Slog tipper Nick sent a link to this Salon story, about why novelists hate being interviewed. Tom Leclair is through with interviewing authors:

I no longer do interviews. Too many problems. The tape broke when Stanley Elkin was talking. I got lost trying to find Joseph McElroy's house in rural New Hampshire. DeLillo gave a thoughtful and mysterious interview, but the Paris Review decided that, after only six novels, he wasn't sufficiently famous. William Gass took a year to rewrite the transcript. William Gaddis refused to edit the transcript. After I'd flown from Ohio to New York, Toni Morrison's secretary said I was not on her schedule and let me in only after I produced a letter promising the interview on that date at that time. I loved the novelists' unreliable narrators, but not the novelists who proved unreliable.

I dislike most author interviews for another reason: They're usually boring. The author, who would rather be doing anything else at that moment in time, only wants to sell his or her book. They're not interested in talking about anything especially juicy or illuminating. Many publicity people send suggested questions to reporters in advance of interviews now, and you'd be shocked how many of those suggested questions make up the entirety of certain published author interviews.

The author interview machine is broken; it's become so slick that people's eyes just slide off whatever pap eventually gets published. For the most part, I'll only interview an author if they're undeniably awesome (Gahan Wilson was an offer I couldn't refuse), or they have something genuinely interesting to say (I talk to Mary Roach in the new issue of The Stranger out tomorrow; she is maybe one of the most charming authors in the business, and she loves to talk about what she's learned). It's disappointing to see that even writers for The Paris Review—one of the best publications for interviews in the world—feel the same way.