Reviews for The Paris Review Interviews, IV

The average rating for The Paris Review Interviews, IV based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-28 00:00:00 Jonny Martin "The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads." William Styron introduces the fourth and final volume of the interviews; an eminently satisfactory and solid selection to finish off the collection. Kerouac is here, and V.S. Naipaul, eccentric characters both. E.B. White, as grounding a literary presence as might be wished for, surprises all in admitting he's not much for reading. He prefers, by far, going outside to see what Nature is up to. There's a wonderful piece submitted by James Lipton; an extract of his interview with Stephen Sondheim. Haruki Murakami actually bristles on occasion, especially with regard to his placement in the pantheon of Japanese literature. But the author who had me sitting up to take note, and whom it's clear I must read at some point, is Paul Auster. The manner in which he expresses his experience of the mid-life conflict...so simply put, so purely felt...is well worth quoting here: "I'm well into my fifties now and things change for you as you get older. Time begins slipping away, and simple arithmetic tells you there are more years behind you than ahead of you - many more. Your body starts breaking down, you have aches and pains that weren't there before, and little by little the people you love begin to die. By the age of fifty, most of us are haunted by ghosts. They live inside us and we spend as much time talking to the dead as to the living. It's hard for a young person to understand this. It's not that a twenty year old doesn't know he's going to die, but it's the loss of others that so profoundly affects an older person - you can't know what that accumulation of losses is going to do to you until you experience it yourself. Life is so short, so fragile, so mystifying. After all, how many people do we actually love in a lifetime? Just a few, a tiny few. When most of them are gone, the map of your inner world changes. As my friend George Oppen once said to me about getting old: what a strange thing to happen to a little boy." This four-part collection has its ups and downs in terms of focus and substance, but on the whole I found it fascinating as a record of artistic thought.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-11-05 00:00:00 George Obrien I stayed up half the night finishing this book. What a GREAT book. Some of the greatest writers talking about their craft, how they began, what influenced them. The interviewers were sharp, witty and knew the writers they were talking to. I found myself wanting to run out and get the 3 volumes that preceded this one. I am sure this book will be of interest to anyone who loves to read, for writers who are learning their craft and for those who are both. I recommend this book to everyone!!!!!