Something Instead of Nothing

In all honesty I have never put as much thought into interviews, as Klosterman did, like about the people asking questions, and how people answer the questions. I always just figured that someone wanted to know something or see what people thought so they asked questions and people would just answer. Not why they choose to respond and why they do not just ignore the person interviewing them or that maybe not all of or any of what the interviewee’s responses could be untruthful. I found it sort of funny but really interesting how Prince reacted when he was being interviewed. He would not let the interviewer take any form of documentation of the interview, they weren’t allowed to record it, or even just jot down a few key points or a quote. That way the interviewer had to recall the entire interview from memory later. He did this so that he could not be quoted accurately and that way whatever he said could not be misquoted or the context could not be changed in any way since there was nothing written down or recorded. I also found it interesting that Klosterman interviewed so many people and had asked numerous amounts of questions, and yet he still admitted that he lied during some interviews. This kind of confused me. I feel that if it was my job to be interviewing people it may frustrate me if I knew that people were not giving truthful answers to the questions that I was asking. I did find this reading somewhat useful because it made me think about the final project and when I interview people and how I ask the questions. Like how Klosterman says that people will open up more if they feel that the interviewer is interested and actually cares what they have to say, whether they actually do or not.