Ursula K. Le Guin: By the Book | Hacker News Reader

Ursula K. Le Guin: By the Book

nytimes.com

37 pointssamclemens20 comments

BBC's Radio 4 did a feature to celebrate her 85th birthday back in April this year:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pkmyg

That may be the worst author interview I've ever read.

And sadly, such a wasted opportunity with such a terrific author. Of all the interesting question the columnist could have asked, sigh.

fun times.

Good god that was uninteresting.

If you really want to botch an interview and bend over backwards to not ask any pertaining (or even interesting) question, this is the way to go. NYT, I want my time back.

What a cringe-worthy interview. It's clear the interviewer is asking from a set list of (stunningly boring) questions, and despite Le Guin answering nearly every question with "please ask a more interesting question", the interviewer doesn't waver.

Sadly I agree. Le Guin is a remarkable talent but the interviewer asked stock questions, nothing tailored to her. Some interviewees might find a way to turn that into something interesting, but it just seems like Le Guin and those questions did not find any common ground.

Pretty sure it was a standard list of questions - perhaps emailed.

Still, she is one of my favorite writers so it's interesting to read what she likes reading.

I would like to think it was certainly emailed because I can't imagine a live interviewer getting those kind of answers and continuing in that vein; I really want to assume the only way that could have happened was if there was no real back-and-forth between the interviewer and the interviewed.

It's a standard thing NYT does and it's pretty obvious that the questions are pre-written and sent as a batch.

http://www.nytimes.com/column/by-the-book

Alas, what a lazy approach. An opportunity wasted.

I don't think that's fair. It's one of several standard types of interview, and legit in its own right, as long as one doesn't confuse it with the others. It's not like Ursula Le Guin hasn't done plenty of face-to-face interviews too.

> It's one of several standard types of interview

Except it's not actually an interview. Call it a Q&A or something if you like, but "interview" implies back-and-forth conversation.

That's fair enough re my usage of the word, but the article never calls itself an interview, and the point that this is a well-known standard format holds. Let's not dismiss things for shallow reasons.

More appropriate to call it a questionnaire than an interview.

Exactly. See The Paris Review's interview with Ursula K. Le Guin for a comparison: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6253/the-art-of-fic...

Thank you for the link, that's an informative piece.

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