For Jacques Derrida only the philosopherвЂ™s actual last вЂњtestament,вЂќ titled вЂњLearning to Live: Finally,вЂќ is reprinted but with an introduction, annotations and an extensive bibliography. The otherwise excellent Ray Bradbury volume offers four interviews, all of them conducted by its editor, Sam Weller, between 20, very late in the great writerвЂ™s career. For instance, the Roberto BolaГ±o opens with a 40-page critical essay - one-third of the book - by its editor, Marcela Valdes. Dick.ДЄfter reading around the entire series, I can attest that each volume offers, besides useful insights into its particular authorвЂ™s work, what an old friend would call вЂњcivilized entertainment.вЂќ Nearly all the titles actually contain several interviews, and some add introductions. Screenwriter/journalist Nora Ephron is part of the most recent trio, which also includes Ernest Hemingway and science-fiction legend Philip K. In slender trade paperbacks, with a uniform design (notably a cover drawing of each author by Christopher King), the collection spotlights novelists and philosophers (but no poets yet), Hannah Arendt as well as Kurt Vonnegut. More recently, Melville House started its own more modest series, вЂњThe Last InterviewвЂќ a title that simultaneously echoes Randy PauschвЂ™s best-selling вЂњ The Last LectureвЂќ while also indicating that no one included is still alive. For instance, the University Press of Mississippi has issued outstanding volumes of literary conversations with dozens of writers, ranging from Isaac Asimov to Eudora Welty.

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate the вЂOde on a Grecian UrnвЂ™ is worth any number of old ladies.вЂќДЄuthor interviews have certainly never stopped being popular. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. вЂњThe writerвЂ™s only responsibility is to his art. Faulkner, declaiming in his full-blown Nobel Prize voice, was particularly inspiring: Through these interviews a 16-year-old could revel in the (somewhat specious) glamour of the literary life, find out about important books worth tracking down (вЂњ The Sacred Wood ,вЂќ вЂњ My Life and Hard Times ,вЂќ вЂњ Decline and FallвЂќ) and, above all, pick up lots of writing tips. Perelman, Saul Bellow, Ernest Hemingway and many others. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Truman Capote, Jean Cocteau, S.J. Being a bookish teenager, I read to pieces the first three вЂњWriters at WorkвЂќ compilations, which included extended talks with James Thurber, Georges Simenon, Thornton Wilder, Dorothy Parker, William Burroughs, Evelyn Waugh, Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, T.S. In their way, the Paris ReviewвЂ™s pioneering literary conversations were as much the stuff of daydreams as any blond centerfold. Forster or Ralph Ellison had to say about the art of fiction. But no one ever deferred checking out Miss March or Miss November, flipping through pages in search of the latest from Charles Addams and George Price, or sitting down to read what E.M.

While each magazine also offered wonderful fiction, thoughtful or humorous essays, and even high-minded symposia on cultural issues of the day, the enjoyment of such features could always be put off till tomorrow or next week. In days gone by it was a truth universally acknowledged that one bought Playboy for the pictures, the New Yorker for its cartoons and the Paris Review for its вЂњWriters at WorkвЂќ interviews.

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