PETER
QUINONES: |
I found the following passage from your novel to be so obvious, empathic, and true; yet, it's evidently so hard for so many folks to accept and practice:
He sat there watching the white folks. Well-dressed folks falling in and coming out of the big department store looking like they were day-dreaming or mad about something. White folks, they strutting or jumping to the same rhythm anybody else strutting or jumping to. They got the blues when it comes to love, like us, dreaming in the moon, like us, high-toned marrying down to common, like us, they die in the arms of peoples who love them, like us, they dream they hearts gon mend and be thinking love gon overcome everything, like us, try to make it they North, they South, they Sunday and they Monday, they forever, like us, and they too got this way of seeing theyself in the face of the peoples they love instead of the face of they love one, like us. He sighed.
I wonder if you could comment on this passage a bit, for us, and say if you feel it has particular relevance to some of our current events, politics and society, today? |
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CLARENCE
MAJOR: |
Sure. It expresses what President Bill Clinton used to say and what Senator Barack Obama is now saying: culturally, historically and socially, there is much more that all Americans—particularly those with roots here before the Civil War—share than there is that separates them. |
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| PQ: |
There are a couple of episodes in the novel where Manfred observes how happy Cleo is when she listens to church music, as opposed to his blues; the question "What did God have that he didn't have?" pops into his mind. However, he realizes that asking her about it would probably be a big mistake. I wonder if you could tell us what points you're making with this situation?
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CM: |
Manfred doesn't know if there is a God; he doesn't have Cleo's faith; faith implies that one accepts the notion of God without evidence or proof. For whatever combination of reasons, Manfred is a skeptic. Not that the evidence isn't there, he simply hasn't seen any evidence that God exists; his position is "maybe he does, maybe he doesn't". In the novel, Manfred doesn't question the existence of God, but if he did, he'd want to know why, for most people, is God necessarily male. I think if Manfred allowed himself to think about the issue, he'd have many questions. And no answers, of course. |
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PQ: |
Manfred encounters incredible racism from several characters—his boss Eliot, his landlord Sofia—as well as personal demons like drinking, hanging out with Solly, and the impulse toward abusing his family...but he still has a kind of fundamental optimism and zest for life, is that accurate? |
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CM: |
Yes. I see Manfred as a happy-go-lucky sort of guy. He goes forth in the world with optimism, much like that of the picaro figure in literature. This is where his brand of faith comes in. It seems to be based on some sort of inscrutable notion that everything somehow will turn out OK, if not entirely well. He does know that there is good and evil in the world; and that both, inevitably, are in himself and he in them; and he also assumes that both are as natural as the air he breathes; and he believes, perhaps naïvely, that they will always balance each other. That final scene suggests this state of mind. Manfred would not be able to talk with you about good and evil in moral/ethical terms. |
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PQ: |
There's a seriocomic scene in the barbershop where a group of the guys are having an argument over which race is more evil—blacks or whites. Kenny takes a very intellectual approach, Marion says the measurement of evil shouldn't be by race but by sex (women are much more evil than men, he claims), others choose one race or the other or say they're equal, etc.. The argument is basically unresolved...presumably because the question is a misleading one, to begin with? |
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CM: |
Yes, the question sets up a misleading premise. Some of what I said about Manfred's sense of good and evil also applies here. Even the guys in the barbershop—most of them, anyway—sense that no single group owns a bigger share of either of good or evil. |
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PQ: |
For our students of composing fiction: the way you write, here—pretty effortlessly shifting from Manfred's consciousness to objective narration—is very instructive. Is that something you do in all your fiction? How hard is it to get inside and inhabit a character's mind that way? |
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CM: |
This system of shifting back and forth between interior monologue and objective narrative is something I learned from reading James Joyce—particularly his novel, Ulysses, where just about every narrative device can be found. Creative writing programs in fiction over the last forty years have relied on the mantra: "show, don't tell". I've tried to shake the stranglehold of that notion, a bit, by telling students that it's fine to gravitate to whatever approach feels comfortable. For example, I tell them to read nineteenth century narrative novels to see how effective "telling" can be. One can take an old system and recreate it in new terms. |
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PQ: |
A couple of questions about your paintings, if we may. First, it's fascinating that you do a lot of still lifes. What attracts you to that particular genre? |
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CM: |
I paint still lifes, landscapes, interiors, but mostly figurative work. Subject matter really does not interest me as much as the process, the experience of making the composition to life on its own terms. I'm not interested in holding a mirror up to nature or life but in creating something that has its own nature and life; something to come to life on its own terms. |
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PQ: |
What are some of the differences in practicing the medium of painting as opposed to writing, for the artist? For the reader/viewer? |
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CM: |
The differences are fascinating. Painting has its basis in space; and poetry, for example, has its basis in time. Poetry is a spoken art, and it is also closely related to music, which also happens in time. The differences might, on the surface, seem pretty basic 'til you start trying to explain the differences between time and space. As Einstein proves, one can't exist without the other. It's true that you can read poetry (without speaking it) and you are more likely to read a novel silently to yourself than out loud. In this visual sense, both poetry and fiction share a premise with painting. |
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