Today, a post in praise of long-time CBC program “Writers and Company” and its host Eleanor Wachtel, a woman I have come to trust without reservation for her wide-ranging eye on the world’s best literature and her exquisite interviews with the people who produce it. I’ve heard interviews with writers in a variety of formats, live or recorded or on television, and sometimes they’re too short to allow for more than sound bites or perhaps the interviewer hasn’t read the book, not thoroughly at least, or is talking too much, or you wish you could jump in and ask your question because the interviewer isn’t getting around to it! Wachtel’s interviews, however, are an hour long, and the conversation has room and it’s rich, it gets where I also wanted to go without my knowing in advance where that was. Continue reading →