The Bat Segundo Show #34

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Author: Tom Tomorrow

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Explaining his recent arrest for littering.

Subjects Discussed: The relationship between text and image, Moebius strips, clip art, working in digital, color vs. black and white, blogging as help, Warren Ellis, Tom the Dancing Bug, New Yorker cartoons and captions, fonts, the influence of the 1950s, on becoming a political cartoonist, lettering, analog vs. digital, the crazy policies of the New Yorker art department, Teletubbies, what happened with the Mondo Minishow version of This Modern World, static comics vs. Flash, pause panels, getting pulled from U.S. News and World Report, reaching mainstream audiences, on not getting booked on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, preaching to the choir, the origin of Sparky and the Bearded Liberal, and finding humor immediately after the 2004 election.

Latest Reading Meme

Continuing the meme (apparently originated by Patricia):

Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won’t, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you’ve never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story – George Orwell
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Shadow of The Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Dune – Frank Herbert
Sula by Toni Morrison
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Also, what titles would you add to this list? (Well, let’s mix it up then!)

John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
Great Expectations by Kathy Acker
Gain by Richard Powers
Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames
The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber
Brick Lane by Monica Ali

The Ambitious Charge: Keeping the Literary Rabble in Line?

Powell’s interview with Jonathan Safran Foer:

Dave: Something I want to ask: Your Wikipedia entry notes that detractors find you overly ambitious. I’m always puzzled when I hear that criticism, whether it’s aimed at a writer or a musician or whomever. I would guess you’ve drawn inspiration from others who may have faced that same complaint. Who comes to mind?

Foer: The term is so dumb that it’s hard to even think about. I guess I would hope they say that about every author I like.