The Paris Review Interviews, II
- ISBN13: 9780312363147
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Since The Paris Review was founded in 1953, it has given us invaluable conversations with the greatest writers of our age, vivid self-portraits that are themselves works of finely crafted literature. From William Faulkner’s determination that a great novel takes “ninety-nine percent talent . . . ninety-nine percent discipline . . . ninety-nine percent work,” to Gabriel García Márquez’s observation that “in the first paragraph, you solve most of the problems with y… More >>
The Paris Review Interviews, II
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The introduction is by Orhan Pamuk. Faulkner said an artist is a creature driven by demons. Graham Greene did not believe that any books he had read as an adult influenced him as a writer. James Thurber got his habits of memory, (nearly perfect recollection), from his mother. Thurber believed that Harold Ross had had a bloodhound instinct as an editor.
American writers felt their creativity and inventiveness would end in their fifties. Faulkner felt a writer’s responsibility was to do his art. The writer should be ruthless. A writer always has to compromise when writing for the movies Faulkner believed.
Robert Lowell felt that teaching meant a lot to him as a human being. A person can’t write poetry all the time. Writing comes from a deep impulse, deep inspiration. It isn’t a craft. While he was writing LIFE STUDIES Lowell figured out it was a regular beat that he disliked. Lowell thought of Frost and Eliot as New England poets. In both Chekhov and Frost the art was found in the well-chosen plots.
To Eudora Welty, Jane Austen was a kindred spirit. She felt even closer to Chekhov for reason of his appreciation of the individual. She lost sleep over reading TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Katherine Anne Porter was wonderfully generous to her in the beginning.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez believes that journalism and fiction writing are matters of cross-fertilization. He never gets involved with a book unless someone recommends it. Philip Larkin refused almost all invitations to be a bigwig. He claimed that in writing a poem he constructed a verbal device. Larkin said he dealt with the passage of time by making every day the same. When young he exchanged unpublished poems with Kingsley Amis.
James Baldwin did not so much choose France as carry out the need to leave America. The painter Beauford Delaney taught Baldwin how to see. Baldwin believed that he had to go through a time of isolation. He wrote four novels before he published one.
William Gaddis had a reputation as a recluse. He thought he learned economy from Evelyn Waugh and that this is apparent in his novel, JR. Alice Munro lives in Clinton, Ontario. Her family lived in a collapsing enterprise, a fox and mink farm. Alice Munro and her second husband stayed in Ontario to be near older family members. When they passed on, Munro and her husband remained.
Information about the contributors appears at the end of this excellent book.
Rating: 5 / 5
5 stars for that incredible initiative of showing the way writers are writing, and behind this, thinking the stories, the personnages…
i have to say, that is a source of inspiration and of understanding of your own style/way of writing
something to really have on your shelves !!!
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a fine collection, but if it is Isaac Bashevis Singer you are interested in, you’ll do much better to get the book I’ve linked to below. The best is to read both the PR interview plus the Burgin book but the Burgin book is, of course, more in-depth and contains a wealth of info for writers as well as readers.
CONVERSATIONS WITH ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
Conversations With Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rating: 5 / 5
The best way to enjoy this book is to not read it straight out. It’s best to use it as a break from a novel perhaps (I used this as a respite from reading the very long Buffett biography), or treat it as a book you go back to from time to time, a couple of days gap. If you read any three interviews in succession, you will feel bored and numbed by guidance and ‘quotable quotes’ about writing, and probably fail to appreciate the nuanced points about the writer’s craft being discussed.
That being said, the best piece is still the one with Faulkner, then Garcia Marquez, then Bloom. The pieces on Thurber and King are also great reads
If youre deciding between vol. 1 and vol 2. Volume 1 is a better choice, by a few points. (I havent read Part III yet). Why? For one the amazing interview with Borges is there. And then the variety on the discussion regarding the “Art of Editing” (with Gottlieb and the superb writers he had edited works of), the poetry/poverty/adventure of Cain, annoyed tips of Hemingway, etcetera are all priceless.
Rating: 5 / 5