Day: May 9, 2007

Two from the “They didn’t really say that, did they?” department:

  • “Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.”

    That’s Ruth Franklin, on Michael Chabon’s latest novel1, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Yet, inexplicably, it’s a positive review. Imagine what that Chabon could accomplish if he’d just write serious fiction for a change!

  • “Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project,” Daniel Giat, the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, told a group of television writers earlier this year.

    And that’s from the New York Times2, on a new adaptation of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. So is that the highest goal of art nowadays? To carry the white audience?

1 Via Kaleidotrope #2 contributor Daniel Ausema

2 Via Ed Champion.

This is the story of Johnny Rotten…

I’m watching Jeopardy right now, and there’s a category on popular music. One of the clues asked for the name of the pistol-themed band formed by former Guns N’Roses members. Now, even if you didn’t know it was Velvet Revolver, even if you didn’t really know much of anything about popular music, would you have guessed the Sex Pistols?

Heather was one of the first supporters of Kaleidotrope, so it seems only fair that I should do a little of the same for her new endeavor, Project Paper Crane. The way it works is pretty simple:

  1. Send an email Project Paper Crane. Name and address, please.
  2. Wait for said crane to arrive (it may take a while).
  3. Email a picture of your crane when it arrives.

I’m going to take part and maybe donate a little folding money — get it? it’s origami, so folding money’s a pun…? It’s…oh, never mind. Just go, get a crane.