Martha Gellhorn and Mordecai Richler (encore episode)

In these two interviews from the archives, Eleanor Wachtel interviews the great American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn and the inimitable Mordecai Richler.

Gellhorn wrote novels, short stories and novellas, but it's her reportage during times of both war and peace that remains the most remarkable to this day. Gellhorn travelled around the world, getting to the heart of social and political issues from the Nuremberg trials to the Spanish Civil War to the Vietnam War. Born into an affluent family in St. Louis, Missouri, she was talented and determined, and as a writer she was fuelled by a fierce sense of justice. She's been the subject of many biographies and even an HBO series, Hemingway and Gellhorn, about her five-year marriage to Ernest Hemingway during the Second World War. Martha Gellhorn spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in Toronto in late 1992. She died in 1998, aged 89. 

ON CURIOSITY AND WANDERLUST

I suppose you're born with curiosity, aren't you? I certainly wasn't trained. The instinct for travel must also have started very early — I spent my childhood riding the streetcars of St. Louis, telling myself I was going to Samarkand, or all these other places with exotic names. So I think I've always wanted to travel. And I've always been curious. I do want to know what's happening in the world. And writing about it was my passport in a way, because as a private citizen you can't ring a doorbell and say, "Do you mind if I come in and ask you about your life?" Oddly enough, if you say, "I am from" — anything — instead of slamming the door in your face, you get in. Also, in a humble and fairly hopeless way, I always hoped that I would write something that would make people notice, think a bit, and affect how they reacted.

ON WRITING WITH NO ROAD MAP 

I have absolutely no ideas about writing. I have always written the best I know how. I haven't any ideas about style, I have no models, I have nothing. I never thought about the literary aspect of writing. There was something to write about, and I just did the best I could.

In writing, if you tell the reader what to think, that's not very good writing. It's up to you to write it in such a way that the reader discovers it for him or herself. But I myself am constantly full of judgement. I have fierce opinions on practically anything you can name, but it's very bad writing to write as if you're delivering a lecture. I can't do it — the only kind of writing I can do is reporting what I've seen and heard. I suppose where the bias comes in is in what I select to write about.

Though he won nearly every major literary award in Canada, Mordecai Richler was always a controversial figure. His breakthrough novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, immortalized the immigrant Jewish neighbourhood of Montreal. He was the kind of writer people got mad at, and he considered himself to be part of the long tradition of social satirists. He left Canada for over 20 years, but returned because, as he said, "I'm a Canadian and a Jew and I write about being both. I worry about being away so long from the roots of my discontent." From the archives, Eleanor Wachtel interviews Mordecai Richler in 1991. He died ten years later, at age 70.

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JOURNALISM AND FICTION

Fiction is dangerous, because it could modify or change your opinions about people and things. Journalism, which I do, really is a grammarian's job, it deals with the grammar of events. But the best fiction deals with the essence of human affairs. Journalism keeps us informed of other worlds, and can be written quite gracefully. But it doesn't send a bucket as far down the well as the best fiction.

ON CANADIAN CULTURAL INSECURITY

I think it's especially okay [to be a social satirist] in England, and countries which are more secure in their culture than Canada. Canadians tend to think that so-called serious fiction has to be worthy or good for you, like health food, and difficult to read. So, Canadians have a problem with cultural insecurity, as far as one can generalize. That's not true in Europe.

Martha Gellhorn's and Mordecai Richler's comments have been edited and condensed.

Music to close the interview: "Arabesque" composed by Germaine Tailleferre, performed by James Campbell, from the album After Hours.