Gabriel Garcia Marquez; thoughts on using tape recorders

Interviewer: How do you feel about using the tape recorder?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The problem is that the moment you know the interview is taped, your attitude changes. In my case I immediately take a defensive attitude. As a journalist, I feel that we still haven’t learned how to use a tape recorder to do an interview. The best way, I feel, is to have a long conversation without the journalist taking any notes. Then afterward he should reminisce about the conversation and write it down as an impression of what he felt, not necessarily using the exact words expressed. Another useful method is to take notes and then interpret them with a certain loyalty to the person interviewed. What ticks you off about the tape recording everything is that it is not loyal to the person who is being interviewed, because it even records and remembers when you make an ass of yourself. That’s why when there is a tape recorder, I am conscious that I’m being interviewed; when there isn’t a tape recorder, I talk in an unconscious and completely natural way.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez from a 1981 interview; ‘The Paris Review Interviews vol II’.

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Joan Didion on writer’s block and rewrites

From a 2006 interview with Joan Didion; ‘The Paris Review Interviews vol I’.

Rewrites can plague all writers. If you get blocked, they can be effective tools to at least keep you writing. Is it better to put something on the page vs. staring at your blank screen/page for hours? I prefer long walks in the forest, let the sounds and sights of nature clear my head and make space for new material. Didion had the following interesting take on rewriting and evading what she accurately calls “blank terror”. To each their own.

Interviewer: Do you do a lot of rewriting?

Didion: When I’m working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm. Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won’t go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting. At the end of the day, I mark up the pages I’ve done – pages or page – all the way back to page one. I mark them up so that I can retype them in the morning. It gets me past the blank terror.

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Jan Morris on tools for writing

Interviewer: Has technology, notably the advent of the word processor, changed your technique or style in any way?

Morris: I do use a word processor, but it hasn’t changed my writing in any way whatsoever. The belief that style and mental capacity depend upon the instrument one uses is a superstition. I will write with anything at any time. I’ve used then all – the fountain pen, manual typewriter, electric typewriter – and none have made the slightest difference. But with a word processor I won’t type the first few drafts on disk because there is the temptation simply to fiddle with the text, to juggle with it. The word processor is useful to me only for the final draft of the thing. I do think that the word processor for a writer’s last draft is a wonderful thing because you can go on and on polishing the thing. (From a 1997 interview with Jan Morris in ‘The Paris Review Interviews’ vol III) On an interesting side note, Jan Morris was born James Humphrey Morris in 1926 and underwent a complete sex change in 1972. At the time of this interview Morris still lived with his/her former wife.

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Morley’s Christmas Pageant

I re-read Stuart McLean’s short story ‘Morley’s Christmas Pageant’ and as with every Christmas re-read, found myself chuckling at some line on every page. This masterful story teller knew better than almost any writer I’ve read (and I read a lot) how to spin a yarn. It’s become a kind of Christmas tradition for me, the re-reading this tale of a school Christmas pageant gone absurdly and hilariously wrong. Whatever your Christmas tradition, be it watching a favorite Christmas movie, going for that Christmas walk in the woods, whatever it is, may you find joy and comfort in renewing your faith and friendships at this wonderful time of year.

Here’s a paragraph from Stuart’s story, if you have not yet read this super funny tale, you can imagine how it unfolds.

“Dave was staring at Gretchen Schuyler who was at the top of the scaffold, holding her lit candle over her head, as if it were an Olympic torch. The flame was only inches from the brass nozzle of the school’s sprinkler system.”

Merry Christmas y’all!

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Bottles and books.

I sit at the bar, marvelling at row upon row of bottles. Rums in many hues. Vodka’s all clear but labelled to catch your eye. Tito. Grey Goose. Stolychnaya. Whiskey’s galore. And it struck me how similar this is to flipping through volumes at a library. Or a bookstore. You take down a title that catches your eye and read the dust jacket. Open it to a random page and read a paragraph. Intriguing? Or put it back on the shelf. That’s how I decide whether to order a new whiskey. If you know the barkeep well enough, he will pour you a little sip for sample. Not many barkeeps do this, so when you do find one who is amenable to keeping you seated at his bar, you are a lucky soul. Especially now. Most will at least allow you to have a look at the bottle. Mason at the Drake Devonshire bar is quite open to letting me look at some brands I was not familiar with. There was a dark rum, “Black Gosling” which I must try next time. Great name. And a mezcal, name escapes me now. That is probably not a beverage you wish to indulge in on your own. Mezcal. It can result in very odd and unpredictable behavior. Then again, so can most any intoxicant if you have enough of it! I limit myself to one Pike Creek and n Americano. The whisky is clean. No floral notes. Just caramel and oak. A fine sipper.

Anyway, that was my thought du jour. Bars and bookshelves. Bottles and books. Have a great pandemic day y’all.

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