Behind the Scenes With Famous Authors

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 153, 1 July 1938, Page 10

Behind the Scenes With Famous Authors

Most writers are intensely individual, and it is interesting, therefore, to note, the methods they employ in formulating their stories, states an exchange. John Cowper Powys, for instance, was in the habit of going for long walks with his brother when composing. For a long time he would be silent, then suddenly ho would say to his brother. “Make your back into a table,” and the latter would have to bend down while the author scribbled a line or two! Going back some years we learn that Pierre Corneille often bandaged his eyes, threw himself on a couch, and dictated to his worshipping wife. Racine had a habit of reciting his ideas in a loud voice, with appropriate gestures, as he walked in the open, and once a group of workmen mistook him for a madman. Od modern authors Grierson Dickson finds that words and ideas come most easily when he is sick in bed. Philip Hughes, who does not wovry about surroundings, started one book in a train on the back of a paper bag that had held buns. William Faulkner wrote a novel without changing a line, during six weeks on the night shift of a power plant, where dynamos hummed ceaselessly. Susan Ertz insists on familiar surroundings, but Talbot Mundy produces all his work while travelling backward and forward across the world. Compton Mackenzie and Damon Runyon work only in tho early hours of the morning. Andrew Soutar uses the scythe out in tho fields while pondering 1 plots; and Victor MacClure, who claims to know fifty ways of cooking rice, often writes with one hand in the cooking pot. Of collaborators, Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershavr (M. Barnard Eldershaw) discuss their plot thoroughly, and each undertakes the writing of certain chapters; and finally they go over leach other's work and suggest alterations. When writing “Anthony Adverse,” a task which occupied four years, Hervcy Allen wrote everything in microscopic handwriting which only his wife could read. As he finished each page, she typed it and supplied him with fresh cigarettes.