The Paris Review
Monday 22 January 2007 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
The Paris Review is credited with inventing the modern literary interview; now viewed as classic works in their own right. Editor Philip Gourevitch has selected the Review's top interviews for a new book which includes the likes of Bellow, Hemingway and Capote. Gourevitch discusses the art of interviewing with Matthew Sweet.
Playlist
Philip Gourevitch
Matthew Sweet talks to the writer Philip Gourevitch, editor of the famous literary journal, The Paris Review, and the author of one of the most revealing pieces of writing on the communal slaughter in Rwanda.
One of distinguishing characteristics of the Paris Review has been its literary interviews, sixteen of which have now been collected in a new book.
Here the likes of Ernest Hemmingway, TS Eliot, Dorothy Parker, Jorge Luis Borges and Kurt Vonnegut talk in detail about their craft, about the mechanics of their writing and about their function as writers.
Gourevitch talks about the purpose of the literary journal and about the attraction of simple question and answers. And what has he learnt as a writer himself from these interviews with the greats?
The Paris Review Interviews: Volume 1 by Philip Gourevitch is published by Canongate Books.
Bobby
The shooting of Robert F Kennedy in Los Angeles at 12.15am on 5th June 1968 has been burnt into the American imagination.
The assassination has been the subject of numerous books, films and conspiracy theories.
Now a new film, by director Emilio Estevez, attempts a different take on the killing, focusing less on Kennedy but on the ordinary people who were caught up in the event and whose lives were changed forever. Michael Goldfarb reviews "Bobby" on tonight's Night Waves.
Bobby is on general release from 26 January, certificate 15.
Political Drama on TV: Who Wins Your Vote?
Over the last couple of years, satires like The Thick of It, A Very Social Secretary and last week's The Trial of Tony Blair, have caught the political mood with their splenetic lampoons of Machiavellian machinations in Westminster.
But as the Blair era appears to be closing, is this trend heading for the political wilderness? Might the electorate even have a new appetite for dramas that represent the political animal as intelligent and idealistic as much as deluded or demented?
The makers of Party Animals, a new BBC2 series which takes this approach, will be hoping so. The programme's political consultant, Martin Bright of the New Statesman, comes to the Night Waves despatch box to argue that it is time for a change.
Across the floor, Alistair Beaton, author of A Very Social Secretary and The Trial of Tony Blair, defends the uses of satirical cynicism.
Party Animals begins on BBC2 at 9pm on Wednesday 31 January.
Alistair Beaton's play King of Hearts opens at Hampstead Theatre in north London at the end of February.
Victorian Female Sexuality
Matthew Sweet, Rachel Holmes and Dinah Birch discuss the reasons why Victorian female sexuality remains so alluring for people today.
Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England by Sharon Marcus is published by Princeton University Press on 1 February.
