Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths
Many writers despise being interviewed; in his collection “Picked-Up Pieces,” John Updike called interviews “a form to be loathed, a half-form like maggots.” They worry that their loose talk will be, to some readers, a cheap substitute for deep engagement with their real work. Yet over the decades few major writers have turned down The Paris Review. Part of the appeal of these exchanges, for writers, is that they’re allowed to tweak the text later, adjusting and readjusting the masks they want to present to readers.
.. The interviews with Hemingway and V. S. Naipaul are the most plainly contentious. “The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions,” Hemingway says, “proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely.” But answer he did, perhaps realizing that readers care about the stray, telling details of a writer’s life in much the same way that an author cares about those details in the characters he or she puts to paper.