WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.420 align:middle line:84% I think that I should explain the phrase-- 00:00:03.420 --> 00:00:07.470 align:middle line:84% my saying that I have world enough and time. 00:00:07.470 --> 00:00:09.360 align:middle line:84% True, my book has been the center 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:17.190 align:middle line:84% of a furor of blast and praise, and, in the cases of blast, 00:00:17.190 --> 00:00:21.450 align:middle line:84% my publisher has ascertained that no one who blasted 00:00:21.450 --> 00:00:24.270 align:middle line:90% read the book at all. 00:00:24.270 --> 00:00:27.630 align:middle line:84% In fact, they didn't even read the book jacket very well. 00:00:27.630 --> 00:00:31.440 align:middle line:84% I was astonished at this blast since the book was 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:37.770 align:middle line:84% written with a total disregard of the negative side 00:00:37.770 --> 00:00:41.970 align:middle line:84% of American culture, and with a great belief 00:00:41.970 --> 00:00:44.100 align:middle line:84% in American culture, particularly 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:50.250 align:middle line:84% as I am university-oriented and not Madison Avenue-oriented. 00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:54.720 align:middle line:84% I met an eminent psychiatrist at a party 00:00:54.720 --> 00:00:57.750 align:middle line:90% for Up the Down Staircase. 00:00:57.750 --> 00:01:00.780 align:middle line:84% Val Kaufman is a dear friend of mine 00:01:00.780 --> 00:01:03.390 align:middle line:84% and she invited me to dinner because she 00:01:03.390 --> 00:01:06.090 align:middle line:90% was one of my readers. 00:01:06.090 --> 00:01:08.640 align:middle line:84% She's one of the great authorities 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:11.790 align:middle line:90% on suicide in this world-- 00:01:11.790 --> 00:01:15.040 align:middle line:84% really a great authority on suicide. 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:17.340 align:middle line:84% So I thought perhaps she could explain the blast to me. 00:01:17.340 --> 00:01:19.530 align:middle line:84% I said, why are they blasting, especially when 00:01:19.530 --> 00:01:20.430 align:middle line:90% they haven't read. 00:01:20.430 --> 00:01:25.080 align:middle line:84% She said, well, my dear, you confront them with this fact. 00:01:25.080 --> 00:01:28.410 align:middle line:84% You have world enough and time, and they 00:01:28.410 --> 00:01:33.360 align:middle line:84% have been sitting around for years with their goofballs 00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:36.360 align:middle line:84% and their alcohol and their nervous breakdowns 00:01:36.360 --> 00:01:39.060 align:middle line:84% saying that no one in American society 00:01:39.060 --> 00:01:44.220 align:middle line:84% can take the time to write a novel of this length 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:46.410 align:middle line:90% and seriousness-- 00:01:46.410 --> 00:01:50.400 align:middle line:84% that it's too late, that the world does not permit it. 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:53.670 align:middle line:84% All the while, I was just peacefully writing it. 00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:59.820 align:middle line:84% I used to hear radio programs during the writing in which I 00:01:59.820 --> 00:02:05.070 align:middle line:84% would hear seminars of critics sitting around moaning 00:02:05.070 --> 00:02:07.980 align:middle line:84% the fact that no one could take the time 00:02:07.980 --> 00:02:11.910 align:middle line:84% to write a novel, which is, after all, only half 00:02:11.910 --> 00:02:15.630 align:middle line:84% the length of Proust in our time. 00:02:15.630 --> 00:02:19.230 align:middle line:84% And I would laugh like the cat that 00:02:19.230 --> 00:02:22.290 align:middle line:90% swallowed several canaries. 00:02:22.290 --> 00:02:24.660 align:middle line:90% They're still appalled. 00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:27.840 align:middle line:84% I think the nicest thing of all which was said 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:30.810 align:middle line:84% was when I was introduced by a Jesuit 00:02:30.810 --> 00:02:33.150 align:middle line:84% at Fordham, who said it will take 00:02:33.150 --> 00:02:36.420 align:middle line:84% the literary world several years to absorb the shock of Miss 00:02:36.420 --> 00:02:38.040 align:middle line:90% McIntosh, My Darling. 00:02:38.040 --> 00:02:42.180 align:middle line:84% I don't know why it should be a shock that an American would 00:02:42.180 --> 00:02:45.510 align:middle line:84% take as long as Joyce or not as long 00:02:45.510 --> 00:02:48.870 align:middle line:90% as Proust to write a novel. 00:02:48.870 --> 00:02:53.430 align:middle line:84% Why they will accept this from a European with some equanimity 00:02:53.430 --> 00:03:00.630 align:middle line:84% but are appalled if an American has that kind of dedication. 00:03:00.630 --> 00:03:05.460 align:middle line:84% I feel that the serious and fabulous side of life 00:03:05.460 --> 00:03:11.040 align:middle line:90% are eminently American-- 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:15.480 align:middle line:84% that we are the great dreamers, that we are the great believers 00:03:15.480 --> 00:03:20.400 align:middle line:84% in the literary art, that our literature in every century 00:03:20.400 --> 00:03:27.060 align:middle line:84% has been in its major statements the literature 00:03:27.060 --> 00:03:32.160 align:middle line:84% of high seriousness, dealing with illusion and the way 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:35.370 align:middle line:90% it impinges upon reality. 00:03:35.370 --> 00:03:42.870 align:middle line:84% I can cite Hawthorne and Poe and Melville and many others. 00:03:42.870 --> 00:03:46.710 align:middle line:84% I was just explaining to some of the professors 00:03:46.710 --> 00:03:49.470 align:middle line:84% here that I unfortunately had an education 00:03:49.470 --> 00:03:50.910 align:middle line:90% the University of Chicago. 00:03:50.910 --> 00:03:55.140 align:middle line:84% I was an Elizabethan, Jacobian major, so that to me, 00:03:55.140 --> 00:04:00.540 align:middle line:84% poetic prose is as natural as the air I breathe. 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:06.750 align:middle line:84% In very early years I wanted to be a novelist-- 00:04:06.750 --> 00:04:08.370 align:middle line:90% a short story writer. 00:04:08.370 --> 00:04:12.090 align:middle line:84% Then when I was a freshman at Indiana University 00:04:12.090 --> 00:04:14.310 align:middle line:84% I awakened one morning with the conviction 00:04:14.310 --> 00:04:16.470 align:middle line:90% that I would be a poet. 00:04:16.470 --> 00:04:20.220 align:middle line:84% I sometimes regret that decision since it kept me 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:24.810 align:middle line:84% for 10 years in the field of poetry as a lyric art. 00:04:24.810 --> 00:04:27.480 align:middle line:84% I know this was a great discipline and preparation 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:30.480 align:middle line:84% for a prose but I sometimes wish that I 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:34.170 align:middle line:90% had gone straight into fiction. 00:04:34.170 --> 00:04:38.010 align:middle line:84% But I came to the novel by route a long road, 00:04:38.010 --> 00:04:42.480 align:middle line:84% through poetry and through non-fiction, 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:47.130 align:middle line:84% finally to that which I love the most of all forms-- 00:04:47.130 --> 00:04:52.470 align:middle line:84% the novel as a as an extended poem, 00:04:52.470 --> 00:04:54.675 align:middle line:90% almost as an extended metaphor. 00:04:54.675 --> 00:04:57.180 align:middle line:90% 00:04:57.180 --> 00:05:01.180 align:middle line:84% Certainly Moby Dick is the novel as poem, 00:05:01.180 --> 00:05:07.090 align:middle line:84% and Joyce is, and I think all the great novels are poems, 00:05:07.090 --> 00:05:09.810 align:middle line:90% whether lyric or epic.