You may or may not – yet – have read The Goldfinch, the new Donna Tartt novel. You may or may not even have read the post on this blog about the novel. But if you are at all interested in life, art, writing and mankind’s stuttering attempts to make sense of the human condition, look at and listen to this interview with Tartt.
Here she talks – and she does not give many interviews, it is said, – about this book, its purpose, its creation and what she hopes we as readers will get from it. She talks about books and the important part they can play in our lives. She talks about literature as philosophy and how it can teach without preaching the good life. Great literature and books are for her one of the great gifts in life. She talks about Dickens – to whom she is often compared – and the human and moral insight which abound in his work.
If you have not felt like taking up her 800 page opus up to this point this interview might make you change your mind.
An extract from the longer CBS interview from which the Bloomberg segment was taken is here.
Here she talks about the book in Waterstones in London.
Garvan Hill 