An Interview with Renata Adler
from 2015, with annotations.
Since Vice.com is shutting down I decided to rescue this interview I did with Renata Adler back in 2015 before it’s possibly wiped off the face of the internet. This was one of those moments I could not believe my luck—an email out of no where asking me if I would like to interview Adler.
Re-reading this for the first time in nine years I was surprised by a few things:
At the time I was worried I had failed to uncover some kind of ground breaking new vision of Adler, some new level of understanding of her brain, her work, her worldview. The interview is much more entertaining than I remember feeling it was at the time. I had such high expectations and so little faith in myself.
Adler said all kinds of things about a journalist’s relationship to institutional power that totally went over my head back then; they hit a different nerve now. There are a ton of missed opportunities here, follow-ups I wish I would have asked, points I wish …