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Linda Rosenkrantz spent the summer of 1965 in East Hampton recording conversations between herself and two close friends. The resulting book, “Talk,” is formatted like a play, with the three characters discussing their ambitions in the buzzing 1960s New York City art world and cultural sea changes in psychoanalysis and sexual politics. (“How does a ménage à trois work?” someone asks. “Doesn’t it make you feel competitive?”) When it was published in 1968, the book was called fiction.

New York Review Books recently reissued “Talk.” In The Guardian, Judy Berman wrote: “Even half a century later, in an era when the live-tweeting of strangers’ dates is more likely to be celebrated than denounced as a violation of privacy, there is an arresting openness to these conversations.”

Ms. Rosenkrantz is identified as Marsha in the book. The other two characters, who go under the pseudonyms Vincent and Emily, retain their anonymity today. In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Rosenkrantz discussed the inspiration for her project, initial reactions to it, her affection for “Broad City” and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

What inspired you to record these conversations? Was the goal from the beginning to turn them into a book?

A.

The idea popped up quite spontaneously — I can still remember exactly where I was standing when it struck me. The objective was always to turn it into a book — I think I saw it as something falling between a conceptual piece and a novel, referring to it as nonfiction fiction. In the beginning I envisioned it as including more than the three characters, as just keeping the tape recorder running all that summer in East Hampton. But I saw quickly that that would be unworkable and realized it could only be effective by whittling it down to just the three of us.

I think I was indirectly influenced and inspired by what was happening in the other arts at that time — Warhol films, early Maysles brothers documentaries, Rauschenberg’s statement about narrowing the gap between art and life, artists painting from photographs, Tom Wolfe and the New Journalism, etc. Reality-based work was very much in the zeitgeist, but hadn’t really been seen in a book.

Q.

Were your two friends at all hesitant about the project?

A.

Not at all — it felt like a group effort from the start, and they were as enthused about it as I was. If they ever did have any hesitations at all, they were never expressed. There was a bit of teasing of the “Hey, we’re writing your book for you” variety as we went along.

Q.

What were the initial reactions of prospective publishers? Were they what you expected?

A.

The initial reactions of publishers were, to put it mildly, negative. I still have all the rejection letters. My favorite, from one of the most eminent publishers, ended with “… their talk ranged from the repellently raunchy to the equally repellently pseudo-witty.” At one point, Vincent encased the rejection letters in plastic and strung them up as a kind of mobile sculpture, which hung in my bedroom for a while.

When it finally did find a publisher, they insisted on presenting “Talk” as a conventional novel — pure, invented dialogue. They had all sorts of legal qualms — in fact, they had Vincent and Emily sign off on every single page of the manuscript. This was a major disappointment to me, as it negated the whole premise and purpose of what I was trying to do, and it’s why I now feel so exonerated by its republication by New York Review Books as it was originally intended to be.

Q.

How did your friends — those in the book and others — react to the final product?

A.

There was a range of responses. Positive reactions from friends (though I wouldn’t be surprised if some were just being polite and were actually appalled), acquaintances, co-workers, strangers. Family response was more problematic, ranging from my mother heading for the nearest therapist’s office, to my father never opening the book but proudly pointing to my back-cover photograph, to a favorite, highly moralistic great aunt suddenly turning mafiosa and saying, “If anyone in the family gives you a hard time, tell them they’ll have to deal with me.” Reviews were equally split between those that echoed the sentiments of the rejection letters, to British Vogue picking it as one of the books of the year.

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Q.

How did the presence of what was then much clunkier technology affect your conversations? Do you think the three of you were “performing” more than usual?

A.

It’s hard to say at this remove of time, but I don’t think so. The presence of the clunky recorder became such a part of the room and beachscape that it was just taken for granted. Then too, Emily was a performer by profession and Vincent had an equally dramatic, exuberant, articulate personality.

Q.

In the book, Vincent is an artist, and Emily is an actress. Did they remain in those fields and find some success? Are the three of you still close?

A.

Yes, they both remained in those fields and did find some success. Vincent is still painting, still exhibiting, his work recognized and collected; Emily has appeared in a number of major movies. I am still close to Vincent — he is thrilled about the republication. Sadly, Emily and I have lost touch.

Q.

How did you go about editing the transcript? Did you change or finesse any wording in the dialogue or did you only delete excess material? You all sound so eloquent.

A.

The tedious process of transcribing the miles of tape, struggling against poor sound quality and sometimes garbled words, often having to go back and play the same sentence over and over to make it out, plus dealing with the physical fragility of the tapes took a full year, and then another year was spent working to shape the 1,500 pages of transcript into a cohesive piece. I think there were probably a few instances when I couldn’t resist finessing some wording — but not much.

Q.

Reading it now, does the book take you back to that time when psychoanalysis and sex were such charged subjects? Is there any angle about those subjects that was left out of the final book?

A.

There was no filter on the talk about those subjects, and I don’t think they felt particularly charged for us or for the other people in our circle, bearing in mind that this was a particular place — the New York art world — and a time, the ’60s, when so much in the culture was opening up. The constant talk of analysis does surprise me somewhat now: it would hardly be part of the conversation for people of that age today.

Q.

Do you have any favorite works (books, movies, etc.) that capture the feeling of what it was like to live in that cultural moment?

A.

More than the books, and movies and plays I was seeing at that time, such as the films of Godard and Antonioni and Fellini, it was the Pop art gallery shows, the “happenings” at Judson Church, etc., that evoke that moment for me. But what would take me back more than anything, is the sound of the new rock ’n’ roll that had burst into our lives and ramped up its rhythms. If I were to hear “Hang On Sloopy” or “Wooly Bully” or “Leader of the Pack” or “Baby Love” or anything else by the Supremes or the Shangri-Las or Martha and the Vandellas or the Dixie Cups, it would instantly transport me right back to Amagansett, 1965.

Q.

How do you relate to the work of current candid female artists like Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer? Do you think the culture is pushing boundaries enough at this time?

A.

I very much identify with the women/girls on “Girls” and even more with Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson on “Broad City” — with that particular sharing of intimacies among female best friends, their mutual supportiveness, their bravery. Sometimes I watch them and think they could almost be reading from a page in “Talk.”