Description

Sinda Gregory and unidentified others join McCaffery in interviewing Apple. Apple’s family was Jewish, and his grandmother came from Europe, moved to Michigan, and never spoke English. When his father died he went back to Michigan, where his grandmother told him about her life: “I knew Yiddish before I knew English.” Their neighborhood was “layered” in languages. In high school, Apple made up stories and set them in type. He attended the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s where he got involved in politics but was later exposed to a “right-wing” environment at Stanford. He owned a health-food store in Houston, Texas, that did not do well, although his grandmother thought of him as a “merchant.” Apple says that although he is now critical of Israeli politics, he is a very strong Zionist, but is not in favor of ideologies. Apple’s “father was a great fan” of baseball and they would listen to and watch games together. At about 46 minutes, side two of the tape begins. Apple read John R. Tunis primarily, but then read “everything.” “When I wasn't outside playing ball I was reading.” He wanted to be a writer and did not know how, but he started writing in his undergraduate years. He does not write realism because he wants more speed “to get right to the center of everything right away.” He never knows what is going to happen next as he writes. He does not know how to type and does not like the sound of a typewriter, so he writes in longhand. He does not read literary criticism because writing is a different process. It is hard for him to teach because he must employ analytic thinking, so he cannot write imaginatively after lecturing. This interview may have been edited for Alive and Writing:Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s.