First and briefly though, having now actually finished Ivan Doig's The Bartender's Tale, I feel that I may have been far too dismissive in my comments about it. I still love his older work first and foremost, but there is little doubt that this book is also a fine example of his outstanding craftsmanship. The last few pages are nothing short of jaw-dropping in the way he brings together his story, tying it all up neatly in that way that Hemingway referred to as the magic that must be performed over and over again at the finish. The ending to this Doig novel will stun you just when you think you have a seemingly simple story all figured out. That seems to be a tool and technique that he has perfected, as his earlier work, Bucking the Sun, is one of the best examples of such that I have ever read.
From the Stegner interview:
"I am a writer by sheerest accident. . . I sat down one afternoon and wrote a story just because I wanted to write a story. I wrote it in about two hours and sent it off to the Virginia Quarterly, I think, and they published it. Then you know you're hooked."He speaks vividly about creating truthful fiction. Part of the mystery behind good writing is that it feels and seems real--it is truthful in that it convinces the reader of a reality that is another country entirely.
"It had to have some forward motion . . . That's a technical problem: by the pure force of the writing to create a sense of involvement in real events . . . In making fiction, one of the things a writer must do is to make absolutely certain that he knows the mind he's dealing through . . . I have to try to become that person as far as possible. If I succeed, I get the tone of voice and the quality of mind that will persuade a reader to see and hear a real and credible human being, not a mouthpiece or a construct.
"Every morning you have to read over what you did yesterday, and if it doesn't persuade you, it has to be redone. Sometimes it takes three hours in the morning to get over the feeling that I've been wasting my time for the past week and that everything I've written up to that point is drivel. Until I can convince myself that I am speaking in the plausible, believable voice of the person I have invented, I can't go on. So the first job is to convince yourself, the second is to convince the reader. If you do the first, the second more or less follows."In response to a question about how much of his fiction is autobiographical:
"What does Wallace Stegner have to do with it? The very fact that some of my experience goes into the book is all but inescapable, and true for almost any writer I can name. Which is real and which is invented is a, nobody's business, and b, a rather silly preoccupation, and c, impossible to answer. By the time I'm through converting my life to fiction, it's half fiction at least and maybe more. People still come to me and say, 'Oh, it's too bad about your son who drowned in that surfing accident." Because some of All the Little Live Things reflects my immediate circumstances, they assume all of it does. People ought to learn to read better than that.
"You don't put placards up for the reader saying, This is my meaning. The whole business of writing is an attempt to arrive at truth, insofar as you can see it, as far as your capacity to unearth it permits. Truth is to be handled gingerly. That's an egg with a very thin shell. I'm not writing fables--where the moral is literally part of the form. I'm writing something from which the reader is supposed to deduce or induce any moral that's there. The moral value ought to be hiding in the material.
"When I was in my prime, so to speak, I would generally get anywhere from three to five or six pages a day, stuff that might have to be rewritten tomorrow, but that would essentially stay. That doesn't happen now. It takes more combing to do it now."
"It's important to get on with the writing, particularly when you're young and you can hardly wait to get down to work because you're boiling with something. But I'm not boiling that hard anymore. The critic is taking charge, and I'm just driving the cab. That's why it takes me so much longer now."Some of what I enjoyed most came in his responses about teaching writing, specifically about what is the most difficult lesson to impart and what is most important in developing a course of study for writers. This in spite of his generalizations about gender, of course.
"Assuming that a student is at a stage where he is still teachable--there is a time when you shouldn't try to teach him, when he is technically proficient and subtle and has his own ways for going about what he wants to say--one of the hardest things to teach him is Revise! Revise! Revise! And they won't revise, often. Many of them would rather write a new book than revise the old one. Revision is what separates the men from the boys. Sooner or later, you've got to learn to revise.
"It might be different for every individual. I would ask some questions. I suppose I would ask, Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer . . . Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it."
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