Thoughts on the Paris Review interviews

The dull hum of the overhead air duct. The sound of the coffee machine whenever the glass door of the break-out area swings open. The chatter of people. It's getting late in the evening and the mist of jargon has begun to set in. I too have a presentation to make in forty-five minutes. Can finish reading Milan Kundera's Paris Review interview once more perhaps. A senior, sitting on his desk instead of his chair, is looking at my screen. For a good camouflage, my already small Internet Explorer window is now open against the backdrop of a predominantly white-colored slide with two pie charts and two tables (each with three rows and four columns) ...

Why I love reading Paris Review interviews at work? Because nobody likes work.

Why I love reading Paris Review interviews in general? Because they spare you the kind of things that I wrote in the first paragraph (and The Hindu and Business Standard write in weekend supplements). The irritating personal touches. The odyssey of the interviewer reaching the writer's address. Whether it was raining that day or not. Whether the autorickshaw-wallah on the way was mustached or clean-shaven.

Every interviewer is trying to write his 'Frank Sinatra has a cold' and yet thinking he is being original.

If I were an interviewer and were to be reminded one thing before the interview, I want to be told: It's not about you, it's about him. It's not to confirm what you have heard and read about his works in the so-and-so critique, it's about getting him to talk.

Now, how to do that? A rather technical measure of it could be the ratio of the word count of the answers to the word count of the questions. But, I think, for a question to be good, more than short and succinct it has to be open-ended (although an open-ended question will inevitably be short). When the question is, "Your protagonist reminds us of Dostoevsky's creations except he is less bitter and hence is more post-modern. Why do you think is that?", it sounds like the kind of compulsive question asked after talks in college auditorium. Apart from being an example of the kind of question a self-absorbed interviewer will ask, it illustrates a closed question. The writer can expound only so much after agreeing or disagreeing to the proposed theory. He might even reply in 'Don't know.' A better question would be- "Do you like Dostoevsky?" And even better- "Which writers do you like?"   

It might sound silly. Asking David Mitchell which writers does he like. Shouldn't we be asking him about his theories on structure now that we have the great structuralist locked in the same room as us. This isn't getting published in a primary school newsletter after all. Why, which writers do you like, of all questions.

Because it's an open question. He might have read Dostoevsky in order to be educated, but he might not have necessarily liked him. He might be more into Dylan Thomas than Dostoevsky. So, what should be the next question- "Ah, the crushing sense of tragedy that the mere choice of his words convey. Don't they?" Or "Which poems of his do you like the most?"

It's also perfect because it's a simple question. Less likely to piss the writer off, more likely to get a wonderful reply. My favorite part of Paris Review interviews is when they ask the writers whether they type or they write. If they write, whether it is by pen or by pencil. The kind of hearty, long, and personal answers writers tend to give to these set of questions is unimaginable to the pointed questions pertaining to real literary theories: Paul Auster referring to writing as a 'very tactile' experience to explain his reason for using pen, and his story about hoarding cartridges of his typewriter when he learned that they were going out of production. Or Don DeLillo stacking the early drafts neatly in shoe boxes!

The successive questions leading to the territory that the writer likes to go is more likely to make the interview enjoyable, both for the writer and the reader, as well as more insightful.

While one may argue that making an interview simple and template-based like Proust's Questionnaire will rob it off its surprise factor, I believe that the surprise should come from the answers, not the questions.
Do you remember the guy who drew the diagram of human digestive system in the space to affix photograph in the slam book you gave him in high school or do you remember the one who pasted his photo?