Listening

Interviews, 1970–1989

Jonathan Cott

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781452961170
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

A wide-ranging collection of interviews and profiles from twenty years of Jonathan Cott’s remarkable writings  

“All I really need to do is simply ask a question,” Jonathan Cott occasionally reminds himself. “And then listen.” It sounds simple, but in fact few have taken the art of asking questions to such heights—and depths—as Jonathan Cott, whom Jan Morris called “an incomparable interviewer,” one whose skill, according to the great interviewer and oral historian Studs Terkel, “is artless yet impassioned and knowing.” 

Collected here are twenty-two of Cott’s most illuminating interviews that encourage readers to listen to film directors and musicians, actors and writers, scientists and visionaries. These conversations affirm the indispensable and transformative powers of the imagination and offer us new ways to view these lives and their worlds. What is it like to be Bob Dylan making a movie? Carl Sagan taking on the cosmos? Oliver Sacks doctoring the soul? John Lennon, on December 5, 1980? Elizabeth Taylor, ever? From Chinua Achebe to Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), Federico Fellini to Werner Herzog, and Oriana Fallaci to Studs Terkel, Listening takes readers on a journey to discover not ways of life but ways to life. Within these pages,Cott proves himself to be, in the words of Brain Pickings’s Maria Popova, “an interlocutor extraordinaire,” drawing candid insights and profound observations from these inspired and inspiring individuals.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chinua Achebe: At the Crossroads
• George Balanchine: Dancing with Mr. B
• J. G. Ballard: Halos of Light
• Ray Davies: Afternoon Tea on Hampstead Heath
• Bob Dylan: Behind the Mask
• Oriana Fallaci: The Art of Unclothing an Emperor
• Federico Fellini: The Language of Dreams
• Theodor Geisel: The Good Dr. Seuss
• Richard Gere: Face-to-Face
• Stéphane Grappelli: The Prince of Violins
• Werner Herzog: Signs of Life
• Mick Jagger: Some Girls
• John Lennon: December 5, 1980
• Astrid Lindgren: The Happy Childhood of Pippi Longstocking
• Henry Miller: Reflections of a Cosmic Tourist
• Lou Reed: A New York State of Mind
• Oliver Sacks: The Neurology of the Soul
• Carl Sagan: Taking On the Cosmos
• Sam Shepard: Lies of the Mind
• Elizabeth Taylor: Passion
• Studs Terkel: Nothing but Listen
• Marie-Louise von Franz: Forever Jung
• Acknowledgments
• Publication History