Passion and Craft: CONVERSATIONS WITH NOTABLE WRITERS [Paperback]

Bonnie Lyons (Editor), Bill Oliver (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0252066871 | ISBN-13: 978-0252066870

The twelve contemporary fiction writers interviewed in Passion and Craft go beyond the usual chatting about career and technique, beyond the merely autobiographical. Readers will discover many personal and artistic differences: T. Coraghessan Boyle's self-aware hipness, Andre Dubus's spiritual strength in the face of physical disability. Rick Bass's commitment to environmental concerns. Richard Ford, a recent winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN-Faulkner Award, describes how he takes control over his own material; and, in one of the few lengthy interviews she has ever granted, Gina Berriault, the 1997 winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award, speaks movingly about the "gaps and silences" in a woman writer's life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

These probing interviews with 12 contemporary writers--all masters of the short story--originally appeared in such places as The Literary Review and Contemporary Literature. There is no fluff here. "We have tried," say the editors, "to go beyond the usual chatting about career and craft, beyond the autobiographical as well." Instead, their goal involved "shedding light on some of the motives behind literary creativity." The questions they pose to the authors arise from an intimate familiarity with the work; the payoff for such preparedness is that the authors answer their questions deliberately and thoughtfully.

Certainly, the interviews also address less specific aspects of the authors' work. When asked if he could write from a female viewpoint, Richard Ford, considered to be a very male writer, replies in the affirmative: "I would never ... say to myself, 'What would a woman say?' Rather, I'd think, Given the circumstances of this person's life, what would this person say? Or do?" T. Coraghessan Boyle discusses the reasons he shies away from happy endings: "First of all, because they tend to be sentimental. But also because there aren't happy endings--we all die." Jayne Anne Phillips compares her unwritten fiction to "a whisper that you can't quite make out.... There's a sense that the book is already there, whole, and I am trying ... to find out what it is and move into it and inhabit it." And Thom Jones rails against the typical magazine short story. "Why do stories have to be boring?" he asks. "Why do we always have to read about some angst-laden, upper-level executive driving around Cape Cod in a Volvo?" --Jane Steinberg

From Library Journal

Two English professors have edited unsigned interviews with 12 contemporary fiction writers: Julia Alvarez, Rick Bass, Gina Berriault, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Andre Dubus, Richard Ford, Thom Jones, Bobbie Ann Mason, Leonard Michaels, Jayne Anne Phillips, Chirstopher Tilghman, and Tobias Wolff. They intentionally sought a cross-section of authors. Because the interviews aim to find out "what matters most to these writers as writers," they ask such things as "Is Dede's politicalization anticipated in the scene in which she claims to be Minerva?" or "Do you think that your sensibility is scatological?" Earlier versions of most of the interviews have been published in such journals as Paris Review and the Literary Review. For more polished interviews that synthesize this type of information better, see the "Writing for Your Life" series (edited by Sybil Steinberg and Jonathan Bing, Pushcart Press). For larger American literature collections.?Nancy Patterson Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, NC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (February 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252066871
• ISBN-13: 978-0252066870
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,390,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)