A Conversation with John Updike [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 369-384]

370
LENKA PROCHAZKOVA
of the American ambassador, Luerse, and his wife, and spent two evenings
with us. Mr. Luerse's brief term as ambassador has almost the marks of
a cultural era: in two years we got to know people like Vonnegut, Albee,
Galway Kinnell and Updike. Updike read his poems to us and even kindly
agreed to reply to some questions of mine when he learned that I proposed
to do an interview with him for a samizdat joural. But it soon became
clear that I had more questions than John Updike had time, and so the
interview took place through an intermediary. I wrote down my questions
and Mr. Kiehl, the American cultural attache, read them to Updike in an
automobile on the road from Prague to Brno. Later he gave me the cassette
with the recording. I mention this technical fact to clarify why, in certain
places, I wasn't able to ask more specific questions, amplify them, or otherwise react to his replies.
The readers can judge the results of this untraditional method for
themselves. I can only express my belated regret that the author, who
depicts landscapes so perceptively, didn't have more time to observe ours;
at the end of the tape you can hear the streetcars of Brno.
Q: Is this your first visit to Czechoslovakia? What was the motivation
behind it?
A: It's my second-I came here in 1964 for a period of about four or
five days-and my purpose in coming, from my standpoint, is to renew
my acquaintance with this beautiful city, really a city that's unique
in Europe insofar as it's not been touched by the changes of time.
And also I wanted to give myself a change of perspective; it's very easy
for a writer to sink into an endless routine of his own words-so Prague
is one stop on really a three-country excursion to Europe that I'm
making.
Q: Which country in your opinion has had the greatest success regarding
fiction in the 1970s?
A: Very hard to say. I'd have to be a gigantic reader to answer that question with any authority. But I think the '70s in general could be regarded as the decade in which the Latin Americans came to the fore
as the most exciting and inventive of world writers. I can't name
any one country-Colombia, of course, is where Garcia Marquez comes
from and Peru is where Llosa comes from-but in general, from the
standpoint of a North American, I would say that the South Americans
had the decade pretty well-dazzled.
Q: We can still witness the after-effects of Marquez' popularity in our
country. What is your opinion about him?