Dedicated "to independent booksellers everywhere," The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews celebrates the way bookstores do more than just sell titles: they build community and foster a love of language, ideas, and deep conversation. Each of the 20 interviews reflects the famed Parisian bookstore's ethos of supporting writers, dating to its 1951 origins, when George Whitman "started hosting free seminars, workshops for artists and writers and informal discussions." Whitman's daughter, Sylvia, who now runs the store, explains that he "considered these 'an evening school for those who regard education as a permanent life process.' " Interviewee George Saunders concurs, arguing that generations of visitors to the fabled store have come "because they knew they didn't know enough. And they knew that if they didn't know enough, they'd live smaller lives."
Adam Biles, literary director at Shakespeare and Company, conducted the interviews. He chose selections for this volume because "the guest rejected the comfort of the trusted anecdote and pre-scripted answer, in favour of the more precarious but exciting route of new thought." Much of that excitement is due to Biles himself. When he asks Olivia Laing about the reparative function of art and whether it serves as a cure for loneliness, he's inviting her to reconsider her work, and her response feels like an act of discovery: "I think the cure wasn't for loneliness. The cure was for shame. And the shame of loneliness is the component that causes the pain of it." Offering additional insights from authors such as Colson Whitehead, Carlo Rovelli, and Katie Kitamura, this collection will enlarge the lives of its readers, one interview at a time. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian