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Robert Birnbaum

Writer, photographer, and acclaimed interviewer Robert Birnbaum talks about his favorite books, chats with Richard Russo, and the deep affections between Charlie Rose and Cartier-Bresson.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rosecrans Baldwin
TMN co-editor Rosecrans Baldwin lives in Paris, France. He founded The Morning News with Andrew Womack in 1999 and has been waking up early ever since. His first novel, You Lost Me There, is coming out soon with Riverhead Books. He currently writes the Letters from Paris column for TMN. His work has elsewhere appeared in The New York Times, New York, The Nation, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. His personal web site is useless, unless you want to know what he is up to next. Someday his ashes will be tossed off Mount Desert Island.
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Name, Date of Birth, Web site if you have one: Robert Birnbaum, 20 February 1947, Identitytheory.com

Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime: Journalist (writer/photographer/editor/creative director/publisher). I don’t have enough imagination to think what I might be in another lifetime.

What makes you laugh: Everything

Out of all the interviews you’ve conducted, the most enjoyable chat you’ve had: Very, very, very tough to answer. If I had to answer (you know, a gun to my head and all that), I will say that the three or four times I have talked with Richard Russo have been fun.

Heroes: Howard Zinn, Studs Terkel, Robert Frank, Angela Davis, IF Stone, Susan Meiselas, Anthony Braxton, Jose Marti, Eduardo Galeano, George Orwell

Unsung authors of the last century we’ll see revered in the next: I have no clue

Traits required in a good interviewer: I don’t know. I think you have to love your conversational partner. I am not particularly fond of Charlie Rose but the best interview I ever saw him do was with Henri Cartier-Bresson. I think he loved that man.

Favorite books:

One Hundred Years of Solitude—Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Man With the Golden Arm—Nelson Algren

The English Patient—Micheal Ondaatje

Los Gusanos—John Sayles

Caramelo—Sandra Cisneros

Ninety Two In The Shade—Thom McGuane

Dreaming in Cuban—Christine Garcia

Mile Zero—Thomas Sanchez

In the Foreseeable Future—Reynolds Price

Bargains in the Real World - Elizabeth Cox

All the Pretty Horses—Cormac McCarthy

Dog Soldiers—Robert Stone

The Sweet Hereafter—Russell Banks

Immortality—Milan Kundera

Wildlife—Richard Ford

Burning Marguerite—Elizabeth Iness-Brown

Shadow Play—Charles Baxter

Imagining Argentina—Lawrence Thornton

Nobody’s Fool—Richard Russo

Even A Blind Man Can Tell I Love You—Amy Bloom

Our House in the Last World—Oscar Hijuelos

Enduring Love—Ian McEwen

The Glass Palace—Amitav Ghosh

The Missing World—Margot Livesey

Swordfish—David McLintock

The Poet—Michael Connelly

Plain Song—Kent Harouf

House of the Spirits—Isabel Allende

A Good Day To Die—Jim Harrison

Einstein’s Dreams—Alan Lightman

In the Cut—Susanna Moore

Bullet Heart—Michael Doane

The Devil’s Own Work—Alan Judd

All Our Yesterdays—Robert Parker

Being Dead—Jim Crace

Almost Heaven—Marianne Wiggins

Shelly’s Heart—Charles McCarry

Crossing to Safety—Wallace Stegner

The World At Night—Alan Furst

The Last Thing He Wanted—Joan Didion

The Hours—Michael Cunningham

The World As I Found It—Bruce Duffy

The Conformist—Albert Moravia

Badland—Jonathan Raban

Taking Lives—Michael Pye

This is an arbitrary list. If asked on another day, I think it might be different, give or take ten books…

Five words that sound great: Implore, Purloin, Mellifluous, Revolution, Dystopian

Charity worth giving to: Doctors Without Borders



—Published January 23, 2003