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PARTISAN REVIEW
SF: Have you seen any of the other movie adaptations that have
been made of your books-
The Driver's Seat
or
The Abbess of Crewe?
MS: The Driver 's Seat
was a good movie-in fact it was an artistic
movie-but Elizabeth Taylor was badly cast as Lise. I thought of
Lise as a big Nordic girl, a big German girl; the rolejust wasn't right
for Elizabeth Taylor. There's too much flesh and health to her-it
didn't look at all as if she was wanting to get a killer to kill her. She
looks far too healthy to want to die .
SF: What do you think of the idea of adapting novels to the stage and
films in general?
MS:
I think it's a very good idea. But you musn't expect the same
product to appear on the screen within two and a half hours as when
one person in an armchair takes as long as he likes to read. It's
got
to
change, and the only anxiety is that it's changed within the spirit of
the original. But I've been lucky that way.
SF:
Do you think you stuck to the spirit of the original when you
based
The Abess of Crewe
on Watergate?
MS:
Oh yes. I thought the Watergate episode was very interesting, it
was completely exaggerated. The Americans created a great big na–
tional thing of it, and I thought, well, if they lived in Europe and
knew about corruption-all governments are corrupt-they would
realize that it was like a nun's quarrel over a thimble. And Nixon
was very foolish in his handling of the thing, trying to cover it up and
then all those tapes that came out-it was too hilarious for words. So
I thought, well, this is a nunnery, and Nixon's a nun, Kissinger is a
nun, they're all nuns, and it's over a silver thimble-and I had some
fun with that.
SF:
To backtrack a bit, can you tell me something about what kinds
of books you read when you were younger, that started getting you
interested in writing?
MS:
I read exclusively poetry. I used to go to the public libraries and
borrow poetry.
SF: You've mentioned the trio of influences on your prose writing of
Newman, Beerbohm and Proust-
MS:
Yes, that was much later. That was around the fifties.
SF: Do you still feel that they were the most important influences on
your work?
MS:
No, I've now got into my own way of writing, and I influence
myself. I have the machinery now, so I don't
need
to have prose in–
fluences. Also, there's a state of mind that goes with all forms of ex–
pression, all techniques; I noticed that when I wrote Beerbohm-like
