In the Fall 2007 issue of BOMB, David Malouf is interviewed by Colm Toibin. In response to a question about Malouf's knowledge of opera and classical music, he says:
" . . .music has always been important to me. In the writing, when I revise, often I'm trying to get a word right, but as often as not what I'm trying to get right is the music. When there's a word I want, an adjective, or even another noun, I'll jot it down in long and in short, like poetry . . . yeah, scansion notation . . . I often do that, partly because the music seems to me to contain whatever it is I want to get into the writing. It often happens in the books, that people who don't entirely catch the sense of what someone is saying, are catching at the emotion of it, becausde they're catching the tune."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"the music seems to me to contain whatever it is I want to get into the writing" -- that sounds right, but what might "whatever" refer to? meaning? something else?
ReplyDelete