Who could ever have thought a book where authors, poets, an editor and a director who have no special item to promote could ever be something precious?

Well, considering these people are, in order, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, James M. Cain, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Stone, Robert Gottlieb, Richard Price, Billy Wilder, Jack Gilbert and Joan Didion, the die is kinda cast.

The subjects vary. And so do the tones of the people involved. While Parker and Capote kick off the book by being very funny and obliging, Hemingway and Eliot are much more serious, yet still cast a wholly different shadow on things, at least considering how Hemingway divulges no intimacies in his books while Capote could seemingly stab into any aspect of his writing.

I've posted a few screen-shots from the book here to give you examples of some of the interviewers' and interviewees' quotes: http://issuu.com/pivic/docs/paris_book_reviews_1

I've never before come across such a great collection of inspiration and depth into the art of creating books, apart from sheer writing and living.

My faves: Parker, Capote, Hemingway, Borges, Vonnegut, Gottlieb, Wilder and Gilbert. Those are many, right? Says a lot.

Can't wait to get into the second volume! ( )

As a writer and an avid reader I love most interviews with authors, but "The Paris Review" interviews are particularly wonderful! The questions are thoughtful, the answers revealing, the interviewers take their time and aren't afraid to stray from the point and explore tangents. This collection includes interviews with some of my favorite authors, I pick it up and refer to it often, include portions of it in my materials for the Classics class I teach, and share quotes indiscriminately with anyone who will listen! ( )

This is an outstanding collection of interviews from some of the "great" authors of our time(s). I usually do not get into short pieces like this, but I read almost this entire book on a flight from Paris to Chicago. I was riveted and could not put it down. Each interview is a tiny story, microcosm, of a life in writing. As an aspiring writer, I found some useful, some just purely entertaining, but each one made me think in some small way. I resonated more with the fiction/non fiction authors vs. screenwriters/poets (although many were crossovers of course). My ultimate conclusion is really, each writer has a style all her/his own (often unable to quantify exactly what it is/was), but that being said, it was fascinating to see some of what made, e.g., Capote, Hemingway visionaries. Interestingly, neither one could really explain that well - they just ... wrote. The interviewers ranged from self important to sincere, but all in all, they asked probative and interesting questions. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in the writing life, process, etc. Specifically, if you have an author you love, find that interview to read. I will definitely check out the subsequent volumes. ( )

Bathroom reading. ( )

Full disclosure: I didn't want to read this book. I'd requested it from the library on a whim after hearing Philip Gourevitch on Nancy Pearl's "Book Lust" podcast talking about his work selecting the "best of" author interviews from The Paris Review for this collection series. The book came in along with a bunch of other interlibrary loans, and as the due date approached, I picked it up. I hadn't read many of the featured authors, and those that I had were not really to my taste. So I started reading it with the plan that after the requisite 50 pages, I would be able to return it to the library and thus whittle down my stack.

Then I read the first interview, featuring Dorothy Parker. She was a hoot! I've never read any of her stories, but after so enjoying her sense of humor, I was ready to check out her complete short story collection from my library. Still not entirely convinced to keep reading, I approached the next interviews with some trepidation: Truman Capote and Ernest Hemingway. Both men had such intriguing things to say about their writing. Alright, so I probably won't read any Hemingway besides The Old Man and the Sea which I read for school, but it was awfully encouraging to see him poking a little bit of fun at the folks who saw a symbol in everything. Now in the full thrall of these interviews, I started taking my time, reading two or three interviews a day, spacing it out so I didn't get my authors confused or crowd out a particularly satisfying one with the next.

Two in particular stand out to me: those featuring Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Gottlieb. Vonnegut's impressed me because it helped me to understand his writing a bit more. I read Slaughterhouse-Five last year, and didn't really like it. I could appreciate what he was doing, but had trouble following and making sense of the narrative, and I had the sneaking suspicion that the author was dangling the story in front of me with the taunt "I know something you don't know." As he talked about his experience in World War 2 during this interview, especially the bombing of Dresden, I started to realize that much of this was what he knew from the war and began to wonder if part of the challenge with the form of the story was that he didn't really know how to make sense of it either. Though it didn't change my personal opinion of the book, it gave me a bit more insight into what went into it. The second stand out was the discussion with Robert Gottlieb. Rather than a traditional interview, it was more like the transcript of a documentary in which not only he himself but several of the writers whom he had edited talked about working with him in the editing process. This method gave me a very fleshed out, holistic impression of him as an editor and reader, and I really enjoyed the fresh approach.

So from reluctantly picking it up with the plan of abandoning it, I've transformed in the reading to not wanting to return it to the library. My wishlist has grown by three books, because I'm certain I'll want to read the other compilations in this series as well. ( )