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.

BBC: “Catching sight of a pretty woman really is enough to throw a man’s decision-making skills into disarray, a study suggests.”

New York Times Corrections: “While he was hired to edit Page Six in 1985 and is its current editor, Mr. Johnson left The Post briefly in 1990 to work at The Daily News and in television; his work on Page Six has not been continuous since 1985.”

BBC: “The author behind the film The Graduate faces eviction from his home in East Sussex because of rent arrears. Novelist Charles Webb, 66, and his partner have only days to pay two months’ overdue rent, totalling nearly £1,600, on their flat in Hove….The Californian author accepted a one-off payment of £14,000 for the novel, while the film made £60m….The theatrical adaptation of the classic movie took another £10m in its recent West End stage run.”

The origin of He-Man: “[Mattel president] Ray Wagner had passed on Star Wars because the license property apparently required $750,000 upfront. At the time, for an unproven property, that was a highly exorbitant sum. So Wagner had Mattel’s Prelimary Design Department – of which I was a member – Come up with viable male action figure concepts. I had been real impressed by Frank Frazetta paintings and I [submitted an idea] that I called monster fantasy. But it was actually a barbarian fantasy.”

Robert Birnbaum talks with Richard Reeves. Some interesting views on the Edmund Morris Reagan bio, Bob Woodward and this interesting quote:

But America, going back to something we said before, America is whatever we say it is. We have no sense of history, we live in the present, totally different and I am not against that. We are not fighting wars, like in Kosovo, for something that happened in the 11th century. And because of that, the way we developed, or at least I would argue American exceptionalism has to do with the fact that, forgetting that we killed the Indians, that there was this land here and we came from everywhere and we could keep moving on. That’s what I think of American exceptionalism and I believe it’s true, for better and for worse. He believed the same thing. But he believed God wanted it to be that way. The “shining city on the hill” stuff, and “last best hope of mankind,” and that was his American exceptionalism, that we were simply better than other people. And he said that over and over again. I am old enough now that I like us—America is a great place—we are different, we are not better. We are a different kind of people and I prefer being an American to being anything else. But I don’t think God had much to do with it. God doesn’t check passports.

Spark’s Slate diaries.

The Litblog Co-Op has revealed its Spring 2006 choice. Like the last round, there will also be five special podcasts provided courtesy of the Bat Segundo show devoted to all of the nominees (three are in the can), as well as brief interviews with the nominators. In fact, it was Mr. Sarvas himself who was the first to be recorded on one of our new audio toys and who put up with our rather geeky fixation on just how utterly sexy he sounded. Thankfully, none of our enthusiastic asides were preserved in audio form.

I stumbled across Charlie Ruas, a guy who’s talked with David Shipler, Dave King, Lily Tuck, A.S. Byatt and many others. Unfortunately, Ruas is a bit of a frightening interviewer. He speaks in a slow and booming baritone that must be heard to be believed, e-nunc-ee-a-ting each word as if about to take the pulpit. An idle thought: must all literary interviewers be so intense (perhaps the word humorless applies) about literature? Writers are, by their very craft, playful folks. Shouldn’t they be entitled to a bit of playful banter every now and then?

Your advocate, who has spent his Saturday night finalizing his taxes, isn’t so much in a joyous mood (sadly, he has to pay), but is greatly relieved that it’s all over (a pox upon you: Schedule CA (540)!) and is, as a result, unusually jocose.

I put forth the following quandry to the prosecution: Have the critics savaged Colson Whitehead’s Apex Hides the Hurt because The Intuitionist and John Henry Days are both damn good novels and quite possibly, at least in this advocate’s opinion, exceptionally brilliant? Is it because Apex does not live up to these two shining beacons of virtuousity?

Corollary: To what degree can a lesser work by a great novelist be forgiven? Did the critics go after Faulkner because The Hamlet didn’t measure up to The Sound and the Fury? Did they not understand that setting down Snopes in early form might have been a way to get to Intruder in the Dust or the next two (better) books in the Snopes trilogy? And even if some of you in the jury might be snobbish enough to think that everything Faulkner put out after 1940 (a lot of it mysteries) isn’t really worth contemplating, to what extent does the literary community and this court by proxy have to consider good (but not great) works from its authors with less alacrity than the norm? I do not suggest handicaps. I suggest context or a more rigorous study of an artist’s work, if charges are to be leveled against my client. How can the vast divide between the masterpieces which an author puts out early in his career be corraled with the “good but lesser” works he puts out later? How can an author maintain any sense of ambition or evolution when the later works don’t live up to critical and scholarly expectations?

It’s a disingenuous charge that the prosecution puts out, your honor. They want to nail these “early bloomers” to the wall. They’ve gone after Dave Sim for his muddled politics in the latter part of Cerebus, failing to consider the accomplishment of his artwork. They’ve gone after Jane Campion because her most recent films don’t live up to An Angel at My Table or The Piano, even when the later films contain clear flashes of brilliance (such as the vibrant reds and greens of In the Cut and the daring sexual politics of Holy Smoke). And they declare Apex as “technical artistry [which] is in the service of unremarkable themes and ideas,” a book that involves “watching Whitehead sketch out a minor character’s essence with one stroke, while breathtaking, makes one wish the same treatment was afforded the people who ostensibly inhabit the novel’s complex ideas,” and dismiss the plaintiff’s work as “admirable ambition.”

But are these really charges with which to castigate the plaintiff? Does it allow for a proper exegesis? Even if the prosecution wishes to condemn the artist, does it not make sense to give the accused some benefit of the doubt in light of honorable standing and past accomplishments?

I do not wish to curtail rigorous and often vicious criticism, your honor. I merely wish to point out that sometimes a book is more than just a disappointment. And it is worth understanding why a book has failed within the context of previous offerings rather resorting to the altogether too easy approach of casual dismissal.

Michael Rice, who stunned listeners earlier this week with his dramatic departure into Masterpiece Theatre territory (without so much as a set of Retarded Ass Questions!), talks with his first repeat guest, Ms. Liebe (“I’m not really a director. I’m just an object choreographer”) Wetzel, she of Lunatique Fantastique. The real question now is whether Cool as Hell Theatre or Bat Segundo will hit Show #50 first. My money’s on Michael.

And in other news, it looks like Pinky’s hit the big time, with appearances on NPR and Theory Radio.