Interview: rob mclennan

rob mclennan in Philadelphia, photo by Stephen BrockwellJulienne Isaacs: You’ve conducted an extraordinary number of interviews with writers. Why is the literary interview, as a form, important to you? What does it do that other literary forms do not, or do not do as well?rob mclennan: A good interview can’t help but provide insight into the work that can be quite different than what might be possible through close reading or someone else’s review or essay on the same work. And yet: there might be things the author is unaware of or blind to. It certainly isn’t a blanket catch-all for perfect insight, but it can allow some great moments.Julienne Isaacs: It strikes me that the literary interview is often overlooked as a legitimate literary form—maybe it’s seen as a means to an end (getting information from writers) versus a craft that requires a great deal of research and time. Do you agree? What factors contribute to this?rob mclennan: I don’t see the form as one that is overlooked. Take, for example, the wealth of interviews over at The Paris Review. I think the form allows for both gathering information and craft; one has to craft worthy questions, after all, that are thoughtful, meaningful, and pertain to what the work is actually doing. A good or great interview requires an attentive listener, able to pick up on tidbits or threads that might be half-buried within a given response. There are the obvious directions that some interviews move in, and then there are those that respond to the minutiae, asking: wait, what was that?If the interview is going to ask nothing more than what has already been asked of the author, why bother? I hope to facilitate a possibility for something unique.Julienne Isaacs: I find “writing process” questions endlessly fascinating—because every writer either has a unique process, or eschews “process.” Why do you continue to find these questions productive (you must, or you would not continue to ask them)?rob mclennan: I would find the suggestion of an outright dismissal of “process” rather suspect, given that every piece of writing that exists is constructed. There are ways in which we approach and build writing that are entirely different from each other, as varied as our original reasons for writing (and what we hope to achieve through such). I am interested in those differences; sometimes the articulation of differences allows me a deeper entry into a particular author’s work, and even a different way to potentially approach my own work.The purpose is to understand, isn’t it? A deeper appreciation and enjoyment can’t help but come through a deeper comprehension. Julienne Isaacs, veteran Crier interviewerJulienne Isaacs: What is your writing process for literary interviews? Do you conduct interviews by email, telephone, or in person? Do you read other writers’ interviews for inspiration (or for pleasure) when preparing your own? Do you draft?rob mclennan: I’ve always hated transcribing (I really haven’t the patience), so the bulk of the interviews I’ve done have been over email. I do actually look at other interviews occasionally when looking to craft new questions, as I don’t want to simply ask the same variety of questions ad nauseam. Vancouver poet and critic Donato Mancini is entirely correct when he says that critics require to routinely shift their perspectives when attempting to discuss new writing.That being said, the “12 or 20 questions” series is obviously a specific project designed as a meme; the original questions took about a week to draft before I began querying writers in August 2007. What becomes really interesting after posting so many is seeing the variation within the form; Anne Boyer, for example, recently refreshed the entire project in the most remarkable way.I still mourn the loss of a tape-recorded interview I did with Nicole Brossard in the mid-1990s; I had passed along the cassette to my ex-wife to transcribe (given the occasional bits of French included, I could never have done so myself), and she managed to misplace it. Brossard and I had talked at length about translation, and the fact that I was reading her work in a language other than the one her books were composed in. I asked about what kind of ownership or kinship she was even able to feel about her books translated into languages she couldn’t read; were they still her books?The other interviews I’ve done, such as the mound of interviews over at Touch the Donkey, do have a bit of overlap to the questions, but the questions are asked one at a time, instead of the single unit of the “12 or 20 questions.” I often spend a day or two sitting on an answer before I manage to craft a subsequent question.Each interview has a specific focus: the “12 or 20 questions” is a general meme; the Touch the Donkey interviews focus initially on the poems included in that particular issue before spreading out, briefly, across the length of that author’s other work; and my other interviews tend to focus on an author’s most recent published work before, again, spreading out across the length of their other work (from the previously published to what might lie ahead).As far as drafts, all but the “12 or 20 questions” interviews, once completed, are returned as a single file for the author to go through and make the required edits or corrections (with the occasional suggestion by myself). Once the author returns the updated file, we call that the “final version.”I haven’t yet attempted any longer-form kind of interview, such as what George Bowering did many moons ago in his issue of Open Letter (Fourth Series, No. 3: Spring 1979; “Three Vancouver Writers”: interviews with Audrey Thomas, Daphne Marlatt and Frank Davey): spending months interviewing three different authors on everything it is they have done, are doing, and might someday do. The scope of such interviews is massive, enviable, and impossible for me at the moment, given I’m full-time with our toddler, Rose.Julienne Isaacs: How much is the success of a “good” literary interview dependent on the interviewer, and how much on the writer being interviewed?rob mclennan: I’ve read interviews that have included great answers to mediocre questions, but there is always so much wasted potential to those mediocre questions. It limits what the interview can accomplish. At the same time, certain authors simply interview terrible; some things can’t always be helped.Julienne Isaacs: You publish multiple interviews per week on your blog and elsewhere. In what ways is this continued attention to the work and perspectives of other writers via interviews productive for your own writing?rob mclennan: I touched on this in an earlier response. I tend to multi-task relatively well, and am often moving in multiple directions at once, which means I’ve also required a great deal of new input. New books, chapbooks, and journals arrive in the mail daily, and have now for more than two decades. There is so much still to absorb.Julienne Isaacs: Finally, a question for you in this role as a perpetual “absorber” of others’ literary output. When you’re reading literary interviews, what delights you? What annoys you? Can you point to some examples of literary interviews around the web that push the form in interesting ways?rob mclennan: I always hate the interviews where it is clear that the interviewer hasn’t nearly enough knowledge of the work of their subject. I was once asked by a student the dreaded “Do you like writing?”—a question that confused and angered me. Given I’ve produced so much work, if I didn’t enjoy the writing process, would that presume me some kind of masochist? Is my entire writing output one of penance? Bah.There are three interviews that have struck me recently.Carrie Olivia Adams in Michigan Quarterly Review: I wasn’t entirely sure how to enter her new collection, Operating Theater, and this provided me with an entry point. I’ve loved everything I’d seen of her prior work, but the structure of this new collection made me hesitate. She’s working far and above most of her peers.Etgar Keret in Guernica Magazine: The deep humanity of such a brilliantly talented prose writer can’t help but simply shine through his every utterance.Anne Boyer in Harriet, the blog of the Poetry Foundation, conducted by Amy King: Amy King is sharp as hell, and Anne Boyer is simply and uniquely brilliant, so there’s no reason why this interview wouldn’t be equally so.In today’s mail came the book-length Eyewitness: From Black Mountain to White Rabbit: Carolyn Dunn interviewed by Kevin Killian (Granary Books, 2015) I’m eager to get into this.rob mclennan is an Ottawa-based writer, editor, publisher and critic. He has published 30 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, most recently The Uncertainty Principle: stories (2014, Chaudiere Books), notes and dispatches: essays (2014, Insomniac Press) and the poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (2014, BuschekBooks). He runs the interview series “12 or 20 Questions” on his blog, and regularly posts interviews at Touch the Donkey and elsewhere. Julienne Isaacs is a Winnipeg writer. Her reviews and interviews have appeared in The Globe & Mail, CV2, Full Stop, [PANK], and The Humber Literary Review. She is a staff writer for The Puritan and an editor at The Winnipeg Review.