print • June/July/Aug/Sept 2006
-
-
print • June/July/Aug/Sept 2006
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
Interviewing the Interviewers
TERRY GROSS
BOOKFORUM: How do you prepare for your interviews with writers?
TERRY GROSS: I completely mark up the books I read. I circle everything I think is important or intriguing. I earmark just about every other page. My notes become a memory bank. I return to them to reflect on the book, and hopefully a picture emerges, like developing film, to guide me in the interview.BF: What do you focus on when you speak with fiction writers? How do you avoid emphasizing the plot and giving too much away?
TG: I try not to get too involved in the intricacies of a novel because it’s a world the -
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
World Without End
As the millennium drew to its dismal close, George Steiner was asked to choose the best book of the past thousand years. He named the Commedia, saying: “Dante’s totality of poetic form and philosophic thought, of ‘local universality’ and language, remains unrivaled. At a time when the notion of culture and of European culture, in particular, is in doubt, Dante is the sovereign underwriter.”
Steiner is perhaps the last of them: the grand masters of erudition who brought illumination to, and brought to the service of illumination, the histories of words, languages, and literatures, the confluences
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
-
print • Feb/Mar 2007
