Interview Roundup

Heidi Benson of the San Francisco Chronicle considers Rebecca Solnit and the print publication of Hope in the Dark, a progressive call to stand fast (excerpted here) that made the rounds online last spring.

Yann Martel's conversation with Graeme Smith of The Globe and Mail has been raising eyebrows on several other literary blogs, due to Martell's somewhat tactless acceptance of the burden of success: "You get used to anything... You can get used to living in a concentration camp and you can get used to seeing your book at airports." Even if, as Smith helpfully points out, "he's got concentration camps on his mind as he tries to write his fourth novel, an allegory for the Holocaust about a monkey and a donkey who wander through a magical world afflicted by horrors," common sense in metaphor choices did seem to fly out the window.

Yes, the Boston Globe piece on Philip Pullman starts in 2000; no, your calendar doesn't need adjusting. And, actually, it's more of an appreciation than an interview or profile, but certainly worth looking at all the same.

Maud Newton emailed Stephen Elliott back and forth about writing as part of the interview series that used to be called "Making Book," eliciting a good argument for not judging a writer too soon:

I think the focus we have on first books is just awful. People generally improve as they get older. You learn how to write from writing. I think it's too bad for a lot of authors that the book the most people are going to read and what's going to determine their career is their first one and oftentimes if that book doesn't work out the author is written off.

Tom Piston/Independent