An Array of Additional Author Appearances, Courtesy of YouTube

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I’ve previously done posts featuring YouTube clips of past and present novelists, but it’s been a few years now so it’s time to do another. I’m only including short clips — all under 10 minutes and many much less. 🙂

It’s interesting to see authors in a speaking setting. Some talk as well as they write; some don’t. But we do get an additional sense of their personalities, and learn more about their work.

Barbara Kingsolver discusses Charles Dickens’ influence on her latest novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead; going back home; and more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TwYw0cjxlw

Toni Morrison (pictured above in a screen shot) talks about survival and the weighty questions of good and evil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xvJYrSsXPA

Daphne du Maurier is interviewed by a semi-obnoxious guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9JvTUjCd0s

A rare recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8czs8v6PuI

John Grisham answers questions on The View TV show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iUhIuVsr3c

Stephen King speaks with Stephen Colbert about his difficulty finishing The Stand and lists his own works that are his personal favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoejU-tf4xI

Kristin Hannah (The Nightingale, The Four Winds, The Great Alone, etc.) summarizes what she focuses on in her fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaAmehxDdSQ

Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) talks about writing and activism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2h5AlqYwVU

Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance) discusses coming to writing later than many authors, education, and more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqw3Csbmnhg

Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall) on English queen Anne Boleyn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohx2Lec6dko

This previous post from 2020 includes clips of Herman Wouk, Liane Moriarty, Alice Walker, Isabel Allende, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Lee Child, Donna Tartt, George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, Kate Quinn, James Baldwin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, and Leo Tolstoy:

https://daveastoronliterature.com/2020/05/24/author-clips-on-youtube/

Another 2020 post features clips of Fannie Flagg, Rita Mae Brown, Terry McMillan, Khaled Hosseini, Kazuo Ishiguro, Walter Mosley, Harper Lee, Octavia Butler, W. Somerset Maugham, Ray Bradbury, Sue Grafton, Buchi Emecheta, H.G. Wells, and Boris Pasternak:

https://daveastoronliterature.com/2020/05/31/author-clips-on-youtube-the-sequel/

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about my town’s mayor “taking the fifth,” and more — is here.

82 thoughts on “An Array of Additional Author Appearances, Courtesy of YouTube”

  1. These are great! Thank you so much. I especially enjoyed hearing Barbara Kingsolver talk about the influence of Charles Dickens on her latest book. I recall feeling Jane Austen’s spirit when I visited her cottage in Chawton.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! 🙂 I agree — Barbara Kingsolver’s remarks were fascinating. And wonderful that you saw Chawton House, where Jane Austen lived! (Speaking of Dickens, my one visit to an author abode in the UK was his home in London.)

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  2. I have an lp of Ezra Pound reading a selection of his own poetry. Sounded like a voice from a very old grave!

    And I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a recording of Eliot–in college 50 years ago.

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  3. I love hearing the voice of authors – the way in which they use words to create energy during an interview. I especially enjoyed listening to Virginia’s voice. Back from blog break and looking forward to catching up.

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    • Thank you, Rebecca, and welcome back from your blog break! You were very much missed!

      I agree — it’s great to hear the words of authors. And listening to Virginia Woolf’s voice was indeed fascinating; I didn’t know such a recording existed until searching around YouTube for this post.

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  4. Can’t find a clip, just a listing of the show, but I do recall a Dick Cavett Show on which Tennessee Williams was guest. Cavett had his wife, Carrie Nye, perform a reading from one of Williams’ plays. At the time,I thought Cavett was beyond presumptuous in putting Williams on the spot– but now I’d like to see it, to know if my impression would change.

    Not to pick on Cavett, but here’s another:

    An almost dust-up of would-be maybe-were literary lions– saw it ‘live’ way back when.  Vidal VS Mailer — A Battle of Wit! | The Dick Cavett Show

    Of all the writers I’d like to see and hear, but can’t– I’d first select Henry James, because from what contemporaries have related, the man would weigh each word momentarily, then each successive clause, as his thoughts meandered around his theme or three, hanging from verbs often under strain of overwork, while suspending his concluding phrase in qualifiers, until at last, like Phoebus post-squeeze, he took a long breath in, and blew further on. 

    IOW, he talked like he wrote!

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    • Thank you, jhNY! Dick Cavett definitely had some fascinating guests — writers, rock musicians, Groucho Marx, and many others. Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal were definitely not sending each other Christmas cards back in the day…

      The wordy Henry James would definitely have been a problematic TV guest. I laughed appreciatively at your description of his writing — especially in his later-career books. 🙂 He lived long enough (until 1916) that there technically could have been silent film footage of him, but none exists that I’m aware of.

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      • As I was writing my Jamesian prose,I remembered I might have done something similar sometime in our shared past here at your site. But I thought: maybe newer readers would enjoy and besides,it’s going well, so keep going!

        Haven’t looked at that clip, since I saw the show when it first aired– but it’s gonna be fireworks at least when one guest has written a recent essay that compared the other guest to Charlie Manson. Especially a guest who fancied himself a pugilist a la Hemingway,himself famous for having punched Wallace Stevens, poet and insurance exec.– and others.

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  6. I’m really enjoying this post, Dave, for which I thank you very much! Despite the fact that I’m not through with all videos, I would like to say that I particularly loved what Virginia Woolf says about the importance of old words becoming beautiful to tell the truth and that words do not live in dictionaries but in our minds!

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  7. Hi Dave, there is a lot going on in this post. I loved the Stephen King interview and his comments about The Stand made me laugh. Authors make mistakes and have to find a way to fix them. A similar thing happened to JK Rowling with her time turners – the ones that all got broken. Nice to here Virginia Woolf’s voice and see Daphne du Maurier and Barbara Kingsolver (I have seen her speak before).

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    • Thank you, Robbie! Glad you enjoyed the videos! Not surprised that you loved the Stephen King clip; I know you’re a big fan of much of his work. 🙂 Yes, authors can reach an impasse — I’ve read that was also the case with Mark Twain when he was writing “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” — and it can be fascinating learning about how they get out of that situation.

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  11. These are so interesting, Dave. I haven’t crawled through all of them, but I like what I’ve seen. I would say you were kind saying that the guy who interviewed Daphne du Maurier was only semi-obnoxious. I think he’s full on.

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    • Thank you very much, Dan! 🙂

      You’re right — I definitely understated my feelings about that male interviewer. He was indeed full-on obnoxious. (Expressed very well by you!) He was partly “of his time,” perhaps, but what an insult to a brilliant all-time writer to treat her that way.

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    • Thank you very much, Shehanne! 🙂 From everything I’ve read about Dickens giving public talks, he did it often and well. It would be amazing to have footage of that if the technology existed back then. Hope your Internet does better today!

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      • It would also have been interesting and I suspect quite entertainingly humorous to see Twain in his prime at a public lecture. And I’d bet he followed Dickens’ footsteps, seeing how well Dickens did for himself as a speaker/performer, and thinking he could do as well for himself.

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  15. I love watching acceptance speeches given by various authors on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. I think this one by Camus is as significant now as it was then. I am posting a link to the text rather than the you tube video, which is in French with English translation in closed caption. Thanks for your videos Dave. Susi

    “Whatever our personal weaknesses may be, the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.” Camus. Link to complete speech:
    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/speech/

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    • Thank you, Susi! Wow — an eloquent, powerful, and socially aware speech by Camus! I appreciate the link. I’ve read or listened to a few Nobel speeches (including John Steinbeck’s) and the recipients definitely rose to the occasion.

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  17. I love what Toni Morrisen had to say about good and evil. I also greatly enjoyed how Charles Dickens gave Barbara Kingsolver permission to write Demon Copperhead. Daphne du Maurier’s was a tad on the condescending/sexist/ageist/elitist side. The Virginia Woolf talk was the most intriguing for me. I’ll have to go back to it and dig more deeply into the nuances of her thoughts.

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  19. Dave, thanks so much for these gems of video clips of some of our great authors! (1) It’s intriguing how inspiration for telling a story can come from an unexpected source as in the case of Kingsolver and Charles Dickens. (2) Toni Morrison, my writing muse, never ceases to amaze me with her clear perception of the human psyche. (3) Arundhati Roy’s response on the changing role of the writer in modern society, as one of social activism, is especially telling when one considers how many books are being banned in recent times because our stories are offensive to some among us. (4) Of special interest is Virginia Woolf’s exploration of our use of words: “Words live in the mind,” she says. The word “woke” immediately comes to mind when she observes that a word can take on new meanings over time.

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