Why Authors do Interviews

And why some novelists hate them

My latest video explores whether Dua Lipa is our greatest interviewer of novelists. In it, I send the pop star on a Mortal Kombat like journey through the literary landscape, where she must battle with podcasters and Oprah and Jimmy Fallon. Shout out to my wife for helping me find that hook.

Originally, the video wasn’t about Dua Lipa at all. It was about why authors do interviews and why we tune into them. Let’s dive into this topic without repeating much from the video.

The Novel Should Stand on Its Own

The strongest adherent of this opinion doesn’t give interviews. Meet Thomas Pynchon.

Elena Ferrante gives a very occasional email interview, but believes, “books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.”

Next on this spectrum are novelists like Sally Rooney and Jonathan Franzen. They spend time in their interviews complaining about the point of the interviews. To them, a literary interview is (usually) stupid. It’s something you do because your publisher begs you to. Or, in the case of Franzen, maybe you like hearing yourself speak more than you’re willing to admit. But both agree: The novel should stand on its own.

The interview is no place for the novelist to clarify themes, to explain context or backstory. If the novel needed those things, they would have added them to the novel!

Interviews Are Boring

As unattractive as their complaints may be, they have a good point. Add to that way most interviewers parade out the same questions:

• What is this book about?

• Where did the idea come from?

• What does the title mean?

• Why did you write this book and not some other book?

• What’s next?

These questions are so predictable that most authors prepare answers in advance, tweaking them slightly each time.

Here is Paul Auster promoting his Book of Illusions on Fresh Air in 2002:

“I noticed right around the age of 50 that something started to change inside me… So many people who I’ve loved or who have loved me are dead. You find yourself talking to ghosts.”

Here is Auster on Charlie Rose the same year:

“Your view of the world begins to change right around 50… a lot of the people you’ve loved are dead… you’re walking around with ghosts in your head.”

Of course authors do this. There’s nothing wrong with it. As viewers/readers/listeners we want the why of the book. We don’t want the answer to “where did the idea come from?” to be:

“I did an analysis of topics that sold well and the result is Book of Illusions.”

But the more these interviews hew to the same obvious questions, the more repetitive the interviews become. But, wait a minute, who cares if they’re repetitive? Why is this a problem?

Is the Interview a Commercial?

We don’t get mad at Bernie and Phyl’s for putting their jingle (“Quality, Comfort and Price. That’s Nice!”) in every commercial. We expect it. (Yes, I could have picked a national brand, but the jingle emerged in my brain first and I must reward its catchiness.)

Is that the purpose of an author interview? Alert the public that a new product is available for purchase at the low-low price of… $32?

Yes. Sure. And yet... This is not why I watch interviews with novelists. To me, an interview with an author is a bad way to discover what book to read next. Sure, maybe a beloved author’s presence alerts you that they have something new you want to check out, but it doesn’t require an interview to do that.

Interviews are Bad for Choosing What to Read

Novels are strange beasts. It’s very difficult to describe the plot of your novel in a way that inspires genuine interest in the person you’re talking to. Trust me, I’ve tried.

“What’s your novel about?”

“An uncle who goes into a VR game to try and find his lost nephew.”

“Oh. That sounds interesting.”

This is always the best you’ll get. That sounds interesting. Notice they’ll never say, “that is interesting!” It always sounds interesting. This means it MIGHT be interesting. But it might not. Cuz I might botch a promising hook. If the strength of a book was purely in its hook, then Moby Dick would be nothing, and we’d all bow before the new airport thriller about the twin who tricks his twin’s wife into poisoning the first twin. Or something.

All that to say that it’s hard for an author to sell their book by describing the premise. (The big exception to this is if they’re in a genre like Romance where the readers decide what to read based on how the novels tropes line up with their personal trope wishlist.)

I think many of my favorite books are lessened when I try to describe their basic plot in a sentence or two. The same would be true if someone asked me to sum up my wife's personality in two sentences.

So if interviews aren’t ideal for deciding what book to read next, what are they good for? For me I’m looking for two qualities:

1. Is this Author Legendary?

When I finish a novel that I loved, I don’t want it to be over. I want to go hunt more information. And ultimately, I want a sense of whether this author seems amazing. It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I’ll love a book and go watch an interview with the author and think, “ok. Great book. Not insightful interview.” But what I’m really chasing are the writers whose intellects span far beyond the novels they wrote. Who have interesting things to say about almost anything. Elif Batuman. Eleanor Catton. Hernan Diaz. R.F. Kuang. George Saunders. Zadie Smith. I could listen to interviews with these folks for days.

Hearing them speak confirms my hunch. Their novels are the products of curious, strange, powerful minds. They didn’t stumble onto greatness. Their great novel was no lucky accident.

And it works the other way too. I felt that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was a YA novel with big vocab words. Listening to interviews with Gabrielle Zevin did not change my mind.

2. What Does This Author Have to Say About the Culture?

Franzen likes this kind of interview. The kind that doesn’t ask bout his work (which needs no elaboration), but asks his take on something in the world. This is risky. Most authors don’t have smart takes on everything. For this kind of interview, my pantheon is:

• Zadie Smith

• Elif Batuman

• David Foster Wallace (whose fiction I’ve barely read)

I don’t always agree with them. I like when I don’t. It proves I actually have opinions, which is nice. Sometimes I feel I don’t.

I always like watching their brains work. Here is David Foster Wallace talking about Blue Velvet:

Here is Zadie Smith talking about fashion (and more).

Here is Elif Batuman talking about Kafka and Mox Brod as Laurel and Hardy. OK, this one is not an interview. It’s a talk.

I wish more interviews with novelists were modeled on the innumerable podcasts with comedians. Give them some topic sentences and let them riff. I don’t need to know why Elanor Catton named the book Birnam Wood. If she picked a great title (which she did) we should be able to figure it out for ourselves.

Then again...

Most of us don’t have the privilege of studying these books in college. We’re reading them quickly, in between changing the baby’s diapers and checking the box score. Is it really so bad if we want the author to help us unpack the novel a little? After all, they know the novel better than anyone else.

Great novels are the result of a mighty effort. And learning the contours of that effort can help us understand just what the novel is and wants to be.

Cheers!