I posted yesterday about an interview with Alan Moore (which is still terribly interesting and worth reading). It’s a long one – partially because it’s a direct transcript of what both parties said.
Now it seems to me that that’s not the usual way interviews are published. You open a newspaper and find some guy talking about how he’s going to meet some musician and he has certain preconceptions, and then he describes the hotel room/café/whatever he’s meeting him in and discusses whether this mildly reinforces or mildly challenges said preconceptions, and then you get something like this:
I asked him what he thought about the Irish weather.
He looked out the window. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s all right.”
There you go, you got your pull quote. Now, for the edification of the reader, you should summarise the guy’s career to date, mention what some people thought about the live show and point out that there’ll be a new album out soon. Job’s a good un.
Which is to say, there seems to be very little interviewing going on.
I love reading transcripts because there’s a real sense of the person’s character, and not just whatever aspect of said that the journalist wants to play up. Plus you get proper, thought-out answers.
On that note, I heartily recommend that anyone with an interest in writing read The Paris Review Interviews. They’re interesting, useful, inspiring and surprisingly funny, and demonstrate nicely why smart and enthusiastic people need more airtime.
Recent Comments