Ron Peters's Reviews > Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews : First Series

This book was fun to read, even if it wasn’t especially earth-shaking. It contains a series of Paris Review interviews, often conducted by well-known writers of the era (the magazine was established by people like Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton), with writers such as E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Thornton Wilder, Truman Capote, Alberto Moravia, and so on.

The authors talk about why they write, about their lives, how they go about writing, their views on technique, their influences, what they think about other writers and “schools”, and so on. Some of them are humble and shy, some are pompous egomaniacs, some are snarky, others are generous and pleasant, and so on. It made me want to read works by some of these older-day writers.

Practically none of them agree with any of the others on anything to do with the practice of writing. The interviews are entertaining, occasionally scurrilous, and fun to read, even if you can’t be said to learn anything very useful about the craft and meaning of fiction.