To Birnbaum: Granted, “above the fray” was a poor choice of words, and the “life of the mind” bit was indeed a gratuitous (and meaningless) barb for which I apologize. You’re right to call me on that.

However, I really can’t swallow this:

>> Also, please keep in mind that I started out my comments with questions—not rhetorical, but sincere I- don’t -get- it -questions. If you want to infer an attitude from that that would be your choice—but I think it’s a bad one that discredits your intentions.

The passage in question is below. I have a hard time believing that any reasonable person (to keep up the legalese) would take those question marks to be sincere rather than rhetorical.

And the attitude I inferred is one of “why are we wasting our time talking about this,” which would seem to be confirmed in your very next para.

(Though believe me, it’s an attitude I’m certainly starting to see the wisdom of.)

>> Let’s see if I understand. We are not to be particularly upset by whatever Ms.Smith may or may not think about England, but whether she stands by what sone interviewers claim she said? Did I get that right?

>> She said, he said. She said she didn’t say. Big media guns enter fray. She cancels interviews. Oih vey. And blah blah blah.

The only other thing I want to respond to:

>> But an offhanded remark by an exhuberant artist who decides to recant or second guess her own innocuous, marginally controversial remark(about England)—that’s a non starter for me.

Recant away. Second-guess away. Got no problem with that. What all this has been about, at least for me, was the decision to blame the reporter for her own words.

First, DW I am going to make an exception and respond to you, although I am disinclined to answer an anonymous correspondent— not because I am above anything—let’s say it’s a personal choice.

I made another personal choice which apparently irks you enough to attribute an attitude to me that is quite foreign (to me)— certainly if I thought I was above any fray, as you put it, then I wouldn’t be announcing or participating in it, even to dismiss it. I would be silent.

Also, please keep in mind that I started out my comments with questions—not rhetorical, but sincere I- don’t -get- it -questions. If you want to infer an attitude from that that would be your choice—but I think it’s a bad one that discredits your intentions.

And if you are miffed that I or anyone missed/dismissed this as a “nuts and bolts issue”—you might allow for varying perspectives. “The issue of a source shooting off her mouth and then blaming the reporter when people don’t like what she had to say” might have been of concern if the “she” was Condi Rice or Hillary Clinton talking policy or issues. But an offhanded remark by an exhuberant artist who decides to recant or second guess her own innocuous, marginally controversial remark(about England)—that’s a non starter for me. And your gratuitous “life of the mind” thingy—what was that ? A barb? An implication that some jejune, effete nonsense was being proferred? What?

My suggestion to you —if I may— is that if you want to engage people on issues with which you are concerned, you might temper the assumptions that you make (or at least have the good sense to keep them to your self).

As to Ms Spiers I am not yet prepared to take instruction from her on ethical and journalistic matters —she kind of reminds me of Gil Scott Heron’s reference to Norman Schwartzkopf in his powerful anti war paean,Work for Peace—okay, forgive the digression. And her rejoinder, loaded with legalisms, solecisms and the like: “favor the journalist who has proof “, “inherent burden of proof” , “questions his or her professional integrity,” ” bad precedent to set for any publication” ,” standard policy not to release tapes ” are pretty much beside the point…

And then there is this , ” In a lot of the book blog coverage I’m reading, there seems to be an odd willingness to automatically defend the author as if the reporter has some responsibility to protect the author rather than to treat her as a subject. ” blah blah blah. This kind of statement is out of the Fox Network playbook. “A lot of blog coverage”? sounds like “Some say…” and then the introduction of some looney theory or allegation —one of the Fox flying monkeys favorite tricks. For someone so concerned with journalistic practice I wouldn’t be bandying this kind of stuf about.

I have been taking advantage of the book tour to bring writers to my doorstep for well over 15 years. I don’t see it as being a controversial statement to say that things have changed. In the early pages of Brett Ellis’s Lunar Park he ascerbically describes the book business back in the mid 80′s —except it sounds like now.

See that elephant in the room— I want you not to think about it. Which is my way of suggesting that the book tour and various charm initiatives do—must— have an effect on the content of the interviews that sprout from it. It’s a bigger topic— the apportionment of attention —but I do wonder about the many writers not on tour and who don’t have the (a) publicity machine behind them. Just like I wonder about Ellis or Moody or Smith or Rushdie getting zillions of reviews and book page attention and Steve Stern and Stephen Dixon and Fred Busch and Lee Smith and Maria Flook and on and on being ignored as the pack rushes to the next big book author (to their credit, Dan Wickett and Ron Hogan don’t do that.) And I don;t see that as contriversial either

Lastly, a while back I mildly rebuked a writer/critic for what I took to be a silly recantation of his original review.
The fellow , of course, took exception and and hectored me about giving publicity to a such a horrible( on further reading this guy seems to discover the worst book he’s ever read every other week) book. And that’s what really rubs me —that what journalists do is reduced, even by them, to mere publicity.

Now I am happy if the attention I and others provide have some postive effect on some one’s fortunes. But I and my fellow practioners ought NOT be an extension of the publicity juggernaut. Right?

Like that.

And the idea that “Surely there are good things about England” would be somehow better journalism than “So what’s so bad about England” (which is the thing that got my blood boiling and prompted me to get into this whole mess in the first place) strikes me as, yes, specious in the extreme.

That said, I realize I’m repeating myself here and I’m sick of listening to myself talk about this (as is, I’m sure, anyone reading) so I’m happy to cede the field. If some kind of more general and substantive discussion of what it’s like to interview authors springs out of this, then maybe that’s the best thing that could happen.

So “hearsay” isn’t admissible, but assumptions like this one are?

Seems pretty obvious that you’ve painted yourself into a logical / ethical corner by trying to get into Zadie Smith’s good graces, So instead of addressing any substantive points on what is admittedly a minor issue (albeit one that’s understandably of great interest to real journalists), you just keep hammering away on the same very vague talking points.

Oh, and just to cut off the next assumption, I don’t know any of these people and no one’s been “getting” me to “weigh in.” Believe it or not, not everyone who disagrees with your specious reasoning has personal motives.

(And since Spiers has obviously followed your blog and commented on it before, the above attack on her motives seems unwarranted and shameful to me.)

Again, these are not attacks.

It may not have been “endless,” but three voicemails from you within an hour strikes me as a tad obsessive. The problem here is that you view what I have presented here as an attack when I am only reproducing WHAT YOU HAVE TOLD ME (with admittedly a bit of snark from me thrown in for good measure). Since that isn’t enough, you get your friend Liz to weigh in with a post that views the journalist as RIGHT and the author as WRONG. No room for gray areas. Only absolutes. That’s an absurd perspective by just about any measure.

To give you the benefit of the doubt, I posted your clarification (include the text of your voicemail to me with scant editorializing) and yet you still believe I am attacking you.

It’s very simple, Boris. I haven’t heard the tape in its entirety. So I have no reference point other than trusting you. But since your story keeps changing ever so slightly with each new voicemail and email, I’m not really sure that I can do that. So I’m forced to conclude that “the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes.” That is, I think, a kind and generous estimate. And it’s certainly not an attack or libel, but the ONLY CONCLUSION that one can form.

I urge you to look up a word called “hearsay” in your dictionary. Please allow me to edify you when I tell you that this there’s a reason why hearsay is not acceptable as court testimony. And that’s essentially what we have here.

So there’s no story here. No one can confirm what was said unless you produce the tape in its entirety. Which you’re not willing to do — for understandable reasons. So it’s essentially a non-issue. Besides, it’s not as if Zadie Smith said anything particularly seditious here.

The most remarkably ignoble example of this banal favoritism (not specifically in the book world, but in the larger territory of entertainment journalism) is probably the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the remarkable perqs and tchochkes used to bribe them so that when they do, in fact, interview their subjects and vote for the Golden Globes, it is, indeed, a deck stacked in the subjects’ favor.

As to the subjects themselves, I too would be interested to hear what Birnbaum has to say. I think there are varying levels of conversational skills and intelligence within any subject. One can’t really make a generalization, nor be unduly prejudiced by this, because a brilliant author might not necessarily be a brilliant conversationalist. Or vice versa.

My question was actually meant for Birnbaum (though of course your response is also appreciated).

But I think what I’m asking is this….

Birnbaum seems to be suggesting that even when an interviewer such as him (or yourself) DOES put a lot of thought and background research into an interview, authors are unable to properly rise to the occasion, so to speak, because their thinking and speaking has been so deformed by the book-tour hamster wheel.

Am I reading that right?

And if I’m not, then what’s wrong with authors doing a book tour and giving lots of interviews, which are bound to be wide-ranging in terms of substance, quality, and interest?

Boris’s proof has not been adequately produced. It has been framed within varying points of context to me through Boris, with endless messages and varying levels of “clarification” — to the point where I can now no longer care less about the exact degrees of what was said. And all this for a quote that really wasn’t all that big a deal to begin with.

I say again: the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. No other conclusion can be drawn.

Now can we go back to discussing something important and leave the gossipmongering to the Media Bistro people?

DW: To some degree. Authors invariably have scripts that they latch onto. Inevitable, given that they are often asked the same questions over and over. But my goal as an interviewer is to steer them off the track, ideally through questions that the others aren’t likely to ask (probably because most journalists don’t even bother to read the books or do the kind of backbreaking research that I do).

The discourse would be markedly improved if these journalists, who, believe it or not, have less time than I do, actually read the goddam books. Or perhaps it could be improved if they focused on the books in question rather than who they happen to be fucking at the moment.

OK, so I get the whole “ho hum, I’m above this petty fray, what about the life of the mind” thing. But believe it or not, some of us media types actually do get exercised by little nuts & bolts issues like this one. (“This one” meaning the issue of a source shooting off her mouth and then blaming the reporter when people don’t like what she had to say.)

As for the rest of your post, are you saying that the hellacious book tour and gerbil mentality are actually affecting the quality of discourse in, say, the interviews you’ve done? It’s not clear if that’s the case (or if it’s just inherently bad that authors are doing lots of interviews), but if so THAT would be an interesting point to follow up.

>> No I believe Ed wrote “That would have clarified Smith’s position”. Clarified.

Except that the whole “clarified” thing is a bit of a ruse. The reporter DID attempt to clarify Smith’s position (“What’s so bad about England?”).

How can anyone believe that saying “Surely there are good things about England” would have been less leading and more “clarifying”? Again, am I taking crazy pills? Is black white and day night?

The “clarity” issue is just a desperately-reaching way to blame the reporter for what Smith chose to say.

I also take issue with this:

>> I still contend, without any favoritism directed towards Smith or Kachka (unlike Spiers), that the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes. ]

So the fact that Spiers used to work with the reporter (which she disclosed) = “favoritism,” while the fact that Ed has been trying to get an interview with Zadie Smith and presumably would still like to get one in the future = “no favoritism”? Come on.

I also find it strange that you think the more palatable answer on zadie’s part was the more “clarified” one. as I stated before, I see no indication that asking her the follow up question “what’s so bad about england?” in any way led her to give a negative response. if anything, she could have said, “nothing, I’m just not happy with …” or “england is great…” Did she? No. The question did not demand a negative answer. she chose to give one.

Also – New York magazine never releases tapes institutionally and while I don’t think they’d reprimand Boris for playing the tape for Ron–who could blame him–it’s a bad precedent to set for any publication. It’s also standard policy not to release tapes at *most* major magazines and newspapers. don’t want to take my word for it? ask your journalist friends who are staffed at those places.

Let’s see if I understand. We are not to be particularly upset by whatever Ms.Smith may or may not think about England, but whether she stands by what sone interviewers claim she said? Did I get that right?

She said, he said. She said she didn’t say. Big media guns enter fray. She cancels interviews. Oih vey. And blah blah blah.

Anyway, I was thinking of reading On Beauty and talking to Zadie Smith. Now, I think I will finish Tommy Hays’s wonderful book, The Pleasure is Mine and Jim Fergus’s Wild Girl and pass on the unavoidably distracted Smith.

But the bigger thing that I am weighing is whether I want to continue to talk to writers who are engaged in this increasingly unholy activity, the book tour. I can say that in the past 15 years that I have been taking advantage of authors on parade there has been a shift to a mechanization of these publicity initiatives. And I have had to work harder to make it clear that what I do is not an extension of those marketing efforts � which have something to do with selling books and only peripherally something to do with literature.

By the way, did anyone read the new Tom McGuane story, “Cowboy” in the New Yorker? Hilarious.

As confident as I have been that what I bring to the literary dialogues I engage in, it has been become more clear to me that book tour gerbil wheel creates a mind set that is a burden and an obstacle. Some authors do countless “interviews” in the big cities and that’s a joke and some authors do almost none and that’s another kind of (bad) joke.

I am clear that there are lots ( I mean really lots) of writers, who for whatever reason, write their books, do a little publicity and then write another book. I think that’s where I ‘m going. I hope some people follow me.

No I believe Ed wrote “That would have clarified Smith’s position”. Clarified. Doesn’t really have anything to do with raising the tone. Depending on Zadie’s answer it could have gotten even more negative. It’s astonishing how something can be written in plain English but, depending on whose reading it, morphs into something else entirely.

I’m just dying for Banville’s book to be released. I’m too poor to get it from Amazon UK.

i’ve said the same things about new york city and america maybe two thousand times in my life, out loud, to people, with conviction

if she thinks something is disgusting, then that’s what she thinks

it’s not exactly a wild, controversy, or insightful opinion

the amount of attention being paid to this is instead of other issues, instead of issues that affect people in a life/death way, is probably the equivalent of one vote for Bush in 2004

that is not an immature or absurd statement, but probably true

It seems pretty clear that contrary to what Zadie Smith would now like people to believe, she was NOT somehow “tricked” into saying what she said. Speaking out of turn is one thing: we’re all human, and if anything it’s actually refreshing that Smith doesn’t just rely on polite soundbites. And to be sure, the reaction to her comments has been all out of proportion.

But this “it’s all his fault, he made me do it” routine is (a) from all available evidence bullshit, and (b) much more distasteful (contemptible, even) than the statements themselves.

>> In Smith’s defense, it’s fair to say that Kachka was only one of dozens of interviews that Smith gave to New York journalists and that no author can be expected to recall the precise details of every single interview.

And yet, she was apparently confident enough in her recollection to blame everything on him.

>>> Why didn’t Kachka ask Smith, “Surely there are good things about England.”

Am I taking crazy pills? Why on earth should the reporter be expected to say to himself, “Uh oh, things are getting negative here, I better raise the tone”?

And I have to say, “What’s so bad about England” is not only a pretty innocuous question, but to me it sure sounds like an attempt to “clarify Smith’s position.”

The best thing Smith could have said in her press release would have been something along the lines of “My comments were off the cuff and not representative of my real feelings about my country and I regret making them.” That’s how a grownup would handle the situation.

Instead, she chose to claim (again, from all available evidence falsely) that they were “twisted and out of context.”

I can’t understand why anyone would feel the need to serve as an apologist for this kind of crap.