Beach Reads

The Writing Life
Philip Gourevitch, The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1
With critic and historian Christopher Hitchens on Sunday, November 19, 5:00 p.m., Auditorium (Bldg. 1, 2nd Fl.)

Philip Gourevitch's book is the first of three volumes highlighting the best of the Paris Review's interviews about the writing process. It includes authors Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, editor Robert Gottlieb, and filmmaker Billy Wilder, among many others. Gourevitch has worked as a staff writer at The New Yorker and, most recently, as editor of the Paris Review. His best-known work is We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, a history of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Do you have a favorite interview in the book?

To have to choose a favorite between Dorothy Parker, Borges, and Jack Gilbert, the poet? Between James M. Cain on the one hand and Rebecca West on the other? It would seem an unkind choice to have to make.

Do you think would-be writers are seeking a formula? What do you think draws people to this sort of book or an event like the book fair?

What comes out of the discussion of craft is not simply "Well, I use a No. 2 pencil on white lined paper" or "I type facing north between 11:00 and 1:30 everyday" or something like that. What's really interesting is that by asking people how they pursue their craft, you really get what absorbs them, what's really on their mind; it takes them to another level of intimacy with their preoccupations, their opinions. There's a kind of candor that emerges. I think that a lot of the attraction here is, sure, some people wondering what is the writing life all about, but it's also the chance to have, with great minds of literature, the closest thing you're ever going to get to a superintelligent conversation. It's a better conversation than you'd probably have if you sat next to them at your fantasy dinner, because at that dinner, they're not going to talk about all the deepest things in their life at once.

Many people complain, "Oh, I met the famous artist, I met the person I admire so much, and all they talked about was their indigestion or their real estate tax or something petty and kind of ungrand, and they were evasive and strange about their own work and about literature, and they made me feel silly." But here you get to meet that person and over time all the other stuff has been edited out and the real good stuff is there.

When there are so many other forms of media, how do you think that a publication like the Paris Review — or even short-story writing or long-form journalism — can remain relevant?

It always remains relevant. I know there are statistics out there and studies about who reads what when, but this has never been, honestly, mass circulation stuff. I feel we're at a time of complexity and turmoil and change and perplexity about our world. It seems like a very ripe time for writers. I don't think people feel that their quick-fix news or other forms of entertainment are doing a devastatingly sharp job of rendering reality these days.

Since you haven't spent very much time in Miami before, do you have any expectations about who might show up for your presentation?

That the audiences are surprising and interested and large and curious — part of it is that you actually find out who's reading it and who wants to know by going. Their coming to see you is the official format, but in fact I'm going to see them too. — Emily Witt

Island Expression
Mervyn Solomon, creator and coordinator of the Caribbean Voices program
Saturday, November 18, 1:30 p.m., Room 3313-14 (Bldg. 3, 3rd Fl.)

Mervyn Solomon's interest in the literature of the West Indian diaspora traces to his boyhood in Trinidad. His father was a respected headmaster, and Solomon recalls listening to the BBC program Calling the Caribbean. In 1989 he took the reins of the increasingly important task of inviting authors to the then-burgeoning Caribbean Voices program. Now, seventeen years later, the program is one of the most vital components of the Miami Book Fair International, and the lineup has grown increasingly representative of the archipelago's diverse intonations. Some of this year's invitees include Jamaica-born Canadian expatriate fiction writer Pamela Mordecai, acclaimed Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, and burgeoning Trinidadian writer Lawrence Scott.

How has the reception to Caribbean authors changed over the past seventeen years?