{"id":91789,"date":"2015-11-10T12:14:22","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T17:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=91789"},"modified":"2015-11-10T12:34:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T17:34:03","slug":"writing-is-a-nefarious-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/10\/writing-is-a-nefarious-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Is a Nefarious Business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3mLzU3dF6gY\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you been doing anything you shouldn\u2019t, William Carlos Williams?\u201d asks the venerable women\u2019s-hour host Mary McBride.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWriting for forty years!\u201d replies the poet with alarming jocularity. \u201cThat\u2019s a nefarious business, you know!\u201d\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s so interesting about this 1950 radio clip\u2014besides the fact that you can practically hear WCW\u2019s professional game-face deteriorate as his phlegmatic interviewer goes on\u2014is that you get a real sense of what the doctor\u2019s bedside manner must have been like. The old chestnuts, the complete silence\u2014but before that, the bonhomie. When McBride asks him to read a poem, for instance, he says coyly, \u201cThere is one called \u2018The Red Wheelbarrow\u2019 that people seem to enjoy. Let\u2019s see if I can remember it \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>But then, Williams gets very passionate: soliloquizing at length about the role of art and culture, and later about the rage he feels at seeing people die as a result of poverty and social injustice.\u00a0\u201dI work off my impotent anger!\u201d he says, indeed sounding angry. \u201cI want to bring it to people\u2019s attention, that\u2019s all I can say. Hoping they\u2019ll buy the book!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is a slightly awkward silence. \u201cDo you think your mother had a great deal to do with your finally choosing writing?\u201d McBride asks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think Mother had anything to do with it,\u201d he says somewhat impatiently. \u201cShe had a lot to do with my choosing medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then some fast-talking pianist plays \u201cLondon Bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review<em>, and the <\/em>Daily<em>\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHave you been doing anything you shouldn\u2019t, William Carlos Williams?\u201d asks the venerable women\u2019s-hour host Mary McBride.\u00a0 \u201cWriting for forty years!\u201d replies the poet with alarming jocularity. \u201cThat\u2019s a nefarious business, you know!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[12582,1132,20154,8476,7221,165,187,339,18695,3915],"class_list":["post-91789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-doctors","tag-interviews","tag-mary-mcbride","tag-medicine","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poverty","tag-radio","tag-the-red-wheelbarrow","tag-william-carlos-williams"],"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 to a William Carlos Williams Radio Interview from 1950<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 10, 2015 \u2013 \u201cHave you been doing anything you shouldn\u2019t, William Carlos Williams?\u201d asks the 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