Thank goodness.
In the years since I began to publish fiction, fresh-faced young dreamers and writing wannabes, their numbers like grains of sand on the beaches, have approached me at conferences, coffee shops, bars, readings, libraries, restaurants and signings. Their shiny-dime eyes glow with hope. They seek a guru, a wisdom pill, a talisman. They awkwardly clear their throats to speak … and then always ask the Question.
“Mr. McNair, how do I get to be a writer?”
Only occasionally am I impatient, snapping some answer like, Well … have you tried putting the seat of the pants in the seat of the chair and writing till your fingernails are gone and you cry blood?
Now Picador gives me a better option. From now till infinity and beyond, when asked How do I get to be a writer?, I will say:
Get the collected Paris Review Interviews. Read them. Then put the seat of the pants in the seat of the chair and write like the writers in this indispensable collection.
Write like Capote, lying down in bed.
Write like Hemingway, standing up.
Whatever you do … write. You have tutorials here, in these wonderfully instructive pages.
It’s a collection for serious no-retreat, no-surrender writers. These interviews with the best and brightest of the world’s literary minds from the last six decades actually transubstantiate. They change into breakfast, lunch and supper. Want to write? Here’s the best nourishment money can buy.
Founding Paris Review editors Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton— yes that George Plimpton—put out the first issue of the influential quarterly in 1953. We’re closing in on 60 years of issues now, making The Paris Review one of our most important and enduring cultural publications. The Writers at Work series, where reviews in this compilation first appeared, stands on its own as a half-century seminar on great writing and how it gets done.