Either way, the final impression is one of increasing melancholy and desperation. ![]() Ultimately, what’s most interesting about the book, though, is Shields’s endless appetite for shit-eating, even if we understand this to also be a literary gesture. Part of the tension in the book comes from the fact that many of the interviewers, however unkindly, raise legitimate criticisms of his work and, because of Shields’s lack of a direct voice, we’re left to guess to what degree he’s willing to entertain this criticism. From a journalist who quotes to him from a particularly nasty blog comment (“David Shields is a dried-up hack who dresses his acts of plagiarism with layer upon layer of bullshit”) to one who seems to want to goad him to suicide, Shields sets himself up for a relentless flogging. The project is in many ways a satisfying career retrospective, but what’s most notable about the book is just how relentlessly hostile the interviewers are to their subject. Although we never hear any of Shields’s answers, his skillful collaging turns each set of interrogations into a highly readable thread, both encapsulating and critiquing his life and work. He then transcribed the interviews, culled hundreds of questions, and arranged them into twenty-two themed sequences (“Childhood,” “Art,” “Capitalism,” etc.). ![]() Reading the new David Shields book, The Very Last Interview, made me wonder, and not for the first time, about the author’s masochistic nature. The book, which consists entirely of questions asked of him by interviewers from throughout his nearly four-decade career, was the result of a painstaking act of curation: Shields listened to every TV, radio, and podcast appearance he’s ever done.
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