Fox: The last line is, “He only wanted to be good.” It’s a kind of statement about the fact that he is good. He only wanted to be good, but he is good. Despite everything about it. He does what is required in this life. He follows the arrow to where it hits the earth or the target. In a stumbling, fumbling way. I remember the cat and dog in that scene. Braided snow. And he remembers that so vividly. And in the end of Desperate Characters I had the vague thought of MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN, the biblical saying. The writing on the wall. But I only thought of that afterwards, not when I was working. The ink runs down the wall.
Rumpus: In another interview you said, “A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.” And looking at the endings of your novels and stories, in ‘Grace’ it ends with a phone call with them, “…trying to make up their minds if they wanted to see each other again.” In The God of Nightmares, Nina sits by her husband after the revelation of the secret affair and in Desperate Characters they watch the ink run down the wall. These endings remind me of the endings of Bergman and Antonioni films.
Fox: Yes, very much. Jeanne Moreau was in one that was by Antonioni.
Rumpus: La Notte.
Fox: Yes. I remember that. And the other one. I remember a window being opened on the Mediterrean.
Rumpus: L’Avventura?
Fox: Yes.
Rumpus: She touches him at the end of that one, she accepts him after he has had sex with another woman. And many of your endings are about whether the two characters will touch and hold onto one another at the end. In many they are touching and then they stop touching. But in L’Avventura they do remain touching. So actually the ending of L’Avventura is more hopeful than some of your endings. Which is neither here nor there. The bigger question seems, will these people stay together and even do they want to stay together. But less gets resolved. And for that I almost know more. It’s like a directive to the reader—the last line of the Rilke poem is ‘You must change your life’—something akin to ‘now you’ve seen these people, how are you going to go on in your own life?’
Fox: Well let me tell you about Portrait of Ivan which is a children’s book. It’s a book about a boy who has a business-like father and his mother has drowned. And he’s being painted—his father has ordered a portrait of him. So he goes to the painter’s studio and there’s a little old lady who reads aloud to him, but for her own sake not his. She loves stories. They all decide to go to Florida and the father gives permission. They go to East Jacksonville and on the St. John’s River Ivan finds this friend who takes him out in a rowboat. Which is what happened to me when I was in Florida. Matty was the friend’s name. He took me out in his little boat and we caught the swells of the big boats that would come into Jacksonville. And I used that. Then Ivan comes back and Matt, who is the painter, finishes the painting. His father believes in camera pictures. Paintings have a little more to them than photographs. And the feeling about them lasts one hell of a lot longer to me. Matt is painting him and he puts him in a sled with the old lady and the new friend. The boy (Ivan) realizes that that will do for him. That sled of people being driven—they will serve him as well as, or not as well, but differently than his dead mother. So he accepts her death finally when he sees the painting the painter has made of him sitting in that sleigh. I remember that sleigh with all those people in it, all of whom represent an aspect of the boy’s life. It’s a kind of solution, just what you said. It’s not the same as his mother being alive, but it’s something else. I’m always writing about something else.
Rumpus: In The Coldest Winter you talk of having an affair with a Corsican politician, Jean-Claude. “We met at odd hours in small dark bistros where we drank harsh red wine. We made quick intense love in dark courtyards.” When you write this way for everyone to read, do you feel naked?
Fox: It bothered me a little bit, that one did.
Rumpus: To write it or to have it published?
Fox: To have it published. To have people I didn’t know reading it.
Rumpus: But it’s very matter of fact.
Fox: I know. In fact, Leonard Lopate asked me about that at Brooklyn College. I said, it’s just plumbing. He asked why I didn’t go into more detail, but what I said was very defensive, and I knew it. He was looking at me with a certain avidity for the details. And the details are always the same. It’s your feelings that are different.
Rumpus: Shortly after this affair ends you say, “I felt, along with a bitter rue I could nearly taste, an unexpected relief, as one does after high emotions, a small death, a reminder that one is finally alone.” This seems very close to the attitudes of your characters.
