That said, has anyone noticed how oral histories are so much more common now with music/sports/entertainment books? They can be really interesting if well-edited but I feel like this is a lazy way to create a book.
I mean, the best rock books are the ones that have a clear, well-written narrative. And creating that is hard! But if you're doing an oral history, you basically just edit the transcripts of your interview and call it a book. It's like an outline with quotations. Feels like the easy way out, kind of a cousin to the 'found footage' film genre. I came up with that simile as I was writing it.
