March 10, 2010
Graham Greene
Interviewer: Many of your most memorable characters, Raven for instance, are from low life. Have you ever had any experience of low life?
Greene: No, very little.
Interviewer: What did you know about poverty?
...
March 9, 2010
March 8, 2010
Robert Lowell
Formative reading figures often as a topic of inquiry in The Paris Review Interviews. Poet Robert Lowell's formative reading at St. Mark's (his high school) was art history.
[M]y school had been given a Carnegie set of art books, and I had a friend, Frank...
March 5, 2010
James Thurber
Some thoughts on humor from one of America's great wits, James Thurber:
With humor you have to look out for traps. You're likely to be very gleeful with what you've first put down, and you think it's fine, very funny. One reason you go...
March 4, 2010
March 3, 2010
William Faulkner
Sometimes, William Faulkner's stories stem from an image.
So shall this post. I had a chuckle--over the picture, then over this quote.
Faulkner:
No. The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some...
March 2, 2010
March 1, 2010
Saul Bellow (by Fay Godwin)
Today I finish Vol. 1 of The Paris Review Interviews with Saul Bellow. Bellow's words have stuck with me since I first read his assessment of "realism" back in November. He discusses this construct several times over the course of the interview, and...
February 24, 2010
Christian Boltanski
We're heading to a salon-style discussion of one of my favorite artists, Christian Boltanski, this evening. We've read The Impossible Life of Christian Boltanski, in which Boltanski tells the story of his life and art to interviewer Catherine Grenier (curator at...
February 22, 2010
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Even though I wake up to singing birds these days, spring seems too far off.
It's time to indulge in a favorite thing.
Chris and I went off this weekend. We have a favorite town along the Mississippi,...
