76
PARTISAN REVIEW
Norman Manea:
As I said, I was not adjusted
to
this type of autobio–
graphical writing. But I don't think that it's more difficult
to
write seri–
ous memoirs than it is
to
write serious literature.
If
you are serious, you
are serious in whatever you write, whatever it is, whatever genre you try.
Of course, it's a different situation now-on a global scale-and it may
get rapidly worse, but I don't think that the writer has many choices. He
is who and as he is. He is acting his own very peculiar, distinct role. In
my case, the writer is writing in a foreign language-the language of the
birds. But he knew from the start that he would not be awarded with
flowers or with money, even in his own place and culture. So the writer
has to continue whatever he does. I am flattered that you consider me a
serious writer. I can only say that I try to be.
Andre Aciman :
This is for Leonard. There is a jazz term which I learned
because 1 have a very good friend who plays the trumpet, and he said
something
to
me, which I am going to use on you. We were listening to
your lecture, which I liked, and then you read the piece from the diary
entry, which I thought was very terse, very oblique, evasive, and elusive–
all those things that we are taught to achieve. Then,
to
come to the jazz
term, you began to wail. It was really magnificent. You began on that
highly rhetorical note, " I will not say, I will not say," which reminded me
of
King Lear
when one of the daughters says, "I will not tell you how
much 1 love you." She never tells him how much she loves him, but she
tells him how much. So, although this was all a wonderful, primitive
moment, 1 don't even think I will remember the diary entry. What I will
remember is the fact that we got the story, we got the character of the
woman, we got your character, we got your voice, we got the whole thing
excellently portrayed in those repeated things-we got a form.
You think there is a question coming, don't you? Let me try to manu–
facture one for the notes, as it were. Writing in fact is total discipline, and
we say that the sonnet is fourteen lin es, has
x
number of structures, and
then, to make our students feel good about it, we say, "however strict it
seems, it's quite liberating." Actua ll y I think wr iting is not liberating.
It
is
not a free thing, it's total discipline, it's sort of shackled, and I was trying
to get you to compare the terse thing that you gave us at the beginning,
and that highly rich, munificent, and rhetorical thing, whi ch was quite
baroque-which I liked. I was just wondering about your reaction to this.
Leonard Michaels:
What you say is so good that I thought you were
going to put me on the spot, and then you just beautifully c urved back
and answered the question that you might have put ear li er, when you
