• The Role and Function of Author Interviews in the Contemporary Anglophone Literary Field
• Rebecca Roach (bio)

As my title suggests, this article examines interviews with authors today. While the phrase "author interview" might connote the highly-edited examples of the Paris Review "Art of Fiction" series or an onstage interview at a literary festival, I want to begin with an extreme contemporary example. In 2016 a new service for authors, publishers, and agents launched, promising to automate the author interview. With "AuthorBot"

[a]uthors can answer reader queries, and chat with multiple readers in their own words—without adding to author time commitment or cost.

Our chatbots create an authentic conversation with readers using AI, NLP and guided elements. Authors can also jump into conversations to support book tours or conduct an AMA—with revenue opportunities on physical sales, ebooks and merchandise.¹

An example of a "chatbot," "chatterbot," or "conversational agent," AuthorBot is a computer program designed to simulate human conversation. It is only the latest incarnation of a much longer endeavour to perfect interpersonal communication with the aid of the latest technology (we could trace its lineage back from Alexa and Siri, via Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA and the Mechanical Turk, to Pygmalion's Galatea). What is unusual is the use to which the chatbot is being put here—namely, an author interview. Generally conceived to be the product of a spontaneous, revelatory, face-to-face conversation with an autonomous subject, the author interview would seem to be the obverse of what can be automated. Yet AuthorBot collapses this distinction, premising itself on both maintaining the appeal of that particular [End Page 335] author–reader interaction, while rendering it more efficient thanks to technological augmentation and reduction of author involvement.

Technophobes' groans aside, AuthorBot offers us a fascinating entry point for examining the interactive role and function of the author in the contemporary literary sphere. In attempting to automate the author interview (and to sell this strategy to the publishing industry²) AuthorBot tries to tap into a wider perception that readers today desire intimate, authentic interactions with an author—a perception fuelled in part by the big rise in literary festivals, author readings, platform interviews and the like: what we might call collectively "live literature."³ It also acknowledges that these interactions—live literature included—are increasingly mediated via computational technologies in the era of digital media and "platformed sociality."⁴ In this respect the decision by the designers of AuthorBot to replicate the author interview is a savvy one: as I argue in my book Literature and the Rise of the Interview, interviews have historically mediated conversation, while promising communicational immediacy. In so doing they have offered a paradoxical dream of face-to-face communication for a mass mediated culture.⁵ Even before AuthorBot attempted to automate the author, interviews were deployed as a means to mediate and manage mass communication.

Expanding on the curious case of AuthorBot, this article seeks to acknowledge the role that author interviews play in the construction and maintenance of a contemporary Anglophone literary sphere. In doing so, I build on the arguments put forth in my book, which examines author interviews and interviewing culture in Britain and America since the mid-nineteenth century. There, I argue that attending to the shifting and multifaceted deployment of interviews—both as form and method—has much to tell us about historical conceptions of authorship, publics, inscription technologies, and reading practices, among other things. Interviews mediate between authors and publics, helping to construct both. They have also helped to promote two, largely oppositional, versions of subjectivity in modernity: one the highly constructed and privileged interviewee; the other, an effaced, de-privileged interviewer, whose personhood is often discounted.⁶ The author interview's mediating function is not neutral, whatever its association with automation (and whatever the tech industry) might imply.⁷

One significant example of this is the author interview's championing of a purportedly autonomous authorial subject within the wider market. In Literature and the Creative Economy Sarah Brouillette traces the implications of the ideology of the "creative industries" (first proposed by Richard Florida and championed by Britain's "New Labour" government after [End...

• 作者访谈在当代英语文学领域的作用与功能
• 丽贝卡·罗奇（生物）

就像我的标题所暗示的那样，本文探讨了今天对作者的采访。虽然“作者采访”一词可能意味着巴黎评论“小说艺术”系列的高度编辑的例子，或者是在文学节上的舞台采访，但我想从一个极端的当代例子开始。在2016年，为作家，出版者和代理提供了一项新服务，承诺实现作者访谈的自动化。使用“ AuthorBot”

读者可以用自己的语言回答读者的查询，并与多个读者聊天，而不会增加作者的时间投入或成本。

我们的聊天机器人使用AI，NLP和向导元素与读者进行真实的对话。作者还可以加入对话，以支持书籍游览或进行AMA，并获得有关实物销售，电子书和商品的收益机会。^1个

“聊天机器人”，“聊天机器人”或“对话代理”的一个示例AuthorBot是一种计算机程序，旨在模拟人类对话。这只是借助最新技术进行更长时间的人际交流的最新体现（我们可以将其血统从Alexa和Siri追溯到Joseph Weizenbaum的ELIZA和Mechanical Turk，再到Pygmalion的Galatea）。聊天机器人在这里的用途（即作者访谈）与众不同。通常被认为是与一个自主的主题进行自发的，启发性的，面对面的对话的产物，作者的采访似乎是可以自动化的东西的反面。但是AuthorBot打破了这种区分，作者与读者的互动，同时由于技术的增强和作者参与的减少而使其更加有效。

除了Technophobes的吟，AuthorBot为我们提供了一个迷人的切入点，以检验作者在当代文学领域中的互动角色和功能。在尝试实现作者访谈的自动化（并将这种策略出售给出版业²）时，AuthorBot尝试利用更广泛的观念，即当今的读者希望与作家进行亲密而真实的互动，这种观念在一定程度上是由文学的大量兴起推动的节日，作家阅读，平台访谈等：我们可以统称为“现场文学”。³它还承认，在数字媒体和“平台化的社会化”时代，这些交互作用（包括现场文献）越来越多地通过计算技术进行调解。⁴在这方面，AuthorBot的设计者决定复制作者的访谈是一个明智的决定：正如我在《文学与访谈的崛起》一书中所论述的那样，访谈在历史上一直是对话的中介，同时也保证了沟通的即时性。通过这样做，他们为大众传播文化提出了面对面交流的悖论梦想。⁵甚至在AuthorBot试图使作者自动化之前，就已经部署了访谈作为调解和管理大众交流的一种手段。

在对AuthorBot这一令人好奇的案例进行扩展的同时，本文力求承认作者访谈在当代英语文学领域的构建和维护中所扮演的角色。在此过程中，我以书中提出的论点为基础，该书探讨了自19世纪中叶以来英国和美国的作者访谈和访谈文化。在这里，我认为，参与面试的变化和多方面的部署（无论是形式还是方法）都足以告诉我们关于作者身份，公众，铭文技术和阅读实践等方面的历史观念。访谈在作者和公众之间进行调解，有助于两者的建构。他们还帮助促进了现代性的两种主要是对立的主观性版本：一个是高度建设性和特权级的被访者；另一个是高度主观的受访者。⁶作者访谈的中介功能不是中立的，无论它与自动化（以及技术行业）的关联如何暗示。⁷

一个重要的例子是作者访谈提倡在更广泛的市场中一个据称是自主的作者主题。在文学与创意经济中，莎拉·布劳埃雷特（Sarah Brouillette）追溯了“创意产业”的意识形态（由理查德·佛罗里达（Richard Florida）提出，并在[End ...