Khaled Hosseini speaks at the Herbst Theatre on Thursday 12/14.
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If you'll indulge me, I really feel like this is one of my better written picks. I spent a lot of time on this one (re: a few days ago) and I think the finished piece reflected the work I put into it. Granted, it was 280-words...not exactly a expose or anything. But I'll take it, especially since the Team Sleep pick was not published, for whatever reason. Oh well. On to the actual conversation. I could not wait for KQED to rebroadcast these lectures, so I figured I would bootleg my own, mono sound and all.
Caille Millner is an editorial writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and while her writing has garnered her accolades, I felt she forced the interview. Her introduction seemed rather dry; there was no mention of Hosseini being named Humanitarian of the Year last year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Moreover, with her first question, she broke one of the most important rules in interviewing: always make your subject feel comfortable. It was one of the central points in research methods and journalism courses I took, and besides that, it is common courtesy. Instead, Millner took this route:
Millner: "Now, the film version of The Kite Runner opens tomorrow. And there's been great controversy over the film..."
Hosseini: (inaudible)
I think he says something to the effect of "Oh, that's how we're going to start."
(Audience laughter)
Millner: "That's how we're going to start. Particularly...(inaudible)...concerning this one scene that relates to the rape of Hassan...(inauduble...might have been "one of the characters in the film")...What do you think about this?"
Yeah, the recording's kind of bad, but the point is that Millner immediately leaps to the question of the rape scene in Hosseini's The Kite Runner and the controversy over its film portrayal. I understand Millner's approach, which is that she's trying to ask a germane question. This is an important question here, and one where Hosseini could provide a lot of insight, but it also holds deep emotional and social ramifications here. Professors always taught me with interviews that you must establish a rapport with a respondent, that you have to establish some sort of trust. Once trust (or some sort of quasi-relationship) is established, then the hard-hitting questions can come out. To throw the the very big concept of rape out there not only complicates the interview from the beginning, it tarnishes any chance of establishing rapport. Even Hosseini acknowledged the awkwardness of the opening with his light-hearted interjection that got the audience chuckling.
I cannot quite make out all of Hosseini's response, but he answered the question thoroughly and emphasized that the "kids were never hurt" in the scene, that the portrayal was just a portrayal, that the actors involved are safe. The question still set an uneasy tone for the conversation that never really subsided.
If I had to do the interview, I would have asked about his childhood in Kabul, how he got into writing (an audience member asked him this later), and what immigrating to the US was like. Get him talking, then ask more thematic related inquires about his work, his books, his characters, etc.
I got to ask my question:
"First off I would like to thank you for coming in. As a young writer I was hoping to gleam some more advice. You mentioned earlier about writing based upon your experiences. You can't write in a vaccuum. You have to be grounded in your own reality. I was hoping if you could give some further advice, perhaps on how you get through writer's block, how you develop your characters...how does writing come to you?"(?) = inaudible or indecipherable
Hosseini: "For me it's always been a process of trial and error, of testing things, of the fact that when I sit down to write a first draft, that's it's going to be a miserable failure. And you have to accept that it's a necessary failure, because it will lead somewhere. And that I have to put down all these other tasks until (?)...and not be discouraged by the fact that 1700-pages of (writing?) something turns out to be a dead end. You have to accept that that is a necessary part of what it takes to build a manuscript.
You know, I meet a lot of aspiring writers now on the road. And a lot of them, well, not a lot, but many of them...it turns out that they are not really writing...(?) It kinds of goes without saying (?) but in order to be a writer, you really have to write. You have to write all the time. It's just one of...you really have to do it, especially if you're writing a novel. Once you hit that 50-page mark, it really becomes cumbersome because the romance of having started (this project?) is over. And now you're kind of in the blue collar section. You have to show up there, you have to punch in the clock, you have to sit down, and you have to do it. And just not get discouraged."
Real encouraging, haha. Basically, sit down and do it.
At the end of the discussion, I met Brenden Salmon, who is associate producer of City Arts & Lectures. He was actually the person handing out the mics for the audience participation segment, and he was a charming fellow who catered to pesky audience members like myself. It must be tough running around the theatre and coordinating question-taking with another fellow mic-person, but Brenden did a good job.
Now to research picks for the next couple of weeks...
