Here is the point in each installment of KCRW’s Bookworm, in which Michael Silverblatt finally permits the author to speak. (It is also worth noting that Bookworm is a twenty-eight minute show.)
Marianne Wiggins: 2:11
Miranda July: 1:59
Nathan Englander: 1:45 (only because Englander interrupted him)
Naeem Murr: 2:34
Michael Ondaatje: 1:30 (!)
Helena Maria Viramontes: 1:50
Kurt Vonnegut: 1:38
Richard Flanagan: 1:30
Jim Crace: 2:19
Jonathan Lethem: 2:07
Annalee Newitz: “Dear reader, there is really nothing worse than a leftist with anthropomorphizing tendencies. This is exactly why people join PETA instead of unions and protest animal experimentation instead of how humans are treated in jail.”
There is news now circulating, confirmed by the New York Times, that Amanda Congdon’s contract hasn’t been renewed with ABC. Which makes me wonder if the DuPont conflict of interest was publicly supported by ABC only because ABC had every intention of letting Congdon’s contract run out.
And here’s a report of the evening from Richard Grayson. As Mr. Grayson notes, someone did indeed leave in a huff midway through the reading. Many thanks to Levi Asher for inviting me.
(Mad props to Caryn)
Washington Post: “The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.”
Oh, and, by the way, as of February 2008, if you leave to and from the United States by air or by sea, you will need special clearance from the same Automated Targeting System listed in this article. Your name will be fed into a computer and, before you can get your boarding pass, your name will be checked against a “risk factor” saved for forty years in the computers. The DHS, of course, has been sketchy about what details it has been collecting.