50
PARTISAN REVIEW
the contemporary history of Paris, where \ lived for thirty years. The
parallel between you and Alexandria is amazingly similar to that
between myself and Paris.
\ spent eight years of my life in a rainy garret trying to write a con–
temporary history of Paris. Parts of it were "me" flashes,
I
quoted
Le
Monde
extensively and did a lot of research, etc. Everyone who read it
said, "The good parts are you."
1'm now trying to reshape it all, and I find \'m only able to do that
since two things happened: \ left my rent-controlled apartment on the
Seine, and for the first time, Paris is in the past and I can frame it. I used
to say I felt like a rat writing about my cage. Now that I'm trying to re–
inject myself into a lot of the stories, \ can't get to myself except through
her,
through a third person. \ wondered if that is diluting it.
Andre Adman:
No, it might get better, and \ can tell you why. \ think
that there are many things going on. One of them is that many writers
are prone to memoir. In fact, most critics, when writing about another
person are really writing about themselves. You're writing about your–
self, but you can't, because there's a time lag: you are in the present, and
you're writing about a you that is also in the present, which doesn't
work. Basically, now that your garret, that ugly rainy garret, is out of
the picture, you miss it. Now it has meaning, because you're going to go
looking for it in your imagination, and that works.
I remember one assignment in which I was sent to Paris. I had to have
a text ready when \ was back off the plane. There was no way \ could do
that, but I had to do it, and so my only trick was to say "\ am in Paris,
but \ can't write about present-day Paris, \ need to miss it, \ need to have
lost it." You need to have grown older, to look back at a younger self.
You need some kind of disruption through time. Proust had figured it out
brilliantly: you need to telescope that thing,
to
put it out of the picture,
make it distant. Once I've been able
to
do so I can write about it, and I
have written about that Paris, the idea that when you walk the streets of
Paris, you say, "\'m not here, \'m in New York remembering this walk
I'm having in Paris." That's the only way \ can describe this walk,
because otherwise you have to describe Paris, and frankly I'm not a jour–
nalist and I'm not a reporter, and \ don't know how
to
write that way.
That's what I mean by not being prone. Some people are not prone
to
deal with and handle and absorb the present. It's out, it has
to
be out,
and so you have
to
manufacture ways in which you can put it out of the
picture, you need
to
lose what you don't even care for in order
to
write
about it.
