Literary conversations series

Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, perhaps the most prominent writers of Native American descent, collaborate on all their works. In these interviews, conducted both separately and jointly, they discuss how their writing moves from conception to completion and how The Beet Queen, Tracks, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, and The Crown of Columbus have been enhanced by both their artistic and their matrimonial union. Being of mixed blood and having lived in both white and Indian worlds, they give an original perspective on American society. Sometimes with humor and always with refreshing candor, their discussions undermine the damaging stereotypes of American Indians. Some of the interviews focus on their nonfiction book The Broken Cord, which recounts the struggle to solve their adopted son's health problems from fetal alcohol syndrome. Included also are two recent interviews published here for the first time. In this collection Erdrich and Dorris tell why they have chosen to write about many varying subjects and why they refuse to be imprisoned in a literary ghetto of writers whose only subjects are Native Americans.

The late African-American novelist Chester Himes (1909-1984) is well known both in America and Europe for his moving depictions of black men destroyed by a pervasive racism and for darkly humorous stories of Harlem's underworld. His novels and stories are all the more striking because they are infused with his own varied experiences as a petty criminal, convict, writer, and expatriate. Himes was equally revealing in the many interviews he granted during his long and tumultuous career in America and France. Himes displays a remarkable candor in all his interviews. Although he never involved himself in any of the black political movements of his lifetime, he did not flinch from speaking his mind about racial politics in America. He was straightforward, as well, in speaking about his relationships with other black writers. As a contemporary of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, he could be brutally direct in his opinions of them and their work. He leavens such criticism by being equally frank about himself and his shortcomings. Compiled here for the first time and drawn from many sources, these interviews span Himes's career and present a bold picture of a proud, brilliant, and combative man who commands both attention and respect.

"In Conversations with E. L. Doctorow Christopher D. Morris has gathered over twenty of the most revelatory interviews with the acclaimed author of Ragtime, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and other novels, plays, and short stories. In his work the American dream and the values his characters try to live by turn to madness and ashes."--BOOK JACKET. "Within this collection Doctorow explores the themes of his work not only in the contexts of national and literary history but also in terms of disturbing trends in contemporary American culture. Talking about style, he discusses his experiments with shifting points of view and unreliable narrators as a part of the modernist heritage to which readers have become accustomed. But he stresses that these techniques are always subordinate to the telling of a good story and the creation of memorable characters."--BOOK JACKET.

Although recognized for founding National Review, hosting television's Firing Line, and being one of the principal architects of the American conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) was also a prominent literary figure. At his peak he produced about 350,000 words for publication a year, and he was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it. He wrote over 7,000 columns, articles, reviews, introductions, forewords, obituaries, and more, in addition to publishing fifty-seven books of fiction and nonfiction. Conversations with William F. Buckley Jr. features interviews from 1970 to 2005, in which Buckley holds court on a variety of subjects: the Cold War, civil rights, literature, sailing, and the many strands of American culture and politics. Throughout his life, he was a prime subject for interviews, as his observations combined raw intelligence, vigorous wit, and a healthy sense of humor. - Back cover.

"Denise Levertov, American poet and activist, died in December 1997 at the age of 74. This book contains some twenty previously uncollected interviews conducted between the early 1960s and the middle of the 1990s. They are focused primarily on her work as a poet but also on her social and political concerns." "The interviews in which Levertov discusses her craft constitute an important document on American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. She talks of her legendary friendship with her mentor William Carlos Williams and her association with the Black Mountain Poets. As she discusses her craft in great detail, she gives special attention to diction, line lengths, versification, and choice of subject matter. Students of American culture and readers of American poetry will be delighted by this collection of the personal views of one of the century's best poets."--BOOK JACKET.

This collection of interviews captures the conversations of a writer about whom the Chicago Sun-Times says, "She is to literary prose what Sir Laurence Olivier is to acting or Willie Mays is to baseball." These interviews reveal M.F.K. Fisher's fierce wit and her uncompromising and frequently contradictory attitudes toward the luxuries and necessities of gastronomy - the idea that sensual appreciation, in all aspects of life, is or should be necessary. In her conversations Fisher often returns to the complexities of her own life - the people and places she has loved: Dijon in the l930s, with its irrepressible and colorful chefs and landladies; her classically late-Victorian mother who lived much of her mature life as an invalid; Rex, Fisher's father, whose newspaper ethics and integrity influenced her work; her three husbands, with special attention to the painter Dillwyn Parrish, her great love, whose illness and suicide shortly before the suicide of Fisher's younger brother so shaped her complex view of detachment. Other recurring subjects in these interviews include the nature of aging, the differences between men and women, and Fisher's relationship with her work, which she describes with precision and a selective memory. These pieces give us a view of M.F.K. Fisher in motion - speaking and changing her mind at will and unable to tolerate simplistic strategies of thinking and living.

Presents twenty-five interviews with the novelist from 1951-1984.

The interviews in this volume span the period from 1970 to 1993. Momaday responds candidly to questions relating to his multicultural background, his views on the place of the Indian in American literature and society, his concern for conservation and an American land ethic, his theory of language and the imagination, the influences on his artistic and academic development, and his comments on specific works he has written. The reader who joins these conversations will meet in N. Scott Momaday a careful listener and an engaging, often humorous speaker whose commentaries provide a deeper vision for those interested in his life and work.

In these pages one of the delights of sophisticated conversation lives again. His interviews collected in this book comprise a treasury of wit. Perelman (1904-1979) was one of America's best writers and, undeniably, one of its wittiest talkers. His great ability to take the tired English language and make it new and shiny was perhaps his most amazing feat. For his seemingly effortless contributions to the world of humor and to an avid, exhilarated readership flourishing over six decades the New York Times Book Review declared him a national treasure. Spanning his entire career, these conversations show that from the beginning he was a unique practitioner and a professional curmudgeon. He discusses his progress from youthful cartoonist to comic writer. He amuses listeners with accounts of hilarious adventures in Hollywood working with the Marx Brothers and later with Mike Todd on Around the World in 80 Days, for which Perelman won an Academy Award for scriptwriting.

Though he lived most of his life in the remote village of Deya on the island of Mallorca, Robert Graves (1895--1985) was conversant with the most important issues of this century and was acquainted with many of the most powerful people. Jorge Luis Borges called him "a soul above." Graves wrote almost restlessly on subjects of great diversity: myths of the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and Celts; modern science and economics; contemporary society and culture as well as of ancient Greece and Rome, of Celtic Wales and Ireland, of the time of Milton, and of the American Revolution. He was a poet of great fame, a celebrated writer of historical novels, and the man who imprinted the name and identity of the White Goddess upon the cultural language. His translations of Latin classics have been applauded; his recastings of Biblical and Persian texts attracted irascible attention from scholars. He was a poet of great fame, a celebrated writer of historical novels, and the man who imprinted the name and identity of the White Goddess upon the cultural language. His translations of Latin classics have been applauded; his recastings of Biblical and Persian texts attracted irascible attention from scholars.

A collection of interviews which help chronicle the life and career of African-American author Gwendolyn Brooks.

Having published only one novel, Ralph Ellison gained and retained a reputation as one of America's premier authors. Though urged by his admirers and by critics to write more, at the time of his death in 1994 Ellison's renown rested upon a novel published in the 1950s. He remained at the peak of his eminence, acclaimed principally for this single work. But this astonishing book was Invisible Man, one of the cornerstones of modern American literature. In these interviews the author of this masterpiece proves himself intellectually vigorous, witty, and sometimes combative. These conversations about himself and about literature show him to be strongly independent, whether his remarks consider race, art, writing, or culture.

For over forty years Saul Bellow has been writing fiction that denounces the destructive forces that have dominated the literature of this century - existential nihilism and historicist pessimism. In novel after novel - The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, Mr. Sammler's Planet, and others - he has tried to restore the integrity of the private life, the value of human feeling, and the primacy of social contract and proclaimed each individual's perennial access to age-old truths.

The winner in 1994 of the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines, whose career spans more than thirty-five years, continues to receive increasing critical and popular attention. In the community of southern authors he finds his natural place. "Southern writers," he says, "have much more in common than differences. They have in common a certain point of view as well.". Through television productions of his fiction - The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and "The Sky is Gray" - Gaines has become widely known and appreciated. Although focused principally upon African-American life in the Deep South, his writing bears strong influence of European authors. In these interviews, two of which have never before been printed, Ernest Gaines casts a retrospective light upon his long and productive career. Drawn from journals, magazines, and newspapers, the interviews are occasions for Gaines to recall his childhood, his "bohemian" days in San Francisco, his long effort to get published, and recent events in his life - including his marriage and his receiving a MacArthur Prize.

In this book, the writer displays the same passion, dynamic sense of humor, and sharp observational skills that characterize his work. The interviews, ranging from 1993 to 2007, feature Alexie speaking candidly about the ideas and themes behind poetry collections (I Would Steal Horses, First Indian on the Moon), short story collections (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Ten Little Indians), novels (Indian Killer, Reservation Blues), and screenplays (Smoke Signals). Coeur d Alene through his father and Spokane through his mother, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. Reservation life is a central concern in his work, as are politics, love, contemporary literature, city living (he now lives in Seattle), and his beloved sport of basketball. His wit, polemical engagement, and willingness to confront received notions have made him one of the most popular American Indian writers today.

"In this collection of interviews, Kingston talks about her life, her writing, and her objectives. From the first, her books have hovered along the hazy line between fiction and nonfiction, memoir and imagination. As she answers her critics and readers, she both clarifies the differences and exults in the difficulties of distinguishing between the remembered and the re-created." "She explains how she worked to bridge her parents' Chinese dialect with American slang, how she learned to explore her inheritance and find new relevance in her mother's "talk-stories," and how she developed the complex juxtapositions of myths and memoir that fill her books."--BOOK JACKET.

The influential American playwright discusses his work, the nature of art, the role of the unconscious, American culture, and the theater.

Largely ignored by mainstream audiences for the first thirty years of her career, Anais Nin (1903-1977) finally came into her own with the publication of the first part of her diary in 1966. Thereafter she was catapulted into fame. Throughout the late sixties and the seventies she attracted a host of devoted and admiring readers in the counter culture, who were magnetized by her personal liberation and openness. For a woman to make such probing exploration of the intimate recesses of her psyche made her a cult figure with a large and lasting readership. Born in France, Anais Nin lived much of her life in America. Her liaison with Henry Miller and his wife June, documented in her explicitly detailed diaries, became the subject of a major film of the nineties. Her forthright books, her diaries that continue to be published in a steady flow, and her charismatic charm made her the subject of many candid interviews, such as those collected here. Eight included in this volume are printed for the first time. Many others were originally published in magazines that are now defunct. Nin elaborates on subjects only touched upon in the diaries, and she speaks also of her role in the women's movement and of her philosophies on art, writing, and individual growth.

Out of this collection of twenty-two interviews spanning two decades rises the distinctive voice of "the princess of black poetry." Nikki Giovanni entered the literary world at the height of the Black Arts Movement and quickly achieved not simple fame but stardom, a phenomenon almost unprecedented for a poet. Her first two volumes of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement, gave expression to the thoughts and feelings of a generation of young. African-Americans and established Giovanni, in the minds of many, as a "revolutionary," even militant, poet. The image was not altogether accurate, yet it became the gauge by which her later work was assessed. In these conversations with Giovanni the reader can follow the evolution of her distinctive voice and the sensibility of the poet's mind. She chooses her words carefully, while giving an impression of spontaneity and even of glibness. Included here is an excerpt. From her conversation with James Baldwin, an interview that first aired on the television program Soul!, later published as A Dialogue. Also included is an excerpt from A Poetic Equation, her lengthy talk with the poet Margaret Walker. In this exchange of ideas and opinions with Walker a young poet new to the literary world assumes the role of spokesperson for a generation.

Jorge Luis Borges, one of the indisputably great writers of the twentieth century, was born in Buenos Aires in 1899. Never having been awarded the Nobel Prize, which his readers worldwide believed he deserved, this story writer, poet, essayist, and man of letters died at age eighty-six. This anthology of interviews with him features more than a dozen conversations that cover all phases of his life and work. He discusses his blindness, his family and childhood, early travels, literary friends, and struggles to find his literary identity. In depth he examines the meanings and intentions of his own famous stories and poems, and he speaks of the writers whose works he has loved - Dante, Cervantes, Emerson, Dickinson, H. G. Wells, Kafka, Stevenson, Kipling, Whitman, Frost, and Faulkner - and of those whom he disliked, such as Hemingway and Lorca. Borges expresses his contempt for Peron and assesses the tumultuous politics of Argentina. He speaks also of the imagination as a type of dreaming, about issues of collaboration and translation, about philosophy, and about time.

Index.

Interviews with the poet, actress, and playwright share her views on her life, her career, her approach to writing, and the Civil Rights movement.

In this collection of interviews from 1978 to 1995 Paley elaborates on the many forces that have influenced her and her writing. In these conversations she reveals not only her triple lives as writer, mother, and political activist but also her perspectives which over the years have become precise and solid. With authority, distinctness, and relentless honesty she speaks out on contemporary issues. She discusses American conditions at large, particularly those that are being neglected or denied. With firm authority Paley discusses topics of wide range, many of which she describes as personal discoveries. She includes politics and environmentalism, the family and human relationships, the impact of background and education, the moral importance of community, feminism and women's liberation, the sexual self and role enforcement, America's need for communality and women's creative response to it, the art of teaching, and the importance of friendship. Paley's conversations, like her writings, are refreshingly candid and radically different from the contemporary American mainstream.

"This volume brings together candid, revealing interviews with one of the twentieth century's master prose writers. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian American scientist, poet, translator, and professor of literature. Critics throughout the world celebrated him for developing the luminous and enigmatic style which advanced the boundaries of modern literature more than any author since James Joyce. In a career that spanned over six decades, he produced dozens of iconic works, including Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and his classic autobiography, Speak, Memory. The twenty-eight interviews and profiles in this collection were drawn from Nabokov's numerous print and broadcast appearances over a period of nineteen years. Beginning with the controversy surrounding the American publication of Lolita in 1958, he offers trenchant, witty views on society, literature, education, the role of the author, and a range of other topics. He discusses the numerous literary and symbolic allusions in his work, his use of parody and satire, as well as analyses of his own literary influences. Nabokov also provided a detailed portrait of his life--from his aristocratic childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia, education at Cambridge, apprenticeship as an émigré writer in the capitals of Europe, to his decision in 1940 to immigrate to the United States, where he achieved renown and garnered an international readership. The interviews in this collection are essential for seeking a clearer understanding of the life and work of an author who was pivotal in shaping the landscape of contemporary fiction."--

Spanning three decades of his literary career, from Catch-22 to comments on the Persian Gulf War, Conversations with Joseph Heller contains a selection of the most significant, informative, and interesting interviews with one of America's foremost novelists. In these interviews Heller reveals his interest in the structure, effects, and themes of his works, his satirical purposes, the influences upon him, his writing methods, his political opinions, and a host of other topics that challenge and engage his lively and reflective mind. Included here are interviews from student newspapers and university magazines, one interview previously not published, and two highly comic "anti-interviews" with close friends Mel Brooks and George Mandel. Also included are two largely serious interviews with his friends Robert Alan Aurthur and Barbara Gelb. Also in this collection are Heller's conversations with authors Martin Amis and George Plimpton and a probing exchange with Bill Moyers about democracy, politics, and Heller's Picture This. Among the interviews are his talks with Sam Merrill in Playboy, Paul Krassner of The Realist, and Chet Flippo of Rolling Stone.

"Conversations with Ian McEwan collects sixteen interviews, conducted over three decades, with the British author of such highly praised novels as Enduring Love, Atonement, Saturday, and On Chesil Beach. McEwan (b. 1948) discusses his views on authorship, the writing process, and major themes found in his fiction, but he also expands upon his interests in music, film, global politics, the sciences, and the state of literature in contemporary society. McEwan's candid and forthcoming discussions with notable contemporary writers--Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Ian Hamilton, David Remnick, and Stephen Pinker--provide readers with the most in-depth portrait available of the author and his works. Readers will find McEwan to be just as engaging, humorous, and intelligent as his writings suggest. The volume includes interviews from British, Spanish, French, and American sources, two interviews previously available only in audio format, and a new interview conducted with the book's editor."--Publisher's website.

This collection of interviews with Amiri Baraka, the former LeRoi Jones and a key figure in the worldwide black liberation movement, provides an extraordinary insight not only into African-American literature but also into the turmoil and passions of the "black experience" during the second half of the twentieth century. From the perspective of a century drawing to a close, readers of these interviews can appreciate how rich and varied Baraka's career has been: ghetto life in the 1940s; Howard University and the Air Force in the early 1950s; the Greenwich Village "beatnik" period of the late 1950s; the riots and radicalism of the sixties; Black Nationalism in the 1970s; Marxist-Leninism in the 1980s; and an endless stream of impassioned, groundbreaking writing throughout each of these eras. As they offer an understanding of the political turbulence of his times, these interviews provide special insights into Baraka's works, his anger, and his career. Not only does Baraka criticize and explain his most celebrated works, but also his comments supply a rich context for understanding the African-American experience. Throughout these candid conversations Baraka maintains his belief in the firm alliance of art and social criticism. "To me, social commentary and art cannot be divorced. Art and life are the same: art comes out of life, art is a reflection of life, art is life.". Here is a collection that contains nearly all of the major interviews this poet, playwright, fiction writer, essayist, and social activist has given in his long and controversial career. Four of them have not been previously published. Included here are interviews conducted by Maya Angelou, Austen Clarke, and David Frost, as well as a new interview Baraka granted the editor of this volume.

A collection of interviews with the Michigan poet, novelist, screenwriter, and essayist, covering the years 1976-1999, reveals his habits of mind, aesthetic choices, intellectual resources, and the psychological contexts of his writing.

For the past forty years Paul Bowles has answered questions about the autobiographical references in his novels (The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House, and Up Above the World) and about his work as a composer in New York, all the time insisting, "I don't want anyone to know about me.". Yet in this collection of interviews dating from 1952 to the present, Bowles gives a variety of answers that reveal as much as they conceal. Too gracious to refuse interviews, he regards inquiries with the same clear-eyed detachment that marks his prose, wondering, "Why is it that Americans expect an artist's work to be a reflection of his life? They never seem to want to believe that the two can be independent of each other and go their separate ways.". Despite his reticence, Bowles frankly discusses his "unconscious" writing practice, his views on the "illiterate imagination," existentialism, his various experiments with altered states of consciousness, and nearly fifty years of expatriate life in Morocco. Included here are three interviews never before published, several that originally appeared in now obscure journals, plus interviews conducted by Jay McInerny for Vanity Fair, Jeffrey Bailey for the Paris Review, and Michael Rogers for the Rolling Stone.