Articles/Interviews

The Twilight Zone Magazine (February 1983) Introduction

Dahl's house ...

Here's an unusual glimpse into the literary life. It's ROALD DAHL, writing in the February '81 Architectural Digest:

"I had become an enthusiastic collector of pictures as soon as World War II ended, in 1945. Each time I sold a short story I would buy a picture. Then, because it took me so long to write another story, I would invariably have to sell the picture I had bought six months before. In those days fine pictures were inexpensive. Many paintings that today could be acquired only by millionaires decorated my walls for brief periods in the late 1940s: Matisses, enormous Fauve Rouaults, Soutines, Cézanne watercolors, Bonnards, Boudins, a Renoir, a Sisley, a Degas seascape ...

"My love of eighteenth-century English furniture is second only to my love of paintings. I don't admire anyone who buys fine furniture–or fine anything, come to that–without troubling to study the history of the artists involved. How many people who buy superb furniture of this period have a copy of Chippendale's great book, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director? Or similar works by Hepplewhite and Sheraton? You cannot begin to appreciate any work of art in the true sense until you have studied the personalities involved and the struggles they had. Equally, I don't admire those who buy only for investment. My pictures, which I suppose are now rather valuable, are not insured. If the house burns down, then that's just bad luck. I would miss my pictures, but money would be no compensation. I'll be damned if I'll insure them, or anything else, except my life. I will insure my life, because there is no way at all in which I can profit from it myself."

It's interesting to see how cleverly Dahl makes use of his hobbies in his fiction: "Skin" is set in the art world (it concerns a man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back), "Parson's Pleasure" is about a collector of eighteenth-century furniture, and "Taste" is about a wine-tasting contest (Dahl's home boasts a 3000-bottle wine cellar). You'll get a somewhat longer look at this demanding, rather fatalistic fellow in the interview beginning on page 70. It was conducted in England by LISA TUTTLE, whose "A Friend in Need" (TZ August '81) has just been included in The Year's Best Fantasy Stories from DAW, and whose novel Familiar Spirit is due this spring from Berkley. She says, in a letter, "Dahl was really nice and rather funny (which I hope comes across in the interview)." I think you'll agree that it does.