Pioneering Over Four Epochs

Joseph Pulitzer, the chief popularizer of the interview in America in the late nineteenth century, in a memo to his senior staff at the New York World impressed on them the importance of giving a vivid, striking, pen sketch of the person being interviewed as well as the domestic environment: wife, children, pets, etc. Perhaps this was because Pulitzer was blind. For generations used to TV, videos and endless photographs it may be even more important to provide such a picture for print media.

Price had grown remarkably grey in the last five years, since his late forties. And had gained weight to some 200 lbs on a six foot frame, after spending most of his life at 160 lbs. He said the weight did not bother him as much as it did his wife, or even his nineteen year old son, Daniel, who occasionally remarked on his over-weight ‘paunchy’ frame. So he spent no time sliming. He did spend a good deal of time reading and writing, most weekends and evenings, except when involved in teaching at a post-secondary college, in Thornlie Western Australia, attending some Baha’i function in the Belmont Baha’i community or some family activity or outing like a movie, a TV program, or a walk in a garden or the bush.

By the time of this sixth interview, his household had no pets. The family cat,Tom, which he and his wife and son had had for a decade or more had died. It was not replaced. The house, built in the early 1950s and purchased for $54,000 in 1988, was now worth, perhaps, $150,000, enough to make an early retirement possible in two years or so, at the age of 55. Christine, his wife, although not enamoured of domestic tasks, provided a comfortable home and garden. At the time of this interview Daniel was writing an examination in Mechanical Engineering at Curtin University and Chris(Tina to her family) was watching TV and reading. A mathematics and science teacher in secondary school, Chris had raised her three children and read a lot of books.

George Urban said in an interview with Marvin Lasky(published in Encounter, March 1989) that interviews are crude because the ‘yes-no’ mode of communication imposes constraints, indeed a whole defining framework. The question and answer style limits what can be covered and how.

Well there is no question about the limitations of the interview format. It does not possess the advantages of the essay, the novel, the poem, the non-fiction book. Every genre of writing possesses advantages and disadvantages over other genres. A book, for example, has always seemed remote from my abilities and interests. There is a wholesome rigour and vigour in the interview which more leisurely and expansive narratives, historical or autobiographical, cannot always match. Many readers in modern society like their print in bite-size chunks. The interview serves up these chunks quite easily with a vivid quality and, in some cases, an abiding interest. I like the size of the essay and I’ve written 150 to 200. It would come second, with poetry, in my hierarchy of genre preferences. For the last year and a half I’ve had a certain obsession with the interview form and with the poem. You need to be obsessed with the medium to put pen to paper to the extent I have. Have you ever heard of anyone interviewing themselves?

The interview was ‘invented’ in the late 1850s.(The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day, Christopher Silvester, editor, Viking Press, London, 1993, p. 1) It has been used increasingly in western society by all sorts of people. Could you comment further on how you react to the interview and to its value to contemporary society?

Some people obviously feel the interview takes away some of their soul, a bit like some indigenous peoples regard the photograph as stealing away their soul. V.S. Naipaul emphasizes the wounding process of interviews and Lewis Carroll of Alice and Wonderland fame had a horror of interviews. I am used to having persistent petitioners in my life in the form of students. They’ve been there for nearly thirty years now. The interviewing ordeal, as H.G. Wells called it, is something I face every working day. Sometimes I have approached it with trepidation. Honesty is an important force in speech as is moderation, if it is to exert an influence. I find I have to play the continuum from a moderate middle to a provocative honesty. You can’t give too much of yourself away. On the other hand, the interview, one person asking another questions, gives the interviewer unprecedented power and influence. One of the reasons I have given these interviews in this form, that is me writing them out, determining the questions and the answers in a controlled fashion, is to alter the power relationship more equitably. I try to make the interview as conversational as possible. Instead of the interviewer being the private secretary, as W.T. Stead a popularizer of interviews in England in the 1880s put it, I have become my own private secretary. I also think the interview is easy to understand.

of war and game. Anyone being interviewed accepts this reality or stays out of the kitchen, so to speak. I have stage-managed these interviews partly because I regard the process as important and I want to be as involved, as engaged, as Fallaci; indeed I want to be one step ahead of her because I am in love with myself, as anyone must be if they are to be capable of loving others. I see life in terms of the war metaphor. Coitus I find very exciting but, unfortanately or fortunately as the case may be, I have to limit it within the confines of a marital relationship. Most of the time, therefore, I must exercise control over my lustful and erotic urges. Sublimating them in the form of interviews and other legitimate forms of expression is, of course, okay.

Ron Price