Interviews from the Edge: 50 Years of Conversations about Writing and Resistance
Given the title of this book, one expects to learn how writing brings social change and, since interviews are from “the edge,” one expects that change to be radical. Instead, most writers talk about their own work, expressing philosophical views they don’t defend.
Victor Hugo considered art essential to politics because it is essential to truth. Latin American independence leader, José Martí, thought poetry and politics inseparable, again because poetry gives truth. He said (370 times) that art is a sword. It cuts, sometimes brutally, as truth does.
Poetry of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde showed US feminism’s radical vision, not just for white, middle-class women. As poet, Rich wrote, “I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.” Rich and Lorde challenge how we think about who we are: as people, not just women.
But how does art change thinking and express truth?
Three essays stand out. Sister Helen Prejean explains how she wrote Dead Man Walking about the death penalty. She makes no broad claims about the human condition or the nature of evil. She discovered people are more than their worst deeds and she leads her readers, life by life, to that reality.
We feel with her. Prejean discovered the humanity of those on death row, fully acknowledging, as she does, their atrocious acts. She explains, practically, how she came to write. Political views emerge in her interview, but they emerge through Prejean’s own experience: of people and of writing.
James Baldwin describes the humility required to be a witness, not an example. Baldwin doesn’t write for an audience because that audience might not exist until he expresses so-far unexpressed truths. It is a point made by Toni Morrison: Artists are responsible for surprise. They express what is not expected—the voice of a black woman, for instance—as if it is, or can be, expected.
Baldwin explains how this happens, as does Ernest J. Gaines, whose understated affection for Louisiana plantation workers is linked to Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev. Russians, he says, “made their peasants real.”
But many authors’ insights are unexplained and undefended. Jack Gilbert, making intriguing remarks about Haight-Ashbury, says poets are magicians whose job is to live. Harold Jaffe says poets must “locate seams in the culture, penetrate them purposefully, subvert collectively.”
Such claims are obscure but that’s all we get.
Valerie Martin notes the “sad” fact that the United States’ “smoothly operating democracy” is “full of murderers and people who don’t read.” It is hard to see how a “smoothly operating democracy” results in citizens who are ignorant and kill each other.
If one already admires Martin, perhaps one understands.
The same is true about Lina Wertmuller, who declares disorder more interesting than order. Imposed order, she believes, is always dangerous. We don’t learn why she thinks this. Perhaps, if one shares her commitment to “absolute total freedom of expression,” such remarks are clear. Otherwise, the interview itself feels like “imposed order.”
Undefended statements matter if the authors themselves matter. They can’t matter otherwise because they’re not understood. Indeed, one feels, uncomfortably, that one is supposed to value insights, obscure as they are, because a famous artist articulates them.
Artist as artist is justification enough. Anais Nin makes the pretentious claim that only artists experience the “reward of finding your people . . . [and of being] a connecting link between people who think as you do and feel as you do.” It’s not clear, first, why it’s good to find people “who think as you do” but certainly it is not the case that only artists do this.
We live in an expressivist age: saying what one thinks, whatever it is, has merit just because one says it. Carolyn Heilbrun takes such expressivism for granted. About the multiple challenges of US feminism, she says: “We can just talk it out.” But that was 1985. We might think today that we need truth, more than expression.
Baldwin comments that Manifest Destiny is a lie and if one lives a lie, one harms oneself. But how does one discover the lies one lives? If one cares about this question, and wonders how writing—fiction, poetry and essays—is central to the answer, this book, except for a few interviews, disappoints.
Given the title of this book, one expects to learn how writing brings social change and, since interviews are from “the edge,” one expects that change to be radical. Instead, most writers talk about their own work, expressing philosophical views they don’t defend.
Victor Hugo considered art essential to politics because it is essential to truth. Latin American independence leader, José Martí, thought poetry and politics inseparable, again because poetry gives truth. He said (370 times) that art is a sword. It cuts, sometimes brutally, as truth does.
Poetry of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde showed US feminism’s radical vision, not just for white, middle-class women. As poet, Rich wrote, “I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.” Rich and Lorde challenge how we think about who we are: as people, not just women.
But how does art change thinking and express truth?
Three essays stand out. Sister Helen Prejean explains how she wrote Dead Man Walking about the death penalty. She makes no broad claims about the human condition or the nature of evil. She discovered people are more than their worst deeds and she leads her readers, life by life, to that reality.
We feel with her. Prejean discovered the humanity of those on death row, fully acknowledging, as she does, their atrocious acts. She explains, practically, how she came to write. Political views emerge in her interview, but they emerge through Prejean’s own experience: of people and of writing.
James Baldwin describes the humility required to be a witness, not an example. Baldwin doesn’t write for an audience because that audience might not exist until he expresses so-far unexpressed truths. It is a point made by Toni Morrison: Artists are responsible for surprise. They express what is not expected—the voice of a black woman, for instance—as if it is, or can be, expected.
Baldwin explains how this happens, as does Ernest J. Gaines, whose understated affection for Louisiana plantation workers is linked to Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev. Russians, he says, “made their peasants real.”
But many authors’ insights are unexplained and undefended. Jack Gilbert, making intriguing remarks about Haight-Ashbury, says poets are magicians whose job is to live. Harold Jaffe says poets must “locate seams in the culture, penetrate them purposefully, subvert collectively.”
Such claims are obscure but that’s all we get.
Valerie Martin notes the “sad” fact that the United States’ “smoothly operating democracy” is “full of murderers and people who don’t read.” It is hard to see how a “smoothly operating democracy” results in citizens who are ignorant and kill each other.
If one already admires Martin, perhaps one understands.
The same is true about Lina Wertmuller, who declares disorder more interesting than order. Imposed order, she believes, is always dangerous. We don’t learn why she thinks this. Perhaps, if one shares her commitment to “absolute total freedom of expression,” such remarks are clear. Otherwise, the interview itself feels like “imposed order.”
Undefended statements matter if the authors themselves matter. They can’t matter otherwise because they’re not understood. Indeed, one feels, uncomfortably, that one is supposed to value insights, obscure as they are, because a famous artist articulates them.
Artist as artist is justification enough. Anais Nin makes the pretentious claim that only artists experience the “reward of finding your people . . . [and of being] a connecting link between people who think as you do and feel as you do.” It’s not clear, first, why it’s good to find people “who think as you do” but certainly it is not the case that only artists do this.
We live in an expressivist age: saying what one thinks, whatever it is, has merit just because one says it. Carolyn Heilbrun takes such expressivism for granted. About the multiple challenges of US feminism, she says: “We can just talk it out.” But that was 1985. We might think today that we need truth, more than expression.
Baldwin comments that Manifest Destiny is a lie and if one lives a lie, one harms oneself. But how does one discover the lies one lives? If one cares about this question, and wonders how writing—fiction, poetry and essays—is central to the answer, this book, except for a few interviews, disappoints.
Given the title of this book, one expects to learn how writing brings social change and, since interviews are from “the edge,” one expects that change to be radical. Instead, most writers talk about their own work, expressing philosophical views they don’t defend.
Victor Hugo considered art essential to politics because it is essential to truth. Latin American independence leader, José Martí, thought poetry and politics inseparable, again because poetry gives truth. He said (370 times) that art is a sword. It cuts, sometimes brutally, as truth does.
Poetry of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde showed US feminism’s radical vision, not just for white, middle-class women. As poet, Rich wrote, “I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.” Rich and Lorde challenge how we think about who we are: as people, not just women.
But how does art change thinking and express truth?
Three essays stand out. Sister Helen Prejean explains how she wrote Dead Man Walking about the death penalty. She makes no broad claims about the human condition or the nature of evil. She discovered people are more than their worst deeds and she leads her readers, life by life, to that reality.
We feel with her. Prejean discovered the humanity of those on death row, fully acknowledging, as she does, their atrocious acts. She explains, practically, how she came to write. Political views emerge in her interview, but they emerge through Prejean’s own experience: of people and of writing.
James Baldwin describes the humility required to be a witness, not an example. Baldwin doesn’t write for an audience because that audience might not exist until he expresses so-far unexpressed truths. It is a point made by Toni Morrison: Artists are responsible for surprise. They express what is not expected—the voice of a black woman, for instance—as if it is, or can be, expected.
Baldwin explains how this happens, as does Ernest J. Gaines, whose understated affection for Louisiana plantation workers is linked to Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev. Russians, he says, “made their peasants real.”
But many authors’ insights are unexplained and undefended. Jack Gilbert, making intriguing remarks about Haight-Ashbury, says poets are magicians whose job is to live. Harold Jaffe says poets must “locate seams in the culture, penetrate them purposefully, subvert collectively.”
Such claims are obscure but that’s all we get.
Valerie Martin notes the “sad” fact that the United States’ “smoothly operating democracy” is “full of murderers and people who don’t read.” It is hard to see how a “smoothly operating democracy” results in citizens who are ignorant and kill each other.
If one already admires Martin, perhaps one understands.
The same is true about Lina Wertmuller, who declares disorder more interesting than order. Imposed order, she believes, is always dangerous. We don’t learn why she thinks this. Perhaps, if one shares her commitment to “absolute total freedom of expression,” such remarks are clear. Otherwise, the interview itself feels like “imposed order.”
Undefended statements matter if the authors themselves matter. They can’t matter otherwise because they’re not understood. Indeed, one feels, uncomfortably, that one is supposed to value insights, obscure as they are, because a famous artist articulates them.
Artist as artist is justification enough. Anais Nin makes the pretentious claim that only artists experience the “reward of finding your people . . . [and of being] a connecting link between people who think as you do and feel as you do.” It’s not clear, first, why it’s good to find people “who think as you do” but certainly it is not the case that only artists do this.
We live in an expressivist age: saying what one thinks, whatever it is, has merit just because one says it. Carolyn Heilbrun takes such expressivism for granted. About the multiple challenges of US feminism, she says: “We can just talk it out.” But that was 1985. We might think today that we need truth, more than expression.
Baldwin comments that Manifest Destiny is a lie and if one lives a lie, one harms oneself. But how does one discover the lies one lives? If one cares about this question, and wonders how writing—fiction, poetry and essays—is central to the answer, this book, except for a few interviews, disappoints.
Given the title of this book, one expects to learn how writing brings social change and, since interviews are from “the edge,” one expects that change to be radical. Instead, most writers talk about their own work, expressing philosophical views they don’t defend.
Victor Hugo considered art essential to politics because it is essential to truth. Latin American independence leader, José Martí, thought poetry and politics inseparable, again because poetry gives truth. He said (370 times) that art is a sword. It cuts, sometimes brutally, as truth does.
Poetry of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde showed US feminism’s radical vision, not just for white, middle-class women. As poet, Rich wrote, “I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.” Rich and Lorde challenge how we think about who we are: as people, not just women.
But how does art change thinking and express truth?
Three essays stand out. Sister Helen Prejean explains how she wrote Dead Man Walking about the death penalty. She makes no broad claims about the human condition or the nature of evil. She discovered people are more than their worst deeds and she leads her readers, life by life, to that reality.
We feel with her. Prejean discovered the humanity of those on death row, fully acknowledging, as she does, their atrocious acts. She explains, practically, how she came to write. Political views emerge in her interview, but they emerge through Prejean’s own experience: of people and of writing.
James Baldwin describes the humility required to be a witness, not an example. Baldwin doesn’t write for an audience because that audience might not exist until he expresses so-far unexpressed truths. It is a point made by Toni Morrison: Artists are responsible for surprise. They express what is not expected—the voice of a black woman, for instance—as if it is, or can be, expected.
Baldwin explains how this happens, as does Ernest J. Gaines, whose understated affection for Louisiana plantation workers is linked to Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev. Russians, he says, “made their peasants real.”
But many authors’ insights are unexplained and undefended. Jack Gilbert, making intriguing remarks about Haight-Ashbury, says poets are magicians whose job is to live. Harold Jaffe says poets must “locate seams in the culture, penetrate them purposefully, subvert collectively.”
Such claims are obscure but that’s all we get.
Valerie Martin notes the “sad” fact that the United States’ “smoothly operating democracy” is “full of murderers and people who don’t read.” It is hard to see how a “smoothly operating democracy” results in citizens who are ignorant and kill each other.
If one already admires Martin, perhaps one understands.
The same is true about Lina Wertmuller, who declares disorder more interesting than order. Imposed order, she believes, is always dangerous. We don’t learn why she thinks this. Perhaps, if one shares her commitment to “absolute total freedom of expression,” such remarks are clear. Otherwise, the interview itself feels like “imposed order.”
Undefended statements matter if the authors themselves matter. They can’t matter otherwise because they’re not understood. Indeed, one feels, uncomfortably, that one is supposed to value insights, obscure as they are, because a famous artist articulates them.
Artist as artist is justification enough. Anais Nin makes the pretentious claim that only artists experience the “reward of finding your people . . . [and of being] a connecting link between people who think as you do and feel as you do.” It’s not clear, first, why it’s good to find people “who think as you do” but certainly it is not the case that only artists do this.
We live in an expressivist age: saying what one thinks, whatever it is, has merit just because one says it. Carolyn Heilbrun takes such expressivism for granted. About the multiple challenges of US feminism, she says: “We can just talk it out.” But that was 1985. We might think today that we need truth, more than expression.
Baldwin comments that Manifest Destiny is a lie and if one lives a lie, one harms oneself. But how does one discover the lies one lives? If one cares about this question, and wonders how writing—fiction, poetry and essays—is central to the answer, this book, except for a few interviews, disappoints.