Mark Twain is one of the most quotable of American writers, especially on the subject of writing. Two of my favorites: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” And: “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
What I didn’t know until now is that Twain was also an expert on being interviewed and he didn’t much like it.
In an unpublished, unfinished essay, Concerning the Interview, now available online for the first time, Twain compares the attitude of interviewers to that of a cyclone “which comes with the gracious purpose of cooling off a sweltering village, and is not aware, afterward, that it has done that village anything but a favor.”
Twain complains that interviewers can’t tell the difference between a good quote and worthless drivel:
He doesn’t know when you are delivering metal from when you are shoveling out slag, he can’t tell dirt from ducats; it’s all one to him, he puts in everything you say; then he sees, himself, that it is but green stuff and wasn’t worth saying, so he tries to mend it by putting in something of his own which he thinks is ripe, but in fact is rotten. True, he means well, but so does the cyclone.
And that’s not all. Twain says interviewers never stick to any one subject long enough to learn much of interest. “Generally, you have got out just enough of your statement to damage you; you never get to the place where you meant to explain and justify your position.” The interview, says Twain, is not a happy invention. In his view, “It is perhaps the poorest of all ways of getting at what is in a man.”
Sounds like Mark Twain was never interviewed by a journalist who was any good at it. A gifted interviewer can learn all sorts of things the subject may not even have wanted to divulge. And it’s worth remembering that Twain’s essay was written around 1890, when yellow journalism was on the rise. Still, it’s a treat–and a little humbling–to read this American icon’s take on one of the central tasks of our craft.
Want to hear more about Twain’s essay? Here’s NPR’s Scott Simon, discussing the art and aggravation of the interview with the writer Calvin Trillin, another humorist from Missouri. Enjoy!
2 Comments
Can’t find the link to the Scott Simon interview. Aggravating!
The audio file is embedded in the post, Brent. Perhaps it’s not showing up in your browser? In any case, I’ve just added a link to the NPR page so you can hear it there instead.