Is conducting interviews scholarly work?
God, I hope so because its the only sort of academic work I seem to do a lot of these days. Some critics might say, Youre simply making up questions and turning on a tape recorder. Its just question-and-answer. You transcribe the responses, but it isnt the same task as spending time in the library doing background research and composing original material as you would with a scholarly article. Well, I understand that argument. I suppose in some ways its valid. On the other hand, for anybody to dismiss an interviewer who is really rigorous is foolish and ignorant. One of the reasons I like to collaborate with John Boe is that he prepares so well. He did not want to do Wayne Booth at first because he knew what kind of a reading task he had ahead of him. In the fall, he read something like twenty books by Wayne Booth. He and Wayne Booth got into this little game where he was trying to ask Booth about the most esoteric things he had ever written. After a while, Wayne Booth even said somethi
