for Sue Neubauer
IntervieweesNew for June 2000R.S. GWYNN
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As regular readers may know, I've been doing interviews with writers and artists for several years, and primarily under the aegis of ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum magazine. In 1998, I proposed to ELF that my next project for them be a series of mini-interviews with a few dozen writers. The interviews would solicit their thoughts on literature at the end of the 20th Century. I would ask all interviewees the same three questions. The series would appear in consecutive issues of ELF right into the year 2000. The proposal coincided with a trip I was making in July to University of the South (Sewanee), as ELF's good-will representative at Sewanee's annual writers' conference. There were several people on faculty who were ideal for the series. With the permission of Wyatt Prunty, the founder/director of the conference, I began work on the first set of mini-interviews. |
That fall ELF unexpectedly closed its doors when publisher and co-founder, Sue Neubauer, became ill. C.K. Erbes, editor and co-founder, could not go on without Sue, who was half the spirit and energy of ELF. I suspended plans to complete the series. I considered submitting what I already had to another magazine. But my heart wasn't in it. Instead, I'm publishing it here, and dedicating it to Sue. For the last nine years, she has been my boss, collaborator, colleague, confidante and friend. Her love and support have meant the world to me. Suzie, dear, this one is for you. |
Books by Mark
StrandIn 1998, a committee which included such literary lights as Gore Vidal and William Styron issued a list of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century. What do you think of their endeavor? If you'd been on such a committee, what works would top your list?
MS: I think nothing of that list. It's junk. It's not interesting. It's a committee's idea of what's good, but they left out a lot of great novels and included a lot of junky ones. I think all lists are stupid.
What trends have you observed among writers that you think will continue into the next century? Are there any trends you feel will dominate letters? Any you'd identify as passing fads only?
MS: Tastes in poetry have become more fragmented. There's no single standard which exercises some control over the way people write. I'm not a moralist, though, so I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad one.
How would you characterize the final years of this century in artistic terms? Will the late 20th Century be remembered as an historic period in American letters?
MS: I have no idea. I'm not capable of answering such a question. I don't romanticize the past and I can't predict the future. I'm not interested in predicting the future. I'm a poet, not a prophet.
People will pay attention to the millennium because it's a marker, but one year follows the other, so there's no reason why we should expect a big change. It's not as if people are going to turn into squirrels or squirrels into people.
There's nothing special about our time. I don't think it's any different from any other period in literature. It is both fragmented and fruitful, both brilliant and stupid.
People will behave just as badly and just as well as they always have. Writers will write just as badly and as well as they always have. A poet's role in 1998 is to write as well as he can. To restore some dignity to the language. The need for rapid communication has eroded its dignity and slurred meaning.
I'm embarrassed to have to so little to say, but I can't predict the future and I'd be a liar if I tried.
In 1998, a committee which included such literary lights as Gore Vidal and William Styron issued a list of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century. What do you think of their endeavor? If you'd been on such a committee, what works would top your list?
MB: In general, I like such "Best of..." lists. That goes for lists of the 100 top 20th-Century poetry books, too, in case there are any. Such endeavors give ok publicity to literature in general--and of course, especially to those authors chosen. Such lists, particularly if they pertain to recent times, can after all help keep literature in the news. So, those lists serve a purpose! Probably such lists can even save younger readers some time in discovering writing which is among the best (at least by committee consensus), sooner rather than later. (Later on, having exposed themselves to "the best" by committee consensus, hopefully intelligent young readers may learn to make up their own, more personal "Top 100" lists.)
Still, there's a flaw in the logic of any such century-spanning list, I think. Certainly when it comes to evaluating work published at the end of any century, as opposed to work published at the beginning of it. We've obviously a better perspective on the importance of authors who finished publishing many years ago--many of who are alas deceased--than we do on those still writing! After all, it's easier to achieve an relatively objective, detached attitude towards those writers who are safely in the past, than towards writers who are not only still kicking around, but who are in your face all the time, as a result of their readings and other live public appearances.
So, such century-spanning lists can in fact be somewhat dangerous with respect to identifying the best of the best. For example, such lists may give undeserved leg-ups to recent writers who are good--but not all that good. And, they will probably tend to ignore writers still currently working more or less out of the public eye and the conventional literary mainstream, and on whom the returns are not in yet. Maybe in a decade or two, we'll have a better perspective on what really counted at the end of the 20th Century. And, some of it may have been brought forth in formats which, so far at least, all the book committees that I've heard of completely ignore. Some of the work may have been, for example, web-based. Purely book-based "Literary Committees" may be an anachronism.
What trends have you observed among writers that you think will continue into the next century? Are there any trends you feel will dominate letters? Any you'd identify as passing fads only?
MB: As opposed to authors of, say business prose (handbooks, manuals, etc.), many literary writers--poets especially--have always been and will, I guess, probably continue to be for a while, relatively right-brain oriented.--i.e., better at coming to terms with reality via Instinct & Intuition, rather than by Logic or Analysis. That phenomenon particularly interests me since (notwithstanding the many excursions I've made into relatively left-brain oriented activities such as editing & journalism), writing poetry is fundamentally my field. I guess that many poets will continue for a while to remain indifferent to & even suspicious of left-brained phenomena such as technology. But both my instincts and sense of Logic tell me that the main task for poets--and for anyone else in any field of human endeavor--is to try to integrate left-side-of-brain & right-side-of brain perceptions. That kind of integration, I think, represents--maybe even clinically--nothing less than sanity.
I think a lot about ways that people have--consciously or not--of healing that old left-side, right side of brain argument. Here's a recent & still somewhat off the top-the-head idea about that: Even the simplest of Web-page Hyper-links are perhaps a metaphor for linking left sides and right sides of brain. Certainly, even simple hyperlinks ("click to top," etc.), connect Synapses!
Anyway, I see the old trend gradually being replaced by a new trend. I see the right-brainedness traditional among poets eventually reversing itself somewhat. I've noticed increasingly that most older poets, including many of my contemporaries, & most younger poets already seem to be thinking in decidedly different ways. Perhaps the same is true for other literary folk, such as short story-writers and novelists. As writers come to terms with technology, the new trend will I think "dominate letters"--or at least the poetry part of it, since most poets are coming from the right side of the brain with a vengeance.
(Suddenly I receive this vision of the words of a poem--or even our entire dear old alphabet--lined up and trembling before a technological ringmaster or ringmasterette, carrying a circus whip. Excuse me: that image is must be the result of the proximity of Thermopylae to Castle In The Sky.)
How would you characterize the final years of this century in artistic terms? Will the late 20th Century be remembered as an historic period in American letters?
MB: I think I'll mostly pass on those two questions--except to say that I firmly believe that as a result of the interplay of minds with technology, any later 20th-Century change in purely artistic terms probably wasn't as significant as changes launched in recent years in purely mental terms. Certainly, the results of those changes haven't fully surfaced yet.
So, I see the final years of the 20th Century--and the first years of the 21st Century, too--as a kind of interim period in which most writers (poets included) conduct/conducted business as usual--even while listening to the sounds of the technological Sword of Damocles coming loose from the wall and about to descend. What's the sound of that Sword coming loose from the wall? Among other things, it's probably the sound of a PCMCIA modem-card after it's plugged in, peeping like a newly-hatched chick just come forth from an egg. That sound divides the old literary culture from the new literary culture I think--and it's "historic" all right!
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