Books, Arts & Manners: Genius and Art

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Sixth Series, edited by George Plimpton (Viking, 414 pp., $22.50)

This volume, like its invaluable predecessors, considers some fascinating questions—How is genius formed? How is art created? These 12 interviews discuss the authors’ personal history, attitude toward writing, and literary technique, as well as the genesis of their work, the responsibility of the artist, the reaction to contemporaries and critics. Many of the authors are professors (skeptical about the value of teaching creative writing), most are respected and successful. I have met Rebecca West, Stephen Spender, and Bernard Malamud, and find the descriptions of their appearance and milieu accurate. This volume is all the more precious since the deaths of five of its subjects: Miss West, Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, William Goyen, and John Gardner.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

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Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Sixth Series, edited by George Plimpton (Viking, 414 pp., $22.50)

This volume, like its invaluable predecessors, considers some fascinating questions—How is genius formed? How is art created? These 12 interviews discuss the authors’ personal history, attitude toward writing, and literary technique, as well as the genesis of their work, the responsibility of the artist, the reaction to contemporaries and critics. Many of the authors are professors (skeptical about the value of teaching creative writing), most are respected and successful. I have met Rebecca West, Stephen Spender, and Bernard Malamud, and find the descriptions of their appearance and milieu accurate. This volume is all the more precious since the deaths of five of its subjects: Miss West, Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, William Goyen, and John Gardner.