Interviews

Biljana Dojčinović
The Complicated Brilliance of John Updike: A Conversation with Biljana Dojčinović
In January 2009, John Updike checked himself into a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts, and spent his final days doing what he had done virtually every morning of his adult life:... Read more...
Robert Miltner
The Things Robert Miltner Talks About When He Talks About Raymond Carver
In 1981, an editor at Knopf named Gordon Lish sat down with a manuscript Raymond Carver had submitted and did something that has generated argument ever since. He cut. He... Read more...
Alberto Pionke
Measured Liberty: Albert Pionke on the Paradoxes of John Stuart Mill
One morning in 1826, John Stuart Mill woke up and felt nothing. He was twenty years old, had read more than most scholars twice his age, and had been constructed—there... Read more...
Jay Parini
The Unrepentant Aristocrat: Jay Parini on Gore Vidal’s Enduring (and Maddening) Legacy
In the summer of 1968, two men sat across from each other on live television during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and conducted one of the most famous exchanges... Read more...
James L. W. West III
In the Heart of Darkness: James L. W. West III on William Styron’s Life and Legacy
In 1967, William Styron published The Confessions of Nat Turner to immediate and tumultuous acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize and selling hundreds of thousands of copies, as readers hailed it as... Read more...
Helena Kelly
Decoding Dickens: Helena Kelly Exposes the Life and Lies Behind the Icon
On the night of June 9, 1865, a train traveling from Folkestone to London derailed on a bridge under repair at Staplehurst, sending several carriages plunging into the river below.... Read more...
Jay Parini
Navigating Borges' Labyrinth: Jay Parini’s Powerful Journey of Memory and Meaning
In the autumn of 1971, a young American graduate student named Jay Parini found himself driving a nearly blind Jorge Luis Borges through the Scottish Highlands in a borrowed car... Read more...
Behind the Shadow: Alan Strauss-Schom Unveils the True Face of Napoleon III
Behind the Shadow: Alan Strauss-Schom Unveils the True Face of Napoleon III
On the morning of September 2, 1870, the Emperor of France climbed into a carriage at Sedan and was driven to deliver his sword in person to the King of... Read more...
Chasin’ the Trane: Lewis Porter Discusses the Life and Music of John Coltrane
Chasin’ the Trane: Lewis Porter Discusses the Life and Music of John Coltrane
On the night of December 9, 1964, John Coltrane led his quartet into Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and recorded A Love Supreme in a... Read more...
Roger Ariew
Descartes' Mind-Blowing Ideas: An Interview with Roger Ariew on Descartes' Impact on Western Thought
In November 1633, Descartes was putting the finishing touches on a treatise he had been working on for several years and preparing to send it to his publisher when news... Read more...
From Stratford to Shanghai: An Interview with the Globetrotting Shakespeare Expert, Professor Michael Dobson
From Stratford to Shanghai: An Interview with the Globetrotting Shakespeare Expert, Professor Michael Dobson
Pull back the curtain on the most famous literary biography in the English language, and you find: almost nothing. No letters. No diaries. No manuscripts in his hand beyond six... Read more...
Robert Barsky
Beyond the Surface: A Close Look at Noam Chomsky’s Ideas with Robert Barsky
In 1971, two of the most formidable intellectual presences of the 20th century sat down across from each other on Dutch television for a debate that has since become one... Read more...