Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

by Mason Currey

  186. “As soon as I”: Boswell in Holland, 37.

  187. “vile habit of”: Ibid.

  188. “I have thought of”: Ibid., 198.

  189. “My affairs are”: Boswell’s London Journal, 183–4.

  190. “dreary as a”: Boswell in Holland, 210.

  191. “Everything is insipid”: Ibid., 197.

  192. “It gives me a”: Ibid., 45.

  193. “comforts and enlivens”: Boswell’s London Journal, 189.

  194. “the dignity of”: Boswell in Holland, 388.

  195. “Life has much”: Ibid., 389.

  196. Immanuel Kant: Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

  197. “The history of Kant’s life”: Quoted ibid., 14.

  198. “a certain uniformity”: Quoted ibid., 153.

  199. “Kant had formulated”: Ibid., 222.

  200. William James: Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006); William James, Habit (New York: Henry Holt, 1914).

  201. “Recollect,” he wrote: Quoted in Richardson, 121.

  202. the “great thing”: James, 54.

  203. “make our nervous”: Ibid.

  204. “James on habit”: Richardson, 240.

  205. “I know a”: Quoted ibid., 238.

  206. Henry James: H. Montgomery Hyde, Henry James at Home (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969).

  207. “It’s all about”: Quoted ibid., 152.

  208. Franz Kafka: Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (New York: Schocken Books, 1973); Louis Begley, The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay (New York: Atlas & Co., 2008).

  209. “single shift” system: Begley, 29.

  210. “time is short”: Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer, November 1, 1912, in Letters to Felice, 21–2.

  211. James Joyce: Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (1959; repr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); John McCourt, James Joyce: A Passionate Exile (London: Orion, 2000).

  212. “A man of”: Quoted in Ellmann, 6.

  213. “the mind is”: Quoted ibid., 308.

  214. “He woke about”: Ibid.

  215. “No,” he replied: Quoted in McCourt, 73.

  216. “diversified,” as he put it: Quoted ibid., 91.

  217. “I calculate that”: Quoted in Ellmann, 510.

  218. Marcel Proust: Celeste Albaret and Georges Belmont, Monsieur Proust, trans. Barbara Bray (1973; repr. New York: New York Review Books, 2001); Ronald Hayman, Proust: A Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1990); Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained, trans. Andreas Mayor, Terence Kilmartin, D. J. Enright (New York: Modern Library, 1993).

  219. “It is truly”: Quoted in Hayman, 346.

  220. “It isn’t an”: Albaret and Belmont, 70.

  221. “After ten pages”: Quoted in Hayman, 251.

  222. “You’re putting your”: Quoted ibid., 331.

  223. “it almost seems”: Proust, 318.

  224. Samuel Beckett: Paul Strathern, Beckett in 90 Minutes (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005); Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978).

  225. “It was spent”: Strathern, 45–6.

  226. “dark he had”: Ludovic Janvier quoted in Bair, 351.

  227. “I shall always”: Quoted in Bair, 352.

  228. Igor Stravinsky: Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882–1934 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978).

  229. “I get up at”: Quoted in Walsh, 419.

  230. “I have never”: Quoted ibid., 115.

  231. “rests the head”: Quoted in Stravinsky and Craft, 298.

  232. Erik Satie: Robert Orledge, Satie Remembered (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1995).

  233. “walked slowly”: Quoted ibid., 69.

  234. “the possibility of”: Quoted ibid.

  235. Pablo Picasso: John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907–1916 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007); Francoise Gilo and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964).

  236. “After the shabby”: Richardson, 43.

  237. “He rarely spoke”: Quoted ibid., 147.

  238. “the artist veered”: Ibid., 146.

  239. “That’s why painters”: Quoted in Gilo and Lake, 116.

  240. Jean-Paul Sartre: Annie Cohen-Solal, Jean-Paul Sartre: A Life, trans. Anna Cancogni, ed. Norman Macafee (1985; repr. New York: Dial Press, 2005); Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Touchstone, 1990).

  241. “One can be”: Quoted in Cohen-Solal, 286.

  242. “His diet over”: Ibid., 374.

  243. “I thought that”: Quoted ibid., 374–5.

  244. T. S. Eliot: James E. Miller Jr., T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, 1888–1922 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005); Allen Tate, ed., T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (New York: Delacorte Press, 1966); Lyndall Gordon, T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).

  245. “I am sojourning”: Quoted in Miller, 325.

  246. “a figure stooping”: Quoted in Tate, 3–4.

  247. “I am now”: Quoted in Miller, 278.

  248. “the prospect of”: Quoted in Gordon, 197.

  249. Dmitry Shostakovich: Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

  250. “I always found”: Quoted in Fay, 46.

  251. “appeared to be”: Quoted in Wilson, 194.

  252. “I discovered him”: Quoted ibid., 197.

  253. “He would play”: Quoted ibid.

  254. “I worry about”: Quoted ibid., 196.

  255. Henry Green: Jeremy Treglown, Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green (New York: Random House, 2000); interview with Terry Southern, “The Art of Fiction No. 22: Henry Green,” Paris Review, Summer 1958, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4800/the-art-of-fiction-no-22-henry-green.

  256. “Though he occasionally”: Treglown, 95.

  257. “Yes, yes, oh yes”: Interview with Southern.

  258. Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (New York: HarperCollins, 1977).

  259. “The funny thing”: Ibid., 431.

  260. “All I needed”: Ibid., 432.

  261. “Many friends have”: Ibid.

  262. Somerset Maugham: Jeffrey Meyers, Somerset Maugham: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).

  263. “Maugham thought that”: Ibid., 37.

  264. “When you’re writing”: Quoted ibid., 37–8.

  265. Graham Greene: Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene, Volume Two: 1939–1955 (New York, Viking: 1994); Henry J. Donaghy, ed., Conversations with Graham Greene (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992).

  266. “a nine-till-five”: Christopher Burstall, “Graham Greene Takes the Orient Express,” The Listener, November 21, 1969, in Donaghy, 60–1.

  267. Joseph Cornell: Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997).

  268. Sylvia Plath: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962, ed. Karen V. Kukil (New York: Anchor Books, 2000); Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (1993; repr. New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

  269. “From now on”: Sylvia Plath, December 7, 1959, in Journals, 457.

  270. She was using: Malcolm, 61.

  271. “I am a genius”: Quoted ibid., 61–2.

  272. John Cheever: Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009); John Cheever, The Journals of John Cheever (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).

  273. “When I was younger”: Quoted in Bailey, 92–3.

 
274. “Almost every morning”: Ibid., 137.

  275. “achieve some equilibrium”: Cheever, 22–3.

  276. “The hours between”: Ibid., 277–8.

  277. “the horniest man”: Quoted in Bailey, 422.

  278. “two or three orgasms”: Quoted ibid., 433.

  279. “With a stiff prick”: Quoted ibid., 568.

  280. “I must convince”: Cheever, 255.

  281. Louis Armstrong: Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

  282. described by Terry Teachout: Ibid., 288–93.

  283. “It’s been hard”: Quoted ibid., 371.

  284. W. B. Yeats: Warwick Gould, John Kelly, and Deirdre Toomey, eds., The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume 2, 1896–1900 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Peter Kuch, Yeats and A.E.: “The Antagonism That Unites Dear Friends” (Totawa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986).

  285. “I read from”: W. B. Yeats to Edwin Ellis, August 16, 1912, quoted in Foster, 468.

  286. According to another: Kuch, 14.

  287. “Every change upsets”: W. B. Yeats to J. B. Yeats, November 1, 1898, in Gould et al., 282.

  288. “I am a very”: W. B. Yeats to William D. Fitts, August 19, 1899, in Gould et al., 439.

  289. “One has to give”: W. B. Yeats to Robert Bridges, June 6, 1897, in Gould et al., 111.

  290. Wallace Stevens: Peter Brazeau, Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered (New York: Random House, 1983); Milton J. Bates, Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985).

  291. “I find that”: Quoted in Bates, 157.

  292. Kingsley Amis: Interview with Michael Barber, “The Art of Fiction No. 59: Kingsley Amis,” Paris Review, Winter 1975, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3772/the-art-of-fiction-no-59-kingsley-amis; Eric Jacobs, Kingsley Amis: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).

  293. “Yes. I don’t”: Interview with Barber.

  294. Amis’s routine shifted: Jacobs, 1–18.

  295. Martin Amis: Interview with Francesca Riviere, “The Art of Fiction No. 151: Martin Amis,” Paris Review, Spring 1998, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1156/the-art-of-fiction-no-151-martin-amis.

  296. Umberto Eco: Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, “The Art of Fiction No. 197: Umberto Eco,” Paris Review, Summer 2008, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5856/the-art-of-fiction-no-197-umberto-eco.

  297. Woody Allen: Eric Lax, Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).

  298. “obsessive thinking”: Ibid., 119.

  299. “I’ve found over”: Ibid., 78.

  300. “I think in the”: Ibid., 117.

  301. David Lynch: Richard A. Barney, ed., David Lynch: Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009); David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (2006; repr. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2007).

  302. “I like things”: Quoted in Richard B. Woodward, “A Dark Lens on America,” New York Times Magazine, January 14, 1990, in Barney, 50.

  303. “I have never”: Lynch, 5.

  304. “We waste so”: Ibid., 55.

  305. Maya Angelou: Jeffrey M. Elliot, ed., Conversations with Maya Angelou (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989).

  306. “I try to keep”: Interview with Walter Blum, “Listening to Maya Angelou,” California Living, December 14, 1975, in Elliot, 153.

  307. “I usually get”: Interview with Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work (New York: Continuum, 1983), in Elliot, 40.

  308. “I have always”: Quoted in Judith Rich, “Life Is for Living,” Westways, September 1987, in Elliot., 79.

  309. George Balanchine: Mason Francis, ed., I Remember Balanchine: Recollections of the Ballet Master by Those Who Knew Him (New York: Doubleday, 1991); Bernard Taper, Balanchine: A Biography (1984; repr. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996).

  310. “When I’m ironing”: Quoted in Francis, 418.

  311. “My muse must”: Quoted in Taper, 13.

  312. Al Hirschfeld: Al Hirschfeld, Hirschfeld On Line (New York: Applause Books, 1999).

  313. “In his 90s”: Mel Gussow, introduction to ibid., 18.

  314. “Very often, when”: Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, “Looking Over His Shoulder,” in Hirschfeld, 24.

  315. Truman Capote: Interview with Pati Hill, “The Art of Fiction No. 17: Truman Capote,” Paris Review, Spring–Summer 1957, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4867/the-art-of-fiction-no-17-truman-capote.

  316. Richard Wright: Hazel Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt, 2001).

  317. As Hazel Rowley details: Ibid., 153–5.

  318. “I never intend”: Quoted ibid., 162.

  319. H. L. Mencken: Fred Hobson, Mencken: A Life (New York: Random House, 1994); Carl Bode, ed., The New Mencken Letters (New York: Dial Press, 1977).

  320. “Like most men”: H. L. Mencken to A. O. Bowden, April 12, 1932, in Bode, 262.

  321. “Looking back over”: Quoted in Hobson, xvi–xvii.

  322. Philip Larkin: Interview with Robert Phillips, “The Art of Poetry No. 30: Philip Larkin,” Paris Review, Summer 1982, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3153/the-art-of-poetry-no-30-philip-larkin; Philip Larkin, “Aubade,” in Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (1988; repr. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989).

  323. “I work all”: Larkin., 208.

  324. “My life is”: Interview with Phillips.

  325. “I was brought up”: Ibid.

  326. “After that you’re”: Ibid.

  327. Frank Lloyd Wright: Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, ed., Frank Lloyd Wright: The Crowning Decade, 1949–1959 (Fresno: California State University, 1989); David V. Mollenhoff and Mary Jane Hamilton, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace: The Enduring Power of a Civic Vision (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).

  328. “Between 4 and 7”: Quoted in Mollenhoff and Hamilton, 113.

  329. “Perhaps it was”: “Olgivanna Lloyd Wright on Her Husband,” in Pfeiffer, 122.

  330. “I could not”: Ibid.

  331. Louis I. Kahn: Carter Wiseman, Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style: A Life in Architecture (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).

  332. “Lou had so much”: Quoted ibid., 87.

  333. George Gershwin: Howard Pollack, George Gershwin: His Life and Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

  334. “To me George”: Quoted ibid., 175.

  335. “Like the pugilist”: Quoted ibid.

  336. Joseph Heller: Adam J. Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993).

  337. “I spent two”: Interview with Sam Merrill, Playboy, June 1975, in ibid., 163.

  338. “most intelligent”: Quoted in Ann Waldron, “Writing Technique, Say Joseph Heller,” Houston Chronicle, March 2, 1975, in Sorkin, 135.

  339. “I wrote for”: Interview with Sam Merrill, Playboy, June 1975, in Sorkin, 165.

  340. “I am a chronic”: Ibid., 161.

  341. “It’s an everyday”: Interview with Creath Thorne, Chicago Literary Review: Book Supplement to the Chicago Maroon, December 3, 1974, in Sorkin, 128.

  342. “I write very”: Quoted in Curt Suplee, “Catching Up with Joseph Heller,” Washington Post, October 8, 1984, in Sorkin, 239.

  343. James Dickey: Henry Hart, James Dickey: The World as a Lie (New York: Picador USA, 2000).

  344. “Every time I”: Quoted ibid., 214–5.

  345. “If they said”: Quoted ibid., 215–6.

  346. “After five and”: Quoted ibid., 262.

  347. Nikola Tesla: Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (New York: Touchstone, 2001).

  348. “I’ve had many”: Quoted ibid., 54.

  349. Glenn Go
uld: Kevin Bazzana, Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Andrew Kazdin, Glenn Gould at Work: Creative Lying (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989); Glenn Gould in The Life and Times of Glenn Gould, CBC Television, March 13, 1998, accessed on April 2, 2010, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Mm_b5lHvU&feature=related.

  350. “most experienced hermit”: Quoted in Bazzana, 320.

  351. “I don’t think”: Quoted ibid., 318.

  352. “I tend to follow”: Gould, CBC Television.

  353. “for Gould, everything”: Kazdkin, 25.

  354. “I don’t approve of”: Quoted in Bazzana, 322.

  355. “best playing I do”: Quoted ibid., 326.

  356. “He was known”: Ibid., 321.

  357. “routinely ran to”: Ibid.

  358. fasting, he said: Kazdin, 64.

  359. Louise Bourgeois: Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, eds., Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923–1997 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).

  360. “My life has”: Interview with Douglas Maxwell, Modern Painters, Summer 1993, in ibid., 239.

  361. “Each day is”: Louis Bourgeois, “Tender Compulsions,” World Art, February 1995, in Bernadac and Obrist, 306.

  362. “I work like”: Louise Bourgeois, “Sixty-one Questions,” 1971, in Bernadac and Obrist, 96.

  363. Chester Himes: Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, eds., Conversations with Chester Himes (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995).

  364. “I like to”: Michel Fabre, “Chester Himes Direct,” Hard-Boiled Dicks, December 1983, in Fabre and Skinner, 130.

  365. Flannery O’Connor: Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (New York: Little, Brown, 2009).

  366. “routine is a”: Quoted ibid., 222.

  367. “I may tear”: Quoted ibid., 225.

  368. “I go to bed”: Quoted ibid., 228.

  369. “I read a lot”: Quoted ibid.

  370. William Styron: Interview with Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton, “The Art of Fiction No. 5: William Styron,” Paris Review, Spring 1954, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5114/the-art-of-fiction-no-5-william-styron; James L. W. West III, ed., Conversations with William Styron (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985).