An example of this is the introductions to the chapters in which you recount what’s been happening in the neighborhood. JOB: There’s an arbitrary quality to “Teitlebaum” which is the source of much of the novel’s pleasure. “Rosemary’s Baby” comes closest to it in the thriller genre it’s quite an accomplishment. I hope that it is possible to write well and yet move things along and engage the reader and give him a story. WM: Yeah but, I am really in the process of relearning my craft now. JOB: But “Teitlebaum” would have been ruined by a plot and conventional transitions. The review assignments are given out lackadaisically, usually by secretaries. And there’s no sense in festering in paranoia over it. But you would imagine the Sunday “Times” people, of all people, should be aware of this, but unfortunately they’re not. In the beginning I thought it was just the dreadful luck of the Sunday “New York Times” assigning it to Alfred Kazin, who by any kind of moral or ethical principle should have turned it down. All signs portended favorably and then the bubble burst. I was the biggest thing that Knopf was putting out at the time and they had big plans for it. It proves again that in publishing there’s no way of predicting anything. The marriage seemed to me more grotesque than anything else. WM: I think the mother, and the father too, were overdone, came on too strong. JOB: I don’t see what you mean by the excesses in the first chapter of “Teitlebaum”? There was a lot of lecturing, a lot of essaying in the guise of fiction. “You Could Live If They Let You” failed but not mainly because it’s specialized or is so heavily laden with Jewish and Yiddish it failed to give the reader what the reader, I’ve concluded, deserves-a good story, something to carry him along. Not too long ago I went back to reread the first chapter and I winced not only at the first chapter but especially that chapter. But that’s no explanation for the hostilities towards “Teitlebaum.” A lot of the hostility was deserved, I think I haven’t reread it. Then by the time of “Teitlebaum,” the renaissance was over and the corpse had begun to stink. You must remember it was the height of the Jewish literary renaissance. It delighted them that someone from within was screaming. WM: It pleased, and this was accidental, a lot of second-raters who saw it as an attack on the New York literary establishment, the “Partisan Review-Commentary” axis. JOB: What was the reason for the good reception? The only nasty review I got was in “Commentary.” WM: The reviews of “To An Early Grave” couldn’t have been more enthusiastic. JOB: What do you think of the reviews you’ve received? Wherever I’ve thought I’ve seen my old shticks, I just took them out. People that I’ve talked to about it wait for the punch line, but there is no punch line. Psychologically it’s the worst thing I’ve faced. I want to make a significant statement about America in the guise of a thriller. I’m absolutely fed up with chronicling the American-Jewish experience. It seemed to be written by an American woman acutely and self-consciously Jewish. WM: No, but I got one letter after “Teitlebaum” from someone in Israel that was very nasty. JOB: Do you get hate postcards after a novel comes out? But the critics from the Jewish establishment have been uniformly hostile. JOB: What kind of reception have you had from other Jewish writers? How do you compete with the Nobel Laureate? I don’t think that I especially care to compete with “Humboldt’s Gift.” I remember particularly the one before “Teitlebaum’s Window.” He was in my mother’s kitchen and my mother was paying him far more attention than she was me. Every time I’ve published a novel, I’ve had a dream about Saul Bellow. I try to avoid thinking about such things. WM: Allen is a lifter, but not necessarily a plagiarist. JOB: I saw “Annie Hall” a week ago and I was struck by the similarities between that movie and “You Could Live If They Let You,” which of course came out several years before “Annie Hall.” I suppose that this is just coincidence. If I don’t know the answers, my wife will. Markfield’s home in Port Washington, New York. This interview was conducted in the spring of 1978 at Mr. From “The Review of Contemporary Fiction,” Spring 1982, Vol.
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