Description

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With an Introduction by Salman Rushdie
  For more than fifty years, The Paris Review has brought us revelatory and revealing interviews with the literary lights of our age. This critically acclaimed series continues with another eclectic lineup, including Philip Roth, Ezra Pound, Haruki Murakami, Marilynne Robinson, Stephen Sondheim, E. B. White, Maya Angelou, William Styron and more. In each of these remarkable extended conversations, the authors touch every corner of the writing life, sharing their ambitions, obsessions, inspirations, disappointments, and the most idiosyncratic details of their writing habits.

The collected interviews of The Paris Reviews are, as Gary Shteyngart put it, "a colossal literary event."

The Paris Review was published early and important work by Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, Jeffrey Eugenides, William T. Vollmann, and many other defining writers of the past half century. Some of the magazine's exceptional stories, poems, and conversations have been collected in The Paris Review Book of People with Problems as well The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms and The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953. 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 Philip Roth's claim that 'a writer needs his poisons' and the antidote is often a book,' to Marilynne Robinson's confession that 'I really am incapable of discipline. I write when something makes a strong claim on me,' The Paris Review has elicited revelatory thoughts from our most accomplished novelists, poets, and playwrights. Why does Maya Angelou write with a Bible and a bottle of sherry at her side? What inspires Haruki Murakami's surrealist imagination? Why did Jack Kerouac embrace haiku? In these 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 Salman Rushdie, this volume brings together another rich, varied crop of literary voices, including William Styron, Orhan Pamuk, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Paul Auster, P. G. Wodhouse, and more.  "A Colossal literary event," as Gary Shteyngart put it, The Paris Review Interviews, IV, is an indispensable treasure of wisdom from the world's literary masters. "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

"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

"Utterly absorbing . . . The interviews are all fascinating and often quite funny."—The Boston Globe

"A small treasure. The interviews are literary landmarks, and the gossip, humor, ideas, and practical advice dispensed are bracing."—San Francisco Chronicle

"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

"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

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

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

About the Author

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THE PARIS REVIEW is America's preeminent literary magazine.

Praise for The Paris Review Interviews, IV…

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"The Paris Review books should be given out at dinner parties, readings, riots, weddings, galas -- shindigs of every shape. And they're perfect for the classroom too, from high schools all the way to MFA programs. In fact, I run a whole semester-long creative writing class based on the interviews. How else would I get the world's greatest living writers, living and dead, to come into the classroom with their words of wisdom, folly and fury? These books are wonderful, provocative, indispensible."--Colum McCann, novelist and Hunter College professor
"A small treasure. The interviews are literary landmarks, and the gossip, humor, ideas, and practical advice dispensed are bracing."--San Francisco Chronicle
"The most remarkable and extensive interviewing project we possess."--The New York Times

"Utterly absorbing . . . They are all fascinating and often quite funny."--The Boston Globe

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