Art-Sheep Tv

Here’s Flannery O’Connor reading her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find\” at Vanderbilt University in 1959.  

In 1958, Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series, interviewed crime writer Raymond Chandler for the BBC. This is the only recording of Chandler’s voice. Listening to their conversation is like eavesdropping on two master genre writers talk shop.

While many stereotype Sylvia Plath as moribund and depressed, this interview reveals a sharp, enthusiastic person with an adroit ability to turn a phrase. “Poetry,” she says, “is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space that you’ve just got to burn away all the peripherals.”

In this recording from 1950, Ernest Hemingway describes his novel Across the River and Into the Trees. He sounds drunk, which may explain the interesting vocal modulation and bursts of random yelling. Best part: “[she] enjoys herself very much, looking out of the upper windows and studying the action OF THE PIGEONS.”

In this short excerpt from a Q&A as University of Virginia’s first Writer-in-Residence, Faulkner talks about The Sound and the Fury, and why it was his favorite novel. Listen to the full recording here.

In a pleasant Scottish brogue, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle talks about how he started writingSherlock Holmes (“I began to think of turning scientific methods, as it were, onto the work of detection”) and the character’s popularity (“I’ve even had ladies writing to say that they’d be very glad to act as [Holmes’] housekeeper”). Then the

Edna St. Vincent Millay reads her poem “Love is Not All.” Her high-faluting accent and theatrical style may seem dated today, but in the 1920s, Millay’s reading tours regularly sold out to rapt crowds.

In a 1987 interview, Arthur Miller talks about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. In addition to thoughtful insight into Monroe’s psychology, he discusses the reception of After The Fall, a play he wrote about his relationship with Monroe.

In this 1952 interview, John Steinbeck talked about writing The Grapes of Wrath and how things had changed since the book was published in 1939. He’s surprisingly optimistic about the changes in American society since the Great Depression: “We have solved so many of [the problems] and the solutions have been the product of ourselves,