{"id":101891,"date":"2016-08-24T16:37:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T20:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=101891"},"modified":"2016-08-25T10:37:04","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T14:37:04","slug":"jean-rhys-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/24\/jean-rhys-speaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Rhys Speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UN_6xJJNphY\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Jean Rhys was born in Dominica, an island among the British West Indies. Though she spent most of her life in England, her time in the Caribbean\u00a0left her with a distinctive, lilting accent. It sounds beautiful to me, but in 1909 it got her kicked out of the Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was supposedly \u201cslow to improve\u201d it. In this minute-long clip, she dispenses some dour wisdom about writing and happiness. (The rumors are true: they\u2019re inversely\u00a0related.) If you don\u2019t have a pair of headphones handy\u2014or if you\u2019re just paralyzed with fear at the thought of hearing a deceased person\u2019s voice\u2014here\u2019s a rough transcript:\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When I was excited about life, I didn\u2019t want to write at all. I\u2019ve never written about being happy, never. I didn\u2019t want to\u2014besides, I don\u2019t think you can describe being happy. I\u2019ve never had a long period of being happy. Do you think anybody has? I think, I think you can be peaceful for quite a long time\u2014but to be happy is different, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0And that\u2019s a bit rarer, I can\u2019t help feeling.*<\/p>\n<p>But then altogether, I think, well, I think if I had to choose I\u2019d rather be happy than write. If I had my life all over again and could choose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Though I can\u2019t confirm its provenance, I think the clip must have its origins in <em>The Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s interview with Rhys, published in 1979, the year she died. The\u00a0interview text isn\u2019t available online, but I\u2019ve found a portion of it that aligns almost verbatim with the recording:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When I was excited about life, I didn\u2019t want to write at all. I\u2019ve never written when I was happy. I didn\u2019t want to. But I\u2019ve never had a long period of being happy. Do you think anyone has? I think you can be peaceful for a long time. When I think about it, if I had to choose, I\u2019d rather be happy than write. You see, there\u2019s very little invention in my books. What came first with most of them was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down. I found when I was a child that if I could put the hurt into words, it would go. It leaves a sort of melancholy behind and then it goes. I think it was Somerset Maugham who said that if you \u201cwrite out\u201d a thing \u2026 it doesn\u2019t trouble you so much. You may be left with a vague melancholy, but at least it\u2019s not misery\u2014I suppose it\u2019s like a Catholic going to confession, or like psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Interested parties should be sure check out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Jean-Rhys-1931-1966-Twentieth-Century-Classics\/dp\/0140189068\" target=\"_blank\">Rhys\u2019s letters<\/a>\u2014sadly out of print now\u2014which often find her in rare form.\u00a0They read, of course, like rays of candied sunshine. Here she is contemplating\u00a0suicide:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Last night I was thinking \u2018If I could jump out of the window one bang and I\u2019d be out of it.\u2019 For this is the sixth floor.<\/p>\n<p>Then I thought of Max\u2019s story of the old lady who went to church with her ear trumpet. And so the stern Scotch sexton or verger or something, eyed her a bit. Then he said \u2018Madam one toot and you\u2019re oot.\u2019 Perhaps that\u2019s what it would be like, One toot and you\u2019re oot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Our Fall 1979 issue, which contains the full Jean Rhys interview, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/back-issues\/76\">is for sale on our online store<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>*Thanks to Emma Seaber for helping me hear this line correctly.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jean Rhys was born in Dominica, an island among the British West Indies. Though she spent most of her life in England, her time in the Caribbean\u00a0left her with a distinctive, lilting accent. It sounds beautiful to me, but in 1909 it got her kicked out of the Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7646],"tags":[17105,1132,24141,4444,182,11581,14627,6024,7782,9311,4445],"class_list":["post-101891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look-2","tag-despair","tag-interviews","tag-issue-76","tag-jean-rhys","tag-letters","tag-listen","tag-recordings","tag-suicide","tag-the-art-of-fiction","tag-voices","tag-wide-sargasso-sea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Listen: A Rare Recording of Jean Rhys\u2019s Distinctive Voice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a clip from her Paris Review interview, the author discusses the gulf between writing and happiness.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/24\/jean-rhys-speaks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jean Rhys Speaks by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 24, 2016 \u2013 Jean Rhys was born in Dominica, an island among the British West Indies. 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