One of the highlights of last term was my interview with screenwriter/author William Nicholson.
My favorite, favorite part of the interview (and it was a really good interview) was when he talked about Henry James.
Now, I’m something of a James fan. But what got to me about the interview was how Nicholson addressed him as if he were a real person. That sounds weird, I know, but I’ve never felt that kind of temerity when it comes to great writers—
Especially with someone like James.
I’ve pasted that part of the interview below. It didn’t make the final cut in my article for TCS.
A little background: Henry James attempted a career as a playwright and failed quite miserably.
I read somewhere that most writers tend to be good at one genre. For example, Henry James was a horrible playwright. What do you think has enabled you to have success across genre and which genre do you prefer?
I think anybody could work across-genre. Henry James could have done it as well. The thing is—it’s no good to write the intensely, psychologically internalized novels he writes and then to think that they’ll transfer to stage, because they won’t. And that’s fine. So what he should have done is done his first draft, taken it along to some actors and said, “Tell me about this.” And they could then say, “Well, nothing’s happening here, Henry! I’ve got nothing to act! I’m just sitting here reading out a book, please give me something to act, drama means drama, things have to happen.” And he would have said, “Oh, what do you mean?” And if he’d followed that line for a bit, he probably would have written fabulous plays.
But that takes a kind of surrender of the ego, which is hard to do, as you get older. And after all, he was a remarkably good novelist. The sadness I feel is not that his plays failed but that he minded so much. I want to say to him, “Look Henry, just relax, you’ve done well. You’ve done some good books. Enough already.” But that’s how people are, they always don’t respect the things that they get their success in and yearn after something else.