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Conversations with Einstein: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts
by Carlos CalleBy power of thought alone, Albert Einstein gave us a fresh conception of the universe. He showed us that space and time are elastic – shrinking or expanding, speeding up or slowing down, depending on your movement. Beginning with an inspiring foreword by eminent Professor of Mathematics Sir Roger Penrose, the book is then divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a concise overview of Einstein's life, achievements, personal loves and public controversies; and a Q&A dialogue based on rigorous research and incorporating Einstein's actual spoken or written words whenever possible. Research physicist Carlos Calle brings Einstein to life through meticulously researched biographical interpretations of Einstein's revolutionary mathematical work. Relax and chat with this genius as he tells you about his work on relativity, his quest for a grand unifying theory of the cosmos, and personal matters – from the pleasures of sailing and music to his anxieties about the nuclear bomb he had helped unleash.
Conversations with Frank Gehry
by Barbara IsenbergAn unprecedented, intimate, and richly illustrated portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world's most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last twenty years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work.Gehry's subjects range from his childhood--when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother's kitchen--to his relationships with clients and his definition of a "great" client. We learn about his architectural influences (including Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright) and what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg.We explore the thinking behind his designs for the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the redevelopment of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany's, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. And we follow as Gehry illuminates the creative process by which his ideas first take shape--for example, through early drawings for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the building's trademark undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry himself allow us to see how so many of his landmark buildings have come to fruition, step by step.Conversations with Frank Gehry is essential reading for everyone interested in the art and craft of architecture, and for everyone fascinated by the most iconic buildings of our time, as well as the man and the mind behind them.From the Hardcover edition.
Conversations with Freud: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts
by D.M. ThomasSigmund Freud was no stranger to controversy. He shocked many with his revolutionary theories on human development, desires and sexuality, and transformed the way we think about ourselves today. Starting with a brilliant foreword from renowned psychologist Edward de Bono, the book is then divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a concise overview of Freud's life, achievements, theories and controversies; and a Q&A dialogue based on rigorous research and incorporating Freud's actual spoken or written words whenever possible. D.M. Thomas carefully guides us through Freud's life and theories that would lead to him become the father of psychoanalysis. In frank conversation, full of energy and spiced with cynicism and wit, he'll interpret your wildest fantasies and strangest dreams, and even let you in on a few family secrets.
Conversations with Galileo: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts
by William SheaWhen Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the skies, he ushered in a scientific revolution: the Moon turned out to be covered with mountains and craters, stars popped out of nowhere, and four satellites were found to be orbiting Jupiter. His discovery of the phases of Venus in 1610 forever shattered the notion that the Sun orbited the Earth and transformed humanity&’s sense of itself and its place in the cosmos. It also contributed to the demise of the idea that knowledge about the world was to be found in ancient texts or supernatural authority.Eavesdrop on an enlightening conversation, and make your own discoveries – about Galileo&’s life in the Medici court, his love of wine and women, and how he came to spend his last eight years under house arrest.
Conversations with Gary Snyder (Literary Conversations Series)
by David Stephen CalonneGary Snyder (b. 1930) is one of the most distinguished American poets, remarkable both for his long and productive career and for his equal contributions to literature and environmental thought. His childhood in the Pacific Northwest profoundly shaped his sensibility due to his contact with Native American culture and his early awareness of the destruction of the environment by corporations. Although he emerged from the San Francisco Renaissance with writers such as Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, and William Everson, he became associated with the Beats due to his friendships with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who included a portrait of Snyder as Japhy Ryder in his novel The Dharma Bums. After graduating from Reed College, Snyder became deeply involved with Zen Buddhism, and he spent twelve years in Japan immersed in study.Conversations with Gary Snyder collects interviews from 1961 to 2015 and charts his developing environmental philosophy and his wide-ranging interests in ecology, Buddhism, Native American studies, history, and mythology. The book also demonstrates the ways Snyder has returned throughout his career to key ideas such as the extended family, shamanism, poetics, visionary experience, and caring for the environment as well as his relationship to the Beat movement. Because the book contains interviews spanning more than fifty years, the reader witnesses how Snyder has evolved and grown both as a poet and philosopher of humanity's proper relationship to the cosmos while remaining committed to the issues that preoccupied him as a young man.
Conversations with George Saunders (Literary Conversations Series)
by Michael O’ConnellBesides being one of America’s most celebrated living authors, George Saunders (b. 1958) is also an excellent interview subject. In the fourteen interviews included in Conversations with George Saunders, covering nearly twenty years of his career, the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December provides detailed insight into his own writing process and craft, alongside nuanced interpretations of his own work. He also delves into aspects of his biography, including anecdotes from his childhood and his experiences as both a student and teacher in MFA programs, as well as reflections on how parenthood affected his writing, the role of religious belief and practice in his work, and how he has dealt with his growing popularity and fame. Throughout this collection, we see him in conversation with former students, fellow writers, mainstream critics, and literary scholars. In each instance, Saunders is eager to engage in meaningful dialogue about what he calls the “big questions of our age.” In a number of interviews, he reflects on the moral and ethical responsibility of fiction, as well as how his work engages with issues of social and political commentary. But at the same time, these interviews, like all of Saunders’s best work, are funny, warm, surprising, and wise. Saunders says he has “always enjoyed doing interviews” in part because he views “intense, respectful conversation [as], really, an artform—an exploration of sorts.” Readers of this volume will have the pleasure of joining him in this process of exploration.
Conversations with Gish Jen (Literary Conversations Series)
by John Zheng and Biling ChenConversations with Gish Jen is the first collection of interviews with the renowned contemporary American author Gish Jen (b. 1955), whose acclaimed fiction and nonfiction have fascinated American readers for more than thirty years. The conversations in this book offer first-hand information not only about Jen’s authorial intentions, but also about her life as a daughter of Chinese immigrants. Spanning more than two decades, beginning in 1991 and ending with a new, unpublished interview from 2017, these interviews provide readers a sense of Jen’s development as a novelist and cultural critic. Jen’s insights into the merits and drawbacks of Eastern and Western cultures, including American individualism and exceptionalism and Asian interdependent mindset and living principles, provide us with keys to understanding the identity struggles of the author herself as well as her fictional characters. The comparative approach Jen adopts in her comments on such topics as education, politics, business, religion, and concepts of creativity and success provokes readers to reflect on their relationships with themselves, with the society in which they live, and with the rest of the world. At the heart of these conversations is Jen’s sense of humor, which makes the book a joyful read for both scholars and casual fans of her work.
Conversations with Goethe
by Johann Peter EckermannA perceptive introduction to the mind of one of German's greatest writers, in a new translation for the first time in 150 years'The best German book there is' Nietzsche By the turn of the nineteenth century, the poet, novelist and thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of the most famous people in the world. In 1823 he became friend and mentor to the young writer Johann Eckermann, who, for the last nine years of Goethe's life, recorded their wide-ranging conversations on art, literature, science and philosophy. This rich portrait of Germany's literary elder statesman, now in its first new translation for over 150 years, gives a fascinating glimpse into a great mind as well as 'many insights and invaluable lessons about life.'Translated by Allan Blunden with an Introduction by Ritchie Robertson
Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism
by Mikhail Gorbachev Zdenek MlynarMikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics.In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that "thinking out loud” process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to "save socialism” to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.
Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism
by Mikhail Gorbachev Zdenek Mlynar George ShriverMikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to "save socialism" to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.
Conversations with Gordon Lish (Literary Conversations Series)
by David Winters and Jason LucarelliKnown as "Captain Fiction," Gordon Lish (b. 1934) is among the most influential--and controversial--figures in modern American letters. As an editor at Esquire (1969-1977), Alfred A. Knopf (1977-1994), and The Quarterly (1987-1995) and as a teacher both in and outside the university system, he has worked closely with many of the most pioneering writers of recent times, including Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Sam Lipsyte, and Ben Marcus. A prolific author of stories and novels, Lish has also won a cult following for his own fiction, earning comparisons with Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett.Conversations with Gordon Lish collects all of Lish's major interviews, covering the entire span of his extraordinary career. Ranging from 1965 to 2015, these interviews document his pivotal role in the period's defining developments: the impact of the Californian counterculture, the rise and decline of so-called literary "minimalism," dramatic transformations in book and magazine publishing, and the ongoing growth of creative writing instruction. Over time, Lish--a self-described "dynamic conversationalist"-- forges an evolving conversation not only with his interviewers, but with the central trends of twentieth-century literary history.This book will be essential reading not only for students and fans of contemporary fiction, but for writers too: included are several interviews in which Lish discusses his legendary writing classes. Indeed, these pieces themselves amount to a masterclass in Lishian literary language--each is a work of art in its own right.
Conversations with Graham Swift (Literary Conversations Series)
by Donald P. KaczvinskyConversations with Graham Swift is the first collection of interviews conducted with the author of the Booker Prize–winning novel Last Orders. Beginning in 1985 with Swift’s arrival in New York to promote Waterland and concluding with an interview from 2016 that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the collection spans Swift’s more than thirty-five-year career as a writer. The volume also includes interviews first printed in English as well as translated from the French or Spanish and covers a wide range of formats, from lengthier interviews published in standard academic journals, to those for radio, newspapers, and, more recently, podcasts. In these interviews, Graham Swift (b. 1949) offers insights into his life and career, including his friendships with other contemporary writers like Ted Hughes and the group of celebrated novelists who emerged in Britain during the eighties. With remarkable clarity, Swift discusses the themes of his novels and short stories: death, love, history, parent-child relationships, the power of the imagination, the role of storytelling, and the consequences of knowing. He also notes the influences, literary and personal, that have helped shape his writing career. While quite ordinary in his life and daily habits, Swift reveals his penetrating intellect and rich imagination—an imagination that can craft some of the most engaging and formally complex stories in the language.
Conversations with Greil Marcus (Literary Conversations Series)
by Joe BonomoGreil Marcus once said to an interviewer, “There is an infinite amount of meaning about anything, and I free associate.” For more than four decades, Marcus has explored the connections among figures, sounds, and events in culture, relating unrelated points of departure, mapping alternate histories and surprising correspondences. He is a unique and influential voice in American letters. Marcus was born in 1945 in San Francisco. In 1968 he published his first piece, a review of Magic Bus: The Who on Tour, in Rolling Stone, where he became the magazine’s first records editor. Renowned for his ongoing “Real Life Top Ten” column, Marcus has been a writer for a number of magazines and websites and is the author or editor of over fifteen books. His critique is egalitarian: no figure, object, or event is too high, low, celebrated, or obscure for an inquiry into the ways in which our lives can open outward, often unexpectedly. In Conversations with Greil Marcus, Marcus discuses in lively, wide-ranging interviews his books and columns as well as his critical methodology and broad approach to his material, signaled by a generosity of spirit leavened with aggressive critical standards.
Conversations with History: Inspiration, Reflections, And Advice From History-makers And Celebrities On The Other Side
by Susan LanderWe’ve read about some in history books and followed the lives of others in the media. We know their mistakes, their struggles, and their joys. But have you ever wondered how celebrities and other public figures would reflect on their lives since they passed? Channeled by a psychic medium and written in interview format, Conversations with History takes us on a unique journey with 22 spirits who were famous (or infamous) during their time on Earth, ranging from 600 B.C. to A.D. 2011. Renowned personalities—from Charlemagne, Ben Franklin, and Eva Perón to Gandhi, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs—have returned with the clarity that can be gained only from the Other Side. These spirits are taking center stage one more time to offer new insights into their lives and share important messages with us about abundance and prosperity, love and relationships, creativity and art, personal responsibility for the world around us, and the legacy we leave for future generations. In every interview, there are simple but powerful lessons that we can use to improve our lives every day.
Conversations with Isaac Newton: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts
by Michael WhiteIsaac Newton's influence on our world is immense. He formulated the theory of gravity, devised a radical new theory of light and created a calculus that would revolutionize mathematics. His theory of matter in motion sparked the Industrial Revolution. But there was far more to Newton even than these great discoveries. Opening with an informative foreword by the bestselling author of The Body Bill Bryson, the book is then divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a concise overview of Newton's life, upbringing, education and achievements; and a Q&A dialogue based on rigorous research and incorporating Newton's actual spoken or written words whenever possible. Biographer Michael White brings Newton to life through detailed research and giving Newton a free voice to tell you about his unorthodox upbringing, his eminent political career, his bitter feuds with rivals and his secret explorations of the occult.
Conversations with James Ellroy (Literary Conversations Series)
by Steven PowellAs a novelist who has spent years crafting and refining his intense and oft outrageous “Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction” persona, James Ellroy has used interviews as a means of shaping narratives outside of his novels. Conversations with James Ellroy covers a series of interviews given by Ellroy from 1984 to 2010, in which Ellroy discusses his literary contribution and his public and private image. Born Lee Earle Ellroy in 1948, James Ellroy is one of the most critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers of crime and historical fiction. Ellroy's complex narratives, which merge history and fiction, have pushed the boundaries of the crime fiction genre: American Tabloid, a revisionist look at the Kennedy era, was Time magazine's Novel of the Year 1995, and his novels L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia were adapted into films. Much of Ellroy's remarkable life story has served as the template for the personal obsessions that dominate his writing. From the brutal, unsolved murder of his mother to his descent into alcohol and drug abuse, his sexual voyeurism, and his stints at the Los Angeles County Jail, Ellroy has lived through a series of hellish experiences that few other writers could claim. In Conversations with James Ellroy, the author talks extensively about his life, his literary influences, his persona, and his attitudes towards politics and religion. In interviews with fellow crime writers Craig McDonald, David Peace, and others, including several previously unpublished interviews, Ellroy is at turns charismatic and eloquent, combative and enigmatic.
Conversations with James Salter (Literary Conversations Series)
by Jennifer Levasseur Kevin RabalaisJames Salter (1925-2015) has been known throughout his career as a writer's writer, acclaimed by such literary greats as Susan Sontag, Richard Ford, John Banville, and Peter Matthiessen for his lyrical prose, his insightful and daring explorations of sex, and his examinations of the inner lives of women and men.Conversations with James Salter collects interviews published from 1972 to 2014 with the award-winning author of The Hunters, A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years, and All That Is. Gathered here are his earliest interviews following acclaimed but moderately selling novels, conversations covering his work as a screenwriter and award-winning director, and interviews charting his explosive popularity after publishing All That Is, his first novel after a gap of thirty-four years. These conversations chart Salter's progression as a writer, his love affair with France, his military past as a fighter pilot, and his lyrical explorations of gender relations.The collection contains interviews from Sweden, France, and Argentina appearing for the first time in English. Included as well are published conversations from the United States, Canada, and Australia, some of which are significantly extended versions, giving this collection an international scope of Salter's wide-ranging career and his place in world literature.
Conversations with Jay Parini (Literary Conversations Series)
by Michael LackeyJay Parini (b. 1948) is best known for his novel about Leo Tolstoy's last year, The Last Station, which has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and made into a Hollywood film. But he has also published numerous volumes of poetry; biographies of William Faulkner, Robert Frost, and John Steinbeck; novels; and literary and cultural criticism. This book contains the most important interviews with the former Guggenheim fellow; former Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford; and former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of London. Parini's work is valuable not just because of its high quality and intellectual range. Parini's life and writings often seem like a seminar table, with friends gathered, talking and trading stories. He has openly written poems in conversation with writers he knew personally: Robert Penn Warren, Gore Vidal, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He has, in his own life, kept an ongoing conversation with many literary friends over the years—Alastair Reid, Seamus Heaney, Anne Stevenson, Ann Beattie, Julia Alvarez, Peter Ackroyd, A. N. Wilson, and countless others. These interviews offer a more comprehensive understanding of Parini's work as a poet, scholar, public intellectual, literary critic, intellectual historian, biographer, novelist, and biographical novelist. More importantly, these interviews will contribute to our understanding of the history of ideas, the condition of knowledge, and the state of literature, all of which Parini has played an important role in shaping.
Conversations with Jerome Charyn (Literary Conversations Series)
by Sophie VallasThis volume of fourteen interviews covers the prolific and rich career of author Jerome Charyn (b. 1937). Four of the interviews appear in English for the first time, and two interviews appear here in print for the first time as well. As one of his autobiographical volumes claims, Jerome Charyn is a “Bronx Boy,” a child born from immigrant parents who went through Ellis Island in the 1920s like so many other travelers without luggage, a “little werewolf” who grew up on his own in the chaos of the Bronx ghetto. “I think I was defined by two things: World War II and the movies.” His work remains deeply marked by this childhood largely forgotten by the American Dream. If Charyn has spent much of his life in Paris, he has paradoxically never left the Bronx: “‘El Bronx’ is there inside my head, and I revisit it the way Hemingway would fish the Big Two-Hearted River in his dreams.” His whole work is a long attempt at evoking his own history and celebrating his lifelong marveling at the power of language—“our second skin”—as well as his deep, unflinching belief in the promises of fiction. Since 1964, Charyn has published more than fifty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction and including short stories; very popular crime novels; graphic novels cowritten with European artists; essays on American culture and cinema as well as on New York; autobiography; and biography—an ever-changing production that has made it difficult for critics to classify him. And yet in many ways Charyn's writing thrives on constant currents: the words “voice,” “song,” “undersong,” or “rhythm” return frequently in his interviews as he explains what literature is to him and ceaselessly asserts that he is trying “to find a music for a musicless world,” a language for “people who cannot speak.”
Conversations with Jerry W. Ward Jr. (Literary Conversations Series)
by John ZhengJerry W. Ward Jr. (b. 1943) has published nonfiction, literary criticism, encyclopedias, anthologies, and poetry. Ward is also a highly respected scholar with a specialty in African American literature and has been recognized internationally as one of the leading experts on Richard Wright. Ward was Lawrence Durgin Professor of Literature at Tougaloo College, served as a member of both the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Advisory Committee for the US Commission on Civil Rights, and cofounded the Richard Wright Circle and the Richard Wright Newsletter. He has won numerous awards, and in 2001 he was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. Conversations with Jerry W. Ward Jr. aims to add an indispensable source to American literature and African American studies. It offers an account of Ward's intelligent and thoughtful responses to questions about literature, literary criticism, teaching, writing, civil rights, Black aesthetics, race, and culture. Throughout the fourteen interviews collected in this volume that range from 1995 to 2021, Ward demonstrates his responsibilities as a contemporary scholar, professor, writer, and social critic. His charming personality glimmers through these interviews, which, in a sense, are inner views that allow us to see into his mind, understand his heart, and appreciate his wit.
Conversations with JFK: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts (Conversations With #1)
by Michael O'BrienImagined by one of the world's foremost JFK scholars, this fictionalised conversation presents the essential biography of America's most glamorous and mythologised president.For many, the presidency of John F. Kennedy was a magic interlude in American history. His admirers saw him as a leader of intelligence and imagination, who wielded power with grace, courage and verve - although detractors have questioned the depth of his convictions and drawn attention to his serial philandering. Kennedy's rise also marked the beginning of modern "celebrity" politics - a politician with film star charisma who proved ideally suited to the new age of television. Meet the man himself and he'll tell you how it felt to have his finger on the red button when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. The book is divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a concise overview of JFK's life, achievements, scandals and controversies; and a Q&A dialogue based on rigorous research and incorporating JFK's actual spoken or written words whenever possible, along with rigorously researched biographical interpretations of his various views and positions.Here you will find all the key moments in JFK's life and career: his early days at Harvard and the US Navy; his family background and the importance of his Catholic faith; running for office against Richard Nixon; his clashes with communist power in Berlin and Cuba; the Civil Rights movement; Vietnam; and the president's often scandalous personal life that was carefully concealed from an adoring public. Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963 marked the beginning of a tumultuous and bitterly divided decade, and birthed countless conspiracy theories that thrive to this day. These legacies of polarisation and suspicion of established authority have assumed particular salience in the 21st century.
Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated (Literary Conversations Series)
by Robert DeMottConversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated offers a judicious selection of interviews spanning the writing career of Jim Harrison (1937–2016) from its beginnings in the 1960s to the last interview he gave weeks before his death in March 2016. Harrison labeled himself and lived as a “quadra-schizoid” writer. He worked in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting, and he published more than forty books that attracted an international following. These interviews supply a lively narrative of his progress as a major contemporary American author. This collection showcases Harrison's pet peeves, his candor and humility, his sense of humor, and his patience. He does not shy from his authorial obsessions, especially his efforts to hone the novella, for which he is considered a contemporary master, or the frequency with which he defied polite narrative conventions and created memorable, resolute female characters. Each conversation attests to the depth and range of Harrison’s considerable intellectual and political preoccupations, his fierce social and ecological conscience, his aesthetic beliefs, and his stylistic orientations in poetry and prose.
Conversations with Jimmy Carter (Literary Conversations Series)
by Tom HeadWhen Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) lost the presidency in 1980, it would have been reasonable to think his public life was coming to an end. The moderate, evangelical, blue-jeans-wearing peanut farmer made an unlikely governor of Georgia, and an even less likely winner of the vicious 1976 Democratic presidential primary. Coming into an era of American politics where evangelical and rural voters became increasingly identified with the Reagan revolution, and the Democratic Party’s identity became increasingly secular and urban, he did not fit neatly into the political categories of the emerging decade. But it was not politics that would define President Carter in the end: it would be his humble Christian faith and his enduring commitment to the poor, to peace, and to human rights.In Conversations with Jimmy Carter, ten interviews, drawn from Carter’s five decades as a national public figure and author, capture the complexities and contradictions that have defined him—and that have helped to both reflect and shape the highest aspirations of the American experiment.
Conversations with Joan Didion (Literary Conversations Series)
by Scott F. ParkerJoan Didion (b. 1934) is an American icon. Her essays, particularly those in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, have resonated in American culture to a degree unmatched over the past half century. Two generations of writers have taken her as the measure of what it means to write personal essays. No one writes about California, the sixties, media narratives, cultural mythology, or migraines without taking Didion into account. She has also written five novels; several screenplays with her husband, John Gregory Dunne; and three late-in-life memoirs, including The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, which have brought her a new wave of renown.Conversations with Joan Didion features seventeen interviews with the author, spanning decades, continents, and genres. Didion reflects on her childhood in Sacramento; her time at Berkeley (both as a student and later as a visiting professor), in New York, and in Hollywood; her marriage to Dunne; and of course her writing. Didion describes her methods of writing, the ways in which the various genres she has worked in inform one another, and the concerns that have motivated her to write.
Conversations with Joanna Scott (Literary Conversations Series)
by Michael LackeyJoanna Scott (b. 1960) has been one of America’s leading writers since the 1990s. Both critically acclaimed and winner of numerous prestigious awards, Scott’s unique and probing vision and masterful writing has inspired readers to adjust their perceptions of life and of themselves. Her fiction jolts and illuminates, frequently exposing the degree to which the perverse is natural and the ordinary is twisted and demented. Conversations with Joanna Scott presents eighteen interviews that span two decades and are as much about the process of reading as they are about writing. Witty, probing, wide-ranging, and insightful, Scott’s off-the-cuff observations about literature and life are as thought-provoking as some of the most memorable lines and scenes in her fiction. Not only shedding new light on Scott’s fiction, Conversations with Joanna Scott also illuminates enduring areas of inquiry, like the challenge of trying to make art out of sentences; the effort to recover and imagine lost stories from the past; the changing status of the literary imagination; fictional portraiture and the productive possibilities that come from blending biography and fiction; and concerns about literacy.Joanna Scott has made her name through brilliant, award-winning novels, but this volume clarifies why she is also one of America’s leading public intellectuals and an astute critic of literature and culture.