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Loading... The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers (edition 2005)by Vendela Vida (Editor)
Work InformationThe Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida (Editor)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Pleasant enough--been chewing my way through this one for a few years now, but finished it up. A real variety of interviews. ( ) As with most anthologies, when you put a lot of different voices into one volume, you can't expect them all to be winners. This book is doubly variegated due to the fact that both the interviewer and the interviewee change from one entry to the next. I think that this strategy (if it was, in fact, a strategy and not just a happy accident) really makes this book interesting--I had only read the work of maybe 15% of the writers represented here and hadn't even heard of half of them, but the conversational and enthusiastic style of the interviews and the creativity of the questions being asked made nearly every entry enjoyable. Highlights for me included Zadie Smith's (rather fanatical) interview with Ian McEwan, Dave Eggers' conversation with Joan Didion, and Cornelia Nixon's interview with Marilynne Robinson. Incidentally, based solely on the strength of their interviews, I almost immediately went out and found books by McEwan and Robinson and have been an ardent fan of both ever since, so I guess you could say that this book changed my life, if you wanted to get all melodramatic about it. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesBeliever Magazine (anthology)
This book is a collection of conversations between writers and their "mentors," taken from the pages of The Believer, along with previously unpublished conversations. The term "mentors" is used loosely to suggest an informal kinship between a younger writer and a more experienced one. These conversations are not limited to issues of writing and craft, but instead offer unfettered exchanges on a wide range of topics -- from Buddhism to infinity, politics to mountain climbing. The interviews feature the serious-yet-casual Believer approach to the standard, often formal, interview format. David Foster Wallace, for example, fields the question, "Do you want to talk about your history with various forms of tobacco?" while George Saunders reflects upon this oft-pondered mystery: "What's up with the crows in Syracuse?" Interviews include Zadie Smith talking with Ian McEwan; Jonathan Lethem talking with Paul Auster; Adam Thirlwell talking with Tom Stoppard; Susan Choi talking with Francisco Goldman; ZZ Packer talking with Edward P. Jones; Dave Eggers talking with David Foster Wallace; Julie Orringer talking with Tobias Wolff; and Ben Marcus talking with George Saunders. No library descriptions found. |
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