On The Road with Helen Simpson By Craig Morgan Teicher - 05/29/2007
British short story writer Helen Simpson lives in London. Knopf published her newest collection, In The Driver’s Seat, on this side of the pond. PW talked to Simpson just as she’d arrived on the West Coast of the U.S. for the first time in her life, and talked to her about the Red Sox, "the autobiographical question," and an unlikely boom industry in the U.K. More
PW's Barbara Walters Interview by Kevin Howell - 05/05/2008
Barbara Walters has been on television since 1961 and while she’s interviewed hundreds of celebrities, criminals and world leaders, she’s managed to keep her own life private…until now. Tomorrow, she releases her 613-page memoir, Audition (Knopf, $29.95; Random House Audio, $29.95) and later that day sits down with Oprah Winfrey. PW Daily turned the tables on Walters and got a few answers about her decision to tell all.
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The Importance of Being God by Adam P. Knave - 05/05/2008
Though writers are known for their egos, few have come out and literally declared themselves God. New Wave fantasist and poet Thomas M. Disch does just that in The Word of God or, Holy Writ Rewritten (Reviews, May 5). Why declare yourself God and why now? God is eternal and eternally relevant. One of the wonderful things about being God is you can say such nonsense and it's all true.
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The Spy Thriller Rules by Paul Goat Allen - 05/05/2008
Central Europe provides the locale for Rules of Deception (p. 43), California novelist Christopher Reich's new spy novel. You were born in Tokyo and have lived in Switzerland. In what way do you think your experiences abroad have affected your writing? I've always loved the “buzz” away from home, a stranger in a foreign land.
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Eric Obenauf and Eliza JaneWood By Lynn Andriani - 05/05/2008
Far from the cubicles of corporate Manhattan publishing, Eric Obenauf, 26, and Eliza Jane Wood, 28, run a publishing outfit called Two Dollar Radio out of their home in Granville, Ohio. The husband and wife sport tattoos of the company logo on their wrists. They put photos of their two-year-old daughter, Rio, and their dogs, Hoon and Scarlet, in their book catalogues.
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The Case Against Intelligent Design by Sarah F. Gold - 04/28/2008
Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller is a leading opponent of intelligent design. In Only a Theory (Reviews, Apr. 14), he explains why. How would you quickly sum up the central flaw in intelligent design? No evidence. Was that quick enough? When you look at the arguments that are raised for ID, no one says: here’s the fingerprint of the designer or here we can see design taking place.
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History Is the Best Novelist by Leonard Picker - 04/28/2008
Alan Furst has published 10 acclaimed espionage novels set in the years just before and during the Second World War, most recently The Spies of Warsaw (Reviews, Apr. 14). When did you decide to focus on this period in history? In 1983, I did a piece for Esquire, which was simply supposed to be about the Danube, but the Russians wouldn’t let me go directly to the town where the riverboat I...
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A Place on Earth for Them by Robert Fleming - 04/21/2008
In the 1960s, the severely mentally ill began to be turned out of public hospitals—too often with tragic consequences. In The Insanity Offense (Reviews, Apr. 14), E. Fuller Torrey explores the issues. What sparked you to write this book? The immediate impetus for the book was the daily printout of what we call “preventable tragedies,” which we collect from newspaper clipping...
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