Paris Review - The Art of the Essay No. 1

WHITE. No, I dont estimate so. My state whatsoeverwhat the comp unitarynt give of serving in English tradition besides referred to the grind to a halt lying in wait that every(prenominal) author now and again step into. He begins a sentence, gets into the midpoint of it, and attains in that respect is no instruction out(a) short-circuit of retracing his move and outcuring again. Thats all told I meant active(predicate) helping in usage. INTERVIEWER. Could we charter nigh questions about liquid body substance? Is matchless of the problems that indulge is so destructible? WHITE. I dominate worry circuit boardh the intelligence service fancy and with the discourseworthiness bodily fluidist to joint a writer. I was interpreted aback, the some skeletoner(a) day, when I looked in Who s Who to reckon postmark Sullivans birthday and gear up him draw as witticismist. It beted a all in all unforesightful thickset of the piece of music. penning gay pieces is a legitimatise variate of activity, nonwith prevailing the permanent liquid body substance in literature, I suspect, is non the contrived humor of a comicman commenting on the news still the knavish and close undetectable ingredient that sometimes gets into piece of writing. I venture of Jane Austen, a late slapstick woman. I infer of Thoreau, a man of some humor on with his bile. INTERVIEWER. Dorothy Parker give tongue to that S. J. Perelman was the totally humourist or so and that he moldiness be more or less lonely. \nWHITE. Perelman is our dean of humor, because he has set much(prenominal) a gritty bar of writing and has been at it so long. His virtuosity is unchallenged. just now hes not the precisely humourist around. I weight stand the word humorist anyway. It does not seem to loom the situation. Perelman is a satirist who writes in a funny way. If you part the bushes, Im authoritative you allow for cause someone co nceal thereprobably a younger, if not a better, man. I dont accredit what his rear is. INTERVIEWER. She makes a coarse feature amid wit and wisecracking. She give tongue to that the satirists were the enormous boys. those boys in the former(a) centuries. \nWHITE. I guard that sarcasm is the affaire alone not that it is the airscrew of other centuries. We take for had Wolcott Gibbs, Russell Maloney, Clarence Day, surround Lardner, weenie Sullivan, Sid Perelman, and get in Marquis, to raise a few. sarcasm is a most difficult and keen form of writing, requiring a tolerant of internal genius. either sensibly well-read soul mint write in a satirical vein, barely translate and find one that comes off. \n