Interview vs correspondence

[jbor]

on 24/4/04 5:48 AM, Malignd wrote:

> If I sit down with you (say) and, in the moment pose
> questions and receive answers, there's more lost than
> gained I think in calling that the same event as my
> emailing you a list of questions and waiting for your
> responses to be emailed back.  The first is certainly
> an interview, a face-to-face conversation; the second
> is a form of correspondence.  One may call it an
> "email interview," but that naming hides more
> differences than it corrals similarities.

Yes. One difference is in the amount of control the subject has over the
content and form of their responses. The mode of an interview, whether it's
by phone, video hook-up or face-to-face, is spoken interaction (i.e.
spontaneous, informal register, unpolished language), and the interviewee is
often put "on the spot" or caught unawares in a variety of ways. There's
also a much greater chance that oral comments made will be taken out of
context or edited selectively by the journalist. Correspondence, by
contrast, such as Pynchon's letter to Thomas F. Hirsch or his faxed reply to
Hajdu, is composed and arrives as written text, and the correspondent has
been able to consider and edit responses at leisure. Likewise, there is more
onus on the recipient to quote accurately and reference the source when text
has been delivered in this form. The other big difference is that in both
instances Pynchon was assisting an author with his research and not
self-publicising. 

And, speaking of semantics, no-one's questioned the point that Pynchon was
forthcoming and generous in his response to Hajdu's request for help with
his research (as he had been with Thomas Hirsch): the argument is always
about what to call the exchange, how to categorise it, how it might alter
Pynchon's seemingly self-imposed reputation as private, elusive, camera-shy,
averse to self-publicity. I'm amused by the amount of energy expended at
regular intervals here to try to claim that two so-called "interviews" (one
incredibly dubious, the other a few faxed sheets of biographical
reminiscences in response to a query from a researching author) from 40
years in the literary spotlight amount to squat, let alone that they qualify
Pynchon as some garrulous media whore. In fact, it seems to me to confirm
near enough the opposite of this -- i.e. that Pynchon "doesn't like to talk
to reporters" and that he doesn't give interviews.

best