Nothing ever appears in print viernes, 25 de octubre de 2013

How much do you tell people about yourself and your project?
Not much, usually. If somebody asks me about myself, I'll tell them, of course. I'll show them a New Yorker if I have a copy. If they ask about my project, I'm usually pretty vague –partly because it's usually still taking shape, and I'm not yet sure what it is. I just say I'm collecting information to put together into a story. I tell people that I want to know as much as I can about their lives, their neighborhoods, their thoughts, their experiences. Basically, I just hang around as long as they'll have me. In some situations, I've become a kind of local curiosity. The White Man on the Couch. I can practically hear people saying, "Hey, come over and see out white man! He's still here!" Of course, some people get suspicious, even paranoid. They may believe at first that I'm a news reporter, but when you talk to a news reporter something comes out in the paper that weekend, or the following week. Meanwhile, here I am, hanging around for months on end, and nothing ever appears in print. People have accused me of being FBI, CIA. Why else would I be collecting so damn much information?

William Finnegan, citado en Robert S. Boynton (ed.), The New New Journalism, New York, Vintage, 2005, p. 93