Some things are more difficult than you might think (literary interviewing edition)

Awhile ago I picked up this book, “The Book That Changed My Life,” which is a collection of interviews with 15 pretty famous authors (Don DeLillo, Diane Johnson, E. L. Doctorow, Grace Paley, and some other names who many middle-aged and elderly readers of this blog might recognize) on the books that influenced them when they were young, along with more specific questions about influences on their well-known books. The interviewer, Diane Osen, asks good questions, but the whole thing doesn’t work for me. I found the book to be boring and difficult to read.

OK, that’s just my reaction. You might love the book. I’m not trying to offer any sort of universal take here. My point really is just that this idea—find a bunch of authors of interesting literature, ask them some open-ended questions, and edit the results—seems like a foolproof formula for a book. And asking about books that changed their lives, that also seems like a great idea, a good way to structure the whole volume. I love the Paris Review interviews, and this seems kinda similar.

But, no, I guess it’s harder than it looks. I’d like to think that if I could have some time to interview Grace Paley (when she was alive), Don DeLillo, etc., I’d have material for a fun book, but, no, I guess not. I guess it takes more than a willing supply of quality interview subjects to put together a readable book of this form.

I like interviews with authors, in the same way that I like book reviews and other meta-literature, so I’m really in the sweet spot of the intended audience for this one. So if this didn’t interest me, given all it seemed to have going for it, this is evidence that a lot more skill is involved in this endeavor than I’d imagined.

1 thought on “Some things are more difficult than you might think (literary interviewing edition)

  1. There are several books with similar titles. Amazon reviewers share your reaction to this one, pointing to the general nature of the accounts, and the ragged editing. It’s a reminder that good qualitative research is about more than data collection; data analysis and reporting are just as important.

    Some of the books on Amazon with similar titles feature authors’ own writings on the book that changed their lives. And since these are noted writers, it would not be surprising that their accounts are more interesting, coherent, and aesthetically pleasing.

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