Tape Ate My Homework

Like most NEWSWEEK writers, I'm a quick study. Somebody dies whom you know a little about, you take a couple of hours to eke out familiarity with solid fact, and you kick in the piece. But unlike most of my colleagues, I'm a slow learner when it comes to practicalities. I hope this year has finally taught me one thing: when it comes to the tools of your trade, get the best, no matter what the cost.

This past summer I did an interview with Philip Roth; we sat in his agent's office, my Radio Shack cassette recorder on the table between us. We spoke for about 45 minutes, after which I brought the tape to a friend's summer house, and settled in to transcribe it. What I heard was the aural equivalent of a blizzard pelting your windshield, with the noise of the machine's innards grinding away in the foreground and, in the far distance, some voicelike noises. I must have spent six hours going over those 45 minutes of tape, reconstructing what Roth had said, and had to give up on some of his best remarks—orphans of the storm.

It made me remember a few other contretemps over the years. The terrific face-to-face interview I did with Rosanne Cash—with the pause button on. A phoner with John Lennon's pathographer—for a cover story—with the headphone and mike wires switched around, resulting in an hour of questions answered by dead air. Luckily for me, he'd recorded the interview, too, in order to protect himself.

So, for 2008, I'm contemplating a digital recorder. I've heard it has no internal grindings to compete with voices—unless bytes or whatever's in there are clattering against each other like billiard balls. If such a mishap is technologically possible, trust me to have it. And this time, for a lot more money.