Volume 1, Number 2 · June 1, 1963
Tapes
By Marion Magid
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews. Second Series.
Viking Press, $6.50
The celebrated Paris Review interviews with writers, of which this volume is the second series, are nothing if not impeccable. The interviewers are as close to ideal for the job as one can imagine—literate, courteous almost to a fault, self-effacing but not too self-effacing, very much 'up' on their subjects, though without ostentation (perhaps an occasional gentle reminder to the author of a boyhood work he had forgotten), interested, though not extravagantly so, in the 'creative process'—in short amateurs in the best sense of the word, and hence immune from both the excessive shyness and the excessive familiarity that would, one imagines, constitute the major hazards of the métier. The subjects, for their part, represent a literary elite quite as formidable as the participants in the first volume, and include, as the dust jacket announces, 'in a fascinating departure from the predecessor volume,' no less than five poets (count 'em). There is not, in short, a single author included in this book whose works one has not read and will not continue to read, nor is there an interviewer one would not very much like to have dinner with. Yet, withal, the reader puts the book down in a churlish spirit.
Review, 1190 words
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