Subject:
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Re: How to conduct an interview and not actually listen
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 20 Aug 2001 22:20:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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249 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> > > Her statement on page two that "I don't want to know if
> > > the book he wrote is so different than the beautiful one I read" is
> > > fantastic, since it crystalizes the truth that an author's intent is
> > > separate from his finished work. (I'd go on, but I can hear everyone snoring
> > > already...)
> >
> > It would have been better if she had more clearly stated what book it was
> > she actually perceived it as.
>
> Interesting. She does kind of reveal that she perceived it as a layering
> of abused child/martial state/cycle-of-victimization sort of thing, but she
> doesn't really put her cards on the table, even to her readers.
Right.
Plus I think that by coming to the conclusion that THIS is what the book is
about, she exposes her inability to think outside the boundaries of what she
herself is interested in. As I said in my reply to Dan, in my view, the book
is about a much more profound moral decision than those issues.
Not to denigrate child abuse as being an unimportant moral issue, mind you,
but racial survival just seems somehow more *profound* to me. She totally
missed that as being what the book is about. And when Card tried to explain
it to her (not very well, I suppose) she just continued on with her
preconceived notions, rejecting the idea that an author might well have had
some overt question he wanted to pose, and in the process pigeonholing Card
as a bunch of things that he isn't (as well as, to her credit, exposing a
few that he appears to be)
Hence, a failure even by the modified "not exactly a normal interview"
standards you posit. A success only as a diatribe vehicle, and even then,
only with those who are not critical thinkers enough to see it for what it
was, a distortive one at that.
> > If she really truly wanted to explain what was going on, perhaps an aural
> > interview wasn't the way to go, but rather something written down with
> > multiple exchanges (kind of what we are doing here). This may actually be the
> > exception to the rule that direct communication is better than written...
>
> My boy Philip Dick conducted several of that kind of interview during his
> life, and they're entertaining to read for exactly the reasons you imply.
> We get to see a more balanced and rational development of his ideas (and the
> interviewer's) over the course of the correspondence.
Roger that.
++Lar
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