Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Quick Bites

• Disney has paid Clive Woodall $1 million to film One for Sorrow. Unfortunately, Disney has revealed a company policy whereby that are only allowed to pay seven figures to a supermarket manager once every thirty years. (This is for tax purposes.) So aspiring writers working at supermarkets will have to consider other studios.
• You have to admire the ethical devotion of the Limestone County School Board. After all, those Alabamans, who are clearly morally superior to the rest of us, have gone out of their way to keep a novel depicting "realistic life" off of school library shelves. The book is Chris Crutcher's Whale Talk. An excerpt reads: "The facts. I'm black. And Japanese. And white. Politically correct would be African-American, Japanese-American and what? Northern European-American? God, by the time I wrote all that down on a job application the position would be filled. Besides, I've never been to Africa, never been to Japan and don't even know which countries make up Northern Europe. Plus, I know next to nothing about the individuals who contributed all that exotic DNA, so it's hard to carve out a cultural identity in my mind. So: Mixed. Blended. Pureed. Potpourri." Could it be that the Key Lime Pie Imperial Wizards have a problem with "realistic" diversity?
• I might be alone in my excitement here, but He-Man has come to DVD.
• "The most unnatural thing for a novelist is to talk about their [sic] work, really. And certainly about themselves." What planet is Emma Richler living on?
• A cookbook catering to book clubs is out. The cookbook will include the proper dishes to serve when book club members are on the verge of strangling each other and an appetizer that will help settle the stomach when only one arty dude shows up among a coterie of thirtysomething women.
• Sam Weller has written a new Ray Bradbury biography entitled The Bradbury Chornicles. No word yet on whether Bradbury will go as apeshit over Weller's title as he did over Fahrenheit 9/11. Odds: 10 to 1 that Weller will be physically assaulted by an 82 year old writer before the summer.
• And believe it or not, Rushdie was able to speak for one hour without threatening a journalist. Too bad that his idea of deep thought is "In order to defeat the enemy that needs to be defeated, we must not stop being what we are."