The Paris Review Interviews, III (Paperback)

~ The Paris Review (Author)
Key Phrases: pure novel, The Paris Review Interviews, New York, Things Fall Apart (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most remarkable and extensive interviewing project we possess. . . . A series of excursions, alternately purposeful and capricious, with side trips, stops for tea, and mystifications."--The New York Times
 
"A small treasure. The interviews are literary landmarks, and the gossip, humor, ideas, and practical advice dispensed are bracing."--San Francisco Chronicle
 
"Utterly absorbing . . . The interviews are all fascinating and often quite funny."--The Boston Globe

 

"Groundbreaking, eclectic, indispensable Q&As."--Elle

"The unguarded moment . . . that's the holy grail for any interviewer trying to discover what makes a writer tick. The Paris Review has a long history of delivering such moments in the author interviews it has conducted over the past half century."--The Seattle Times

"As The Paris Review Interviews reveals, there is an art to the interview and a value to what it brings. . . . In the best interviews, the exchange of question and answer brings the authors to life."--The Wall Street Journal

"Fascinating interviews . . . [The subjects] discuss their writing and methods with detail and candidness found nowhere else. While lit fans will undoubtedly be satisfied, aspiring authors will glean tremendous insight from these masters of the craft."--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)


"A stimulating, funny, and provocative snapshot of five decades' worth of (mostly) American literary history . . . The resulting conversations are luminous and often revelatory."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune

 

"Fascinating . . . This book will intrigue and delight any serious reader or writer. It may even inspire."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)

 

"Here is a canon of great minds. . . . A fascinating attempt at getting to the heart of how writers work."--Financial Times (London)

Product Description

"I have all the copies of The Paris Review and like the interviews very much. They will make a good book when collected and that will be very good for the Review."--Ernest Hemingway

Since The Paris Review was founded in 1953, it has given us invaluable conversations with the greatest writers of our age, vivid self-portraits that are themselves works of finely crafted literature. From Salman Rushdie's daring rhetorical question "why shouldn't literature provoke?" to Joyce Carol Oates's thrilling comments about her own prolific output, The Paris Review has elicited revelatory and revealing thoughts from our most accomplished novelists, poets, and playwrights. How did Geroges Simenon manage to write about six books a year, what was it like for Jan Morris to write as both a man and a woman, what influences moved Ralph Ellison to write Invisible Man? In the pages of The Paris Review, writers give more than simple answers, they offer uncommon candor, depth, and wit in interviews that have become the gold standard of the literary Q&A. With an introduction by Margaret Atwood, this volume brings together another rich, varied crop of literary voices, including Martin Amis, Norman Mailer, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Harold Pinter, and more. "A colossal literary event," as Gary Shteyngart put it, The Paris Review Interviews, III, is an indespensible teasure of wisdom from the world's literary masters.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Picador (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031236315X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312363154
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #91,025 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Paris Review Interviews Some of the Best and Brightest, January 13, 2009

By	Sacramento Book Review "SacramentoBookReview.com" (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

As expected, the leader of literary interviewing, "The Paris Review," once again delivers the most entertaining and thought-provoking content about writers and their work in /The Paris Interviews: Volume III/. With documented conversations that give an inside look into the processes, styles, and personal thoughts of some of the leading poets, essayists, and novelists in the history of the publication, or the world for that matter - Ralph Ellison, Raymond Carver, Jan Morris, Salman Rushdie, among others.

Contained within the interviews, these masters of the craft and art of writing deliver, in their answers to the questions asked of them, are some of the most powerful and provocative pieces of prose. In some cases, some of the things that they say in interviews, rival or surpass entire careers of everyday writers. Interviewing writers is perhaps one of the smartest ideas that any publication has done, after all they are writers and will naturally write, even if only with their mouths instead of their pens. As such, "The Paris Review" and consequently /The Paris Review Interviews: Volume III/ is engrossing and makes you wish that you could read faster while simultaneously catching more of what these clever craftsmen have to say.