In <strong>Conversations with Mary Gordon</strong> Mary Gordon reveals her intellectual vigorher freewheeling humor and her strongly held opinions on issues ran... » 

In Conversations with Mary Gordon Mary Gordon reveals her intellectual vigorher freewheeling humor and her strongly held opinions on issues ranging fromsex to contemporary literature and gender theory. With candor she details herdeparture from and eventual return to her IrishCatholic heritage.Since the resounding success of her first novel Final Payments 1978 Gordonhas been one of Americas most popular and controversial writers. She haspublished five novels three novellas two collections of essays a short storycollection a memoir a biography of Joan of Arc and dozens of book reviews.Conversations with Mary Gordon joins the writer in talks with Terry GrossCharlie Rose Edmund White Madison Smart Bell Patrick H. Samway and others.Nine of these interviews have never before been published.Her many interviewers know her as a wonderful gregarious passionate andarticulate interviewee. This is surprising considering that Gordon onceinsisted during an interview that interviews are absolutely my idea of hell.The clarity and conviction evident in her writing are matched by the samequalities in her conversation. She explores her favorite novelists VirginiaWoolf Jane Austen George Eliot Thomas Hardy Ford Madox Ford and talks atlength about how and why she uses Roman Catholicism as metaphor and symbol inher own writing.Freely discussing the autobiographic influences in her work she is open aboutthe huge influence of her father. David Gordon a journalist and scholar diedwhen Mary was seven. Mary loved him dearly and she discusses his influence onher life and writing as well as her profound disillusionment with him whenshediscovered the selfhatred and ultraconservatism of his writing. Her utterdevotion to him in early interviews gives way to disillusionment rejectionand ultimately acceptance.This collection allows the reader to trace the roots both literary andautobiographical of «