NONFICTION - Dec. 16, 1990

INTER/VIEW: Talks With America’s Writing Women by Mickey Pearlman and Katherine Usher Henderson (University Press of Kentucky: $25; 224 pp.) It’s impossible not to greet this book with great affection--even as you wish that the writing about women writers was as good as what those writers write. Pearlman and Henderson have interviewed 28 women across the country about what they do and who they are. The result is an encapsulated study of writers who still are considered peripheral members of the literary club, whose careers sometimes flounder on professional naivete, who are too often judged on criteria they reject.

The entries are fascinating and too short by half. As introductory tidbits, the interviews work fine, but they leave the reader desperately hungry for more. If only the authors had an 800 number we could call for the unabridged transcripts.