RED IN TOOTH AND TYPE
ask: What's in it for me?
LONG interviews with personalities in the news — this week it's Jimmy Goldsmith are the top current fad in British journal- ism today. Indeed they are in danger of getting out of hand, with the star interview- er elbowing the subject out of the frame. The ideal interview, like good prose, should be a sheet of perfect glass, through which the person under scrutiny is seen clear and whole. The outstanding practi- tioner used to be John Freeman, whose Face to Face series still makes matchless viewing 30 years later. All you saw of John was a back view, and Kingsley Martin, who was fearfully jealous of John's celebrity, used to say, 'He is the only man who has ever made himself famous by turning his arse on the public.' Such self-effacement is rare nowadays, though one who comes close to it is Valerie Grove of the Sunday Times. This week she was getting a fine performance out of A. S. Byatt, whose selection as this year's Booker Prize winner goes some way (though not much) to justify the existence of this gruesome in- stitution, which has done more harm to English literature than anything since the Leavises. It is always a pleasure to enter the London Library and find Miss Byatt scribbling away, head bent industriously over her books. Mrs Grove, by simply listening and noting, brought out the subtle flavour of this civilised writer, who comes close to making Eng. Lit. Crit. intellectual- ly respectable. Another excellent inter- view, this time with Keith Waterhouse, was published in the Times Saturday Re- view. I could almost hear the old boy, who never says quite what you expect, holding forth, or rather muttering, but the inter- viewer, Candida Crewe, was invisible and unheard. That is as it should be.
With a heavyweight interviewer, of course, it is inevitable that his/her perso- nality will be felt, if only in the questions beginning 'But . . .'. That is what you expect, indeed want, from the Indepen- dent's Terry Coleman, whose highly origin- al mind, attacking topics from oblique angles, makes him Britain's best interview- er today. What I object to is the type who begins (in effect): 'I am the famous inter- viewer, and what have we on the menu
today? Oh---ugh!' The archetype of this approach is Lynn Barber, also of the Independent, who is said to be the journal- ist most admired by the younger genera- tion. If so flattery has pushed her over the top. Last week she was upstaging Kirk Douglas by pretending to go to sleep. If she finds him dull, why interview him? This week she was telling us that Frank Warren had sued her for libel, but that she had forgiven him, sent him a get-well card when he was shot, etc. I knew about the shooting and that he had something to do with boxing but we were 1,200 words into the interview before Miss Barber told me exactly who he was.
With feminine needle at work, the inter- view itself is liable to become the issue. I can't now recall a word of the notorious chat Barbara Amiel of the Times had with Germaine Greer, but Miss Greer's riposte in the Independent Magazine was a minor classic of scorned-woman fury. Why must clever, likeable ladies have such rows? Miss Amiel has a fresh line of comment about almost everything, and I could listen again and again to her account of how her parents abandoned her when she was 14 it is the best thing since David Copperfield. So I found Miss Greer's account of her '1 still feel pretty secure. I'm the seventeenth man.' behaviour during the interview unrecognis- able. Greer's mind is first-rate and on most literary topics she has more illuminating things to say than anyone I have heard since C. S. Lewis. How, then, can she stoop so low as to accuse Miss Amiel of having big feet? Supposing I were to write that she conjures up for me, as she does, the handsome but heroically embattled figure of the wife of an ex-convict living in Paramatta, circa 1820? She would rightly .dismiss this as a piece of sexist impudence. So is not sauce for the chauvinist gander sauce for the feminist goose?
Miss Greer says she only agreed to be interviewed by Miss Amiel in the first place because she was under pressure from her publisher, and that as a result of it he will not put pressure on her any more. That, dear lady, is a cop-out. Writers are just as keen on peddling their wares as publishers. I don't recall Lord Weidenfeld ever having been obliged to twist my arm to submit to journalistic interrogation, though I am very careful indeed about whom I allow across the threshold. There are some oper- ators who are not interested in your books at all and are simply looking for an opportunity to attack an exposed flank. Foreigners, in my experience, cause little trouble. I have had a lot recently, mainly from Spanish-speaking countries, Italy, Scandinavia, etc. They are often pretty young women, very polite — one might almost say gushing — and agreeably uncri- tical, and they dispose of what seems enormous amounts of space. It is true they sometimes ask difficult questions: 'Who would you say, Senor Johnson, is the most significant post-Peronist president of Argentina? Please give reasons.' There are occasional culture gaps too, especially with the Japanese. One journalist from Tokyo said he was particularly interested in my views on Larrup. It was not quite as funny as Kingsley Amis's account of getting to conversational grips with his Japanese translator, but the interview had its mo- ments, as we roamed over Larrupean unity, the Larrupean Community and re- lated topics. He may have been taking the mickey, but I doubt it. It is only in the English-speaking world that being inter- viewed is like entering a minefield. My advice to any celebrity, be he pop-star or racing-driver, is to ask himself a simple question: What's in it for me? If the answer is: Nothing except vanity, then refuse. I took a risk myself this summer when I agreed to be put In the Psychiatrist's Chair by Dr Anthony Clare. Friends begged me not to. But I made a careful calculation that if I could get in plugs for, say, two of my books and keep the rest of the con- versation mainly on religion, the operation would just be worth it. And so it proved. But I would not recommend it to all. The Doctor is no fool. As for exposing oneself to A. N. Wilson or Miss Barber, they are the Scylla and Charybdis of reputational oblivion.
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