January 2012 Guest Editor Simon Lelic selects The Paris Review Interviews , volumes I-IV...
Is it cheating to pick four books as one? This collection is not literature in itself but each volume, through interviews with leading writers collated over the years, offers an indispensable insight into the minds of those who forge it. A regular source of inspiration, consolation and distraction. My only criticism would relate to the selection of interviews included – or, rather, those that have been omitted. Fortunately, the entire archive is available online at www.parisreview.org – which should keep you going until they publish volume five.
| Primary Genre | Non-Fiction Books of the Month |
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 recognised as classic works of literature, an essential and definitive record of the writing life. 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 indispensible book for all writers and readers.
The Paris Review Interviews : Volume 1 features in the following genres: Non-Fiction Books of the Month, Recommendations
The Paris Review Interviews : Volume 1 is available in Paperback
The Paris Review Interviews : Volume 1 was written by Philip Gourevitch and published by Canongate Books Ltd
The Paris Review Interviews : Volume 1 has 510 pages
Yes it is part of The Paris Review series
£13.49