INTERVIEWER
What about plot? Do you always know where you're going? Would you write the end before you got there?
MORRISON
[excerpted from her response] ...When Keith Jarrett plays "Ol' Man River," the delight and satisfaction is not so much in the melody itself but in recognizing it when it surfaces and when it is hidden, and when it goes away completely, what is put in its place. Not so much in the original line as in all the echoes and shades and turns and pivots Jarrett plays around it. I was trying to do something similar with the plot in Jazz. I wanted the story to be the vehicle that moved us from page one to the end, but I wanted the delight to be found in moving away from the story and coming back to it, looking around it, and through it, as though it was a prism, constantly turning.
Photo of Stachys byzantina (lamb's ear) in winter taken in my yard.
What about plot? Do you always know where you're going? Would you write the end before you got there?
MORRISON
[excerpted from her response] ...When Keith Jarrett plays "Ol' Man River," the delight and satisfaction is not so much in the melody itself but in recognizing it when it surfaces and when it is hidden, and when it goes away completely, what is put in its place. Not so much in the original line as in all the echoes and shades and turns and pivots Jarrett plays around it. I was trying to do something similar with the plot in Jazz. I wanted the story to be the vehicle that moved us from page one to the end, but I wanted the delight to be found in moving away from the story and coming back to it, looking around it, and through it, as though it was a prism, constantly turning.
Photo of Stachys byzantina (lamb's ear) in winter taken in my yard.
RSS Feed