INTERVIEWS AT WORK

Mid-twentieth-century literary culture was dominated by the specialized language

and method of the New Critics with their unprecedented focus on the text and the

ascendancy of the critic over the writer. Most literary magazines and journals were

publishing criticism while turning away from the authority of the writer. Founded in

1953, The Paris Review stood out in its determina...

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Mid-twentieth-century literary culture was dominated by the specialized language

and method of the New Critics with their unprecedented focus on the text and the

ascendancy of the critic over the writer. Most literary magazines and journals were

publishing criticism while turning away from the authority of the writer. Founded in

1953, The Paris Review stood out in its determination to return attention to the artist

through masses of original poetry and fiction and a feature that soon made it famous: the

Paris Review interviews. Best known today in the Writers at Work anthologies, these

conversations with writers such as T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway

are highly praised by academic and popular audiences alike. The official subject of these

exchanges is "The Art of Writing;" however, the subtext of these encounters is the

meaning of authorship and the way that influence, inspiration, and intention work

together. The Paris Review interviews are sites of the construction and conflict of

authorship, persona, and performance and can play a critical role in the production of

culture and meaning. The popularity of the interviews raises questions about authorial

intention and why, despite what is known about the limitations of intentionalism, readers

are still consistently drawn to the perspective of the writer.

This project offers a series of approaches to reading the Paris Review interviews

that can be applied to literary conversations more generally. The form and history of the

literary interview and the Paris Review example are considered in detail with a focus on

both the Review's official and "unauthorized" history for its first twenty-five years and its

popular and critical response. Using archival materials only recently made public,

individual interviews are dissected to uncover the machinations at work and the larger

implications of the process and content of these conversations.

Ultimately, this project establishes that the Paris Review interview, far from being

an exercise in, as W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe Beardsley suggest, "consulting the

oracle," can be a unique and fertile site for learning about how authors construct

themselves and how intention is negotiated between readers, writers and texts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES viii
ABSTRACT x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 ORGANIZATION AND METHODOLOGY 6
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES viii
ABSTRACT x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 ORGANIZATION AND METHODOLOGY 6
CHAPTER 2 THE EVOLUTION OF THE LITERARY INTERVIEW 14
2.1 WHY CONSIDER THE LITERARY INTERVIEW? 14
2.2 LITERARY INTERVIEW: TEXT, PARATEXT, EPITEXT 17
2.3 HISTORY OF THE LITERARY INTERVIEW 25
2.3.1 Classical Antiquity: Plato's Socratic Dialogues 27
2.3.2 Dialogue in the Enlightenment 35
2.3.3 The Literary Conversation as Life Story: Boswell & Johnson 37
2.3.4 The Growing Popularity of the Conversation 43
2.3.5 Beginnings of the Literary Interview: America and France 45
2.3.6 The Paris Review 49
2.3.7 Post-Paris Review and into the Twenty-first Century 51
CHAPTER 3 THE HISTORY OF THE PARIS REVIEW 63
3.1 HISTORIES OF THE PARIS REVIEW 63
3.1.1 Founding Anecdotes 66
3.1.2 Early Content and Attitude 69
3.1.3 The Paris Review Design 77
3.1.4 The Scene: Paris in the 1950s 81
3.1.5 Early Operations and Adventures 86
3.1.6 Change and Growing Pains 89
3.1.7 The New York Scene 91
3.2 THE PEOPLE OF THE PARIS REVIEW 95
3.2.1 George Plimpton: Larger than Life 99
3.3 ENTERPRISE IN THE SERVICE OF ART 104
3.4 THE CIA CONNECTION 114
3.5 THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS 124
V
3.6 HONOURS AND READER RECEPTION 128
3.7 THE NEW PARIS REVIEW 141
CHAPTER 4 INSIDE THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW 144
4.1 THE PROCESS OF THE MODERN LITERARY INTERVIEW 144
4.2 THE WRITER'S AGENDA: MYSTERY, MONEY, MYTH? 154
4.3 THE UNIQUE PROCESS OF THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW: COLLABORATION 161
4.4 CONSTRUCTING THE AUTHOR: EDITORIAL STRATEGIES 165
4.4.1 Collaboration or Counterfeit?: Norman Mailer 166
4.4.2 To Cut or Not to Cut: Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Ralph Ellison 172
4.4.3 What is Hidden: John Berryman 179
4.4.4 Interview as Domestic Drama: William Carlos Williams, Jack Kerouac 182
4.4.5 Interview with a Dead Man: John Steinbeck 189
4.4.6 Editors, Interviewers, Egos: W.H. Auden 192
4.5 CONTROL, CHARACTER AND THE CONFLICTED SUBJECT: VLADIMIR NABOKOV
AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY 196
CHAPTER 5 THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW I N THE WORLD 218
5.1 THE NATURE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE MODERN LITERARY INTERVIEW 218
5.2 THE LITERARY INTERVIEW IN THE FIELD OF LITERARY PRODUCTION 225
5.3 CELEBRITY, POWER AND PERSONA 237
5.4 PERFORMING THE PUBLIC SELF: AUTHORIAL PERSONA AND THE PARIS
REVIEW INTERVIEW 245
5.4.1 An Ornery "Papa": Ernest Hemingway's 1958 Paris Review Interview 248
5.4.2 The Perfect Yankee: Robert Frost's 1960 Paris Review Interview 260
5.4.3 A Lady Composed: Marianne Moore's 1961 Paris Review Interview 278
CHAPTER 6 READING THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW: THE
SEARCH FOR AUTHORIAL INTENTION 293
6.1 AUTHORIAL INTENTION AND THE WAY WE READ 293
6.2 THE INTENTION DEBATES 297
6.2.1 The Romantic Era: the Poet is the Poem 297
6.2.2 T. S. Eliot: A Move Towards Impersonality 301
6.2.3 Personality and Intention: C. S. Lewis and E. M. W. Tillyard 305
6.2.4 An Absolute Prohibition: Wimsatt and Beardsley 310
6.2.5 New Criticism and Anti-Intentionalism 317
VI
6.2.6 Post-Structuralism and Intention 319
6.2.7 Intention and Meaning: The Hermeneutic Position 322
6.2.8 From the Author to the Reader 324
6.3 A RECONSIDERATION OF AUTHORIAL INTENTION THROUGH THE INTERVIEW 329
6.3.1 William Faulkner: "I don't know what inspiration is" 330
6.3.2 Ernest Hemingway: "Only death can stop it" 337
6.3.3 Marianne Moore: "I was just trying to be honourable" 344
6.3.4 William Burroughs "I had nothing else to do" 349
6.3.5 T. S. Eliot: "I don't know until I find I want to do it" 355
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION 368
BIBLIOGRAPHY 378
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