Robert Birnbaum’s idea of a vacation is being able to sit down and read Edith Grossman’s new translation of Don Quixote. Because he lives in New Hampshire with his blond canine, Rosie, he may be able to do that soon.

• November 2003: Interview with Sissela Bok
  The renowned Harvard applied ethicist and philosopher on lying, the behavior of mice, and Nobel Prize-winning parents.
• July 2003: Interview with Jamaica Kincaid
  She’d rather write the bouillon cube than the broth.
• June 2003: Interview with Margot Livesey
  On getting unsteadily better and the exhilarations of plot.