writing without smoking?
NM: I suffered greatly for years, which gave something to the new
style, because when you���re suffering, to get the writing out when
your mind is not entirely clear, you truly have to work on clarity.
CB: Much of the new clarity didn���t exist before. I was just
reading what James Baldwin said about ���The White Negro,���
which you published in Advertisements for Myself. He
felt he couldn���t understand what you were talking about.
NM: He may not have agreed, but I think he understood. He
was saying, ���How dare you write about black experience?��� That
irritated the hell out of me. I said, ���Jimmy, how dare you write
about white experience?��� In Giovanni���s Room he had written
about two white boys. My whole feeling was, of course, we can
cross over. Is a man never to write about a woman? Is a woman
never to write about a man?
CB: The right to write about another���s consciousness is what���s at
stake.
NM: If we can���t do that, we may be doomed as a species. That
is a large remark. But unless we are truly able to comprehend
cultures that are initially alien to us, I don���t know if we are going
to make it. This applies to all sorts of things. If we can���t begin to
imagine the anxiety and pain and disorder that is caused in all
parts of the cosmos by birds dying in the oil of the Exxon disaster,
or if only a third of us can recognize that, then worse things will
happen. What terrifies me about human nature is our stupidity
at the highest levels. For example, all the Y2K crap going on now
��� what was going on in those guys��� heads that they couldn���t look
HYLAND
31
