Smash hit

Gourevitch talks passionately, animatedly, about the interviews he has helped to construct. For these are not, like the interview I’m conducting with him, a single morning’s conversation. A Paris Review interview might take months, or indeed years; the subject will be permitted to look over the material gathered and edit it as he or she sees fit.

What? No catching an unsuspecting subject out? To Gourevitch — and to Plimpton before him — that simply isn’t the point.

“These interviews are collaborations, not confrontations, to put it really simply. The qualification is that the editors and interviewer in some big way have a lot of esteem for the person — not that we don’t think there are problems, but it does mean that if we basically think someone’s not very good, we don’t think, ‘Let’s go and expose him.’ He’s exposed himself by then.

“The market actually works pretty well that way. And these interviews focus on craft, not on the writer’s latest book. Now, when you publish a book, you talk about the book. Quite often a serious writer’s hope is that the reviewer or interviewer will consider the bulk of the work.

“To some extent we like our interviews to be timely, and I’m trying to make them a bit more timely. So we ran the Rushdie interview when Shalimar the Clown came out; we ran the Peter Carey interview when Theft came out. On the other hand, those books counted for maybe one page of the 35-page interview. They don’t carry any special weight. That’s the concept, a much bigger portrait.”

Two more volumes are planned, and, as Gourevitch points out, this work is not simply archival, but continues in every issue of the magazine, among its mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and photography. Some of the portraits in this first volume may be of writers unfamiliar to you, such as the moving interview with the American poet Jack Gilbert, whose first collection in ten years, Refusing Heaven, was published in 2005. I would be surprised if this courageous conversation about the price of an artistic life lived without compromise did not turn you to his work.

The interview with Saul Bellow will show you the inner workings of a mind that you may know well. A conversation with Didion shows how an artist constructs a balance between fiction and nonfiction in her life. None is less than completely fascinating. Perhaps this is because each is really about the meaning of freedom.

“In each one’s case, however eccentric the working habits, what’s being pursued in the structure of their lives, the structure of mind, is a place where the freedom to see, think, hear and speak is unencumbered by other people’s ideas or conventions or preconceptions,” Gourevitch says. “To be free. To be free is a lot of work and it’s very hard to attain. And I don’t mean the kind of freedom that’s on the march all over the Middle East these days. I don’t mean political, rhetorical freedom. I mean inner freedom.

“I think writers, more often than not, talk about trying to get at the truth, but often what they mean is that they’re trying to be free. There’s a lot that militates against that. These are people who are comforable with the notion of being outside. The notion of being an outsider usually carries the idea of having a chip on your shoulder, or being excluded; but most of these people wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Gourevitch is right; artistic freedom comes at a high price. The Paris Review, however, doesn’t; you can subscribe to this remarkable quarterly for less than the price of a couple of hardback novels. Don’t take my word for it. Read the interviews, and the magazine, and see the work of writers who carry on a brave tradition of liberty in a world where that word has become a little tainted.

And what’s more — no one will try to pick you up. ()

In their own words: a pick of The Paris Review

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