Enough About Me #19: In Which the Author and Proud Owner of a New Website Gives a Mediocre Performance at an Interview, and Considers the Author's Responsibility for Creating a Good Interview

Plus: Tip Sheet for Assignment Editors: The Best Author Interviews Out There

At the end of an eventful week, which included the launch of my author website (I have finally entered the 21st century at a highly cyber imaginative address), the announcement that the paperback of Crossing California has gone into its second printing, plus a weeklong visit from the in-laws, I ambled down to Café La Fortuna for an interview and photo session for a feature in the weekend edition of a daily metropolitan newspaper. Having spent enough time at the other end of the microphone conducting interviews with authors, artists and assorted crackpots from a wide variety of professions, I should be reasonably prepared for a fairly standard discussion of my forthcoming novel, but on this occasion, I spend so much time asking questions of the interviewer that the conversation ends with me wondering if I've managed to say anything substantive at all.

The conventional wisdom is that the responsibility for the quality of an interview falls squarely upon the journalist, but if this session hasn't gone as well as it could have, it's pretty much my fault; I have either rambled instead of responded or relied upon canned quotes that I could recite in my sleep. As much as the interviewer must ask questions or provide discussion points that inspire or intrigue his or her subject, it is the subject's job to be open and generous enough for an original and unpredictable conversation. It's pretty obvious what an interviewer can do to screw up an interview?fail to read the book (or be unable to fake it), ask questions directly from the press materials, rely on a prepared list of topics and refuse to let a conversation take its natural course. But are there things that an interviewee can do to make sure that an interview goes smoothly, or dreadfully? Unfortunately for me, the answer seems to be yes.

Douglas Wolk, a journalist and critic who has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Slate, Blender and just about everywhere else, says that the best interviewees are those who are unscripted, who can digress, and who "have some kind of theoretical perspective on what they do, and can explain it."

"The worst are people who try to answer questions as briefly as possible," Wolk adds. "We're happy to sift through everything you say to find the interesting stuff. You don't have to give us a yes or no."

"The only good interview is a lively, unpremeditated conversation," says Robert Campbell, architecture critic for the Boston Globe. "The worst is a Q&A session with the interviewee measuring every word."

Misha Berson, author and theater