Books & Writers: Novelists, Screenwriters, Poets, Journalists, Playwrights, Non-fiction Writers & Showrunners Talk Writing, Creativity & The Creative Process · Novelists, Screenwriters, Poets, Playwrights, Non-fiction Writers, Journalists & Showrunners Talk Writing - Creative Process Original Series

On Borges, Gore Vidal, Robert Frost & The Writing Life with Author & Filmmaker JAY PARINI

·31 min·1 clip

Parini says Jesus centers the marginalized and uses the word “kenosis” for self-emptying.

1. The Creative Process interviews Jay Parini about Borges, Gore Vidal, Robert Frost, Camus, Jesus, and the writing life. 2. Parini is a poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, and biographer whose books include Steinbeck, Frost, Faulkner, Gore Vidal, Jesus, and Borges and Me. 3. The episode asks what writing is for when a memoir becomes a film, poetry becomes memory, and AI tries to generate text. 4. Parini describes Borges and Me as memoir slash autofiction built from 1970, when he and his friend Billy were drafted for the Vietnam War. 5. He says Billy went to Vietnam, he went to Scotland for graduate work, and he spent nearly seven years there. 6. Parini says Billy was killed in Vietnam while he was in Scotland, and he wrote from depression and anxiety. 7. He says Alastair Reid introduced him to Jorge Luis Borges, and a road trip through the Highlands restored him. 8. Parini says the film adaptation was hard to finance until producer-director Mark Turtletaub read the book and wanted to make it. 9. He describes being on the Scottish set every day, working with daily rushes, script development, and an executive producer role. 10. Parini says the movie used 61 sets, a crew of 100 or more, and locations including the Cairngorm Mountains, Loch Ness, and Orkney. 11. He says the Borges project took about seven years from the book in 2018 to the finished film in 2025. 12. Parini recounts an earlier Tolstoy adaptation that began with a call from Anthony Quinn, who wanted to play Tolstoy. 13. He says that project went through Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, and Christopher Plummer before the film finally moved ahead. 14. Parini calls Borges a writer who taught him that “it’s never about you” and that the work comes first. 15. He says Borges told him that being a reader matters more than being a writer, and that great readers are rare. 16. He describes Robert Frost as someone who learned from chicken farmers, wood-stove talk, and the “sound of sense.” 17. Parini says he retired from teaching after 50 years and now wants to write books he would want to read himself. 18. He argues that teaching is theatrical, using the Latin idea of persona as the “voice sounding through the mask.” 19. Parini says AI can be detected in two seconds, while Borges, Vidal, and Camus require a lifetime to shape a recognizably human voice. 20. He ends by linking Jesus, kenosis, Trump, immigrants, Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, and nature into one argument for listening, watching, and waiting. 21. He compares Gore Vidal’s brilliance with narcissism, saying the essays and conversation were stronger than many of Vidal’s novels. 22. Parini says the love between Gore Vidal and Howard was companionate rather than conventional, and he treats it as a rare relationship. 23. He describes Camus as a teenage obsession, his mother’s alarm at The Stranger, and his current book The Boy Who Loved Camus. 24. He says literature, politics, and writing all depend on place, memory, and attention to the natural world. 25. The interview stays conversational and reflective, with long autobiographical answers and a steady focus on craft, history, and moral language. 26. Listeners who like literary biography, poetry, and questions about voice will likely find this episode rewarding. 27. Listeners looking for fast pacing or plot-driven stories may prefer something shorter and less reflective. 28. The episode uses Parini’s own career as a bridge between memoir, scholarship, teaching, and film. 29. It also shows how his reading of Borges, Frost, and Camus shaped his ideas about memory and style. 30. The closing section ties writing to spiritual, political, and cultural survival in a noisy public world.

As heard by us

A literary life story where poetry, war, Borges, and Gore Vidal share the same table.

Jay Parini treats poetry as memorability, then moves through Borges, Vietnam, Scotland, and the depression after Billy's death without losing the thread.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When you want a literary conversation about poetry, memoir, Vietnam, Scotland, and Borges.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Books & Writers: Novelists, Screenwriters, Poets, Journalists, Playwrights, Non-fiction Writers & Showrunners Talk Writing, Creativity & The Creative Process