Monday, December 22, 2008

Richard Price sobre Richard Yates

En una entrevista que pueden leer acá.

I just went up to him after one class where he was really going after me, “Oh, so you’re our billion-dollar bonus baby.” He says, “Well, I’d like to do a writing exercise. You’ll probably think this is Mickey Mouse, Price.” And I said, “What?” And then he did his thing, and he looked at me and he said, “Pretty Mickey Mouse, right, Price?” And I said, “No, not at all.” And he said, “Oh, good, thank you.” And after class I said, “Look, I think you got a problem with me. I don’t know you. I think you’re taking stuff out of me and I’m coming in here, I’m paying, and if you want, I’ll transfer to another class.” And he completely backpedaled, because he was an incredibly kind and generous man, at heart—and then we started going to the West End bar after every class. It was 1974, I was twenty-four years old, and I had never even heard of Revolutionary Road, and then he left Columbia and published Disturbing the Peace the next year, and I was like, Wow, this is really good. And then they reissued Revolutionary Road, and I finally read it and I was mortified. I couldn’t believe I knew this guy, had him as a teacher, and I wasn’t even curious enough to read his stuff. But I do remember one thing he said to me, he said, “You doing a lot of movie stuff, you doing a lot of Hollywood stuff?” And I said, “Well, actually, yeah, I got offers.” He said, “Yeah, I had offers once, too. Now I just feel like at this point in my life I don’t have time for that.” When he said that, I was like, What the fuck are you talking about? But that’s the way I feel now. I’m fifty-eight. I don’t want to waste time, I don’t want to waste a whole year. I don’t care how much they pay me, I’m not spending a whole life working on something nobody’s going to see. I’m not going to spend my time coming up with this guy said this thing and that guy said that thing then this happens… And none of it ever sees the light of day. You can do that in your twenties and thirties because you can get your payday and you’re happy, but the older you get, the more careful you want to be with what you commit to. You want to make sure it’s something that’s going to go all the way.

1 comment:

David Miklos said...

Buenísimo, Guilli. Vaya, se me erizó la piel. The great Richards.