Master Writer Shares His Craft Despite Himself

"This is an easy question: How do you see yourself in terms of 18th- and 19th-century writers, and how do you want to be seen?"

"That's not an easy question!

"You have to ask yourself, 'What can I do that these gentlemen - or ladies - have not done.' As far as ranking yourself with Austin or Dickens, try your best, recognizing that you cannot quite write as they did, no matter how excellent and impeccable and masterly their work still is. The social context is gone, and for better or worse, you must write out of today's truth. In some sense, literature is assured of renewing itself because no two generations are quite exactly alike in history."

Do you use notes or a journal?

"Not much. My theory is that it should be so simple that you can carry it in your head.

"Quite often I begin with a fairly dim notion of the character and then have faith that when I think the character wants to appear that he or she will appear."

Have you ever written yourself into a corner so tight that you had to throw out work?

"I had to abandon a couple of longish books. One was about high school. I knew about high schools from two angles: I went to one, and my father taught in one. I loved the smell of wax and chalk. To me it was home in a funny way. Yet I couldn't.... The book just gathered pages, but didn't gather momentum or meaning. I was reading it to my wife, and I said, 'This is pretty bad, isn't it?' And she couldn't deny it.

"I'm in a kind of corner now, and don't know how I'll get out. In general, you avoid these corners if you wait to begin until you have a picture of the whole arc of the book. Most books have a simple underlying plot. In "Couples," it's the coronation of a new couple. By the end of the book, they have become a new couple. Within this basic movement there are many dances. Don't begin until you have some sense of the ending."

Is your approach to writing formal or more spontaneous?

"Early on I set a modest quota. I thought if I worked three hours a day and completed three pages a day at least, that should move matters along, and so it's been."

Seagulls

A gull, up close,

looks surprisingly stuffed.

His fluffy chest seems filled

with an inexpensive taxidermist's material

rather lumpily inserted. The legs,

unbent, are childish crayon strokes -

too simple to be workable.

And even the feather-markings,

whose intricate symmetry is the usual glory of birds,

are in the gull slovenly,

as if God makes too many

to make them very well.

Are they intelligent?

We imagine so, because they are ugly.

The sardonic one-eyed profile, slightly cross,

the narrow, ectomorphic head, badly combed,

the wide and nervous and well-muscled rump

all suggest deskwork: shipping rates by day, Schopenhauer

by night, and endless coffee...

Commencement, Pingree School

Among these North Shore tennis tans I sit,

In seersucker dressed, in small things fit;

Within a lovely tent of white I wait

To see my lovely daughter graduate.

Slim boughs of blossom tap the tent and stamp

Their shadows like a bower on the cloth.

The brides in two glide down the grassy ramp

To graduation's candle, moth and moth.

The Master makes his harrumphs. Music. Prayer.

Demure and close in rows, the seniors sway.

Class loyalty solidifies the air.

At every name, a body wends her way.

Through greenhouse shade and rustle to receive

A paper of divorce and endless leave.

As each accepts her scroll of rhetoric,

Up pops a Daddy with a Nikon.

Click.

(From Collected Poems 1953-1993. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 1993)

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