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Title: The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953 by George Plimpton, The Paris Review, The Paris Review ISBN: 0-312-42238-5 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 03 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Probably an impossible task
Comment: I bought this book mainly for the interviews the magazine has had over the years, and some of them with notoriously reticent figures like Nabokov and Hemingway. But I was disappointed, because what really distinguishes a Paris Review interview from those of other magazines is how well they're edited, and how beautifully and naturally the conversations flow. All we get here is single paragraphs, usually just anecdotes, funny stories, little opinions: sometimes they're profound (see Edmund White's page) or just convey the author's personality well (Faulkner, Hemingway), but all of them just made me upset about not being able to read the rest of the interview.
Of course there's not enough space. But I would have thrown out most of the other material. I doubt there was any way to make this collection totally succesful: if you pick only the famous stuff that the magazine has published over the years, it's sort of a waste, since most people would either have read the selection already or wouldn't want to read just an excerpt. A first chapter is useful to get you excited about an upcoming book, but unnecessary if the book's already been published. If you limit yourself to the more obscure material, well, it'll be good, but there's a reason that some people remain obscure.
Not that I didn't get a lot of pleasure out of this book. Heather McHugh's poem, for example, is beautiful, and I never would have run across it if I hadn't picked this up. There are little wonders sprinkled throughout, but too much of the rest is familiar, just okay, or an unsatisfying little piece of something larger.
I hesitate to put forward this criticism, since I have no idea how I could do it better - but I do know what book I would rather have read. If anyone down at the magazine (which I hope will rebound from the sad loss of Plimpton) can put together a big volume of complete, untruncated interviews, I would pay a princely sum for it. I've seen earlier collections, but nothing that covers the entire Plimpton era, and I think it would be easier to pick just the great interviews than to squeeze thirty plus years of wonderful material into this enjoyable but probably ill-advised collection.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best Anthology, Longest Title Award
Comment: This book makes a perfect gift for both serious literature junkies and those who have blown off reading for the past fifty years. If the former applies to you, here's the best from the best. If you're in the latter category, this book will catch you up to speed. The Paris Review published the first chapter of Kerouac's ON THE ROAD, the first chapter of McInerney's BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, the first chapter of Franzan's THE CORRECTIONS, etc., etc., etc. Obviously, they've been able to spot new talent from the day they started even to today. And of course, their fantastic interviews with writers themselves are legendary. A must for the collector and the neophyte alike.
Rating: 2
Summary: sloppy seconds
Comment: I'd love to read a book that lives up to the title of this one. The recent New Yorker anthologies of fiction, nonfiction, and humor come a lot closer. The Paris Review published the lesser work of major writers, and lately it has been mostly given over to the longueurs of lightweights like Rick Moody. Plimpton will go down in literary history as a negligible, starstruck, Robin Leach-like figure, a party boy of narrow taste and ken. His magazine has been irrelevant for at least two decades now.
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Title: Latin American Writers at Work by Derek Wolcott, Paris Review ISBN: 0679773495 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Paris Stories (New York Review Books Classics) by Mavis Gallant, Michael Ondaatje ISBN: 1590170229 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Best of Plimpton by George Plimpton ISBN: 0871135035 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Collected Poems: Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter; Introduction by Frank Bidart by Robert Lowell, Frank Bidart, David Gewanter ISBN: 0374126178 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: The Early Stories : 1953-1975 by John Updike ISBN: 1400040728 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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