All I Did Was Ask: conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists, Terry Gross. Hyperion. 2004.
Terry Gross’ voice is calming: Whenever I hear, “I’m Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air,” I take a mental deep breath. I know that I’m about to be engaged, entertained, and perhaps challenged for a little while, and I’m happy to send my attention to that radio place where my own preoccupations go away and I listen to other people’s. Her introduction the this book was much the same for me. It was quiet, engaging, and filled with interesting and revealing commentary about herself, her show, and her guests. The introduction was actually my favorite part of the book.
While I listen to the show frequently, there were many interviews in this book that I hadn’t heard. The style, however, is such that I could hear the words in the voices of the subjects.
One of my favorites is the interview with John Updike, who among other things discusses writing as an aggressive act, and the greedyness of fiction, “the appetite of the blank page for ever more information, ever more data. An empty book is a greedy thing.” As expected, the Johnny Cash interview was another of my favorites. I heard this one when Fresh Air replayed it shortly after Cash’s death in 2003. Somehow, the interviews seem longer when you’re listening on the radio. I guess I read too fast, but this chapter was over too quick for me. Another highlight was Mary Karr, in an interview that was much more personal than others in the book, but then, Karr’s righting is intensively personal as well.
Well, I’ve been writing a line or two every once and a while… and what it really boils down to is: they’re all fantastic. There are 39 interviews documented here, and they're all well worth reading. The book’s a bestseller because it’s great. Read it.
jill
