To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: "How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?" That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice."Rest in peace, Christopher Hitchens. Read more...
To a great degree, in public and private, I "was" my voice. All the rituals and etiquette of conversation, from clearing the throat in preparation for the telling of an extremely long and taxing joke to (in my younger days) trying to make my proposals more persuasive as I sank the tone by a strategic octave of shame, were innate and essential to me. I have never been able to sing, but I could recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so. And timing is everything: the exquisite moment when one can break in and cap a story, or turn a line for a laugh, or ridicule an opponent. I lived for moments like that.
Smith: When you spouted a few lines of poetry to Samantha Morton, who played Elizabeth Barry in the movie—that was my introduction to Wilmot's work, to his poetry. And I noticed in Alice, when the Hatter recites, "Jabberwocky," that you have a gift for giving us the full measure of a poet's work. It is really quite difficult. Could you imagine doing a recording of works of poetry?Read more...
Depp: I don't know. It's daunting, because you don't know exactly... I mean, you can decipher the intent, and you can kind of swim around in the guts of it, but you just don't know how the poet would have wanted it read.
Smith: Yes, but that's no different than Glenn Gould having to anticipate how Bach would want his work played. I thought the Hatter's reading of "Jabberwocky" was luminous. Yesterday you read me a poem written by the Elephant Man. I didn't know he wrote poetry. The poem you recited was heartbreaking. How did you come to find it?
Depp: I made an appointment at the hospital where they had his remains....
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