Soundscapes and storytelling in literary interviews

Abstract Interviews have long depended on recordings, but the interview ‘text’ has traditionally been transcribed and published in written form. Scholars therefore hailed the advent of digitization for making recordings available to a broader audience and displaying their orality. Despite this growing interest in the significance of speaking voices, other sonic aspects of interviews are still largely ignored. Set within the frameworks of multimodal research and audionarratology, this article explores the sonic environment of an interview conducted by journalist Heinz Ludwig Arnold with German author Günter Grass in 1970, subsequently published in written form in 1990 and released as an audio recording in 2011. It analyses how voices, background sounds and noises impact on narratives told and on the interview trajectory at large and how they can inform our interpretation of interview materials. The article argues for a more comprehensive approach towards the sonic dimension of audio-recorded interviews and interview narratives.