For over sixty years Tom Bishop has contributed to shaping the literary philosophical
cultural artistic but also political conversation between Paris and New York. In his position
as professor and director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture at New York
University he made the Washington Square institution one of the great bridges between French
innovation and a New York scene that was then in full transformation. Tom Bishop was close to
Beckett championed Robbe-Grillet in the United States befriended Marguerite Duras and Hélène
Cixous organized historic public encounters-such as the one between James Baldwin and Toni
Morrison. He is also a scholar a recognized specialist in the avant-garde notably the Nouveau
Roman and the Nouveau Thétre.In 2012 he invited Donatien Grau to give a talk at NYU. This
invitation led to conversations-some of which are assembled in this book-and a frienship. Tom
Bishop retraces his own history: his departure from Vienna his studies his meetings his
choices his conception of literature and life his relationship to the political and economic
world the way he helped define the profession of curator as it is practiced today. In these
interviews he can be seen as a scholar an organizer a major intellectual as an individual
with his anger refusals loyalty his insatiable appetite for discovery and novelty and his
deep attachment to the university a place of freedom and creation.
