Two interviews to share, neither a traditional Q&A. The first, via Jessa Crispin, is Walter Cronkite talking to Gertrude Stein in 1935 when Cronkite was working for the Daily Texan newspaper at the University of Texas and Stein was in town to give a talk. Cronkite sets the scene:

Dressed in a mannish blouse, a tweed skirt, a peculiar but attractive vest affair, and comfortable looking shoes, Miss Stein appeared much more of the woman than do the pictures that currently circulate. She strokes her close cropped hair with a continuous back to front movement. Even this nervous gesture is easily accepted by her present company.

The whole thing is not long, and well worth reading. Hard to imagine anything like it in a college newspaper today.

The second, via Nigel Beale, is the National Post catching up with Martin Amis to talk about teaching creative writing, which Amis was doing at the Humber School for Writers’ Summer Workshop. The reporter had two 15-minute sessions with Amis, during which not much seemed to be said, but he also sat in on a class, where he got material:

Now, he said, he wrote using a combination of long-hand and the computer (”I use about six fingers for typing, with an average of one mistake per word,” he said). The benefits of long-hand, he said, were that when you scratch out a word, it still exists there on the page. On the computer, however, when you delete a word it disappears forever. This is important, Amis stressed, because usually your first instinct is the right one.