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| December 5, 2005 |
The art of the interview
If I am asked anything about what I do -- and I am often asked anything, things you can't imagine and wouldn't want to -- it is what it's like to sit down and speak with So-and-So. So-and-So, you see, is a mythic creature of great power and untold fame. So-and-So is not human, though it occasionally looks like it might have once been, before it evolved into something far more glamorous than mere mortals.
So-and-So. Nice guy. You should interview him some time. Or her, they come in both varieties.
I bring this up by way of an interview Robert Birnbaum recently conducted. This interview with with Robert Birnbaum (or Isadore, to make it easier). Yes, Mr. Birnbaum interviewed himself, and in his defense he was asked to do it. JBooks.com thought it would be good for him to do this rather odd thing and publish it on their site, and I thank them for their quirkiness.
Birnbaum (sorry, Isadore) brought up the mythical So-and-So when he said, "I am somewhat discouraged by a sad consequence of celebrity culture, that sometimes friends and readers say to me, 'Wow, you talked to So-and-So,' as though So-and-So were a different life form."
So-and-So is a different life form. Let's get that out of the way. At the very least, continue to tremble in awe at how we members of the press get to mingle with So-and-So. Aren't we important? No, really. Aren't we?
Nevertheless, when I read this I was immediately convinced that I must write about Mr. Birnbaum, JBooks.com and the art of the interview, something Birnbaum is vastly better at than I (or at least, more practiced at).
Let us start with JBooks.com, or the online Jewish book community. It says that right under the logo, therefore I assume it to be an accurate description. Nextbook.org gets more press, I think because they refer to themselves as "a gateway to Jewish literature, culture & ideas." That sounds more interesting, but perhaps a bit less descriptive. Colorful, I think is the word I'd used.
JBooks.com, I think, should get more attention. This is due to its ease of use, better organization, and generally clearer content. I like book reviews, and I especially like ones that don't read like book reports. JBooks has those, lots of those. Self-referential essays on books (like the poorly written one you're currently reading) are not as much my cup of tea, though they're not bad. Nextbook has lots of those.
But what I like most about JBooks, and what I wish more places would engage in, is the capacity for using books as launching pads. Bar Mitzvah Disco (which will be getting a mention in our upcoming issue) is a fine piece of coffee table amusement, but it can (and should) be more than that. Enter Donald Weber, who writes an entire review of the book as a way to discuss the uncomfortable cultural niche of the bar and bat mitzvah in modern Jewish life. A book full of god-awful photos and half-baked essays by the self-annointed purveyors of Jewish hip is turned into an intellectually enriching discussion by an English professor.
I like English professors, academics in general. I like them more than self-important (and self-indulgent) "critics." JBooks has more of the former, less of the latter.
All of which brings me back, in some very poorly constructed way, to Mr. Birnbaum. He is a journalist, not so much the academic I am so fond of, but he belongs to a class of journalists (most of whom are now bottled up as literary journalists) that are either dying out or are condemned to live as a besieged minority churning out more than their fair share of cultural material. They're very Jewish that way.
He does interviews, which are more like conversations, and he does them in such a way that we're not finding out the dirty little secrets about the people being interviewed. We are instead learning the only thing that makes these people worth our time... their thoughts on actual subjects of import and interest.
Take for example Birnbaum's (Isadore's) answer about the tricks of his trade: "The only thing that is consistent about my talks is that I have at least read and familiarized myself with the most recent work that someone has done and when I am with that person I am quite enamored of them. I guess that kind of makes me like a hooker. Except that I am sincere."
You see that? Birnbaum reads enough to be able to turn a clever phrase himself. He's like a hooker, except sincere. That's good. That's the color, but it's not the point. Birnbaum gets this, which is why he goes above and beyond what you'd get from someone else, say your run of the mill celebrity-obsessed hack. He actually reads and invests time in the cultural contributions of his subjects.
Then he listens, and this, I suppose is what we interviewers do. We read, then we pay attention, and though we can turn a clever phrase we're not enamored of ourselves (too much, I swear). We're enamored of the people who do this better than we. So are our readers. It's a nice system.
Birnbaum gets this. He gets it so much that he concludes his own interview with a T.H. White quote: "The best thing for being sad...is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails."
This is the art of the interview, the art of literary review and cultural analysis. It is not the capacity to get a subject to cry on camera. Nor is it how good you are at engendering yourself to a celebrity, getting them to tell you something juicy that you can trumpet as printed gossip for money and minor fame. It is most certainly not to determine that which is cool, that which is hip and happening, and then tell others so they may follow after your trendsetting lead.
It is to learn, and then perhaps pass this learning onto others. What is the purpose then of writing and art if not to illuminate, and to give us the chance to do that which never fails? And we, the interviewers, the reviewers, and the writers who flock after this gift and try to drag an unwitting public along... we fail too often.
But I don't believe Mr. Birnbaum fails so much. I know this, because I read his interview.
(Robert Birnbaum, for those who are interested, is presently the Editor-at-Large of IdentityTheory.com, yet another example of cultural analysis as educational and good.)
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