Longevity the Eco way

Philip Marchand interviews Umberto Eco.

"Take the case of a person who's totally illiterate," Eco says. "When he or she dies, his or her life has spanned 60 or 70 years, let's say. But you or me, when we die we've had a life 2,000 years long. Our life contains — I don't know, the assassination of Caesar and the discovery of America. People who have had cultural training have a longer life than the person who has only personal biography."


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The Writer's Cafe
Check out the latest in audio interviews with Canuck scribes, including monthly features with writers from the Walrus.


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Neil Gaiman on the future of film
Ah yes, that pesky money-making problem.

I think we're heading soon to the point where a lot of things are going to be up for grabs. We're moving into a world in which the actual recording process is cheap and free. I would love to see a deep democratization of film, and I think that is actually on the border of happening. I think the Web will level the playing field, is already leveling the playing field, as broadband starts to become more of an international reality. If I wanted to make a film now and I wanted people to see it, I'd just put it up on the Web. There's not really a way to make money off that, which is one of the places where things sort of break down. I'm fascinated by people, like (filmmaker) Steven Soderbergh, who are saying they'll release (movies simultaneously) on the Web and on DVD. I don't know that the time for that has quite come yet, but it makes absolute sense that people will do it like that one day or that delivery methods will change.

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The geek kings
Time interviews Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon. What fun. Especially the part about Hollywood.

JW: I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.

NG: Yes. It really is this thing of executives loving the smell of their own urine and urinating on things. And then more execs come in, and they urinate. And then the next round. By the end, they have this thing which just smells like pee, and nobody likes it.

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Salon interviews Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke
An interesting discussion on the state of English myths and fairy tales.

It's almost like England has to cope with something big that's been lost. Take Stonehenge: I get irritated when neopagans start talking about the ancient legends of Stonehenge and how far back they go. When I tell them that those legends mostly come from the 1850s, they get really upset. In "Remains of Gentilism and Judaism," which is John Aubrey's book, he went out and found every single thing he could and wrote it down -- everything that was commonly believed about Stonehenge, which was if you chip a rock off Stonehenge and put it in your well, it will keep toads away. That's it. That's everything John Aubrey was able to find in the 1640s.

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David Rakoff

Interviewed.


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Meta Marchand

Star Books editor Philip Marchand interviews himself about his new book..

So you've just been promoting your new book, Ghost Empire: How The French Almost Conquered North America. You poor author, having to do a book promotion tour. Tell us how wearying it was to the sensitive soul of a writer like you.

Don't be sarcastic. You and I both know there are few things better than staying in a good hotel room that somebody else is paying for.

(From The Quill)


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Wanker.

Agreed.

Amen.

Lisa Moore

Interviewed.


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Jeff Bezos interviewed
CNET talks to Amazon's CEO about the company's new Amazon Pages program.

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Philip Roth spits in Death's eye

Roth, interviewed.


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Joan Didion

Interviewed about how she's getting on alone.


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Interviewing:

Joseph Parisi at Bookslut.


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Canadian bad girl Eden Robinson

Interviewed at the Ceeb.


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