The obsession that a writer has is that of the witness, meaning he or she must bear witness. Nevertheless, after all, one doesn't write to be published. And those who read were alone, were in a minority. The parents don't want us to burden their children with these memories. Rabbis! And the rabbis said, we cannot impose it on our children, because the parents are against it. I know that the publisher went to rabbis. It had, luckily, a good review in The New York Times, and in other papers, too, I imagine.īut they couldn't sell it. And what I was left with, of course, was a very great sum, which then to me was a great sum anyway. So 50 went to my French publisher, 10 percent to my agent. They couldn't find one.Īnd finally, we found a small publisher who gave us a hundred dollars, a hundred dollars for the book. My book wandered from one major publisher to another. It went- I'm saying this- there may be writers here who have many rejection slips. And even then, when we came to America, we couldn't find a publisher. Finally, he found a small publisher who happened to be the publisher of Beckett. He, himself, took the book and brought it to publishers, literally, personally. And in spite of his friendship and support, we couldn't find a publisher in France. Where Francois Mauriac, who was a great, great man of letters, a Catholic writer, Nobel laureate, an older man. Now when I wrote it 10 years after the war, and in the beginning, I couldn't find a publisher, neither in France nor here- even in France. Just one word, not just one bereshit, in the beginning. If I could have written the first word of the Bible, bereshit, believe me, I would have given up all of my books. And I, as a student of the Bible, as a Jew who believes in the Bible, I felt that as a student and a Jew, I had to go in the footsteps of our ancestors and try to do what they have done so well, meaning to use less words in order to give more meaning. What else do you have to say?īut in those sentences, in those words, there is so much. He was born, he lived, he had children, and he died. Because in one sentence, you describe a generation. No style is as condensed, as concentrated as the biblical style. This, by the way, is a very biblical method. This is a way of writing a certain literature. And you know what I did all afternoon? I eliminated the comma.
And then in the afternoon, I wrote even harder. And all morning what I did is, I wrote a comma. And he said, you know, all morning- you know what I did all morning? Actually, I worked very hard on my novel. Flaubert, when he wrote Madame Bovary, he wrote the letter to a friend of his. We spoke about Flaubert with a great lady at the table tonight. There is a marvelous story about Flaubert.
Imagine just 860 pages for these poor students there. I am sure you are grateful that I cut it a little bit- to 110 or 120. Now some of you surely have been told that Night was a longer book.
Afterwards, other words had to be found to break down the walls. That there was a time when everything was a prison. Words, too, can become a prison.Īnd I believe that we may use words to break the prison, to break the walls around the prison. It is because I have written Night that I felt more had to come, not to allow the reader or myself to stay with its impact, with its memory, with its vision, as in a prison. Had it not been for Night, I would not have written anything. It is the basis for all the other books, the foundation. Night is to me, of course, a very special book.
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