Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series

_The Paris Review_ interviews began in 1953 and continue today—a unique exploration of contemporary writers and writing. Recognized as an indispensable adjunct to modern literature, these interviewsare also fascinating in their own right. Through searching questions addressed to great literary artists, they reveal, better than anything else could, the minds and methods behind the published works. As Van Wyck Brooks noted, “‘the writers draw portraits of themselves.” Here is a sample of what critics said about this first volume of Paris Review interviews: “I know of no book that better conveys the sense of being a writer.” —Walter Allen, New Statesman ‘For those who like to go behind the scenes of contemporary writing, these discourses, so frankly inquiring, so laden with experience, are a must.” —Edward Weeks, Atlantic Monthly “Dignified, searching, often profound. [These interviews] should appeal not merely to the bookish, but to any general reader interested, however mildly,in the literature of his time.”’ —Clifton Fadiman, Book-of-the-Month-Club News The Paris Review, founded in 1953 by a group of young Americans including Peter Matthiessen, Harold L. Humes, George Plimpton, Thomas Guinzburg, and Donald Hall, has survived for twenty-five years—a rarity in the literary-magazine field, where publications traditionally last for a few issues and then cease. While the emphasis of The Paris Review’s editors was on publishing creative work rather than nonfiction (among writers who published their first short stories there were Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Evan S. Connell, Samuel Beckett), part of the magazine’s success can be attributed to the public interest in its continuing series of interviews on the craft of writing. Reasoning that it would be preferable to replace the traditional scholarly essay on a given author’s work with an interview conducted with the author himself, the editors found a form which attracted considerable comment—from the very first interview, with E.. M. Forster, which appearedin theinitial issue, in which the distinguished author, then considered the greatest novelist in the English language, divulged whyhe had not been able to complete a novel since 1926. Since that early interview the magazine has continued to complement its fiction and poetry selection with interviews from a wide range of literary personages, which in sum constitute an authentic and invaluable contribution to the literary history of the past few decades.