing her novel partly in order to combat the idea that "we're all
courteous maniacs, discreetly making allowances for everyone else's
derangement" -to overcome a feeling of intellectual isolation . Does
that have anything to do with why you write novels?
MS:
Yes, it's a way of communicating that a shy person can use to
overcome-art may in fact bejust
that.
It ' s possible-I don't know,
because I'm not an analyst - but it's possible that the artist is
made
by an absolute personal need to communicate . I can communicate
much better with the page I'm writing, knowing it's going to go out
to unknown people, than I can at a cocktail party, for instance; I feel
happier communicating that way. And I think that literature does
have an effect , it does change people's lives-it always has, look at
the Bible. Literature has changed countless lives, it's going on all the
time.
