Finding a sharper focus on reality through literary criticism

Bibliophiles

August 14, 2011|By Amy Sutherland, Globe Correspondent

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman enjoys reading novels and poetry. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe…)

There’s no resting on his laurels for documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. This summer he’s holed up in Maine editing a film. Come fall, the 81-year-old premieres his newest documentary, his 38th, “Crazy Horse,” on the legendary Parisian nightclub. Over his long career, the Cambridge resident has proved to be an ultimate omnivore, turning his eye to racetracks, fashion runways, public housing, and the boxing ring.

BOOKS: What kind of books do you like to read?

WISEMAN: I like to read novels, poetry, and criticism of poetry. Two critics that I like to read are Christopher Ricks and Helen Vendler. Reading a poem and then reading the criticism is like talking to someone who’s much more intelligent than you are. It’s also a very close reading of the text, which I like. It’s extremely useful for my work. It has taught me to pay close attention.

BOOKS: What kind of novels do you read?

WISEMAN: I like the 19th-century Americans a lot, Hawthorne and Melville. And I’ve read everything of Philip Roth’s. I like Saul Bellow. Poets, contemporary ones, I like Stephen Dobyns, David Slavitt, and Elizabeth Bishop.

BOOKS: Have you always read a lot of poetry?

WISEMAN: From college on. I had a terrific course my junior year on T.S. Eliot that really got me going. Now that I will direct a play about Emily Dickinson, “The Belle of Amherst” by William Luce, in Paris next year I’ve been reading a lot of her poetry.

BOOKS: Are you discovering poems of hers you weren’t familiar with?

WISEMAN: A lot! She wrote about 1,600 poems. You read the classic ones but there were lots of other really great ones. And her letters are fantastic. There’s a 1,650-page edition, “The Letters of Emily Dickinson,” published by the Harvard University Press.

BOOKS: Have you read any other writer’s letters?

WISEMAN: Flaubert’s letters, the best description of what it’s like to be a writer that I’ve ever come across. There’s a two-volume collection of the letters, also from Harvard, which are beautifully written. The issues that he writes about are the same issues I deal with as a film editor. So in a funny way Flaubert’s letters and Ionesco’s essays about play-writing are the best writing I’ve read about film editing.

BOOKS: Do you have any guilty pleasures?

WISEMAN: Not really. I don’t read things in that way. I only read good writing.

BOOKS: Not even People magazine at a doctor’s office?

WISEMAN: Oh, of course. I never subscribe to it, but when I go to the dentist’s I read it.

BOOKS: What are you reading now?