Conversations with William Maxwell
collects thirty-eight interviews, public speeches, and remarks that span five decades of the esteemed novelist and
New Yorker
editor's career. The interviews collectively address the entirety of Maxwel's literary work--with in-depth discussion of his short stories, essays, and novels including
They Came Like Swallows
,
The Folded Leaf
, and the American Book Award-winning
So Long, See You Tomorrow
--as well as his forty-year tenure as a fiction editor working with such luminaries as John Updike, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, and J.D. Salinger. Maxwell's words spoken before a crowd, some previously unpublished, pay moving tribute to literary friends and mentors, and offer reflections on the artistic life, the process of writing, and his midwestern heritage. All retain the reserved poignancy of his fiction. The volume publishes for the first time the full transcript of Maxwell's extensive interviews with his biographer and, in an introduction, correspondence with writers including Updike and Saul Bellow, which enlivens the stories behind his interviews and appearances.