Category: interviews

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

An interview with Jeff Smith, part one. Part two is coming soon, I hope. Smith is known best for his epic series of Bone comics:

Part of the plan was that I was going to reprint the collection in books, to always keep the story available. I always wanted to do the big one volume edition, too. One of the things that I wanted to do was change the model of comics and make them restockable, instead of comics just being up on stands for a month and then coming down and going back into the longbox, after getting marked up a bit.

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A somewhat goofy interview with comics writer James Kochalka in one two three parts. “There have been occasions where I‚Äôve said things to people, just to get reactions from them, so I could draw a strip about it. I‚Äôve done that to my wife before. It‚Äôs kind of a mean trick.”

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An interview with Steven Johnson.

I came out of college in the late ’80s amid the science wars. Literary theorists were deconstructing the scientists, and scientists were making fun of the literary theorists. There was no realm where you’d come into a classroom and say, “This complexity theory might be useful in thinking about the kind of urban system Dickens is describing.” If you talked about science, it was entirely to show how it was Eurocentric or something.

I always felt like that was a total waste of time. There were obviously insights that both domains could productively share. A lot of what I’ve been trying to do since then is figure out what those connections could be, and figure out a way to work them into the books.

[via… Steven Johnson]

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An interview with SNL writer Bryan Tucker.

One thing people still don’t seem to get is that the show is actually live and on Saturdays – just like the title says (when I got the job my mom asked me what night the show came on), Things are literally being rewritten and changed until minutes before they get on the air – usually not radically changed, but definitely tweaked. The whole show is put together in about four days, and it’s frustrating when people compare SNL to other comedy shows that have the tremendous advantage of pre-taping things and controlling every aspect of what ultimately gets produced.

And here is part two.

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Al Gore talks with GQ magazine. Politics aside, he actually seems like a cool, earthy guy. What I would really like is for a journalist to do an interview without bringing up the 2008 election. Seems like they all are just begging to get the scoop: “Al Gore Changes His Mind.” He said he isn’t running, folks. Lay off.

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

New York Inquirer interviews Keith Gessen of the literary magazine n+1, sometimes rival to McSweeney’s. I like his comments on book reviews:

One of the few rules we have for book reviews is that they can’t be about dead authors. It’s very easy to say I love Tolstoy or Flaubert or whoever, and my contemporaries are not up to that standard… It‚Äôs fun, I’ll admit‚Äîbut in the end nothing could be less interesting or useful. And nothing could tell us less about the way we live now.

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Scott Rosenberg interviews Steven Johnson about his latest book, The Ghost Map. I liked Johnson’s thoughts on the evolution of popular theories and the role of public intellectuals. “Part of what you’re supposed to do as an educated intelligent person is try and figure out the giant weird invisible elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about — the thing that everybody’s missing. But it’s hard. They’re blind spots for a reason.” Reminds me of Mises’ thoughts on ideas.