Talk to Her

By Kristine McKenna

Kristine McKenna's work as a journalist began in the late 1970s, when she covered the Los Angeles punk scene for various domestic and international publications. During the '80s and '90s she wrote art, film and music criticism, and profiled directors, musicians and visual artists for a variety of publications including Artforum, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times and New York Rocker. Talk to Her is McKenna's second collection (the first was 1999's Book of Changes ) of favorite interviews culled from McKenna's files, and the book reveal's McKenna's highly intimate technique as an interviewer. That she manages to get such candor out of her subjects is remarkable. The stunning list of interview subjects includes: Filmmaker Robert Altman; Jackie Onassis's cousin Edie Beale; punk rocker and poet Exene Cervenka; the musician Elvis Costello; surf guitar legend Dick Dale; the postmodern critic Jacques Derrida; Beat poet Allen Ginsberg; Television's Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine; art curator Walter Hopps; Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde; country music legend Rickie Lee Jones; the Sex Pistols' John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten); singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell; the Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man; punk rock legend Joey Ramone; New York rock legend Lou Reed; the actress Eva Marie Saint; and the recently-departed Joe Strummer of the Clash. Also included are brief oral histories of Andy Warhol and Orson Welles. Talk to Her also includes portraits of each interview subject by some of the best cartoonists in the world, including Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Phoebe Glockner, Tony Millionaire, Jeff Wong and others.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560975709
• ISBN13: 9781560975700
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Insightful!

Forget the "fluff" and tabloid gossipy tidbits. Kristine McKenna interviews celebrities with questions that we ourselves would ask a friend. Reflections on their culture, how they feel about their fame and questions of who and what inspires them. I originally purchased this book for an interview piece on Edie Beale but was soon drawn to other interviews with other celebs. I didn't know who some of the interviewed were but Krisitine's interviewing style made me interested in who some of these people were and piqued my curiousity to learn more about them. Her writing style and genuine interest in the people she interviews make her a careful and thoughtful writer. I will purchase her other book, "Book of Changes" based on the wonderful experience that I had reading this book.

A Fun, Important Book

A celebrity with the chance to be interviewed by Kristine McKenna is one mighty lucky celebrity indeed. Ms. McKenna refuses to delve into the tabloid gossip of their lives, focusing instead on drawing out their insights about the human condition. She wants these people to explain inspiration, fame, ambition, enchantment... and by reading her subjects well, and expertly pacing her lines of inquiry, she almost always succeeds. A magnificent achievement, given how jaded and suspicious most of her interviewees tend (at least initially) to be. Ms. McKenna is a far more accomplished and insightful interviewer than Fresh Air's Terry Gross, in my opinion.