What's Your Idea of a Good Time? Interviews and Letters 1977-1985

by Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer

Cultural Writing. Literary Criticism. Between 1977 and 1985, Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer interviewed each other on a range of topics. Collected here for the first time, the resulting documents, along with accompanying letters, are variously celebratory, flirtatious, experimental, and probing. This volume offers a collaborative portrait of two major American writers in action. Bill Berkson was born in New York in 1939. His recent books include FUGUE STATE, HYMNS OF ST. BRIDGET & OTHER WRITINGS with Frank Ohara, and THE SWEET SINGER OF MODERNISM & OTHER ART WRITINGS: 1985-2003. Bernadette Mayer was born in 1945 in Brooklyn. She is the author of numerous volumes of both poetry and prose, the most recent of which are Scarlet Tanager and the re-issue of her "epic of daily life," Midwinter Day.

Genres: Poetry

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Paul insists it’s not as good as the letters to her sister, it’s still a romp.

[Joe]

Wondered how interesting a relatively contemporary collection of letters could be but was zapped enough by BM's reading in Albany to give this a try. Glad I did-- the exchange of letters and accompanying interview questions was initiated with some prospect of larger publicity and so at least BM throws herself into them, keeps things interesting while Bill Berkson acts as more of reserved, contemplative foil.

And the total arc of the letters is coherent, from the first flush of two people reknowing each other by asking and answering questions as intimate as "What do you think about when lying alone" to non-sequiters "What do you think about flying" (A: The lap of the gods!) to the correspondents losing the threads of the interview and filling in these lapses with (mostly BM's) successes and crises--age, divorce, having no $. And the book ends with a return to the interview format--but with the wind kicked out of it, the respondents not even commenting on how they're refusing to comment on certain questions, the last lines of the correspondene concerned with sin--"If by 'sin' you mean pleasure, then yes, it is greater than anyone ever imagines." It trails of. And that's always been the (stupidly unatticipated) shock in regard to reading correspondence--how full of holes and loose ends it is. These seeming particularly raw on account of how concerned the letters themselves are with friendship, relations, connection, and the difficulties of maintaing these while working jobs, paying bills, sustaining "projects" larger than oneself. Currently also struck with idea that BM was so concerned with "utopias" while running the Poetry Project--in that the limits of institution led to thinking of more ideal institutions? Would have liked to read BM articulating more specific reactions against it--other than that it took and took a lot.
Now I wonder why this was the only book BM was selling in Albany. What do you think, internet? So yeah read this.

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful.