Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Paris Review - Interview with Julian Barnes

One of my favorite writer's resources is The Paris Review, where I found an interview with this year's Man Booker Prize winner, Julian Barnes - http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/562/the-art-of-fiction-no-165-julian-barnes.

In reading this interview, I found the discussion on truth in fiction to be especially interesting. In particular, I liked the quote from Barnes that states "when you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world, to say things that are not as straightforward as might be understood from reading my journalism and to produce something that you hope will reveal further layers of truth on a second reading." I am a rereader myself and am always amazed at how some of the best literature can have so many different meanings when read at different times of my life. And, I too would pick Flaubert's Madame Bovary as one of my favorite books, and one which I recently had the pleasure of rereading.

If you enjoy this interview, you should definitely check out the archives, which go back to the 1950s - http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews.

Happy writing! :-)

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