Interviewing novelists on the art of fiction: When novelists say they converse with characters, why do interviewers rarely pursue the issue?

In past posts, I have criticized interviewers as having no curiosity or being incompetent. But another possibility is that interviewers are afraid.

There is an old joke that neurotics build castles in the air, while psychotics live in them (and psychiatrists collect the rent). The interviewer may feel that a novelist’s conversing with characters as though they were real people is psychotic. And the interviewer may be afraid to challenge a person who may be psychotic.

Why, then, do novelists volunteer such information about their creative process? Novelists, themselves, may wonder if they are crazy. So if they say such things in published interviews, but nobody accuses them of being crazy, they feel reassured.

Of course, I see the fiction writer’s characters who converse with them as being equivalent to alternate personalities, and I don’t see multiple personality trait as psychotic—besides, most psychotics are not violent—so I would not be afraid of pursuing the issue.