The Guardian might still offer one of the best book chat Web sites, but its bloggers display a frightening and cavalier ignorance of anything that happened before blogging began. David Mattin recently celebrated the Paris Review interviews, writing:
"When I first became aware of the Paris Review, back in 2000, the Art of Fiction interviews were not easy to get at. Though a few were (and are) available in full at the website, there was no collection in book form. All that changed, thankfully, with the appointment of Philip Gourevitch in 2005. The new editor – best known for his brilliant writing on the Rwandan genocide – quickly realised the value of the asset he had inherited, and Volume One was published in 2006."
Actually, Viking published at least eight volumes of the interviews in book form from the 1950s through the 1990s, and the paperbacks were found on every would-be writers' desk. I cannt muster the necessary sarcasm here, only sadness.
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