Description
This collection is the first volume to comprise notable selections from the Irish Literary Supplement. These sixteen interviews—some of the most distinguished pieces ever published in the journal—originally appeared in its pages between the years 1984 and 1994. James P Myers, Jr., introduces the collection with a critical essay exploring some of the aesthetics and conventions of the interview form itself. the conversations record the author’s perceptions of their own works, the process by which those writings came into being, and commentary on other writers’ work. From the lively give-and-take of the dialogue, the interviews reveal the passion with which the authors regard literature and their own writing. The book will serve as primary material for students and will preserve for Irish literature the discourse and methods of some of its preeminent writers.
Table of Contents
Preface
Interviewers
Introduction
John McGahern by Eileen Kennedy
Jennifer Johnston by Michael Kenneally
John Montague by Kevin T. McEneaney
William Trevor by Jacqueline Stahl Aronson
Michael Longley by Dillon Johnston
John Banville by Rüdiger Imhof
Benedict Kiely by Jennifer Clarke
Paul Muldoon by Kevin Barry
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill by Lucy McDiarmid and Michael J. Durkan
Tom Paulin by Eamonn Hughes
Brendan Kennelly by Richard Pine
Hugh Leonard by S. F. Gallagher
Medbh McGuckian by Kathleen McCracken
Eavan Boland by Nancy Means Wright and Dennis J. Hannan
Derek Mahon by James J. Murphy, Lucy McDiarmid, and Michael J. Durkan
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin by Deborah Hunter McWilliams
Notes
Suggested Readings
Index
About the Author
James P. Myers, Jr. , teaches Shakespeare, early-seventeenth-century literature, and Irish studies at Gettysburg College. He has edited a collection of Elizabethan essays on Ireland and an annotated, modernized edition of Sir John Davies's A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued.
February 2000
