I’ve decided to respond to the Janet Malcolm interview by Janet Roiphe because it has the double distinction of being (towards the end) an interview about interviews.
It also happens to be a timely topic for me, as I’ve spent the last three days barreling through hours of interview tape for a story I’m working on. Malcolm is, no doubt, a sort of unofficial arbiter on all topics journalism, so I think her commentary on how she approaches interviews while a bit ambiguous stands as “must-hear” content for aspiring journalists.
But first I want to comment on the style of this interview. I think it’s an interesting twist that Malcolm as a prolific journalist who has built a living by asking folks questions – in many instances to their faces or as Roiphe calls her “the masterful interviewer”– that she will visit with Roiphe face to face but the interview is conducted in meticulously thought-out e-mails. Roiphe explains that Malcolm “has politely refused the role of subject and reverted to the more comfortable role of writer.”
But it begs the question – is this really an “interview” or is this some other type of exercise? Maybe it’s guided autobiography.
On one hand this process undermines the ad-lib, organic, pick-your-brain concept of interviewing, but on the other it shows the over-analytic thought process of Malcolm. She’s may be wary of a slip-of-the-tongue inarticulation but I get the sense that she’s more concerned with the words on the page, and meaning what she says.
(I thought it especially poignant when Roiphe calls her out on quoting herself or others in large chunks, showing just guarded she is about the words she’s willing to proffer.)
It reminds of the Paris Review interview I read with Robert Frost, who kept making side comments throughout the interview about the tape recorder – and would at times reverse back over his words – almost nervous to make sure that he’s recorded saying exactly as he means.
It’s funny to think about the double standard that Malcolm perhaps posits when on the topic of interviews she says:
… I learned the same truth about subjects that the analyst learns about patients: they will tell their story to anyone who will listen to it, and the story will not be affected by the behavior or personality of the listener; just as (“good enough”) analysts are interchangeable, so are journalists.
This idea that when you and I interview somebody, we’ll get the same responses seems a bit too general on first appearance. I agree that’s the case if we’re talking about public figures – but I think it depends person to person. I know for myself – oftentimes when I interview someone if the conversation ends up on a common interest such as music or if we share familial traits – sometimes the interviewee opens up and shares things with me that they wouldn’t otherwise.
Of course Malcolm, despite the controlled arena of the interview, does double back and says in the next paragraph that she’s second guessing her habit of quoting herself and “suddenly not at all sure about any of this.” Reading between the lines – I think the fact that Roiphe called her out on the quotations and the fact that her responses are reacting to this unique point (unique to Roiphe) it causes the response to double over itself.
To say it bluntly, it’s a unique and funny interview moment.
But really, in the end I can’t help but wonder how the conversations between Roiphe and Malcolm in the confines of her own home went? What are the inflections of Malcolm’s voice, and how does she gesture when she talks? It’s not something I wonder about with any other Paris Review interview. There’s not normally wild gesturing on behalf of Cormac Mccarthy or who-have-you, but now I’m just curious.
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