Conversations with Robert Penn Warren.Conversations with Robert Penn Warren Noun 1. Robert Penn Warren - United States writer and poet (1905-1989) Warren . Edited by Gloria L. Cronin and Ben Siegel. Literary Conversations. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi The University Press of Mississippi, founded in 1970, is a publisher that is sponsored by the eight state universities in Mississippi:
abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 1-57806-734-0; cloth, $50.00, 1-57806-733-2.) Readers of southern and modern American literature American literature, literature in English produced in what is now the United States of America. Colonial Literature American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in will be pleased to see Robert Penn Warren featured in Mississippi's Literary Conversations series, though this new volume presents little that is new. Almost all of the interviews that appear are already available in Talking with Robert Penn Warren, edited by Floyd C. Watkins, John T. Hiers, and Mary Louise Weaks (Athen, Ga., 1990), which is currently in print. Acknowledging their "huge debt" to the Georgia collection, the editors of Conversations with Robert Penn Warren note that "preparing this volume was made much easier by the excellent editorial work of Warren's previous interview editors" (p. xviii). This reliance on the previous edition is clear in several features of the book. With a few exceptions, many of the selections in Conversations are identical to those in the Georgia collection, and the editing is also very similar. In order to highlight Warren's voice in panel discussions or interviews with multiple participants, the Georgia editors omitted some of the statements from the other speakers. The Conversations editors make the exact same deletions. Unlike the Georgia editors, they do so without using ellipses Ellipses is the plural form of either of two words in the English language:
Conversations offers three selections not included in the Georgia collection: Warren's brief responses to seven questions about American writing, politics, and culture for Partisan Review Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937. It was founded by William Phillips and Philip Rahv. in 1939; an interview on All the King's Men and the political novel with William Kennedy in 1973; and Warren's remarks about his beginnings as a writer in a 1979 retrospective article by William Ferris. Eight interviews in the Georgia collection do not appear in Conversations. One of them is the interview with Harvey Breit in the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Book Review, which the Conversations editors identify as Warren's "first interview with a major publication" but do not include in their volume (p. xii). The other seven are interviews with Ralph Ellison and Eugene Walter, Richard B. Sale, Marshall Walker, Ruth Fisher, Benjamin DeMott, John Baker, and David Farrell. The editors' introduction descriptively surveys the interviews and specifically situates them within the context of Warren's biography. The editors preface the collection with a brief bibliography of primary texts and a timeline of the author's life, all of which is useful as reference material for reading the interviews. One might quibble QUIBBLE. A slight difficulty raised without necessity or propriety; a cavil. 2. No justly eminent member of the bar will resort to a quibble in his argument. with a few of the details. For example, the bibliography and introduction incorrectly classify the composition textbook Fundamentals of Good Writing--A Handbook of Modern Rhetoric as a literature textbook. Overall, though, such matters do not detract from the purpose of the book. By providing a representative sampling of Warren's most notable interviews, this book will fit comfortably into the current bibliography of Warren scholarship. JONATHAN S. CULLICK Northern Kentucky University Northern Kentucky University is a public, co-educational university located in Highland Heights, Kentucky, seven miles (11 km) southeast of Cincinnati, Ohio. Enrollment is currently about 14,200 students. |
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