Overview

Literary essays on Marion Morehouse, Hubert Selby, Henry Miller, and Jack Kerouac; interviews with Albert Hofmann (about LSD), Michael Korda (about T.E. Lawrence and Ulysses S. Grant), Jeffrey Jackson (about the Paris flood of 1910), Robert Roper (about Walt Whitman and Nabokov's Lolita, Justin Kaplan (about Mark Twain and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass), Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno (about E.E. Cummings), James Dempsey (about Scofield Thayer).

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9780996688819

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Reviews

Couteau's essays are informal, fervent, and well-versed examinations of the work or author at hand. At their best, they include fascinating insights into the significance of a writer like [Hubert] Selby.... The interviews are uniformly strong and include conversations with Michael Korda on T.E. Lawrence, Justin Kaplan on Walt Whitman, and Robert Roper on Vladimir Nabokov. Not all of them focus on literature: author Jeffrey Jackson covers the 1910 flood of Paris and why it's relatively forgotten; and Robert De Sena, in one of the best interviews, discusses his life as a gang member turned community activist. Couteau's passion and wealth of knowledge are obvious throughout the book ... and should appeal to many readers. - Publishers Weekly Select. The 'Renaissance Man' is a multi-faceted individual whose fingers are in just about every pie you could imagine, fostering a variety of abilities and mastering many quite well. His expertise is wide-ranging and there's seemingly no limit to his subject, as is demonstrated in More Collected Couteau: Essays and Interviews, which gathers Couteau's insights and encounters with a diverse range of individuals... The joy of reading Couteau lies as much in his penetrating, crystalline language as it does in the works or figures being examined, and so readers receive a wide-ranging treat that examines victims, vengeance, mortality and immortality through an inspection process that educates even those unfamiliar with the subject.... After proving his prowess at the essay form, he turns to the heart of the collection: its interviews. These range from discussions with Albert Hoffman (activist and the discoverer of LSD) to interviews with literary figures such as historian and cultural commentator Robert Roper or poet Christopher Sawyer-Lau�anno. One of the pleasures in this collection is that readers needn't have prior familiarity with the writers' works. Couteau provides that familiarity by the structure of his interview questions, which probe the foundation beliefs of each figure.... From the possibility that Nabokov suffered unconscious doubts about his own value that led him to insist that the world acknowledge him as a genius to the underlying patriotism of counterculture icons who were commonly seen as rebels ... both essays and interviews are designed to make readers think about underlying psychology, social perceptions, and cultural change. Readers seeking not just a literary presentation but a lively analysis of selected wordsmiths and their lives and influences must add More Collected Couteau to their reading lists. It's a powerful presentation that offers much insight and food for thought, and which should find its way into many a college classroom as well. - Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review.

Couteau's essays are informal, fervent, and well-versed examinations of the work or author at hand. At their best, they include fascinating insights into the significance of a writer like [Hubert] Selby.... The interviews are uniformly strong and include conversations with Michael Korda on T.E. Lawrence, Justin Kaplan on Walt Whitman, and Robert Roper on Vladimir Nabokov. Not all of them focus on literature: author Jeffrey Jackson covers the 1910 flood of Paris and why it's relatively forgotten; and Robert De Sena, in one of the best interviews, discusses his life as a gang member turned community activist. Couteau's passion and wealth of knowledge are obvious throughout the book ... and should appeal to many readers. - Publishers Weekly Select. The 'Renaissance Man' is a multi-faceted individual whose fingers are in just about every pie you could imagine, fostering a variety of abilities and mastering many quite well. His expertise is wide-ranging and there's seemingly no limit to his subject, as is demonstrated in More Collected Couteau: Essays and Interviews, which gathers Couteau's insights and encounters with a diverse range of individuals... The joy of reading Couteau lies as much in his penetrating, crystalline language as it does in the works or figures being examined, and so readers receive a wide-ranging treat that examines victims, vengeance, mortality and immortality through an inspection process that educates even those unfamiliar with the subject.... After proving his prowess at the essay form, he turns to the heart of the collection: its interviews. These range from discussions with Albert Hoffman (activist and the discoverer of LSD) to interviews with literary figures such as historian and cultural commentator Robert Roper or poet Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno. One of the pleasures in this collection is that readers needn't have prior familiarity with the writers' works. Couteau provides that familiarity by the structure of his interview questions, which probe the foundation beliefs of each figure.... From the possibility that Nabokov suffered unconscious doubts about his own value that led him to insist that the world acknowledge him as a genius to the underlying patriotism of counterculture icons who were commonly seen as rebels ... both essays and interviews are designed to make readers think about underlying psychology, social perceptions, and cultural change. Readers seeking not just a literary presentation but a lively analysis of selected wordsmiths and their lives and influences must add More Collected Couteau to their reading lists. It's a powerful presentation that offers much insight and food for thought, and which should find its way into many a college classroom as well. - Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review.

Author Information

Positive reviews of Rob Couteau's books have appeared in the Midwest Book Review, Publishers Weekly Select, and Barney Rosset's Evergreen Review. In 1985 he won the North American Essay Award, a competition sponsored by the American Humanist Association. His work as a critic, interviewer, and social commentator has been featured in books such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by Thomas Fahy, Conversations with Ray Bradbury edited by Steven Aggelis, Ghetto Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Tyrone R. Simpson, and David Cohen's Forgotten Millions, a book about the homeless mentally ill. Over one-hundred selections of his poetry and prose have appeared in over forty-five periodicals. Couteau's interviews include conversations with Ray Bradbury, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Justin Kaplan, Last Exit to Brooklyn author Hubert Selby, Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda, LSD discoverer Dr. Albert Hofmann, Picasso's model and muse Sylvette David, Nabokov biographer Robert Roper, social activist and music producer Danny Goldberg, poet and publisher Ed Foster, and Puppetmasters author Philip Willan. James Dempsey is a novelist, biographer and an award-winning journalist. A former instructor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he is the author of The Tortured Life of Scofield Thayer, The Court Poetry of Chaucer, Zakary's Zombies, and Murphy's American Dream. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Gail.

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