In So Many Words:
Interviews with Writers, Scholars and Intellectuals
Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2013
Cassandra is an established interviewer and prime scholar on American public intellectuals. In So Many Words features interviews with eleven of the most influential intellectuals, scholars and writers in the United States. Building on the earlier model of the Paris Review interviews with major writers, Atherton has applied a similar methodology to her book of interviews. From Noam Chomsky to Camille Paglia, Harold Bloom and Todd Gitlin, Atherton prioritises the original question and answer format to allow these luminaries to speak in their own voices. Her interviews are informed not only by the published writings and speeches of her wide-ranging group of subjects, but by direct knowledge of their ideas. Atherton discusses her interviews in a series of personal introductions, lending an intimacy to each piece. In this way, the reader is invited into the office, bar, café or home of the interviewee to listen to the interview unfold.
As a collection of interviews, this book investigates the role of the public intellectual in America. By way of incisive and well researched questioning, Atherton enters the debate about whether pubic intellectuals should work in academe and how the writing and teaching processes in academe are linked to the public intellectual’s work. The nature and role of the public intellectual has undergone major change over the last two decades. From both inside and outside the academy such figures have featured increasingly prominently in public debate and discussion. In this book, Atherton attempts to discover just how and why these changes have occurred and what the current state of play is. This book responds to arguments that the public intellectual is endangered, dead or in decline. It posits the re-birth of the American public intellectual through a reinvention of him/herself in the New Media.
Interviews are with: Harold Bloom, Noam Chomsky, Jim Cullen, Dana Gioia, Todd Gitlin, Jim Green, Kenneth T. Jackson, Paul Kane, Stephen Greenblatt, Camille Paglia, Howard Zinn.
More information here: www.scholarly.info/book/352/