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The Paris Review Interviews, 1
How do great writers do it? From James M. Cain's hard-nosed observation that "writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational," to Joan Didion's account of how she composes a book--"I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm"--The Paris Review has elicited some of the most revelatory and revealing thoughts from the literary masters of our age. For more than half a century, the magazine has spoken with most of our leading novelists, poets, and playwrights, and the interviews themselves have come to be recognized as classic works of literature, an essential and definitive record of the writing life. They have won the coveted George Polk Award and have been a contender for the Pulitzer Prize. Now, Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch introduces an entirely original selection of sixteen of the most celebrated interviews. Often startling, always engaging, these encounters contain an immense scope of intelligence, personality, experience, and wit from the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Rebecca West, and Billy Wilder. This is an indispensable book for all writers and readers.
510 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 2006
About the author
The Paris Review
110 books282 followersFounded in Paris by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton in 1953, The Paris Review began with a simple editorial mission: “Dear reader,” William Styron wrote in a letter in the inaugural issue, “The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work—fiction and poetry—not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs, i.e., somewhere near the back of the book. I think The Paris Review should welcome these people into its pages: the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good.”
Decade after decade, the Review has introduced the important writers of the day. Adrienne Rich was first published in its pages, as were Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. Selections from Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy appeared in the fifth issue, one of his first publications in English. The magazine was also among the first to recognize the work of Jack Kerouac, with the publication of his short story, “The Mexican Girl,” in 1955. Other milestones of contemporary literature, now widely anthologized, also first made their appearance in The Paris Review: Italo Calvino's Last Comes the Raven, Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Donald Barthelme's Alice, Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries, Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Virgin Suicides, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.
In addition to the focus on original creative work, the founding editors found another alternative to criticism—letting the authors talk about their work themselves. The Review’s Writers at Work interview series offers authors a rare opportunity to discuss their life and art at length; they have responded with some of the most revealing self-portraits in literature. Among the interviewees are William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Joan Didion, Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, and Lorrie Moore. In the words of one critic, it is “one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world.”
Decade after decade, the Review has introduced the important writers of the day. Adrienne Rich was first published in its pages, as were Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. Selections from Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy appeared in the fifth issue, one of his first publications in English. The magazine was also among the first to recognize the work of Jack Kerouac, with the publication of his short story, “The Mexican Girl,” in 1955. Other milestones of contemporary literature, now widely anthologized, also first made their appearance in The Paris Review: Italo Calvino's Last Comes the Raven, Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Donald Barthelme's Alice, Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries, Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Virgin Suicides, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.
In addition to the focus on original creative work, the founding editors found another alternative to criticism—letting the authors talk about their work themselves. The Review’s Writers at Work interview series offers authors a rare opportunity to discuss their life and art at length; they have responded with some of the most revealing self-portraits in literature. Among the interviewees are William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Joan Didion, Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, and Lorrie Moore. In the words of one critic, it is “one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world.”
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June 19, 2021
WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE
Madre e figlia.
Queste interviste sono frammenti di storia, non credo unicamente letteraria. Chapeau alla Paris Review che da decenni le realizza, e chapeau a Fandango che le traduce e pubblica in italiano.
In questo primo volume gli intervistati sono: Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, James M. Cain, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Stone, Robert Gottlieb, Richard Price, Billy Wilder, Jack Gilbert, e last but no least Joan Didion.
Figlia e madre.
Che è il vero motivo per cui mi sono fatto regalare il libro, per me un’occasione di leggere ancora qualcosa della mia scrittrice preferita, di questa donna eccezionale.
All’epoca di questa intervista, Didion (2006) aveva pubblicato da poco L’anno del pensiero magico (2005) - e quindi già da tempo tutti i suoi sei romanzi (l’ultimo è del 1996).
In questo memoir, che è un reportage nel dolore, nel lutto e nella perdita della persona amata, Didion racconta la morte di suo marito, avvenuta proprio davanti ai suoi occhi, al tavolo da pranzo, all’inizio della cena, poco prima del natale 2003.
La coppia era rientrata a casa dopo essere stata all’ospedale a trovare la figlia in coma.
La famiglia Dunne-Didion al completo.
Il funerale di John Gregory Dunne, che sposò Joan nel 1964 e le rimase a fianco ogni giorno, coppia molto legata, sempre innamorata, coppia anche nel lavoro, lui primo lettore e miglior editor per gli scritti di lei, e viceversa, quasi cinquant’anni di vita in comune, un fatto non comune soprattutto nella comunità artistica nella quale hanno vissuto, il funerale si tenne qualche giorno dopo, il tempo di aspettare che la figlia, Quintana Roo, uscisse dal coma e si riprendesse per poter partecipare.
Dopo il funerale, Quintana volle tornare sulla West Coast, a Malibu dove era cresciuta, dove la famiglia aveva passato lunghi anni meravigliosi: scendendo dall’aereo, cadde, sbatté la testa, fu di nuovo ricoverata e morì due anni dopo.
La famiglia Didion-Dunne.
Quando L’anno del pensiero magico fu pubblicato Quintana era morta da poco, e il libro di questo non parla, è concentrato sul marito.
Joan ebbe l’idea di adattare il suo memoir per il palcoscenico: non l’aveva mai fatto, e volle cimentarsi.
David Hare, l’amico chiamato a dirigere, le suggerì di includere nel play anche la storia della figlia.
Lo spettacolo fu portato in scena sotto forma di monologo da Vanessa Redgrave, storica amica dei Didion, che due anni dopo (2009) perdeva la figlia Natasha.
Joan era arrivata a pesare 34 chili, probabilmente viveva solo di sigarette e coca cola. David Hare capì che coinvolgerla, averla presente alle prove e alle repliche, era un buon modo per nutrirla: e così fu, Joan acquisto qualche etto in più e gli amici si sentirono utili.
David Hare, Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Didion.
Joan Didion è nata a Sacramento, la capitale dello stato di California, dove è ambientato il suo primo romanzo, Run River, dove sotto Reagan governatore fu costruita una super dimora a spese della collettività per ospitare l’ex attore e sua moglie (credo usata solo da lui – anche Schwarzenegger si è rifiutato di risiedere lì), a Sacramento dove è ambientato Lady Bird, il bel film dell’attrice-regista Greta Gerwig.
Gli antenati di Joan arrivarono in California insieme al Donner Party: o meglio, fecero un pezzo del viaggio insieme, poi si rifiutarono di seguire il convoglio per la folle scorciatoia (e sappiamo come andò a finire), proseguirono per la loro strada e loro sì, arrivarono sani e salvi.
Gli antenati del marito, invece, approdarono in USA dall’Irlanda, sbarcando a Ellis Island, e credo che John Gregory fosse la prima generazione a stelle e strisce (il nipote, figlio del fratello maggiore, Griffin, è attore e regista, e ha dedicato a Joan un magnifico documentario, reperibile su Netflix).
Quando i Dunne-Didion abitavano a Malibu, decisero di fare lavori domestici, nuove stanze, nuovi spazi: il falegname che eseguì i lavori e visse due mesi con loro era un giovane amico di famiglia, Harrison Ford.
La solidità del matrimonio Dunne-Didion superò allegramente anche la corte serrata che le faceva Warren Beatty, che prima di ogni cena dove sapeva ci sarebbe stata anche Joan, telefonava alla padrona di casa per pregarla di metterla seduta al suo fianco.
In questa intervista racconta parte della sua carriera letteraria e soprattutto il suo metodo di scrittura, autodidatta: battere e ribattere a macchina (e in seguito al computer) non solo i propri lavori, ma anche riscrivere i racconti altrui che leggeva, sopra tutti quelli di Hemingway. Questo lavoro di riscrittura, o meglio, ribattitura, le consentiva di sentire il ritmo della frase, di imparare a modularlo.
Alla ricerca del suo personale stile, della sua forma letteraria, e quindi, della sua voce.
Didion e Dunne si sono dedicati anche al cinema. E se prima di scrivere qualcosa di nuovo, Joan rilegge sempre “Vittoria” di Conrad, prima di scrivere un film John e lei riguardavano sempre “Il terzo uomo”, un grandissimo film, una sceneggiatura perfetta.
Joan, io vorrei chiederti se con “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” intendi che ognuno si crea la sua realtà, e si costruisce i ricordi che vuole? È per questo, allora, che “the center will not hold”?
Il documentario di Griffin Dunne dedicato a Joan Didion.
Madre e figlia.
Queste interviste sono frammenti di storia, non credo unicamente letteraria. Chapeau alla Paris Review che da decenni le realizza, e chapeau a Fandango che le traduce e pubblica in italiano.
In questo primo volume gli intervistati sono: Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, James M. Cain, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Stone, Robert Gottlieb, Richard Price, Billy Wilder, Jack Gilbert, e last but no least Joan Didion.
Figlia e madre.
Che è il vero motivo per cui mi sono fatto regalare il libro, per me un’occasione di leggere ancora qualcosa della mia scrittrice preferita, di questa donna eccezionale.
All’epoca di questa intervista, Didion (2006) aveva pubblicato da poco L’anno del pensiero magico (2005) - e quindi già da tempo tutti i suoi sei romanzi (l’ultimo è del 1996).
In questo memoir, che è un reportage nel dolore, nel lutto e nella perdita della persona amata, Didion racconta la morte di suo marito, avvenuta proprio davanti ai suoi occhi, al tavolo da pranzo, all’inizio della cena, poco prima del natale 2003.
La coppia era rientrata a casa dopo essere stata all’ospedale a trovare la figlia in coma.
La famiglia Dunne-Didion al completo.
Il funerale di John Gregory Dunne, che sposò Joan nel 1964 e le rimase a fianco ogni giorno, coppia molto legata, sempre innamorata, coppia anche nel lavoro, lui primo lettore e miglior editor per gli scritti di lei, e viceversa, quasi cinquant’anni di vita in comune, un fatto non comune soprattutto nella comunità artistica nella quale hanno vissuto, il funerale si tenne qualche giorno dopo, il tempo di aspettare che la figlia, Quintana Roo, uscisse dal coma e si riprendesse per poter partecipare.
Dopo il funerale, Quintana volle tornare sulla West Coast, a Malibu dove era cresciuta, dove la famiglia aveva passato lunghi anni meravigliosi: scendendo dall’aereo, cadde, sbatté la testa, fu di nuovo ricoverata e morì due anni dopo.
La famiglia Didion-Dunne.
Quando L’anno del pensiero magico fu pubblicato Quintana era morta da poco, e il libro di questo non parla, è concentrato sul marito.
Joan ebbe l’idea di adattare il suo memoir per il palcoscenico: non l’aveva mai fatto, e volle cimentarsi.
David Hare, l’amico chiamato a dirigere, le suggerì di includere nel play anche la storia della figlia.
Lo spettacolo fu portato in scena sotto forma di monologo da Vanessa Redgrave, storica amica dei Didion, che due anni dopo (2009) perdeva la figlia Natasha.
Joan era arrivata a pesare 34 chili, probabilmente viveva solo di sigarette e coca cola. David Hare capì che coinvolgerla, averla presente alle prove e alle repliche, era un buon modo per nutrirla: e così fu, Joan acquisto qualche etto in più e gli amici si sentirono utili.
David Hare, Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Didion.
Joan Didion è nata a Sacramento, la capitale dello stato di California, dove è ambientato il suo primo romanzo, Run River, dove sotto Reagan governatore fu costruita una super dimora a spese della collettività per ospitare l’ex attore e sua moglie (credo usata solo da lui – anche Schwarzenegger si è rifiutato di risiedere lì), a Sacramento dove è ambientato Lady Bird, il bel film dell’attrice-regista Greta Gerwig.
Gli antenati di Joan arrivarono in California insieme al Donner Party: o meglio, fecero un pezzo del viaggio insieme, poi si rifiutarono di seguire il convoglio per la folle scorciatoia (e sappiamo come andò a finire), proseguirono per la loro strada e loro sì, arrivarono sani e salvi.
Gli antenati del marito, invece, approdarono in USA dall’Irlanda, sbarcando a Ellis Island, e credo che John Gregory fosse la prima generazione a stelle e strisce (il nipote, figlio del fratello maggiore, Griffin, è attore e regista, e ha dedicato a Joan un magnifico documentario, reperibile su Netflix).
Quando i Dunne-Didion abitavano a Malibu, decisero di fare lavori domestici, nuove stanze, nuovi spazi: il falegname che eseguì i lavori e visse due mesi con loro era un giovane amico di famiglia, Harrison Ford.
La solidità del matrimonio Dunne-Didion superò allegramente anche la corte serrata che le faceva Warren Beatty, che prima di ogni cena dove sapeva ci sarebbe stata anche Joan, telefonava alla padrona di casa per pregarla di metterla seduta al suo fianco.
In questa intervista racconta parte della sua carriera letteraria e soprattutto il suo metodo di scrittura, autodidatta: battere e ribattere a macchina (e in seguito al computer) non solo i propri lavori, ma anche riscrivere i racconti altrui che leggeva, sopra tutti quelli di Hemingway. Questo lavoro di riscrittura, o meglio, ribattitura, le consentiva di sentire il ritmo della frase, di imparare a modularlo.
Alla ricerca del suo personale stile, della sua forma letteraria, e quindi, della sua voce.
Didion e Dunne si sono dedicati anche al cinema. E se prima di scrivere qualcosa di nuovo, Joan rilegge sempre “Vittoria” di Conrad, prima di scrivere un film John e lei riguardavano sempre “Il terzo uomo”, un grandissimo film, una sceneggiatura perfetta.
Joan, io vorrei chiederti se con “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” intendi che ognuno si crea la sua realtà, e si costruisce i ricordi che vuole? È per questo, allora, che “the center will not hold”?
Il documentario di Griffin Dunne dedicato a Joan Didion.
September 23, 2011
What are writers like? What makes them different? On goodreads, for example, they will be the people that write their 'about me' sections in the third person. However, I had a feeling there must be more to that.
When I was younger I thought writers were an entirely different caste of people. You can't become a writer, you have to be born one. There are no creative writing courses in Poland, because writing is not something you can teach. It comes from divine inspiration and not from knowing your craft. Anyway, writing is not a craft. This attitude is responsible for the embarrassing quality of Polish literature. It relies on gold nuggets rather than a gold mine.
I want to know everything about writers and the writing process. I mean, everything! This collection of interviews was an immense pleasure. The writers come and confess what they do and how they do it (alas, some very reluctantly, I am looking at you, Hemingway). I could fill out this whole review with all the quotes I neatly underlined in my copy, but that might take a while. The final conclusion is that there is no right way to write. Every writer in the selection was contradicted by another writer at some point.
You can read while you write, or you can't. It will affect your writing or it won't. You have to write when you feel very emotional about the subject or you need to wait till you calm down and detach yourself. You have to know the history of literature inside out or you might not even read Madame Bovary until you are 40. You need to show your work to people before it is finished, or you can't ever do that. You need to invent new metaphors and be creative or quite the opposite - use only the well established metaphors because only those are true. You can't have a hidden agenda, or you might, or maybe you even should. And so on.
I found myself in bits of every writer. It got me fantasising about publishing my own book. When the writers tell you how they started writing, it seems like something you might do yourself. They all of a sudden don't seem larger than life but they come across as ordinary human beings (that they were once, before they became AUTHORS).
My favourite interview was the one with Robert Gottlieb, editor who worked with people like Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, Le Carre. This was probably the most honest interview and the most fascinating one. See, the problem with writers is that they are writers. Even if they try to be candid they can't help being writers. They start to write themselves eventually, because that's what they do and that's who they are. Sometimes they become their own creations.
When I was younger I thought writers were an entirely different caste of people. You can't become a writer, you have to be born one. There are no creative writing courses in Poland, because writing is not something you can teach. It comes from divine inspiration and not from knowing your craft. Anyway, writing is not a craft. This attitude is responsible for the embarrassing quality of Polish literature. It relies on gold nuggets rather than a gold mine.
I want to know everything about writers and the writing process. I mean, everything! This collection of interviews was an immense pleasure. The writers come and confess what they do and how they do it (alas, some very reluctantly, I am looking at you, Hemingway). I could fill out this whole review with all the quotes I neatly underlined in my copy, but that might take a while. The final conclusion is that there is no right way to write. Every writer in the selection was contradicted by another writer at some point.
You can read while you write, or you can't. It will affect your writing or it won't. You have to write when you feel very emotional about the subject or you need to wait till you calm down and detach yourself. You have to know the history of literature inside out or you might not even read Madame Bovary until you are 40. You need to show your work to people before it is finished, or you can't ever do that. You need to invent new metaphors and be creative or quite the opposite - use only the well established metaphors because only those are true. You can't have a hidden agenda, or you might, or maybe you even should. And so on.
I found myself in bits of every writer. It got me fantasising about publishing my own book. When the writers tell you how they started writing, it seems like something you might do yourself. They all of a sudden don't seem larger than life but they come across as ordinary human beings (that they were once, before they became AUTHORS).
My favourite interview was the one with Robert Gottlieb, editor who worked with people like Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, Le Carre. This was probably the most honest interview and the most fascinating one. See, the problem with writers is that they are writers. Even if they try to be candid they can't help being writers. They start to write themselves eventually, because that's what they do and that's who they are. Sometimes they become their own creations.
September 7, 2019
"Em meados dos anos cinquenta, um grupo de jovens intelectuais americanos criou uma revista chamada The Paris Review. Os seus autores dificilmente terão tido a percepção de que estavam a fazer nascer uma abordagem nova à literatura, e de que se constituiria a partir dali o mais extraordinário arquivo do fascínio que uma entrevista literária pode alcançar."
(do prefácio de Carlos Vaz Marques)
Os entrevistados desta edição e data da entrevista:
1952 - E. M. Forster
1953 - Graham Greene
1956 - William Faulkner
1957 - Truman Capote
1958 - Ernest Hemingway
1959 - Lawrence Durrell
1960 - Boris Pasternak
1965 - Saul Bellow
1966 - Jorge Luis Borges
1968 - Jack Kerouac
(do prefácio de Carlos Vaz Marques)
Os entrevistados desta edição e data da entrevista:
1952 - E. M. Forster
1953 - Graham Greene
1956 - William Faulkner
1957 - Truman Capote
1958 - Ernest Hemingway
1959 - Lawrence Durrell
1960 - Boris Pasternak
1965 - Saul Bellow
1966 - Jorge Luis Borges
1968 - Jack Kerouac
March 6, 2021
I would read the top minds of any field to see how the operate. Top directors, political minds, or even hedge fund managers, if I really hated myself that day. But, because they are writers, they often have the most exquisite phrasings, ready for a Bumble profile, photo caption, tombstone epitaph, or all of the above.
These interviews provide an illuminating spotlight on the processes of writing and the trends that have developed over the last seventy years. Whether you’re an aspiring author or not, this collection of interviews provides as close a mapping of the interior of a creative mind as one might get.
I noticed that many of the issues we have in contemporary literature—moralizing, the fake posturing of a radical, overwriting—were warned about years ago. Unfortunately, they only seem to have grown worse over time. As Borges says, “I don’t think ideas are important” and that the writer should “…be judged by the enjoyment he gives and by the emotions one gets.”
Robert Gottlieb later notes that the elements “eroding excellence in publishing” are commercialization and “judging novels and stories by their theme or by the color or political stance of their authors.” Of course, every novel is political to an extent, but using novels as political signposts does a disservice to the story. How the hell do we get out of this trend?
For an answer to that question, and a complete reflection on this book, listen here: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/15...
These interviews provide an illuminating spotlight on the processes of writing and the trends that have developed over the last seventy years. Whether you’re an aspiring author or not, this collection of interviews provides as close a mapping of the interior of a creative mind as one might get.
I noticed that many of the issues we have in contemporary literature—moralizing, the fake posturing of a radical, overwriting—were warned about years ago. Unfortunately, they only seem to have grown worse over time. As Borges says, “I don’t think ideas are important” and that the writer should “…be judged by the enjoyment he gives and by the emotions one gets.”
Robert Gottlieb later notes that the elements “eroding excellence in publishing” are commercialization and “judging novels and stories by their theme or by the color or political stance of their authors.” Of course, every novel is political to an extent, but using novels as political signposts does a disservice to the story. How the hell do we get out of this trend?
For an answer to that question, and a complete reflection on this book, listen here: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/15...
Read
May 7, 202144th book of 2021. No artist for this review, but portraits of the interviewees.
I've been addicted to reading The Paris Review interviews for a long time now, but you're only allowed to read the first part of the interviews online before having to pay. I've read a lot of beginnings. The Paris Review have published a number of interviews across four volumes, which I intend to finally read in full. The sixteen writers in vol. 1 are: Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, James M. Cain, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Stone, Robert Gottlieb (whose interview is comprised of many writers and G. himself), Richard Price, Billy Wilder, Jack Gilbert and Joan Didion.
On the whole, it is a fantastic selection. I have no interest whatsoever in movies so the screenwriting elements, and essentially the whole of Wilder's interview, were boring for me. There are some crossovers between writing prose and writing for the screen, no doubt, and so I read them. In fact, one of the best on-writing talks I ever saw was at my university by a J. Yorke, a screenwriter, who had incredible writing advice that was very transferable to the page. Of course, the stand out interviews were by writers I have read and enjoy such as Capote, Hemingway, Eliot, Vonnegut, Borges, Didion, etc. I have never read any Jack Gilbert but loved his interview and will definitely look to read some now. Likewise with Stone, who was partly in the Beat Generation's orbit. Just some highlights and bits I underlined below.
Dorothy Parker says, on discussing her own generation of writers and influences, "But as for living novelists, I suppose, E.M. Forster is the best, not knowing what that is, but at least he's a semifinalist, wouldn't you think?" She claims to read Vanity Fair a "dozen times a year". She thinks Mailer's The Naked and the Dead is a "great book" and that Styron's Lie Down in Darkness is "an extraordinary thing."
Capote's interview is brilliant and I underlined a great, great deal. "Henry James is the maestro of the semi-colon. Hemingway is a first-rate paragrapher. From the point of view of ear, Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence." He says one of the most fascinating things I've heard about knowing when a story is finished: "The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final?" I adore that idea of silencing the imagination. I've read about Capote's claims before, about his memory being 96% accurate or whatever he said and here, his famous reading quote, "I average about five books a week—the normal-length novel takes me about two hours." He mentions a number of his influences but says the "enthusiams that remain constant: Flaubert, Turgenev, Chekhov, Jane Austen, James, E.M. Forster, Maupassant, Rilke, Proust, Shaw, Willa Cather—oh the list is too long, so I'll end with James Agee", what a list! And finally, his "personal quirks" are wildly interesting (and amusing):
Truman Capote
Hemingway is a sour interviewee who answers some questions with things like, "I see I am getting away from the question, but the question was not very interesting." Or after answering one also says, This is one of the dustiest clichés there is and I apologise for it. But when you ask someone old, tired questions you are apt to receive old, tired answers." Oh, Hem.
Eliot, on the other hand, comes across as affably as ever. Most interestingly, he replies to the question about Pound and if he cut whole sections from The Waste Land:
Bellow is also interesting, and says "I like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald." Another great list there. I've already quoted this in multiple reviews since reading this, but I'll quote it again, Bellow's response to someone talking about Henderson the Rain King, "He [a professor of Bellow's] said the subject was much too serious for fooling. I felt that my fooling was fairly serious." What a beautiful thought: the serious fooling of literature."
I'm going to have to transcribe the beginning of Borges' interview as it's delightful to read.
Borges later says, "I began to fear for my mental integrity—I said, Maybe I can't write anymore. Then my life would have been practically over because literature is very important to me. Not because I think my own stuff particularly good, but because I know that I can't get along without writing. If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no?" And you must excuse me, I must transcribe the end of the interview too:
Jorge Luis Borges
Vonnegut's is another great interview that I could quote plenty, but I'll stick with this one poignant line he says. "The raid didn't shorten the war by half a second, didn't weaken a German defence or attack anywhere, didn't free a single person from a death camp. Only one person benefitted—not two or five or ten. Just one."
The interviewer asks, Who?
"Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that."
James M. Cain says, "Actually, the strange thing is that novels aren't written by young guys. I was saying that before. You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it's working on then you can write a novel." And also, mentions the fact that Alice in Wonderland is "the greatest novel in the English Language."
West talks poorly of almost everyone, even says Maugham "can't write for toffee", but how untrue is that? Of course, she is asked about her affair with H.G. Wells but she deflects it well, seems like a very intelligent woman.
Bishop is asked, As a young woman, did you have a sense of yourself as a writer? And she replies, I'm imagining, wistfully, "No, it all just happens without your thinking about it. I never meant to go to Brazil. I never meant doing any of these things. I'm afraid in my life everything has just happened."
Never read Stone, as I said, but I think I will now. Too much to quote again. As a big Kerouac fan, I only want to quote this:
There's way too much in the Gottlieb section, writers like Heller, Morrison, Caro, etc., all talking about him and their work and G. talking about them and their work in return. Price and Wilder talked a lot about screenwriting, the latter almost entirely, so I have no interest there, really. Gilbert was a joy to hear too so I'll be reading some of his poetry, so honest and full of love and peace. His interview ends as—
And Didion speaks well, firmly, despite the loss she's suffered throughout her life. I'm looking forward to reading more of her this year.
Joan Didion
Vol. 2 awaits me at some point.
I've been addicted to reading The Paris Review interviews for a long time now, but you're only allowed to read the first part of the interviews online before having to pay. I've read a lot of beginnings. The Paris Review have published a number of interviews across four volumes, which I intend to finally read in full. The sixteen writers in vol. 1 are: Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, James M. Cain, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Stone, Robert Gottlieb (whose interview is comprised of many writers and G. himself), Richard Price, Billy Wilder, Jack Gilbert and Joan Didion.
On the whole, it is a fantastic selection. I have no interest whatsoever in movies so the screenwriting elements, and essentially the whole of Wilder's interview, were boring for me. There are some crossovers between writing prose and writing for the screen, no doubt, and so I read them. In fact, one of the best on-writing talks I ever saw was at my university by a J. Yorke, a screenwriter, who had incredible writing advice that was very transferable to the page. Of course, the stand out interviews were by writers I have read and enjoy such as Capote, Hemingway, Eliot, Vonnegut, Borges, Didion, etc. I have never read any Jack Gilbert but loved his interview and will definitely look to read some now. Likewise with Stone, who was partly in the Beat Generation's orbit. Just some highlights and bits I underlined below.
Dorothy Parker says, on discussing her own generation of writers and influences, "But as for living novelists, I suppose, E.M. Forster is the best, not knowing what that is, but at least he's a semifinalist, wouldn't you think?" She claims to read Vanity Fair a "dozen times a year". She thinks Mailer's The Naked and the Dead is a "great book" and that Styron's Lie Down in Darkness is "an extraordinary thing."
Capote's interview is brilliant and I underlined a great, great deal. "Henry James is the maestro of the semi-colon. Hemingway is a first-rate paragrapher. From the point of view of ear, Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence." He says one of the most fascinating things I've heard about knowing when a story is finished: "The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final?" I adore that idea of silencing the imagination. I've read about Capote's claims before, about his memory being 96% accurate or whatever he said and here, his famous reading quote, "I average about five books a week—the normal-length novel takes me about two hours." He mentions a number of his influences but says the "enthusiams that remain constant: Flaubert, Turgenev, Chekhov, Jane Austen, James, E.M. Forster, Maupassant, Rilke, Proust, Shaw, Willa Cather—oh the list is too long, so I'll end with James Agee", what a list! And finally, his "personal quirks" are wildly interesting (and amusing):
"I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone becayse their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won't accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses—which is sad because they're my favourite flower. I can't allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won't travel on a plane with two nuns. Won't begin or end anything on a Friday. It's endless, the things I can't and won't."
Truman Capote
Hemingway is a sour interviewee who answers some questions with things like, "I see I am getting away from the question, but the question was not very interesting." Or after answering one also says, This is one of the dustiest clichés there is and I apologise for it. But when you ask someone old, tired questions you are apt to receive old, tired answers." Oh, Hem.
Eliot, on the other hand, comes across as affably as ever. Most interestingly, he replies to the question about Pound and if he cut whole sections from The Waste Land:
"Whole sections, yes. There was a long section about a shipwreck. I don't know what that had to do with anything else, but it was rather inspired by the Ulysses canto in The Inferno, I think. Then there was another section that was an imitation of Rape of the Lock. Pound said, It's no use trying to do something that somebody else has done as well as it can be done. Try something different."
Bellow is also interesting, and says "I like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald." Another great list there. I've already quoted this in multiple reviews since reading this, but I'll quote it again, Bellow's response to someone talking about Henderson the Rain King, "He [a professor of Bellow's] said the subject was much too serious for fooling. I felt that my fooling was fairly serious." What a beautiful thought: the serious fooling of literature."
I'm going to have to transcribe the beginning of Borges' interview as it's delightful to read.
INTERVIEWER
You don't object to my recording our conversation?
BORGES
No, no. You fix the gadgets. They are a hindrance, but I will try to talk as if they're not there. Now where are you from?
INTERVIEWER
From New York.
BORGES
Ah, New York. I was there, and I liked it very much—I said to myself, Well, I have made this; this is my work.
INTERVIEWER
You mean the walls of the high buildings, the maze of streets?
BORGES
Yes. I rambled about the streets—Fifth Avenue—and got lost, but the people were always kind. I remember answering many questions about my work from tall, shy young men. In Texas they had told me to be afraid of New York, but I liked it. Well, are you ready?
INTERVIEWER
Yes, the machine is already working.
BORGES
Now, before we start, what kind of questions are they?
Borges later says, "I began to fear for my mental integrity—I said, Maybe I can't write anymore. Then my life would have been practically over because literature is very important to me. Not because I think my own stuff particularly good, but because I know that I can't get along without writing. If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no?" And you must excuse me, I must transcribe the end of the interview too:
INTERVIEWER
Before I go, would you mind signing my copy of Labyrinths?
BORGES
I'll be glad to. Ah yes, I know this book. There's my picture—but do I really look like this? I don't like that picture. I'm not so gloomy? So beaten down?
INTERVIEWER
Don't you think it looks pensive?
BORGES
Perhaps. But so dark? So heavy? The brow... Oh well.
Jorge Luis Borges
Vonnegut's is another great interview that I could quote plenty, but I'll stick with this one poignant line he says. "The raid didn't shorten the war by half a second, didn't weaken a German defence or attack anywhere, didn't free a single person from a death camp. Only one person benefitted—not two or five or ten. Just one."
The interviewer asks, Who?
"Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that."
James M. Cain says, "Actually, the strange thing is that novels aren't written by young guys. I was saying that before. You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it's working on then you can write a novel." And also, mentions the fact that Alice in Wonderland is "the greatest novel in the English Language."
West talks poorly of almost everyone, even says Maugham "can't write for toffee", but how untrue is that? Of course, she is asked about her affair with H.G. Wells but she deflects it well, seems like a very intelligent woman.
Bishop is asked, As a young woman, did you have a sense of yourself as a writer? And she replies, I'm imagining, wistfully, "No, it all just happens without your thinking about it. I never meant to go to Brazil. I never meant doing any of these things. I'm afraid in my life everything has just happened."
Never read Stone, as I said, but I think I will now. Too much to quote again. As a big Kerouac fan, I only want to quote this:
"I didn't know him well [Kesey]. And I didn't travel on the bus. I saw the bus off and greeted the bus when it arrived on Riverside Drive. We went to a party where Kerouac and Ginsburg and Orlovsky and those guys were, and Kerouac was at his drunken worst. He was also very jealous of Neal, who had shifted his allegiance to Kesey. But Neal was pretty exhausted too. I saw some films taken on the bus—Neal looked like he was tired from trying to keep up with the limitless energy of all those kids. Anyway... Kerouac at that party was drunk and pissed off, a situation I understand very well. The first thing I ever said to him was, Hey, Jack, have you got a cigarette? And he said, I ain't gonna give you no fucking cigarette, man, there's a drugstore on the corner, you can go down there and buy a fucking pack of cigarettes, don't ask me for cigarettes. That's my Kerouac story."
There's way too much in the Gottlieb section, writers like Heller, Morrison, Caro, etc., all talking about him and their work and G. talking about them and their work in return. Price and Wilder talked a lot about screenwriting, the latter almost entirely, so I have no interest there, really. Gilbert was a joy to hear too so I'll be reading some of his poetry, so honest and full of love and peace. His interview ends as—
INTERVIEWER
Do you think poetry is relevant in our society anymore? Do you think it has a place?
GILBERT
Someone once asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilisation. And he's supposed to have said, "I think it would be a very good idea." That's the way I feel.
INTERVIEWER
Do you still wake up happy but aware of your mortality?
GILBERT
Yes, though sometimes I have to have a cup of tea first.
And Didion speaks well, firmly, despite the loss she's suffered throughout her life. I'm looking forward to reading more of her this year.
Joan Didion
Vol. 2 awaits me at some point.
Read
September 22, 2013Read up until the Vonnegut interview (which was great). The rest of these interviews seem less urgent to me, so I'm putting this back on the occasionally-reading shelf.
My impressions of the interviews, below:
1st Interview: Dorothy Parker
I thought that dear Dorothy certainly had a pose that she was anxious to keep. There were definitely some airs and "well, dahhhhhling," sort of moments. However, I appreciated her good taste. Her favorite contemporary writer was EM Forster (with a wonderful little anecdote about how she met Somerset Maugham and he was all, "Well, we have a writer over here called Forster, but you probably haven't heard of him over there," and she wanted to hit him over the head with a frying pan), was envious of Edna Millay (she was always trying to live up to her in poetry and felt she never could) and she was wonderfully loyal to Fitzgerald. She identified as a member of the "lost" generation (and thought that Gertrude Stein had screwed them all with that label). I think my favorite anecdote other than the Forester one was the one where she was fired from Vanity Fair for giving a bad review of a terrible Ziegfield produced show with an actress in it called Billie Burke. Two other colleagues quit with her when she was fired in protest and they left a sign in the hallway on their way out that read, "Contributions for Billie Burke."
2nd Interview: Truman Capote
Wow, this one has an ego on him of the highest order! When asked to list a book of his own that he wrote long ago that he likes, he doesn't just name one, he lists four. He also claims that he has "never been aware of any direct literary influence" though others see great writers in him sometimes (Faulkner, Welty, McCullers). He also is really big into pronouncements from upon high about what kind of writers there are- "stylists and typists." He also has some good reading taste, though. He says that he can't read Poe, Dickens or Stevenson anymore ("I love them in memory, but find them unreadable"- like the rest of us and our childhood loves), but the "enthusiasm that remain constant" are: Flaubert, Turgenev, Chekhov, Jane Austen, James, Forster, Maupassant, Rilke, Proust, Shaw, Willa Cather and James Agee- his favorite contemporary writer.
My favorite part- Capote talks about how he needs to detach himself to write about things, "exhausting the emotion": "...I believe my fictional method is equally detached- emotionality makes me lose writing control: I have to exhaust the emotion before I feel clinical enough to analyze and project it, and as far I'm concerned that's one of the laws of achieving true technique. If my fiction seems more personal it is because it depends on the artist's most personal and revealing area: the imagination.
... I seem to remember reading that Dickens, as he wrote, choked with laughter over his own humor and dripped tears all over the page when one of his characters died. My own theory is the writer should have considered his wit and dried his tears long, long before setting out to evoke similar reactions in a reader. I believe the greatest intensity in art in all its shapes ins achieved with a deliberate, hard and cool head."
... I am actually not sure that I agree with Capote about that. I know the times I have felt that I achieved the most in my art, I was not cool or detached. Perhaps that is just because I am not a great artist, but it's food for thought.
3rd Interview: Hemingway
Towards the end of the interview, Hemingway states "The most essential gift for a writer is a built-in shockproof, shit detector."
Well. You can at least tell that whatever else he might say in this interview, or whatever other statements he might disavow, that is one that he is quite proud to stick by. The whole interview is characterized by him proudly showing off that he believes that he has this gift and letting the interviewer (George Plimpton, who he seems to have a longstanding acquaintance with at the time of this interview) know it. He kicks back at this interview for being "stupid" and for asking "tired questions" at several points- mostly because he either feels that a question was badly worded, or he doesn't want to answer it. Plimpton points out in a forward to the interview that Hemingway was so uncomfortable with discussing his craft, and in fact held the strong belief that one should not discuss certain aspects of it lest they melt away (something I remember from his discussion of Fitzgerald as a butterfly in A Moveable Feast), that he wrote out answers on a writing board instead of answering verbally. I wish he'd asterisked which ones that Hemingway answered out loud and which ones were silent- I have a feeling all the schoolyard-y ones were verbalized, viciously, and much of the rest was written down, with a sort of embarrassment. I got that sense of a guy who is at one and the same time embarrassed to talk seriously about his art and makes fun of it a lot out of a sense of... what... I don't know, that he's not doing something more important.. but at the same time desperately wants to talk about it and loves it to no end- it's that "if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more," thing. But you know, with more rudeness and masculine posturing.
He also seems quite resistant to the attempts by the interviewer to class him with what I imagine by 1958 (when this interview was done) the "historic" lost generation crowd Unlike Dorothy Parker and her constant talk of poor Fitzgerald, Hemingway makes it a point to either barely talk about or get directly pissy with that crowd. Gertrude Stein was the biggest example- clearly there's an ax to grind there. ("Miss Stein wrote at some length and with considerable inaccuracy about her influence on my work. It was necessary for her to do that after she had learned to write dialogue from a book called The Sun Also Rises"- Wow, the ego and wow, grudge much?) I will say that he was happy enough to underline that he had had the chance to meet Monet and some of the other painters of the time, though.
I have to say I was very impressed with how strongly the interviewer made Hemingway's personality come through, though. He did a wonderful examination of Hemingway's workspace in Havana in the prologue to the interview. Hemingway used a standing desk- who knew? Forerunner of modern health at least in one ways if not in hard-drinking others. He worked at one small little space on top of a bookshelf rather than on the huge desk in the room. As I said, he was quite prickly and in a very specific you're-an-asshole way, despite his own questionable motives at times (apparently once in Madrid he said that "imaginations might be the result of inherited racial experience," after a concussion in the presence of the interviewer and then tried to make him seem like the asshole for taking advantage of a concussed man and violating the clubhouse rules of never writing down silly things that are said- because conversation is for saying "irresponsible" things so you don't write them down." I got a real sense of him in a way that humanized him for me for the first time ever as Hemingway a guy to hang out with, not just Hemingway with the terrible personal life and Hemingway the author.
Favorite bits related to writing:
"If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it there is a hole in the story.
The Old Man and the Sea could have been over a thousand pages long and had every character in the village in it and all the processes of how they made their living, were born, educated, bore children et cetera.That is done excellently and well by t writers. In writing you are limited by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have tried to learn to do something else. First I have tried to eliminate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to the reader so that after he or she has read something it will become a part of his or her experience and seem actually to have happened."
Interviewer:".... Archibald MacLeish has spoken of a method of conveying experience to a reader that he said you developed while covering baseball games back in those Kansas City Star days. It was simply that experience is communicated by indicating the whole by making the reader conscious of what he has been aware of only subconsciously."
Hemingway: "The anecdote is apocryphal.. What Archie was trying to remember was hoe I was trying to learn in Chicago around 1920 and was searching for the unnoticed things that made emotions, such as the way an outfielder tossed his glove without looking back to see where it fell, the squeak of resin on canvas under a fighter's flat-soled gym shoes, the gray color of Jack Blackburn's skin when he had just come out of stir... You saw Blackburn's strange color and the old razor cuts and the way he spun a man before you knew his history. These were things that moved you before you knew his story."
4th Interview: TS Eliot
I really enjoyed this interview. Eliot was the first of the interviewees that was willing to talk about his work fairly straight on without evasions, and was willing to engage in a more in-depth literary discussion as well. He seemed very polite (I wonder if this is why they placed his interview just after Hemingway, just to give us all a bit of a break). It seemed like he was thoughtful about the progress of his own work, what he had improved at each stage and why.
He says that he considers Four Quartets his best work, and The Waste Land does not stand for the "Lost Generation" or anything like that. At the time of the interview, he had just wrapped up finishing a play, so he was full of talk about writing for the theatre as opposed to writing poetry.
My favorite part of the interview was where he talked about how he had moved from a more "obscure" style of writing to a "simpler" style at the time of the interview:
"I see the Quartets as being much simpler and easier to understand than The Waste Land and Ash Wednesday. Sometimes the thing I'm trying to say, the subject matter, may be difficult, but it seems to me that I'm saying it in a simpler way.
The other element that enters into it, I think, is just experience and maturity. I think that in the early poems it was a question of not being able to-of having more to say than one knew how to say, and having something one wanted to put into words and rhythm which one didn't have the command of words and rhythm to put in a way immediately apprehensible.
That type of obscurity comes when the poet is still at the stage of learning how to use language. You have to say the thing the difficult way. The only alternative is not saying it at all, at that stage. By the time of the Four Quartets, I couldn't have written it in the style of The Waste Land. In The Waste Land, I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying. These things, however, become easier to people with time. You get used to having The Waste Land or Ulysses."
He also makes an interesting case that he thinks that the fact that he had a second job made his writing better, that it forces you to focus your efforts simply because you have less time to devote to writing. He finds that it could have been a "danger" to simply write too much rather than "perfecting smaller amounts."
The interview certainly made me curious to know a lot more about him. A cursory google search made me even more interested. I'll definitely be picking up the Four Quartets, and likely a biography on him (and his wife) as well.
5th Interview: Saul Bellow
I will admit that I had not read any Saul Bellow going into this, and I didn't know anything about him, really, except that his name often came up on lists of authors and books that one should read.
In the forward to the interview, the interviewer wrote that Bellow spent hours and hours perfecting this interview over the course of five weeks. They actually had about 2-3 sessions of talking across five weeks and then several more meetings just to go over what he had said, correct it, excise sections, etc. So I got the impression of a careful and perfectionist individual who took what he said very seriously, especially when speaking to a publication like the Paris review.
He was very serious about talking about the progression of his own work in a way that felt honest, but not overly egocentric. In addition, of all the interviews, he was the most engaged with the literary environment around him, and with analyzing it and the work of other writers.
His thoughts on Hemingway and Fitzgerald, for example: "I like Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. I think of Hemingway as a man who developed a significant manner as an artist, a lifestyle that is important. For his generation, his language created a lifestyle, one that pathetic old gentlemen are still found clinging to. I don't think of Hemingway as a great novelist. I like Fitzgerald's novels better, but I often feel about Fitzgerald that he couldn't distinguish between innocence and social climbing. I am thinking of The Great Gatsby."
I also liked his thoughts on when he was starting out as a writer:
Interviewer: "You mentioned before the interview that you would prefer not to talk about your early novels, that you feel that you are a different person now from what you were then. I wonder if this is all you want to say or if you can say something about how you've changed."
Bellow: "I think that when I wrote those early books I was timid. I still felt the incredible effrontery of announcing myself to the world (in part I mean the WASP world) as a writer and an artist. I had to touch a great many bases, demonstrate my abilities, pay my respects to formal requirements. In short, I was afraid to let myself go."
6th Interview: Borges
This interview was something of a creation, I would say, more like a one-act play or a scene created around a character than a naturalistic conversation between two people. The setup itself, I suppose, is hard to resist. The interviewer met Borges at his job- serving as the Director of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires. By the time of the interview Borges was almost totally blind and relied on others for a great many things. There is a side character of his assistant who pops in and out to announce, Godot-like that "Mr. Campbell is waiting," (it seems only for Borges to have the opportunity to say things like, "Those Campbells keep coming," and to get to close the interview as a character would, noting, "...But now I remember the Campbells are coming, the Campbells are coming. They are supposed to be a ferocious tribe. Where are they?"). The interviewer certainly worked hard enough to create an interview that seemed as surreal as some of the writings of the author himself, so kudos.
Borges talked about a number of things, about symbolism and intention in his prose (or the lack thereof), about his blindness and how it had affected his writing, how he got started on writing short stories, etc. Some opinions of other writers- he seems to have respect for Joyce, but he really dislikes Eliot. He sees Eliot as a creature of academia, always "disagreeing with some professor or other," and "drawing fine distinctions," involved in theories and the academic dialogue and game of disagreeing with someone slightly to make a seemingly different but not actually that different point, or being a part of one "school" or another. Borges himself seems, in the Hemingway vein, to see himself as "just writing," rather than being involved in all that "professional academic" stuff.
He says of Eliot: ".. he's not one of the poets that I love. I should rate Yeats far above him. In fact, if you don't mind my saying so, I think Frost is a finer poet than Eliot. I mean a finer poet. But I suppose Eliot was a far more intelligent man; however intelligence has little to do with poetry. Poetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence. It may not even be linked with wisdom... I remember- of course I was a young man- I was even angry when Eliot spoke slightingly of Sandburg. I remember he said that classicism is good because it enabled us to deal with such writers as Mr. Carl Sandburg. When one calls a poet mister, it's a word with haughty feelings, it means Mr. So-and-so who has found his way into poetry and has no right to be there, who is really an outsider.... That annihilates him, that blots him out."
Though, I have to say, he is the director of the Biblioteca Nacional, and the whole first part of the interview was about his recent study of Old English and Old Norse and their use of metaphors, so I don't know how snotty he really gets to be about Eliot's engagement with the world of the ivory tower and his general following of the norms of academia, which is what Borges seems to mean by "intelligence"
Also, ironically, he seems to have had a very similar experience to Eliot in terms of the development of his writing That is, he makes statements in favor of writing with simplicity and how when he was younger, he thought he had to write in a fancy way to get attention and prove himself, but as he has become older, he has changed his mind:
"Look, I mean to say this: when I began writing, I thought that everything should be defined by the writer. For example, to say, "the moon" was strictly forbidden; that one had to find an adjective, an epithet for the moon... I would never have said So-and-so came in and sat down, because that was far too simple and far too easy.... I think the whole root of the matter lies in the fact that when a writer is young, he feels somehow that what he is going to say is rather silly or obvious or commonplace, and then he tries to hide it under a baroque ornament... Then as time goes on, one feels that one's ideas, good or bad, should be plainly expressed, because if you have an idea you must try to get that idea or that feeling or that mood into the mind of the reader... So I think that a writer always begins by being too complicated- he is playing several games at the same time."
Look above to compare these with Eliot's statements. Appears that they agreed on some things in any case. The interviewer agrees with me- he tries to get Borges to admit that he and Eliot (particularly the Eliot of The Waste Land) have a lot in common, but Borges is just not biting.
There were also some other fun parts- Borges loves English and says that Americans are the "savior" of the language. He says that Shakespeare is not a very "English" writer and calls him "too bombastic." He makes fun of Hamlet's last line as pretentious ( "One feels that Shakespeare is thinking, Well, now Prince Hamlet is dying, he must say something impressive. So he ekes out that phrase, "The rest is silence." Now that may be impressive, but it is not true! He was working away at his job of poet and not thinking of the real character of Hamlet the Dane.") and then goes on a lengthy discourse on the "this England," speech and how it's too long and written in a way that lessens the impact.
Also completed: Vonnegut. Fascinating interview-with-himself type palimpsest, created out of four separate interviews that he edited with a fifth interviewer to create the whole. Will give more detail later.
My impressions of the interviews, below:
1st Interview: Dorothy Parker
I thought that dear Dorothy certainly had a pose that she was anxious to keep. There were definitely some airs and "well, dahhhhhling," sort of moments. However, I appreciated her good taste. Her favorite contemporary writer was EM Forster (with a wonderful little anecdote about how she met Somerset Maugham and he was all, "Well, we have a writer over here called Forster, but you probably haven't heard of him over there," and she wanted to hit him over the head with a frying pan), was envious of Edna Millay (she was always trying to live up to her in poetry and felt she never could) and she was wonderfully loyal to Fitzgerald. She identified as a member of the "lost" generation (and thought that Gertrude Stein had screwed them all with that label). I think my favorite anecdote other than the Forester one was the one where she was fired from Vanity Fair for giving a bad review of a terrible Ziegfield produced show with an actress in it called Billie Burke. Two other colleagues quit with her when she was fired in protest and they left a sign in the hallway on their way out that read, "Contributions for Billie Burke."
2nd Interview: Truman Capote
Wow, this one has an ego on him of the highest order! When asked to list a book of his own that he wrote long ago that he likes, he doesn't just name one, he lists four. He also claims that he has "never been aware of any direct literary influence" though others see great writers in him sometimes (Faulkner, Welty, McCullers). He also is really big into pronouncements from upon high about what kind of writers there are- "stylists and typists." He also has some good reading taste, though. He says that he can't read Poe, Dickens or Stevenson anymore ("I love them in memory, but find them unreadable"- like the rest of us and our childhood loves), but the "enthusiasm that remain constant" are: Flaubert, Turgenev, Chekhov, Jane Austen, James, Forster, Maupassant, Rilke, Proust, Shaw, Willa Cather and James Agee- his favorite contemporary writer.
My favorite part- Capote talks about how he needs to detach himself to write about things, "exhausting the emotion": "...I believe my fictional method is equally detached- emotionality makes me lose writing control: I have to exhaust the emotion before I feel clinical enough to analyze and project it, and as far I'm concerned that's one of the laws of achieving true technique. If my fiction seems more personal it is because it depends on the artist's most personal and revealing area: the imagination.
... I seem to remember reading that Dickens, as he wrote, choked with laughter over his own humor and dripped tears all over the page when one of his characters died. My own theory is the writer should have considered his wit and dried his tears long, long before setting out to evoke similar reactions in a reader. I believe the greatest intensity in art in all its shapes ins achieved with a deliberate, hard and cool head."
... I am actually not sure that I agree with Capote about that. I know the times I have felt that I achieved the most in my art, I was not cool or detached. Perhaps that is just because I am not a great artist, but it's food for thought.
3rd Interview: Hemingway
Towards the end of the interview, Hemingway states "The most essential gift for a writer is a built-in shockproof, shit detector."
Well. You can at least tell that whatever else he might say in this interview, or whatever other statements he might disavow, that is one that he is quite proud to stick by. The whole interview is characterized by him proudly showing off that he believes that he has this gift and letting the interviewer (George Plimpton, who he seems to have a longstanding acquaintance with at the time of this interview) know it. He kicks back at this interview for being "stupid" and for asking "tired questions" at several points- mostly because he either feels that a question was badly worded, or he doesn't want to answer it. Plimpton points out in a forward to the interview that Hemingway was so uncomfortable with discussing his craft, and in fact held the strong belief that one should not discuss certain aspects of it lest they melt away (something I remember from his discussion of Fitzgerald as a butterfly in A Moveable Feast), that he wrote out answers on a writing board instead of answering verbally. I wish he'd asterisked which ones that Hemingway answered out loud and which ones were silent- I have a feeling all the schoolyard-y ones were verbalized, viciously, and much of the rest was written down, with a sort of embarrassment. I got that sense of a guy who is at one and the same time embarrassed to talk seriously about his art and makes fun of it a lot out of a sense of... what... I don't know, that he's not doing something more important.. but at the same time desperately wants to talk about it and loves it to no end- it's that "if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more," thing. But you know, with more rudeness and masculine posturing.
He also seems quite resistant to the attempts by the interviewer to class him with what I imagine by 1958 (when this interview was done) the "historic" lost generation crowd Unlike Dorothy Parker and her constant talk of poor Fitzgerald, Hemingway makes it a point to either barely talk about or get directly pissy with that crowd. Gertrude Stein was the biggest example- clearly there's an ax to grind there. ("Miss Stein wrote at some length and with considerable inaccuracy about her influence on my work. It was necessary for her to do that after she had learned to write dialogue from a book called The Sun Also Rises"- Wow, the ego and wow, grudge much?) I will say that he was happy enough to underline that he had had the chance to meet Monet and some of the other painters of the time, though.
I have to say I was very impressed with how strongly the interviewer made Hemingway's personality come through, though. He did a wonderful examination of Hemingway's workspace in Havana in the prologue to the interview. Hemingway used a standing desk- who knew? Forerunner of modern health at least in one ways if not in hard-drinking others. He worked at one small little space on top of a bookshelf rather than on the huge desk in the room. As I said, he was quite prickly and in a very specific you're-an-asshole way, despite his own questionable motives at times (apparently once in Madrid he said that "imaginations might be the result of inherited racial experience," after a concussion in the presence of the interviewer and then tried to make him seem like the asshole for taking advantage of a concussed man and violating the clubhouse rules of never writing down silly things that are said- because conversation is for saying "irresponsible" things so you don't write them down." I got a real sense of him in a way that humanized him for me for the first time ever as Hemingway a guy to hang out with, not just Hemingway with the terrible personal life and Hemingway the author.
Favorite bits related to writing:
"If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it there is a hole in the story.
The Old Man and the Sea could have been over a thousand pages long and had every character in the village in it and all the processes of how they made their living, were born, educated, bore children et cetera.That is done excellently and well by t writers. In writing you are limited by what has already been done satisfactorily. So I have tried to learn to do something else. First I have tried to eliminate everything unnecessary to conveying experience to the reader so that after he or she has read something it will become a part of his or her experience and seem actually to have happened."
Interviewer:".... Archibald MacLeish has spoken of a method of conveying experience to a reader that he said you developed while covering baseball games back in those Kansas City Star days. It was simply that experience is communicated by indicating the whole by making the reader conscious of what he has been aware of only subconsciously."
Hemingway: "The anecdote is apocryphal.. What Archie was trying to remember was hoe I was trying to learn in Chicago around 1920 and was searching for the unnoticed things that made emotions, such as the way an outfielder tossed his glove without looking back to see where it fell, the squeak of resin on canvas under a fighter's flat-soled gym shoes, the gray color of Jack Blackburn's skin when he had just come out of stir... You saw Blackburn's strange color and the old razor cuts and the way he spun a man before you knew his history. These were things that moved you before you knew his story."
4th Interview: TS Eliot
I really enjoyed this interview. Eliot was the first of the interviewees that was willing to talk about his work fairly straight on without evasions, and was willing to engage in a more in-depth literary discussion as well. He seemed very polite (I wonder if this is why they placed his interview just after Hemingway, just to give us all a bit of a break). It seemed like he was thoughtful about the progress of his own work, what he had improved at each stage and why.
He says that he considers Four Quartets his best work, and The Waste Land does not stand for the "Lost Generation" or anything like that. At the time of the interview, he had just wrapped up finishing a play, so he was full of talk about writing for the theatre as opposed to writing poetry.
My favorite part of the interview was where he talked about how he had moved from a more "obscure" style of writing to a "simpler" style at the time of the interview:
"I see the Quartets as being much simpler and easier to understand than The Waste Land and Ash Wednesday. Sometimes the thing I'm trying to say, the subject matter, may be difficult, but it seems to me that I'm saying it in a simpler way.
The other element that enters into it, I think, is just experience and maturity. I think that in the early poems it was a question of not being able to-of having more to say than one knew how to say, and having something one wanted to put into words and rhythm which one didn't have the command of words and rhythm to put in a way immediately apprehensible.
That type of obscurity comes when the poet is still at the stage of learning how to use language. You have to say the thing the difficult way. The only alternative is not saying it at all, at that stage. By the time of the Four Quartets, I couldn't have written it in the style of The Waste Land. In The Waste Land, I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying. These things, however, become easier to people with time. You get used to having The Waste Land or Ulysses."
He also makes an interesting case that he thinks that the fact that he had a second job made his writing better, that it forces you to focus your efforts simply because you have less time to devote to writing. He finds that it could have been a "danger" to simply write too much rather than "perfecting smaller amounts."
The interview certainly made me curious to know a lot more about him. A cursory google search made me even more interested. I'll definitely be picking up the Four Quartets, and likely a biography on him (and his wife) as well.
5th Interview: Saul Bellow
I will admit that I had not read any Saul Bellow going into this, and I didn't know anything about him, really, except that his name often came up on lists of authors and books that one should read.
In the forward to the interview, the interviewer wrote that Bellow spent hours and hours perfecting this interview over the course of five weeks. They actually had about 2-3 sessions of talking across five weeks and then several more meetings just to go over what he had said, correct it, excise sections, etc. So I got the impression of a careful and perfectionist individual who took what he said very seriously, especially when speaking to a publication like the Paris review.
He was very serious about talking about the progression of his own work in a way that felt honest, but not overly egocentric. In addition, of all the interviews, he was the most engaged with the literary environment around him, and with analyzing it and the work of other writers.
His thoughts on Hemingway and Fitzgerald, for example: "I like Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. I think of Hemingway as a man who developed a significant manner as an artist, a lifestyle that is important. For his generation, his language created a lifestyle, one that pathetic old gentlemen are still found clinging to. I don't think of Hemingway as a great novelist. I like Fitzgerald's novels better, but I often feel about Fitzgerald that he couldn't distinguish between innocence and social climbing. I am thinking of The Great Gatsby."
I also liked his thoughts on when he was starting out as a writer:
Interviewer: "You mentioned before the interview that you would prefer not to talk about your early novels, that you feel that you are a different person now from what you were then. I wonder if this is all you want to say or if you can say something about how you've changed."
Bellow: "I think that when I wrote those early books I was timid. I still felt the incredible effrontery of announcing myself to the world (in part I mean the WASP world) as a writer and an artist. I had to touch a great many bases, demonstrate my abilities, pay my respects to formal requirements. In short, I was afraid to let myself go."
6th Interview: Borges
This interview was something of a creation, I would say, more like a one-act play or a scene created around a character than a naturalistic conversation between two people. The setup itself, I suppose, is hard to resist. The interviewer met Borges at his job- serving as the Director of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires. By the time of the interview Borges was almost totally blind and relied on others for a great many things. There is a side character of his assistant who pops in and out to announce, Godot-like that "Mr. Campbell is waiting," (it seems only for Borges to have the opportunity to say things like, "Those Campbells keep coming," and to get to close the interview as a character would, noting, "...But now I remember the Campbells are coming, the Campbells are coming. They are supposed to be a ferocious tribe. Where are they?"). The interviewer certainly worked hard enough to create an interview that seemed as surreal as some of the writings of the author himself, so kudos.
Borges talked about a number of things, about symbolism and intention in his prose (or the lack thereof), about his blindness and how it had affected his writing, how he got started on writing short stories, etc. Some opinions of other writers- he seems to have respect for Joyce, but he really dislikes Eliot. He sees Eliot as a creature of academia, always "disagreeing with some professor or other," and "drawing fine distinctions," involved in theories and the academic dialogue and game of disagreeing with someone slightly to make a seemingly different but not actually that different point, or being a part of one "school" or another. Borges himself seems, in the Hemingway vein, to see himself as "just writing," rather than being involved in all that "professional academic" stuff.
He says of Eliot: ".. he's not one of the poets that I love. I should rate Yeats far above him. In fact, if you don't mind my saying so, I think Frost is a finer poet than Eliot. I mean a finer poet. But I suppose Eliot was a far more intelligent man; however intelligence has little to do with poetry. Poetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence. It may not even be linked with wisdom... I remember- of course I was a young man- I was even angry when Eliot spoke slightingly of Sandburg. I remember he said that classicism is good because it enabled us to deal with such writers as Mr. Carl Sandburg. When one calls a poet mister, it's a word with haughty feelings, it means Mr. So-and-so who has found his way into poetry and has no right to be there, who is really an outsider.... That annihilates him, that blots him out."
Though, I have to say, he is the director of the Biblioteca Nacional, and the whole first part of the interview was about his recent study of Old English and Old Norse and their use of metaphors, so I don't know how snotty he really gets to be about Eliot's engagement with the world of the ivory tower and his general following of the norms of academia, which is what Borges seems to mean by "intelligence"
Also, ironically, he seems to have had a very similar experience to Eliot in terms of the development of his writing That is, he makes statements in favor of writing with simplicity and how when he was younger, he thought he had to write in a fancy way to get attention and prove himself, but as he has become older, he has changed his mind:
"Look, I mean to say this: when I began writing, I thought that everything should be defined by the writer. For example, to say, "the moon" was strictly forbidden; that one had to find an adjective, an epithet for the moon... I would never have said So-and-so came in and sat down, because that was far too simple and far too easy.... I think the whole root of the matter lies in the fact that when a writer is young, he feels somehow that what he is going to say is rather silly or obvious or commonplace, and then he tries to hide it under a baroque ornament... Then as time goes on, one feels that one's ideas, good or bad, should be plainly expressed, because if you have an idea you must try to get that idea or that feeling or that mood into the mind of the reader... So I think that a writer always begins by being too complicated- he is playing several games at the same time."
Look above to compare these with Eliot's statements. Appears that they agreed on some things in any case. The interviewer agrees with me- he tries to get Borges to admit that he and Eliot (particularly the Eliot of The Waste Land) have a lot in common, but Borges is just not biting.
There were also some other fun parts- Borges loves English and says that Americans are the "savior" of the language. He says that Shakespeare is not a very "English" writer and calls him "too bombastic." He makes fun of Hamlet's last line as pretentious ( "One feels that Shakespeare is thinking, Well, now Prince Hamlet is dying, he must say something impressive. So he ekes out that phrase, "The rest is silence." Now that may be impressive, but it is not true! He was working away at his job of poet and not thinking of the real character of Hamlet the Dane.") and then goes on a lengthy discourse on the "this England," speech and how it's too long and written in a way that lessens the impact.
Also completed: Vonnegut. Fascinating interview-with-himself type palimpsest, created out of four separate interviews that he edited with a fifth interviewer to create the whole. Will give more detail later.
January 7, 2016
The first of four volumes, this collection presents the most noted conversations published by the esteemed literary periodical, The Paris Review. Known for its access to top-tier contemporary writers and its intimate approach to the craft, the magazine's interview has long been considered one of the key sources of insight into the working life of the artist - be it novelist, poet, screenwriter, historian, or cultural commentator. (Editors also occasionally appear: Robert Gottlieb made the cut here.)
Each interview starts with a brief recounting of its arrangement; the number of times the subject was met, the subject's concerns, the subject's involvement in the editing. (Artists were permitted to review the piece and make what changes they wished prior to publication.) The stage is then set with a description of the chosen environment - a writer's living room, office, library - with careful attention paid to the more distinctive visible elements. A short bio is sometimes offered, though it is largely assumed the reader is familiar in broad stroke with the luminary at hand. And then the conversation begins.
Most writers struggle. There is a well-known and pervasive resistance to the discussion of process among authors. Some attribute this to superstition. (I think it has more to do with the belief that naming a thing takes away its power - which is less superstitious than it is psychoanalytic.) Whatever the reasoning, being asked to explain how they do what they do has a tendency to set a writer's teeth on edge.
Interviewer:
Do you find it easy to shift from one literary project to another, or do you continue through to finish what you start?
Hemingway:
The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely. I will be. Don't worry.
There is a similar tension at certain points in almost all of the interviews. The resulting communications spin away from explanation into a careful negotiation of the abyss, and this is what makes them fascinating. In terms of content, there is what one might reasonably expect: Vonnegut discusses his experience as a German prisoner of war, Robert Stone the impact of the sixties drug culture; Billy Wilder relays a marvelous tale about Charles Boyer and a cockroach. It's good stuff.
I'd give this book the highest rating available, as most readers have, if the paperbacks hadn't been printed on what has to be the cheapest paper on the planet. This is the grade of sheet I use to pack my dinner plates for transport. It's shoddy and serves as a compelling counter to the self-congratulatory pride The Paris Review takes in treating the craft with utmost respect. Every time I turned a page...well, anyone who's still reading hard copy knows the effect.
So, boo to that. And hurray to this.
Each interview starts with a brief recounting of its arrangement; the number of times the subject was met, the subject's concerns, the subject's involvement in the editing. (Artists were permitted to review the piece and make what changes they wished prior to publication.) The stage is then set with a description of the chosen environment - a writer's living room, office, library - with careful attention paid to the more distinctive visible elements. A short bio is sometimes offered, though it is largely assumed the reader is familiar in broad stroke with the luminary at hand. And then the conversation begins.
Most writers struggle. There is a well-known and pervasive resistance to the discussion of process among authors. Some attribute this to superstition. (I think it has more to do with the belief that naming a thing takes away its power - which is less superstitious than it is psychoanalytic.) Whatever the reasoning, being asked to explain how they do what they do has a tendency to set a writer's teeth on edge.
Interviewer:
Do you find it easy to shift from one literary project to another, or do you continue through to finish what you start?
Hemingway:
The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely. I will be. Don't worry.
There is a similar tension at certain points in almost all of the interviews. The resulting communications spin away from explanation into a careful negotiation of the abyss, and this is what makes them fascinating. In terms of content, there is what one might reasonably expect: Vonnegut discusses his experience as a German prisoner of war, Robert Stone the impact of the sixties drug culture; Billy Wilder relays a marvelous tale about Charles Boyer and a cockroach. It's good stuff.
I'd give this book the highest rating available, as most readers have, if the paperbacks hadn't been printed on what has to be the cheapest paper on the planet. This is the grade of sheet I use to pack my dinner plates for transport. It's shoddy and serves as a compelling counter to the self-congratulatory pride The Paris Review takes in treating the craft with utmost respect. Every time I turned a page...well, anyone who's still reading hard copy knows the effect.
So, boo to that. And hurray to this.
December 4, 2018
As entrevistas ao Faulkner e ao Kerouac são os pontos mais altos. No primeiro caso por ter respostas... Surpreendentes. No segundo por ser uma espécie de conto beat. (gosto particularmente da parte em que o Kerouac crava um drunfo ao entrevistador)
September 11, 2021
Rivista prestigiosa, scrittori mitici, interviste intriganti. Una miscela esplosiva ed esclusiva per chi ama leggere. Interviste in puro stile anglosassone (in questo caso e' un complimento) asciutte, precise, senza gigioneggiamenti, che vanno dritte al cuore della tecnica, della prassi dello scrivere, prima ancora che alla ricerca delle radici della passione di farlo. Mostri sacri dicevamo, ma su tutti direi che meritano una menzione particolare il monumentale (e un po' trombone) Hemingway, il brillante Wilder, ma soprattutto l'impagabile Vonnegut.
October 16, 2009
If you've ever tried to write or even wondered about the creative writing
process these interviews will have you riveted. I expected some ego and
posturing and there is a bit but most of the authors are amazingly honest....even
Hemingway as he picks and chooses what he wants to discuss. Most delicious is
when these writers give their take on fellow writers. Here's an example from
Joan Didion, "There's a passage by Christopher Isherwood in a book of his called
`The Condor and the Crows', in which he describes arriving in Venezuela and
being astonished to think that it had been down there every day of his life."
Dorothy Parker says, "And I thought William Styron's `Lie Down in Darkness' an
extraordinary thing. The start of it took your heart and flung it over there."
Best of all are their observations:
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, xxxx
detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."
Ernest Hemingway
"But novel writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be
taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative-writing courses! The
academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to
write is to buy him a typewriter."
James M. Cain
"I had begun to lose patience with the conventions of writing. Descriptions
went first; in both fiction and nonfiction, I just got impatient with those long
paragraphs of description. By which I do not mean--obviously--the single detail
that gives you the scene. I'm talking about description as a substitute for
thinking."
Joan Didion
process these interviews will have you riveted. I expected some ego and
posturing and there is a bit but most of the authors are amazingly honest....even
Hemingway as he picks and chooses what he wants to discuss. Most delicious is
when these writers give their take on fellow writers. Here's an example from
Joan Didion, "There's a passage by Christopher Isherwood in a book of his called
`The Condor and the Crows', in which he describes arriving in Venezuela and
being astonished to think that it had been down there every day of his life."
Dorothy Parker says, "And I thought William Styron's `Lie Down in Darkness' an
extraordinary thing. The start of it took your heart and flung it over there."
Best of all are their observations:
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, xxxx
detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."
Ernest Hemingway
"But novel writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be
taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative-writing courses! The
academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to
write is to buy him a typewriter."
James M. Cain
"I had begun to lose patience with the conventions of writing. Descriptions
went first; in both fiction and nonfiction, I just got impatient with those long
paragraphs of description. By which I do not mean--obviously--the single detail
that gives you the scene. I'm talking about description as a substitute for
thinking."
Joan Didion
December 12, 2009
This book is darned interesting. As readers we're fascinated by what writers have to say about their work. These interviews provide glimpses of how they think as well as their individual works and what elements shaped them. Every one of the interviews is absorbing, even the one I cared for the least. That was Saul Bellow's. I was disappointed that, as was explained in the introductory remarks to his interview, he felt the need to heavily edit it. That process apparently involved several drafts and, no doubt, a heavy rewording of the contents. It reads of spontaneity, but you know it's all been carefully put together by Bellow. While all the interviewers get to see and approve the finished product and are free to amend, I have the feeling they don't meticulously edit. One small quibble: the Capote interview seemed dated. The Truman Capote we understand today seems to me different from the young 1957 version. In a sense Truman Capote hadn't been invented yet. My favorites? Jorge Luis Borges, so unassuming and cooperative. Kurt Vonnegut seemed the most open and unguarded. Robert Stone spoke the most profoundly about the craft of writing. The best part is there are 3 more volumes of these Paris Review Interviews.
November 11, 2009
As this is not a novel it is perhaps not necessary to start at the beginning and read through to the end, but I did so nevertheless, utterly enthralled by the intimate view of the writing process. What most writers have in common: they are usually readers too, they seem often to know the beginning of a story and the end, and have to wrestle with the middle, and most of them seem to need a routine, structure and discipline.
However what is remarkable is the individuality of the process and attitude to what they are doing, some taking it so so seriously, others astonished at being taken seriously. I found the section on Robert Gottlieb particularly informative for the insight it gives you into the publishing business, and I think my very faavourite writer was Kurt Vonnegut: he was so down to earth, so not full of s**t, so moving and so so funny: not his favourite jokes, which were execrable, but his idea to reverse the lack of dependable readers: "I propose that every person out of work be required to submit a book report before he or she gets his or her welfare check." That made me hoot with laughter!
However what is remarkable is the individuality of the process and attitude to what they are doing, some taking it so so seriously, others astonished at being taken seriously. I found the section on Robert Gottlieb particularly informative for the insight it gives you into the publishing business, and I think my very faavourite writer was Kurt Vonnegut: he was so down to earth, so not full of s**t, so moving and so so funny: not his favourite jokes, which were execrable, but his idea to reverse the lack of dependable readers: "I propose that every person out of work be required to submit a book report before he or she gets his or her welfare check." That made me hoot with laughter!
June 4, 2012
Gostei do livro mas este tem, a meu ver, uma enorme lacuna: A total ausência de entrevistas a mulheres escritoras. E Carlos Vaz Marques tinha, se assim o entendesse, nomes por onde escolher (mesmo confinado ao limite temporal dos anos 50 e 60) - Isak Dinesen (também conhecida por Karen Blixen), Dorothy Parker, Françoise Sagan (que me foi imposta na escola com o seu Bonjour Tristesse), Simone de Beauvoir, Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, Marianne Moore e Katherine Anne Porter. Concordo que, ao contrário dos nomes que constam no livro, a maior parte destas autores passa despercebida ao grande público mas esse seria, a meu ver, mais um incentivo para deixar que pelo menos um par delas passasse à edição final: seria uma excelente maneira de dar a conhecer "novos" autores ao público nacional... Bem... Fica para a próxima!
(pode ler a crítica completa no meu blog: notadepagina.blogspot.com)
(pode ler a crítica completa no meu blog: notadepagina.blogspot.com)
December 16, 2018
Once I realised that many of the famous writers' quotes came from their Paris Review interviews, I went straight to the source. And what a source! I hadn't ever tried reading a book consisting purely of interviews, but so long as I read the interviews with a bit of a gap, I found the format appealing. The theme, if you care about it, is riveting: this is written work about (mostly) writers who talk about (mostly) writing.
My favourite interviews were those where I already cared about the author: Borges, Hemingway, Eliot, Cain, Vonnegut. But even of the rest, Parker and Capote were hilarious, and in almost every other interview I found something to laugh about or something to learn.
When you've read Vol 1, stick it on a shelf nearby, and order yourself a copy of Vol 2.
If I don't write, I feel, well, a kind of remorse, no?
—Jorge Luis Borges
My favourite interviews were those where I already cared about the author: Borges, Hemingway, Eliot, Cain, Vonnegut. But even of the rest, Parker and Capote were hilarious, and in almost every other interview I found something to laugh about or something to learn.
When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same. I mean you compare time to a road, death to sleeping, life to dreaming, and those are the great metaphors in literature because they correspond to something essential. If you invent metaphors, they are apt to be surprising during the fraction of a second, butt they strike no deep emotion whatever.
—Jorge Luis Borges
When you've read Vol 1, stick it on a shelf nearby, and order yourself a copy of Vol 2.
December 5, 2019
Reading this book was an elevating experience, an oasis amidst the daily banalities. So many great minds speaking up their minds (forgive me the pun...) at once. Some interviews were more literary/intellectual, others were more chatty, and although I favored the former for obvious reasons (self-help, of course!), I also didn't mind the latter because the chatter was always elevated too, no small talk here whatever the topic was, and plenty of healthy irony. And some interviewees, like Hemingway, Borges or Dorothy Parker, really had their personalities all over the pages in all their multidimentional glory and non-glory. My very favorites were Parker, Truman Capote, Rebecca West abd Joan Didion.
February 6, 2021
Video review
The Art of Fiction is the gold standard in writers' interviews: great snippets into the lives, idiosyncracies, obsessions and quirks of some of the greatest writers in recent history. Recommended to passionate readers, but an absolute must for aspiring writers.
The Art of Fiction is the gold standard in writers' interviews: great snippets into the lives, idiosyncracies, obsessions and quirks of some of the greatest writers in recent history. Recommended to passionate readers, but an absolute must for aspiring writers.
July 28, 2008
Loved this book. Part of it is the novelty of insightful interviews with T.S. Eliot, Truman Capote, and Earnest Hemingway. But even the interviews with writers I don't know well (Robert Stone, Jack Gilbert) were really interesting.
Moving on to the second volume soon..
A running list of terrific quotes from this book:
"I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it." -Dorothy Parker
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all good writers have had it." -Ernest Hemingway
Interviewer: What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?
Kurt Vonnegut: It's a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.
Interviewer: I see.
Kurt Vonnegut: I beg your pardon, between the cheeks of his or her ass. I'm always offending feminists that way.
"I was never a big fan of people who don't leave home. I don't know why. It just seems part of your duty in life." -Joan Didion
Moving on to the second volume soon..
A running list of terrific quotes from this book:
"I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it." -Dorothy Parker
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all good writers have had it." -Ernest Hemingway
Interviewer: What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?
Kurt Vonnegut: It's a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.
Interviewer: I see.
Kurt Vonnegut: I beg your pardon, between the cheeks of his or her ass. I'm always offending feminists that way.
"I was never a big fan of people who don't leave home. I don't know why. It just seems part of your duty in life." -Joan Didion
July 9, 2007
BEST. BOOK. EVER. This book is a required reading for anyone that enjoys literature, authors, or a fascinating glimpse into the artistic process. The remarkable George Plimpston and friends interview everyone from T.S. Eliot to Dorothy Parker to Earnest Hemingway and back again. The interview with Kurt Vonnegut, dealing in part with writing about his experience in Dresden, will blow your mind.
June 17, 2008
Essential for aspiring writers, near-essential for anyone else interested in a look behind the curtain. Candid, thoughtful back-and-forths with some of the greats of the last century. Watching Plimpton spar with Hemingway over the latter's reluctance to give too much away is worth the price of admission alone.
July 8, 2021
Its a wonderful thing to read words from people who love words as much as you do, even if a handful of those ppl are dull and entirely traditional while thinking they are part of a vanguard. The Borges, Stone, Gottlieb, and Gilbert interviews were delightful. Didn’t think i could hate Hemingway any more than I do but he’s truly a proper asshole in this, his dedication to rudeness and self-importance in his interview is almost impressive!
Obvs points off for too many dudes and an entirely white line up, but what else do u expect from a masthead of the literary establishment (yughh)? The other volumes seem better about this
Obvs points off for too many dudes and an entirely white line up, but what else do u expect from a masthead of the literary establishment (yughh)? The other volumes seem better about this
August 28, 2022
Renowned interviews starting from the 50's, with writers, poets, biographers and essayists. One of the best resources for anyone interested in literature - the interviews are long enough to allow depth an surprise, run by people obviously familiar and in love with their subject, the art of writing. The questions are thought out and in themselves are sometimes works of art and writing. An online subscription to The Paris Review, allowing to read all interviews from the 50's until today, is an incredible cost-effective way to explore our current humanities.
December 7, 2008
http://miamisunpost.com/archives/2008...
Bound - Miami SunPost
Nov. 20, 2008
A Gentleman Among Men
George Plimpton Was All That and Then Some
By John Hood
George Plimpton and I first met at his Manhattan home back in ’90 or ’91 when he hosted a wedding reception for then Paris Review Senior Editor Fayette Hickox. I was just coming into my ego then and still a bit reticent around celebrity, but Plimpton made me feel immediately welcome into his world. That his world consisted of every 20th century writer of any merit, not to mention more bold-faced names than any three compendia on fame, only made his welcome all the warmer — and all the more cool.
The next day Plimpton had me up to his place again, this time so I could interview him for Paper Magazine, and again he insisted that I call him “George.” It wasn’t an easy move for me to make — his stature suggested a definite “Mr. Plimpton” — but he was adamant. Besides, George was simply too damn agreeable to argue with. We collided a couple more times over the years, most notably when Brian Antoni threw a Black & White Ball to celebrate the release of Truman Capote, and on each and every occasion George remained the consummate gentleman — impeccably mannered, effortlessly elegant and genuinely kind.
Of course I’m just one of the thousands upon thousands who encountered George throughout his long and robust life, and hardly one of his intimates. Had we been closer I’m sure I’d be among the many remembrances in the remarkable George, Being George (Random House, $30), an oral history that includes looks back from the likes of Gay Talese, Gore Vidal, William Styron and Peter Matthiessen.
Subtitled George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals — and a Few Unappreciative Observers, and expertly edited by his pal Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., George is not just the sort of oral history very few people deserve, it’s the sort George himself would’ve definitely approved of. Why? Because it was a form he perfected with the books Edie and Truman Capote.
Yet neither Warhol’s tragic superstar nor the noted “non-fiction novelist” even came close to covering as much ground as George Plimpton, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, died the talk of the town, and in between lived enough lives to account for any 50 people, provided those 50 never stopped fully living throughout their entire lives.
I’m talking a man of action as well as letters, and quite often both at the same time. As a participatory journalist for Sports Illustrated, George went three rounds with then light heavyweight champ Archie Moore, quarterbacked the Detroit Lions, goaled for the Boston Bruins, hit the PGA Tour alongside Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and flew through the air with the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. Each of those feats and more are talked about in George, some with envy, some with pride and all with utter awe.
But beyond the books and the exploits, George will perhaps be remembered for The Paris Review, which he helmed for the last 50-plus years of his life.
Founded in ’53 by Peter Matthiessen and Harold “Doc” Humes and basically given to George shortly thereafter, The Paris Review remains perhaps the most influential literary journal in history, mostly on account of its interviews, which began with E.M. Forster and number virtually every writer to have picked up a pen since.
Hemingway, Ellison, Faulkner, Greene, Burroughs, Miller, Bellow … name a 20th century heavyweight and The Paris Review chatted ‘em up. Some of those immortal interviews can now be found archived online, but to read them as they really were meant to be read, I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up Pantheon’s The Paris Review Interviews (Picador, $16).
Of the three volumes currently available, it’s impossible for me to pick a favorite, so I’ll just mention personal highlights from each.
In Volume I I’m most partial to James M. Cain, Richard Price and Dorothy Parker. Not because I don’t dig Borges and Bellow and Hemingway and Vonnegut (all of whom are also included), but because I double-dig crime and wisecracks, and if Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Price’s Clockers don’t epitomize crime writing and Parker wasn’t the embodiment of a wisecrack, then I’ll eat my hat.
For Volume II I’ll stick with Graham Greene and William Faulkner, first because of The Comedians and Our Man in Havana, and second because of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, all of which I discovered back when I was broke and a book was all the sustenance I needed to get through a New York night.
In III I’ll take Raymond Carver, Norman Mailer and Martin Amis. Carver’s ultimately inimitable short stories still floor me, and on a couple occasions I got to meet Mailer, so his entry gets extra credit. Amis, I’m proud to say, I too had the privilege of interviewing.
And that kinda brings me full circle. Like George I believe in both word and action, and by George I’m inspired to fully use both. And while I might not do so with such grace and good manners, I’ve at least been given a blueprint. And so now have you.
Bound - Miami SunPost
Nov. 20, 2008
A Gentleman Among Men
George Plimpton Was All That and Then Some
By John Hood
George Plimpton and I first met at his Manhattan home back in ’90 or ’91 when he hosted a wedding reception for then Paris Review Senior Editor Fayette Hickox. I was just coming into my ego then and still a bit reticent around celebrity, but Plimpton made me feel immediately welcome into his world. That his world consisted of every 20th century writer of any merit, not to mention more bold-faced names than any three compendia on fame, only made his welcome all the warmer — and all the more cool.
The next day Plimpton had me up to his place again, this time so I could interview him for Paper Magazine, and again he insisted that I call him “George.” It wasn’t an easy move for me to make — his stature suggested a definite “Mr. Plimpton” — but he was adamant. Besides, George was simply too damn agreeable to argue with. We collided a couple more times over the years, most notably when Brian Antoni threw a Black & White Ball to celebrate the release of Truman Capote, and on each and every occasion George remained the consummate gentleman — impeccably mannered, effortlessly elegant and genuinely kind.
Of course I’m just one of the thousands upon thousands who encountered George throughout his long and robust life, and hardly one of his intimates. Had we been closer I’m sure I’d be among the many remembrances in the remarkable George, Being George (Random House, $30), an oral history that includes looks back from the likes of Gay Talese, Gore Vidal, William Styron and Peter Matthiessen.
Subtitled George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals — and a Few Unappreciative Observers, and expertly edited by his pal Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., George is not just the sort of oral history very few people deserve, it’s the sort George himself would’ve definitely approved of. Why? Because it was a form he perfected with the books Edie and Truman Capote.
Yet neither Warhol’s tragic superstar nor the noted “non-fiction novelist” even came close to covering as much ground as George Plimpton, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, died the talk of the town, and in between lived enough lives to account for any 50 people, provided those 50 never stopped fully living throughout their entire lives.
I’m talking a man of action as well as letters, and quite often both at the same time. As a participatory journalist for Sports Illustrated, George went three rounds with then light heavyweight champ Archie Moore, quarterbacked the Detroit Lions, goaled for the Boston Bruins, hit the PGA Tour alongside Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and flew through the air with the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. Each of those feats and more are talked about in George, some with envy, some with pride and all with utter awe.
But beyond the books and the exploits, George will perhaps be remembered for The Paris Review, which he helmed for the last 50-plus years of his life.
Founded in ’53 by Peter Matthiessen and Harold “Doc” Humes and basically given to George shortly thereafter, The Paris Review remains perhaps the most influential literary journal in history, mostly on account of its interviews, which began with E.M. Forster and number virtually every writer to have picked up a pen since.
Hemingway, Ellison, Faulkner, Greene, Burroughs, Miller, Bellow … name a 20th century heavyweight and The Paris Review chatted ‘em up. Some of those immortal interviews can now be found archived online, but to read them as they really were meant to be read, I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up Pantheon’s The Paris Review Interviews (Picador, $16).
Of the three volumes currently available, it’s impossible for me to pick a favorite, so I’ll just mention personal highlights from each.
In Volume I I’m most partial to James M. Cain, Richard Price and Dorothy Parker. Not because I don’t dig Borges and Bellow and Hemingway and Vonnegut (all of whom are also included), but because I double-dig crime and wisecracks, and if Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Price’s Clockers don’t epitomize crime writing and Parker wasn’t the embodiment of a wisecrack, then I’ll eat my hat.
For Volume II I’ll stick with Graham Greene and William Faulkner, first because of The Comedians and Our Man in Havana, and second because of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, all of which I discovered back when I was broke and a book was all the sustenance I needed to get through a New York night.
In III I’ll take Raymond Carver, Norman Mailer and Martin Amis. Carver’s ultimately inimitable short stories still floor me, and on a couple occasions I got to meet Mailer, so his entry gets extra credit. Amis, I’m proud to say, I too had the privilege of interviewing.
And that kinda brings me full circle. Like George I believe in both word and action, and by George I’m inspired to fully use both. And while I might not do so with such grace and good manners, I’ve at least been given a blueprint. And so now have you.
December 26, 2021
What else can be compared to read these famous writers' interviews . Hearing them share their bookish pet peeves, their writing experiences, and share their love of authors and books.
June 10, 2022
Love writers! My fave interviews were Hemingway, Borges, Vonnegut (obviously), and Didion (obviously 😭). Everyone was so smart. I now have a list of things to read/search up. And Tq to Hania for fueling the Paris Review journey
January 24, 2015
What better way to begin this series of interviews than with the delightfully erudite Dorothy Parker followed by the charming, eccentric Truman Capote. You could stop right there and be satiated. But why would you when further on there is an interview with Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Borges, Vonnegut, James M. Cain, Elizabeth Bishop and last but never least, Joan Didion who hasn’t ever used a wrong word.
Thanks to artful, skilled interlocutors like George Plimpton, you learn about the personalities of these great authors in addition to their thoughts on writing. Indeed, the interviews in this collection are far more instructive than any book on creative writing. Along the way you’ll find it necessary to add a ‘must read’ category to your ever expanding reading list.
It’s a fabulous collection that will fascinate you from beginning to end.
Read what it’s like to be a writer from those who KNOW!
Thanks to artful, skilled interlocutors like George Plimpton, you learn about the personalities of these great authors in addition to their thoughts on writing. Indeed, the interviews in this collection are far more instructive than any book on creative writing. Along the way you’ll find it necessary to add a ‘must read’ category to your ever expanding reading list.
It’s a fabulous collection that will fascinate you from beginning to end.
Read what it’s like to be a writer from those who KNOW!
March 28, 2012
This is the first of four volumes of writer interviews, first published in The Paris Review over the past fifty or so years. I jumped around and saved Kurt Vonnegut (1977) for last, and it was my favourite. I love to read quality interviews, even more than biography, or memoir, because when the chemistry is right between the two participants, thoughts and ideas get pulled forth that might not otherwise surface. The highlights of this volume for me were Hemingway (1958), Dorothy Parker (1956) and Elizabeth Bishop (1981). Many of the writers featured are my heroes, and it's endlessly interesting to me to read their thoughts about the times they lived in, as well as their craft. Looking forward to beginning the next volume. Just wonderful stuff.
February 16, 2010
The friend who pressed this volume in my hands was correct -- it is every bit as intelligent, engaging, and exciting to read as he insisted. Vonnegut is funny, Borges sublime, Didion contemplative--- exactly as you would want them to be. (I always hesitate to read interviews, for fear that the interviewee will disappoint by failing to meet some ridiculously high level of sophistication and insight that I've dreamed up.) The real surprise in this volume was Hemingway, who was smart, acerbic, and thoroughly engaging in ways I didn't expect--foolish me. (It has been 3 decades since I've read any H....) Absolutely worth owning, and rereading and rereading.
August 19, 2008
The liner notes from this book promise a walk through the minds of literature's greatest, a tour so astounding that it is essentially all you could hope for from an MFA in creative writing. I have never been on a tour through a mind nor earned an MFA, so it's hard to verify these claims. Still, the book is a fine collection of interviews, especially Capote and Hemingway, and it is so so so refreshing to read an interview not constructed to discredit the interviewed or create needless sensationalism. This book is pure quality.
April 24, 2008
Interviewer (Plimpton): What would you consider the best intellectual training for the would-be writer?
Hemmingway: Let's say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.
Me: HAHAHAHAHA
Hemmingway: Let's say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.
Me: HAHAHAHAHA
June 23, 2008
I don't know when I've been so moved by a book. This book of interviews is so rich and I learned so much about my own texture and the texture of those in my life, and of course the creative process. I was amazed as I closed the cover to have the same kind of feeling I have had after reading an exceptionally moving novel or watching a mind-blowing film. It's like every page in this book is golden. It's really a beautiful book.
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