She listens and gets the goods

In the land of the sound bite, the extended interview is king. As an antidote to “gotcha” journalism, to the lament that one’s quotes were “taken out of context,” a Q-and-A session, not too badly mauled by aggressive editors or impatient producers, can be a tonic. On television, we’ve cut our teeth on Mike Wallace’s interrogations; blubbered along with Oprah Winfrey’s and Barbara Walters’ sob fests; witnessed Tim Russert’s Sunday cross-examinations; and implored Charlie Rose to please, please get to the point of his question. In print, we’ve had Studs Terkel’s classic “Working” and such magazine formats as George Plimpton’s literary chats in the Paris Review, the long-running Playboy interviews and, later, those in Rolling Stone.

On radio, home of a million yammering talk nuts, an oasis of calm is Terry Gross, of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air.” In her annotated collection, “All I Did Was Ask,” she has gathered nearly 40 of her interview subjects from the arts and entertainment fields; those are the ones she says hold up best over time. So we encounter conversations with the likes of John Updike, Johnny Cash, Uta Hagen, Mickey Spillane, Mario Puzo, Paul Schrader, Albert Brooks, Larry Rivers, Dennis Hopper, Eric Clapton, Grandmaster Flash, Dustin Hoffman and James Baldwin. A fun bunch, for sure, but reading all of them at one sitting could probably cause showbiz whiplash. Presumably they all played well on air, so the question being asked here is, how do they read? (Disclosure: I once assigned Gross a print interview for a magazine I was editing. It didn’t work out.)

For more than 25 years, Gross’ gentle, civilized grilling of a wide assortment of notables has been a staple of the radio network’s programming. Her style, which is to do a lot of homework, ask questions that actually follow up on the answers and keep things friendly, has become instantly recognizable to a generation of drivers seeking surcease from road rage or accidental exposure to Rush Limbaugh. You know Gross’ voice when you hear it -- soft, curious and quick with a laugh that seems more often genuine amusement than polite response. She is generally not confrontational.

As she says in her introduction, she interviews most of her guests via satellite or phone lines, without ever seeing them. “If you’re a bit of a coward, as I am,” she writes, “it’s easier to ask a challenging question when you’re not looking someone in the eye -- you can’t be intimidated by a withering look.” Gross claims she gets greater intimacy by being geographically separated from them because she’s shy and neither she nor her subject have to worry about “being self-conscious.” OK, but being put off by scowls wouldn’t take you far in TV or in print.

Nor, in theory, would her admission that she allows her nonpolitical guests to “set the rules on what’s private and therefore off-limits.” She also encourages people to take advantage of the interviews’ being taped and edited for broadcast, so that they can rephrase answers or delete false starts. “I suspect that some of the journalists I look up to would take issue with me over this practice, but I’m doing radio -- if an answer isn’t clear, it’s unusable.” OK, though it’s true that publicity flacks’ demands are the bane of TV and print journalists, and interviews are regularly sliced and spliced in the editing room, it’s usually the journalist, not the subject, who decides what to cut. To Gross’ credit, she spells out her procedures in full, and that’s more than many journalists do.

So how are Gross’ interviews, by the volume? Well, it depends on whom she talks to. With writers such as Updike, who speak in something like the prose they write, it can make for absorbing reading:

T.G.: While you were writing about the middle class, the middle class went crazy. People were doing drugs and drinking a lot. Marriages were breaking up.... Was this an interesting time to be writing about the middle class?

Updike: We were a little old for the revolution. By this time we were parents of small children, four in my case. I suppose there was a general wish to join in the fun. So we had our own little sexual revolution ... which took the unhappy form of divorce, often.... But yes, I wrote about couples. Trying to describe this generation, for which the various faiths, patriotic and religious, had faded, and for whom, unlike today, their professions offered no deep diversion.

Or Mario Puzo, in 1996:

T.G.: What do think it is about [the “Godfather” novel and movies] that make people connect with them in such a powerful way?

Puzo: Well, it’s a story with warm personal family feeling, and I think it’s everybody’s wish to have somebody they could go to who would correct all their injustices without the problems of going to court, hiring a lawyer. You know, somebody fixing up your world for you.

T.G.: Of course, there is always a bloodbath.

Puzo: People are not perfect.

One thing about Gross, you know she’s having a conversation, not just reading questions off a sheet, especially when she gets carried away with her own train of thought. Nick Hornby, author of “High Fidelity,” is explaining his protagonist’s record-obsessed need to make compilation music tapes for the girls he meets:

Hornby: In a rather unpleasant way, it’s like dogs and lampposts, it’s marking out your territory. Virgin ears are very important for that kind of man.

T.G.: I have to tell you, I’ve always found that male urge to mentor a girlfriend kind of irritating.

Hornby: Yes, I should think it is, actually.

T.G.: Yes, it’s somebody who doesn’t want an equal, someone who doesn’t want to share an interest, but wants to teach it.

Hornby: Yes, you’re trying to turn the other person into a female version of yourself, which kind of defeats the point of the relationship.

T.G.: Exactly.

With the show business folk, it can be hit and miss. Reading how Nicolas Cage (or Samuel L. Jackson) prepares for a role can get very James Liptonish, even without a Bernard Pivot questionnaire. And by the time you get to the 10th dysfunctional family upbringing, you begin to suspect that Tolstoy was wrong -- all unhappy families sound about the same. But personal insights emerge, far more than in the usual movie-plug chat.

A few interviews are strung together by “affinity”; for instance, Paul Schrader, Jodie Foster and Albert Brooks, all of “Taxi Driver,” a big favorite of Gross’. Though it’s reassuring to read that Schrader won’t watch “amoral violence” in films, it’s probably one fare too far. Are you all talkin’ to us about the same movie?

More telling moments can come from her less-widely known guests, such as this moment with jazz bass player Charlie Haden:

T.G.: Did singing in churches and other religious events give you a sense that music has a spiritual dimension to it?

Haden: I believe 85% to 90% of improvisation in jazz is spiritual. You can go to school and learn the ... fundamentals of scales and chords and composition, but when you start to play, you tell a story to people and take them on a journey.

The book is rich with anecdotes that don’t seem canned. Michael Caine discusses his father the Cockney fish-market porter, who was so tough he believed that any man who ate chicken was gay. Frank Stella explains how house-painting led directly to painting canvases. Mickey Spillane talks about collecting Blue Willow pottery and being a Jehovah’s Witness. Memoirist Mary Karr recalls attempting suicide while her neighbors bickered outside her window: “I thought, ‘You know, Socrates didn’t have to deal with this.’”

But for drama, nothing matches the encounter with a rampant Gene Simmons of KISS, determined to shatter Gross’ composure by wielding his macho shtick like a club. Asked about his serial seductions and costume codpiece, Simmons tells Gross she needs to confront life: “If you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs.”

It ends this way:

T.G.: I would like to think that the personality you’ve presented on our show today is a persona ... but that you’re not nearly as obnoxious in the privacy of your own home.

Simmons: Fair enough. And I’d like to think that the boring lady who’s talking to me now is a lot sexier and more interesting than the one who’s doing NPR -- studious and reserved. I bet you’re a lot of fun at a party.

I remember hearing that one on the air, and though it’s fun to read, I miss the sound of the visceral dislike coiling between the two of them. For a self-confessed coward, it was brave of Gross to include it in this lively, often thoughtful collection. *