Conversations with William Maxwell

Conversations with William Maxwell collects over thirty interviews, public speeches,and remarks made by the esteemed novelist and New Yorker fiction editor. Spanningfive decades, the interviews collectively address the entirety of Maxwell's literary work,with in-depth discussion of such work as They Came Like Swallows, The Folded Leaf,and the American Book Award-winning So Long, See You Tomorrow. The interviewsalso illuminate, at length, Maxwell's forty-year tenure as a fiction editor working withsuch writers as John Updike, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, andJ. D. Salinger.Maxwell's words, some previously unpublished, pay moving tribute to literary friendsand mentors and offer reflections on the artistic life, the process of writing, and hismidwestern heritage. All retain the reserved poignancy of his fiction. The volumepublishes for the first time the full transcript of Maxwell's extensive interviews withhis biographer Barbara Burkhardt, who is the editor of this volume. The book'sintroduction includes Maxwell's discussion of correspondence with Updike, SaulBellow, and other luminaries.Barbara Burkhardt is associate professor of English at University of Illinois,Springfield. She is the author of William Maxwell: A Literary Life.