EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily’s Adam Kohut interviewed Chuck Klosterman during the second day of his visit Wednesday.

What makes a good interview subject?

The best interview subjects are people like Marilyn Manson; people who like being interviewed, who almost see themselves as a, you know, journalist as much as musicians in a weird way. The process of being part of the media is as much what [Manson’s] career is as is music. But in a way that’s less interesting because I know he’s doing it consciously. The most interesting people are the ones who are the least sort of self-conscious, and that’s really rare. Bono was very interesting, but here again not because he was not self-aware, but because he was actually the most aware of everything he does.

What I’ve found over time is that the best people – at least in music – to interview are people who have just made their first record, or who are at the very end of their career. People who are making their first record don’t really know what their persona is yet, usually. You get somebody at the end of their career, like Robert Plant, they don’t really care anymore what the perception is, and they feel like they can be more honest and more forthcoming.

Do you always ask your toughest question first during an interview?

I gave an interview one time where I said that a lot of people save their difficult question, their bomb question or whatever, for the end [of an interview]. And I used to always ask it in the beginning, because I thought it kind of created this interesting creative tension. But much to my surprise, awareness of that is now everywhere. It seems like very often now when I do interviews, people assume I’m going to ask some crazy question up front. So now I do the opposite. Because they think I’m going to ask a hard question right away, I actually ask a kind of middling question. They, in their mind, think, “Well, this was his hard question?” and then they immediately relax.

Compare yourself to a band or musician based on your level of notoriety.

Wow. That’s a very difficult question, because if I pick somebody too successful, then I seem arrogant and a prick. If I pick somebody who’s not successful enough then it seems like false humility, and that’s even worse – nothing’s worse than somebody pretending that the have no notoriety if they do. Purely a level of notoriety. Ryan Adams, I don’t know. He’s very prolific, some people love him, some people hate him. I’m in the same situation. We make a lot of bad decisions, we’re kind of weird. That’s a very hard question, though.

Does the “Speed Racer” film fit in with advancement theory?”

[I didn’t see Speed Racer, but the Wachowski] brothers are advanced. Or they’re moving toward advancement. You talk about advancement being this idea of not doing what you’re expected to do, but also not doing the complete opposite. [Larry Wachowski] becoming a woman was not either of those things; I did not think that would be an aspect of their career. I mean, I don’t know if he’s technically a transsexual … The work that they do, though, has always been interesting, and it remains interesting because they do not seem that affected by media or outside response. They made “The Matrix” … “Matrix” was this incredible movie and people were kind of talking like, “This is going to be a trilogy, this could be like on par with ‘Star Wars.’” And then the second one kind of failed -- the third one was a disaster -- but I get the impression they thought it was a success; in their mind, from what they were trying to do, it worked. I have a lot of respect for artists who don’t seem to care about response, because it’s very hard to do.

What’s the worst part of being a writer?

The worst part is the publishing. You have to kind of give up some of your agency when you put something out in the world. That’s at times a very disenchanting process. I don’t know if this is the worst part, but it’s something I think about: I try to think that the only opinion that really matters is your own opinion, and from an artistic sense that is true. If I write something I like, it doesn’t really matter if other people don’t like it. But from a making a living, commercial perspective it’s not true at all. If I write something I love and no one buys it, that’s going to stop me from having a career as a writer. So I don’t like the fact that I always have to think to myself … it’s like my ability to keep doing this thing I love is really dependent on how much other people appreciate it. 


-Adam Kohut is a professional writing senior.