Run Away from School

Interviews with Samuel R. Delaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Yu Hua, and Lydia Davis.

The Paris Review Redux: free interviews, stories, poems, and art from the archives of The Paris Review. View this email in your browser Marc Yankus, New York Berlin, 2013. From a portfolio in issue no. 211. "I was writing music, directing plays, acting in them, singing in folk groups, choreographing dances," said Samuel R. Delany in his Art of Fiction interview, describing his time in college. "And if I had a paper due next week, there was at most a one-out-of-five chance I would finish it." In the spirit of the approaching school year, this week we're unlocking our interview with Delany in addition to interviews with three other writers who discuss their adventures in education: Elizabeth Bishop kept a pot of Roquefort in her bookcase at Vassar; Yu Hua vied for writing space in the dorm room that he shared with fellow novelist Mo Yan; and Lydia Davis, inspired by passages of Thoreau, ran away from boarding school with a backpack full of Shakespeare. INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 210 Samuel R. Delany   INTERVIEWER Did college not excite you in the same way? Why did you drop out? DELANEY I wasn't smart enough. By that I mean I lacked a particular kind of organizational discipline or intelligence. I had the reading under my belt. I had the analytical chops. I was a magpie for picking up facts and dates. But to do well at college—there's no way around it—you have to be able to organize your time, which I could not do to save myself. I'd get started on one thing, and twenty minutes later I'd be off on another, in the midst of which I'd pick up some book on calculus or archaeology or Galois theory and read the odd hundred pages about that. I was intellectually all over the place.   From issue no. 197 (Summer 2011) INTERVIEW The Art of Poetry No. 27 Elizabeth Bishop   BISHOP I lived in a great big corner room on the top floor of Cushing and I apparently had registered a little late because I had a roommate whom I had never wanted to have. A strange girl named Constance. I remember her entire side of the room was furnished in Scottie dogs—pillows, pictures, engravings and photographs. And mine was rather bare. Except that I probably wasn't a good roommate either, because I had a theory at that time that one should write down all one's dreams. That that was the way to write poetry. So I kept a notebook of my dreams and thought if you ate a lot of awful cheese at bedtime you'd have interesting dreams. I went to Vassar with a pot about this big—it did have a cover!—of Roquefort cheese that I kept in the bottom of my bookcase … I think everyone's given to eccentricities at that age. I've heard that at Oxford Auden slept with a revolver under his pillow.   From issue no. 80 (Summer 1981) INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 261 Yu Hua   INTERVIEWER How was it sharing a room with Mo Yan? Did you show each other your work? YU While I was writing Cries in the Drizzle, he was writing The Republic of Wine. We rarely exchanged our works in progress, but we worked side by side, at two desks that faced the same wall. At first, there was just one cabinet in the room to divide our separate spaces, and later we went and stole another, which he had discovered somewhere. When we opened their doors, they divided the room almost completely. But the thing is, when you're writing longhand, you want to lean back, to look to the right or the left as you're thinking, and there was a small gap between the two cabinets. Often I'd look over and see he'd be looking at me. It felt wrong. I'd say, "You're affecting my work." He'd say, "You're affecting my work." In the end he went to some garbage pile and found an old calendar with photos of popular actors. He hung it on a nail—the gap was sealed.   From issue no. 246 (Winter 2023) INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 227 Lydia Davis   DAVIS I was fifteen and we were reading Thoreau, and I got very excited about the ideas in Walden, which actually caused me to run away from school with a knapsack full of tiny volumes of Shakespeare. I thought I would live in the woods and read Shakespeare. I don't know what I thought I would eat. I went off after lights out and walked down the highway. INTERVIEWER How far did you get? DAVIS As far as the village down below the school. About a three-mile walk. Then a police car stopped me. I tried to claim that I was on a school hike. Of course I was returned to my dormitory. I didn't try to run away again.   From issue no. 212 (Spring 2015) To read more from issue no. 197, including fiction by Roberto Bolaño, why not subscribe? 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