It might seem easy to conduct an interview, but it’s not, especially if you’re after riveting stories. Telling stories is what I love to do and I love listening to stories, too. Tell me a story and I'm happy. Maybe you read the AVA for the stories. I conducted my first interview in New York in the summer of 1968, with the Australian-born writer, Christina Stead, the author of the novel, The Man Who Loved Children, which is still a neglected masterpiece. I didn’t know how to conduct an interview, and hadn’t been taught how to conduct one. But I figured, how difficult could it be? I took a notebook and pencils with me, asked Stead questions and wrote down her answers. It was published in 1970 in The London Magazine under the title “Christina Stead in Washington Square.” I do not have a copy but I went online and found that the issue of the magazine with my interview is available for sale for about $16 plus shipping. I am not planning to purchase it. I connected to Stead with the help of Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, both of them economists and the editors of Monthly Review, a socialist publication. Stead’s husband William Blake had published in 1939 a 729-page book titled An American Looks at Karl Marx, on sale on the internet for $100.
My second interview was with Doris Lessing, the author of The Golden Notebook and about 50 other books both fiction and non-fiction. That took place in May 1969 and was published first in The New American Review and elsewhere. I interviewed Lessing half-a-dozen times after that first interview with her, plus interviews with hundreds of other people from all walks of life. I also taught the art of the interview at Sonoma State University for about 30 years. I’m retired now from teaching, but I still conduct interviews, mostly in person, though occasionally by phone and on a computer.
Recently, I received a request from a journalist who writes for a newsletter for elders. She wanted to interview me and sent me two-dozen questions and then a dozen more; not a good sign in my view, but I met her and sat down opposite her at a long table in an office in San Francisco. It soon became apparent that she didn’t know how to interview me, though she had interviewed at least half-a-dozen elders and published them. All interviews are not the same. They have to be hand crafted. She wanted what’s called “a take away,” which the Oxford dictionary defines as “a key fact, point, or idea to be remembered, typically one emerging from a discussion or meeting.” It’s different from “take out,” which might mean to kill or to purchase prepared food to be consumed away from the place it’s purchased. Most of us have done that. I first heard the phrase “take out” when I was a college undergraduate and went to a delicatessen on Broadway in New York to buy and to eat in my dorm room, a sandwich with salami and provolone on white bread with mustard, mayonnaise and all the fixings.
The phrase “take away” came into my life much later. I was listening to an interview with James Atlas on NPR and the host wanted Atlas to provide a “take away” or a sound bite for the listening audience. I didn’t like the phrase, and still don’t though I understand that “media outlets” want them. In the old days, we used the phrase “raised quotes,” which are sentences from an article that are lifted from the text, that are enlarged and that are meant to draw readers into the story. I don’t object to them, just as I don’t object to captions under photos or drawings. To ask someone who is interviewed to provide a “take away” strikes me as cheating. It’s the job of the interviewer to decide on the essence or key idea embedded in the remarks by the interviewee.
I confess I have cheated. I once asked Doris Lessing to tell me the underlying meaning in one of her novels. She said, “I’m the author. You're the critic. It’s your job to find and describe the meaning in the text.” Fair enough. I’ve been doing that ever since. The woman who was interviewing me wanted me to provide the memorable moments in my life and to sum it up in a phrase. She had read several of my books and complained that there was nothing about me in them.
I replied that they were all autobiographical. If she looked carefully she would find me. I also told her that at 82 I had dozens of memorable moments and that I couldn’t put my whole life in a nutshell or “take away.” She vowed to conduct more research about me and to read the autobiography I had written in the early 1970s and published under the title Out of the Whale in 1974. “That was fifty years ago,” I said. “If I were to write about myself now I would tell very different stories, and also retell the account I provide in Out of the Whale. I might call the book Inside the Whale.” I added that at 82 my life looks and feels different than it did at 32.”
The idea was lost on the woman who was interviewing me, though I didn’t give up on her. I had spent hours talking with her and wanted the interview to be published and for elders to read it. I suggested to her that she have a conversation with me and not conduct a question and answer interview, that to “get information it helps to give information.” I added, “you might open yourself, be transparent and not opaque.” That’s not what she wanted to hear. I have not heard from her since
I enjoyed reading your story, Prof. Raskin.
I, too, failed miserably at my first interview. The Elder complained I had inaccurately portrayed her. True, the piece was an embellishment of someone I didn’t know.