April 8, 2016 Listen “The Work Is Full of Ghosts”: An Interview with Pat Barker By Dan Piepenbring At 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers—many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and The Paris Review have made recordings of these interviews available at 92Y’s Poetry Center Online and here at The Paris Review. Consider them deleted scenes from our Writers at Work interviews, or directors’ cuts, or surprisingly lifelike radio adaptations. This week we’ve debuted four new recordings from the series. Today, the last of the bunch: Pat Barker, author of the Regeneration Trilogy, who spoke with Michael Gorra on April 16, 2001. This interview was never adapted for the Review’s Writers at Work series, so what you hear has been essentially buried for the past fifteen years. From the start, Barker discusses why she disdains being considered a “gritty, working-class” writer because of her hailing from Northern England, and how fiction can help readers face “the past that’s not even past”: Read More
April 7, 2016 Listen “Consuming All the Crystals”: An Interview with Norman Mailer By Dan Piepenbring At 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers—many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and The Paris Review have made recordings of these interviews available at 92Y’s Poetry Center Online and here at The Paris Review. Consider them deleted scenes from our Writers at Work interviews, or directors’ cuts, or surprisingly lifelike radio adaptations. This week we’re debuting four new recordings from the series. Today, listen to Norman Mailer, who talked with George Plimpton on May 11, 1998. Though Mailer has been interviewed twice for the magazine—first in 1964 and later in 2007—this is one of the rare 92Y conversations that never made it to print, making it all the more interesting. Mailer talked about chair preference (“I like a hard chair when I write. Because I fall asleep in a soft one”), casting Plimpton in a movie, and why he didn’t write about his childhood: Read More
April 6, 2016 Listen “I Couldn’t Dig It”: An Interview with Arthur Miller By Dan Piepenbring At 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers—many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and The Paris Review have made recordings of these interviews available at 92Y’s Poetry Center Online and here at The Paris Review. Consider them deleted scenes from our Writers at Work interviews, or directors’ cuts, or surprisingly lifelike radio adaptations. This week we’re debuting four new recordings from the series. Today, listen to Arthur Miller, who talked with Christopher Bigsby on January 4, 1999. Their conversation laid the groundwork for Miller’s Art of Theater interview in the magazine later that year. Here, he dilates on meeting Mel Brooks (“He said, What’s [the play] about? And I said, Well, there are these two brothers… and he said, Stop, I’m crying!”), watching productions of his work, and the influence of politics in his plays: Read More
April 5, 2016 Listen “Lies Don’t Last with Age”: An Interview with John le Carré By Dan Piepenbring At 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers—many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and The Paris Review have made recordings of these interviews available at 92Y’s Poetry Center Online and here at The Paris Review. Consider them deleted scenes from our Writers at Work interviews, or directors’ cuts, or surprisingly lifelike radio adaptations. This week we’re debuting four new recordings from the series, and first up is John le Carré, who spoke to our founding editor George Plimpton back in October 1996—their conversation formed the basis of Le Carré’s Art of Fiction interview in the magazine the next year. Here, he touches on his discovery of his character George Smiley, his experience with intelligence services, and how he chose his inimitable pseudonym: Read More
July 7, 2015 Listen One Night in Lasgidi By Teju Cole Clubbing in Lagos. Image: Underdog Teju Cole wrote the following piece to accompany his new mixtape for Okayafrica’s “Africa in Your Earbuds” series, mixed by Chief Boima. It doesn’t really get good until about one A.M., but you do want to be there by then, because you’d like to get in at least two solid hours of dancing by the time the clubs shut down. Afterward you run the gauntlet of cops on Falomo Bridge. “Oga, anything for us?” “Ehn, don’t worry, on my way back.” And on the way back, you lie. “Officer, I already saw you before na. You no remember?” Naturally, you’re not trying to drive to the mainland at that hour. You’ve made arrangements to sleep in some island neighborhood, assuming you’re not rich enough to already live there: Ikoyi, V.I., Lekki 1, Lekki 2, Lekki 3, Ajah. At this hour, you’re taking the uncannily clear roads at speed, stopping not even for traffic lights. The breeze is blowing, the great lagoon sleeps. Twenty-one million people are in whatever form of shelter they call home, these human energies at rest, numerous as the stars above the endless city. The past two hours begin to come back to you, a blur of moves and bodies, and the two or three things you saw and were reluctant to believe, good things, bad things, badt guys, as Lagosians say, and bad gyals dem. Read More
July 1, 2015 Listen “Mumbling Like a Maniac”: An Interview with Robert Fagles By Dan Piepenbring At 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers—many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and The Paris Review have made recordings of these interviews available at 92Y’s Poetry Center Online and here at The Paris Review. Consider them deleted scenes from our Writers at Work interviews, or directors’ cuts, or surprisingly lifelike radio adaptations. Because our new Summer issue has a focus on translation, we’ve dug up two interviews with translators to present this week. This one features Robert Fagles, who died in 2008—a prolific translator of ancient Greek and Roman texts, he’s remembered especially for his seminal editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Read More