Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing

INTRODUCTION

The interviewers I fear most are the ones who’ve read what the publisher’s PR people say about your book, along with some handy pull quotes. They read one of these aloud and say in a sincere voice, “Now, tell us more about what you said here.”

Such interviewers get on well with celebrities who have written a book. It doesn’t matter if the celebrity didn’t actually write the book, since the interviewer hasn’t actually read it. All that’s wanted is a sound bite.

“Tell us more about this” may also work with serious authors whose book contains information or a message they’re eager to repeat in order to make sure it gets delivered.

But it fails with authors who have worked hard to put something complicated into words as well as they possibly can. They’re happy to hear what they said read aloud, but not happy with the implication that it needs to be said differently or better. “What you wrote about the nightingale is so interesting, Mr. Keats, please tell us more?”

I’ve been fortunate enough to meet the polar opposite of this uninformed interviewer. A couple of sessions with Bill Moyers set my permanent standard of The Good Interview. It’s the one you wish could go on. It’s a conversation between people who have thought about what they’re talking about, and are thinking about it now in the light of what the other person is saying. This leads each of them to say things that they may be just discovering. They may not agree, may even have quite fundamental disagreements, but such differences, spoken and answered without belligerence, can take the conversation to a high level of intensity and honesty.

By now I know within a question or two whether we’re heading for frustration or reward. If the signs of doom are clear, going on with it is hard work for both of us. I think, “How am I supposed to answer that?” while the interviewer thinks, “Oh god, another ten seconds of silence and then she says, Um.”

The good interview is like a good badminton rally: you know right away that the two of you can keep that birdie in the air, and all you have to do is watch it fly.

Facing each other for the first time in one of KBOO’s lovable, terminally funky recording rooms, David and I were a bit stiff and shy, but we soon got going, and I knew our bird was on the wing.

As a novelist I can talk and do talk shamelessly about fiction, but am shy and amateurish speaking as a poet. People who talk about poetry are usually talking to other poets, and Other Poets are a demanding, fiercely opinionated, often adversarial lot. They can be clannish, too. On performance nights at writing workshops, I’ve sat with prose writers listening intently as the poets read; when it was the prose writers’ turn to read, the poets all got up and left. And then there’s a kind of Poetspeak that goes with the territory, but which is not my language. All in all, I was nervous about the poetry interview with David. But that lasted no time. Nothing cures nervousness quicker than getting interested in the conversation.

Having to talk about my nonfiction scares me in a different way. I fear the interviewer is going to discuss the influence on my work of Schopenhauer, or Wittgenstein, or Theodor Adorno, none of whom I have ever read; or will demand my opinion of queer theory, or string theory; or instruct me to tell the audience what Taoism is; or (likeliest of all) will ask me about The Future of Mankind. That I know the immensity of my ignorance doesn’t mean I like to display it. I’m grateful to an interviewer who respects the limits of my learning and my intellect, and who doesn’t require me to act the Oracle of Delphi.

And every now and then I meet one who realizes that what I really like to do is talk shop.

David likes talking shop too. So that’s what we did.

I want to thank KBOO for letting us do it. And for being for fifty years the strongest consistent voice in Oregon of and for the arts and the freedom and generosity of thought. While America is busy tearing itself apart into factions with rant, lies, and mindless violence, it’s in voices like this that you can hear—if you listen—what may yet hold us together.