John Steinbeck in 1949. Photograph courtesy of Los Angeles Daily News via Wikimedia Commons. LICENSED UNDER CC BY 4.0.
Each week, The Paris Review unlocks stories, poems, and interviews from our archive for our readers. This week, we’ve unlocked the two parts of John Steinbeck’s Art of Fiction interview from issue no. 45 (Fall 1969) and issue no. 63 (Fall 1975).
“I have noticed so many of the reviews of my work show a fear and a hatred of ideas and speculations,” wrote John Steinbeck in an unsent letter to his editor, Pascal Covici. “It seems to be true,” he continued, “that people can only take parables fully clothed with flesh. Any attempt to correlate in terms of thought is frightening. And if that is so, East of Eden is going to take a bad beating because it is full of such things.”
For issue no. 48 of the Review, published in the fall of 1969, the magazine’s editorial staff compiled a number of comments Steinbeck had made over the years—on topics like “the art of writing,” “titles,” and “luck”—mostly sourced from the unsent letters Steinbeck wrote to Covici while drafting East of Eden. In the fall of 1975, the Review published a continuation of that interview, including passages in which Steinbeck comments on “hack writing,” “having a writer in the family,” and “fame.” This week, we’ve unlocked both interviews from the archive.
INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 45 John Steinbeck
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—“Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.” Of course a writer rearranges life, shortens time intervals, sharpens events, and devises beginnings, middles and ends. We do have curtains—in a day, morning, noon and night, in a man, birth, growth and death. From issue no. 48 (Fall 1969)
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—“Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.” Of course a writer rearranges life, shortens time intervals, sharpens events, and devises beginnings, middles and ends. We do have curtains—in a day, morning, noon and night, in a man, birth, growth and death.
From issue no. 48 (Fall 1969)
My first gem called forth quite adverse criticism, although I considered it extremely apropos at the time. It was published on a board fence, and was in the form of free verse. It ran something like this: Gertie loves Tom, and Tom loves Gertie. From issue no. 63 (Fall 1975)
My first gem called forth quite adverse criticism, although I considered it extremely apropos at the time. It was published on a board fence, and was in the form of free verse. It ran something like this:
Gertie loves Tom, and Tom loves Gertie.
From issue no. 63 (Fall 1975)
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Hazel Byers is the Review’s engagement editor.
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