Rug Out the Window

I just found out that the website for The Paris Review has their full interviews for free via pdf. Today I read one with Charles Olson; I didn’t know anything about the guy so I figured it’d be a good place to start. Turns out that in addition to being a notable American poet of the 50s and 60s, he’s also crazy. The interview starts with:

Charles Olson: Get a free chair and sit down. Don’t worry about anything. Especially this. We’re living beings and forming a society; we’re creating a total, social future. Don’t worry about it. The kitchen’s reasonably orderly. I crawled out of bed as sick as I was and threw a rug out the window.

Interviewer: Now the first question I wanted to ask you. What fills your day?

Olson: Nothing. But nothing, literally, except my friends.

Interviewer: These are very straight questions.

Olson: Ah, that’s what interviews are made of.


It gets wilder, and often less coherent, in the rest of the interview. Next I’m gonna read ones with Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner – they’re usually straightforward fellas.