Description

Apple reads an essay, “My Love Affair with English,” from the New York Times of March 22, 1981. He says he will answer any questions about the world, but “no homework.” Next he reads the story “Eskimo Love,” published in Esquire Magazine of April 1, 1984. Someone asks whether “Oscar,” the protagonist of “Eskimo Love,” is based on anyone. Apple begins to answer before side one ends at around 47 minutes. Questioners are not identified. About the reading, “It’s always astonishing to hear it out loud.” In his essay he says he tried to tell the truth, but in fiction his “touchstone always was the rhythm.” There is an advantage in knowing more than one language because “you learn to lie in two languages.” He teaches at Rice University but says that it is not related to Texas, and he would live the same way no matter where he was. Writers pre-select themselves, but writing can be taught “because you can help them to hear themselves.” “It’s not like training for any other work. It’s like training for the Olympics when there are no games, … so you have to like the training.” He did not publish until he was 30-something and did not think early about being a professional writer. Asked if he “labors” at writing, he says, “I labor very much.” He would “love to sell millions of copies” and would write a best-seller “if I could.” He makes “half a living” from his writing, “but I do not mind teaching.” There is no “great conspiracy against quality,” but only good business for the publishers and big bookstores. Saying, “I think we need designer books,” Apple comments, “We’re really living in a time when there are so many good prose writers in our language,” adding, “look around.” McCaffery shuts off the recorder while beginning to talk.This material may have been edited for Alive and Writing:Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s.