WRITERS AT WORK: THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS Edited by George Plimpton Viking; 414 pages; $22.50
The case against interviews with writers is historic: they exploit personalities, expose their subjects in verbal undress, without their styles hitched up, and they traffic in anecdote and gossip. This is also the case in favor of such interviews. And why not? How else would a faithful reader learn as he does in Writers at Workthat Elizabeth Bishop, while a student at Vassar, ate from a bedside pot of Roquefort cheese at night to stimulate dreams for her notebooks,...
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