- Ed Park offers a fab review of Black Swan Green. Really, folks, this is the way to write criticism. (via Jenny D)
- Also tackling Mitchell is Mr. Derek Weiler and Mitchell is sharp as a tack in this Book Standard review. Incidentally, he’s also going to be at the Booksmith next Monday.
- Over at Maud’s, Katharine Weber remembers Muriel Spark.
- There’s an unfortunate trend of product placement in comic books. So that explains the recent Wolverine White Flower Day story arc! (via Galleycat)
- Apparently, publicity budgets are so thin that desperate writers are now gambling their savings away to establish a marketing budget. And here I was thinking that the $8 I dropped Sunday night on a middling martini was a gamble.
- There’s a Stockton band called the Lobstrostities. All of their songs contain references to The Dark Tower. Apparently, the name alone has been a major draw. If that’s the case, I’ll have to start a band called Roland and the Gunslingers.
- Never underestimate Canadian sarcasm.
- An interview with DBC Pierre: “So, don’t think that I set out with an agenda to shock or to make any kind of big statement, either. They just seemed such blindingly obvious things in the world around me that I, you know, felt compelled to write about them.” Well, that would explain why Vernon God Little is so flaacid.
- Good to know that the subjects of Continuum’s excellent series are reading the books. But then this is Sonic Youth we’re talking about here. They kick ass by default.
- Mental Multivitamin channels “The Chris Farley Show.”
- Jane Fonda: milquetoast.
- South Park plans to take on James Frey.
© 2006, Edward Champion. All rights reserved.
DBC, why the hell are you compelled to write about “blindingly obvious things”? Surely if they’re blindingly obvious, everybody has already noticed them, right? So what’s the point?
Just a few groundbreaking topics from his next book: 1) the sun rises in the east; 2) rain descends to the Earth from clouds; 3) gravity is what keeps all of us from floating off into space. Thanks in advance, DBC!
Pierre is one of the most talented and compelling writers to appear since Marquez in the 1967. You just don’t know quality when you see it. He sold 1.5 million copies of Vernon, which, for a literary fiction title, is astronomical. And his second book, while completely different in tone, structure, and subject, is equally compelling.
All that talent, but he doesn’t know the dialectical difference between “fuckin” and “fucken.” 🙂
So what’s the fucking difference then?