Major Writers on Writers

I love to hear big-time writers criticizing other big-time writers, or even just telling stories out of class about them. For most of us, that's out of bounds; we don't have the standing to do so.

Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac's rambling style, "That's not writing, that's typing!" Last week at the San Miguel Literary Festival, Tom Robbins said, "But much of what Kerouac wrote was as good or better than what Capote wrote." Ouch. As it turns out, Kerouac was constantly writing, and those close to him said he was always revising and re-writing, although his style makes it seem like a stream-of-consciousness first draft.

Robbins also addressed research in his workshop. He said it should be woven in, so that it becomes a natural part of the writing. "Not like Michener, who spent the first 40 pages of his book, Mexico just spouting out research."

Then there's Michener criticizing Hemingway, although he revered his work. Hem's friend A.E. Hotchner was asked to edit a Hem piece for Life magazine that was supposed to be 10,000 words. Life gave the 120,000 word manuscript to Hotchner to edit. Michener said it was incredibly overwritten and full of repetition and run-on sentences. The polished manuscript ran to about 70,000 words, and when the final version got down to about 45,000 words, it was pretty good. Hmmm...back then they had REAL editors! Today, a book has to be ready to go or publishers won't even look at it.

Once, when Hemingway was just starting out, he gave a manuscript to F. Scott Fitzgerald to critique. Well, Fitzgerald let him have it in a detailed and biting way. Hem scribbled on it, "Kiss my ass." But surely he made some changes to the book after that.

Of course, there was always this ongoing competition/discussion between Hemingway and Faulkner on style. Hem said he knew those big words that Faulkner used, he just preferred to use simpler ones. Personally, I think writing should be clear and succinct, unless a particular thought or passage demands it. Some of Faulkner's stuff you can just get lost in. Like James Joyce.

Michener said of Truman Capote, "I grew ever more grateful to him for playing the role of the genius-clown who reminds the general public that artists are always different and sometimes radically so."

Funny thing about Truman Capote: On cross-country trips he would make the driver take him to a library in some rural county seat and wait while Capote ran inside. When asked what he was doing, Capote said, "Checking the card catalogs. In this one Mailer had seven cards. Gore Vidal had eight. But I had eleven."

The wonderfully crass and honest (and butt-ugly!) poet, Charles Bukowski, when he was rising up, wrote that he knew there was room for him in the literary world, since he had read Tolstoy and all the others, and they just weren't that great. I enjoyed reading Bukowski's novels, especially, Ham on Rye, Women, and Hollywood. They read fast and they're funny and entertaining; sometimes a little gross. Read them and you'll know what I mean.

Bukowski's favorite writer was John Fante. I like him too. A lot. I wish he would've written more novels. Although he was known mostly as a screenwriter, his style is very efficient and clear. I loved his novel, Ask the Dust. Every single sentence is well-written. He also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Nelson Algren's Walk on the Wild Side," which is set in New Orleans.

And then there's Andrei Codrescu's story of how, when he as a young man in New York, fresh from Romania and barely able to speak English, the Beat poet Allen Ginsburg set up a meeting for Codrescu with Wiliam S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch, Junkie). During lunch, Burroughs slid his cold, bony hand on Codrescu's thigh. Codrescu, (as he tells it) told Burroughs he wasn't into that.

You know that Burroughs lived on the Westbank of New Orleans? Yes, in 1948 he lived in Algiers. The cops were always trying to arrest him for shooting heroin, but they could never catch him. So the city council passed an ordinance that you could be arrested for having track marks on your arms. Then the cops picked him up for that.

Burroughs was also arrested after police searched his home and found letters between him and Ginsberg referring to a possible delivery of pot. Burroughs fled to Mexico to escape imprisonment in Louisiana. Burroughs planned to stay in Mexico for at least five years, the length of his charge's statute of limitations.

Burroughs used to shoot an apple off his wife's head, as a drunken game. In 1951, Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a boozed-up game of "William Tell" at a party above the American-owned Bounty Bar in Mexico City. He spent 13 days in jail before his brother came to Mexico City and bribed Mexican lawyers and officials, which allowed Burroughs to be released on bail while he awaited trial for the killing (he never did).