In “The Art of the Interview,” season three of the podcast The Critic and Her Publics, Merve Emre speaks with writers, editors, psychoanalysts, and other professional interviewers to ask them about the art of conversation and the work of asking questions. The Review is collaborating with Lit Hub to publish transcripts and recordings of each episode.
Below, we’ve collected the first four episodes of the season—featuring discussions with an editor from This American Life, a novelist, a journalist, and a psychoanalyst. The rest of the season will be published over the next four weeks.
Orna Guralnik
Listening for the Unconscious
“One of the things that needs to happen for a real psychoanalytic interview to take shape is for the patient to feel themselves becoming rehumanized in the process of talking to the clinician, which is no simple task. What you try to do as a psychoanalyst when you’re interviewing is turn your ear to listen for things that are different than a regular conversation. You’re listening for the unconscious.”
Read the full interview here.
Sarah Stillman
People Want to Be Heard
“It’s complex reporting terrain when people have reasons to feel afraid of telling their stories, and a lot of the process is figuring out who’s in a safe position to talk, and who wants to talk. And these women really wanted their stories to be known.”
Read the full interview here.
Sheila Heti
Consulting the Oracle
“It’s interesting to think about the relationship between interviewing a person and talking to an oracle, because I was interested in doing interviews initially because I thought people were oracles, and I was using them that way. I had this feeling every time I did an interview, that I would learn the meaning of life from this person, and I would figure out how to make art and live. Once I no longer had that faith, I didn’t enjoy doing interviews anymore, and I stopped.”
Read the full interview here.
Chana Joffe-Walt
The Best Tape You Can Get
“The part of interviewing that feels natural to me is being interested in other people and being an observer. I have always liked watching people, wondering who they are, what they’re thinking about, what their lives are like. As an adult, I have become more enraged by things that hurt other people’s experience of the world. Vulnerable people, in particular.”
Read the full interview here.
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