Having written for the New Yorker, National
Geographic, Harper’s, Sports Illustrated, the New
York Times Magazine, Runners World, O: The Oprah
Magazine, and many other high-profile publications — and
having spent years at the Washington Post, including a stint as
the paper’s South American bureau chief — Cynthia Gorney
knows how to conduct an interview. She has done it for print media and
as a host on KQED’s “Forum.” She has won awards for it and she teaches
it at UC Berkeley, where she is a professor at the Graduate School of
Journalism. She knows the main rules — don’t talk too much, don’t
interrupt — and the subtler touches. But when she interviews
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll at the Berkeley
Repertory Theater (2025 Addison St., Berkeley) on March 23, the
task will be easier than usual, because she’ll be interviewing an old
friend.
“We became pals 25 years ago,” Gorney says, “when I was writing a
piece about my son, who was then two years old … and was turning into
a complete flaming boy. Even though I was trying to raise him
gender-neutral,” as befitted the politically correct Berkeley parent, a
turning point came when the toddler ripped a waffle into the shape of a
gun.
“I was kind of stumped,” Gorney laughs, about how to weave the
personal and political together in her story, to set the little picture
within the big one. At that time, Carroll was the editor of
California magazine. Gorney was a fan, recognizing even then
that “he is one of those few people in the world who is incapable of
writing a bad sentence.” So she called him — “I said, ‘I’m
your adoring little acolyte'” — and asked for help. “I don’t
remember what he said, but it turned out to be right.” At the Rep, the
pair will discuss a range of current topics. Preceded by a cheese and
no-host wine reception in the lobby, the event is a benefit for
Oakland’s Park Day School.
Gorney has just returned from India, where she was working on a
National Geographic story about child brides. She will soon
visit the Middle East and Africa to continue working on this story.
“Child marriage in India is not what we Americans tend to think it is,”
she says. In India — where the practice is illegal, but still
occurs — girls are officially wed in infancy or prepuberty
but do not begin married life until their late teens. Gorney
interviewed a seventeen-year-old who was married at eight and a
thirteen-year-old who had managed to circumvent the wedding that her
parents had planned for her when she was eleven. As for the
Berkeley-based journalist’s own son: His waffle-gun days long over, he
works for the Oakland School System. “He’s extremely manly,” Gorney
says, “and very kind.” 7 p.m., $25. ParkDaySchool.org
