AL: I'm looking for anything. Anything and everything. I can't say that I'm looking for any specific thing. When I look at the mail, I think: "Is this something that will catch a reader's eye?" Or, "Is this something that will teach a reader something?" Is this something that many people can relate to or is this offbeat? Is it different? I want my column to be easy to read. I don't want it junk.
PT: What your answer says in effect is that you do it by instinct, sheer instinct.
AL: And it's something that you can't teach somebody else to do either. Either they have it or they don't, they feel for it or they don't feel for it.
PT: On the way here, we couldn't avoid passing a giant television screen showing Maury Povich conducting the public airing of private problems. Do you think you've been the mother of it all?
AL: When I first started to write, the mail was very different from what I'm getting now. People had to read me awhile to get to know me before they opened up to me. Then I noticed the quality of the mail gradually improved. The people I hear from after 38 years are very different from the people I heard from at first.
PT: In what way?
AL: My readers today are much better educated and function at a much higher intellectual level.
PT: Do you mean sophisticated in matters of the heart, in what we used to call psychology, or are you referring strictly to education?
AL: Everything.
PT: And why are they writing? You said that what they asked you was different. What is different about what they've asked?
AL: What's happened after all these years is that I've evolved into a much more serious, more insightful person than what they perceived when I first started. Serious, thoughtful people didn't read advice columns 38 years ago.
PT: You helped change that.
AL: Yes, I think so.
PT: Why do you think people read about other people's problems? Is it because they like to hear about other people's problems or do they think they'll learn something about themselves?
AL: It's a lot of things. I think it was Edmund Burke who said, "I am human therefore all things human interest me." I think this is what it's all about. People want to know about other people, and when they read the column they do see others-and they often see themselves. That's what I think makes it easy for them to open up. Also, they see a chance to get a different take on their problems. "What's wrong with me? Why is my life like this?" Often, in fact, people will say "I saw myself today in your column," or "I could have written that letter."
PT: At least one scholarly analysis of your column reported that more than two thirds of your readers are women. Is that still true?
AL: No. When I started, at least 75 percent of readers were women. Now it's equal numbers of men and women.
PT: I don't doubt what you say, but I doubt that most men admit to reading it.
AL: They do now. But 35 years ago, they would hide it under the sports page. I would get letters: "The guy next to me on the bus was reading your column, hiding it, sort of ashamed....'
PT: The males in the office read it, but none of them admitted it. The women said, "Of course we read it. We have read it since we were ia,, Why do you think that's true?
AL: I have been hearing for a very long time, "Oh I don't read that stuff." But they are reading that stuff because for a long time half the mail has come from men.
PT: Does it come from readers diverse in other ways as well? And how do you know?
AL: Oh yes. My column is carried by many papers that have a big readership among blacks, in Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago. I get a lot of letters in which people identify themselves by saying, "I am black." Or "I am Afro-American," "I am Oriental." Remember, my column appears in many other countries.
PT: The letters have changed. How has Ann Landers changed over the years?
AL: I've been pretty grown up for quite a while. I got married when I was 21. I know people say I am not as sarcastic. My columns have become more sympathetic. I guess I thought I had to be sort of snappy in the beginning. I don't feel that anymore.
PT: If you do look at your column over time, it is true. There's more meditation and less tartness in your responses. How many letters do you get a day?
AL: About two thousand.
PT: That's incredible. Ploughing through it must be quite a job.
AL: I'm not looking at 2,000 letters a day. I receive 2,000 pieces of mail. Many of them are booklet requests. No human could read 2,000 letters a day.
PT: Okay. You read 200 letters, or even 100 letters a day. That's more problems by far than most therapists are exposed to. Being immersed in those problems, how do you keep your bearings.
AL: I know what you're saying. Some letters absolutely break your heart. Early on I had a wonderful editor who taught me how to write the column. He called everybody "baby." He said, "Baby, some of these letters are going to kill you, but you've got to remember that what they are telling you is happening to them, not you. You have to learn how to separate yourself from those readers."
PT: Yet part of your value is to be able to have compassion, to understand.
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