In this collection of interviews drawn from her Chicago radio show, Open Books
, Seaman shows herself to be a consummate book lover, engaging everyone from first-time novelists, such as Julia Glass and Edward P. Jones, to old hands like Peter Carey, T.C. Boyle and Margaret Atwood. Although she has a tendency to fall back on plot or the basics of character and doesn't always let a conversation grow organically, there are times—as in a wonderfully thoughtful interview with Chitra Divakaruni and an odd and funny dialogue with the comic strip artist Lynda Barry—when Seaman allows the writers to wax philosophical. Focusing heavily on novelists, this volume gives a refreshingly various portrait of both the writers' personalities and the writing process, which ranges from organized and disciplined to scattershot. While devotees of what longtime Booklist
editor Seaman calls "serious literature" (as opposed to "popular fiction," a distinction she comes back to time and again) and followers of particular writers will find much to admire here, the book suffers from its translation from spoken word to print. On the page, the interviews lose the intimacy radio confers, that sense a listener has of being invited into a conversation, sharing a small confidence. (Sept.)
Correction: The publisher of Jed Perl's New Art City
(reviewed last week) is Knopf, not Simon & Schuster.
