Lit Links

This weekend, while driving home from the city, our family tuned in to Eleanor Wachtel's interview with cartoonist-slash-artist-at-large Lynda Barry. It is engaging, wildly entertaining, hilarious, empowering, yea even magical. And yet I can't find it on the Corp's podcast page. But you can stream it here. Just, please, do yourself a favor and tune in.*

I like Thomas Pynchon. I think he's funny, clever, illuminating. But the last Pynchon novel I read was Vineland, and after finishing it I decided I wasn't going to devote any more of my reading time to him -- I'd read enough. Too many books, too little time. As for Sam Anderson, well ... he hates Thomas Pynchon. Hates, hates, hates him -- over here.

*I should add that I am not an unreserved fan of Wachtel's show. I think Wachtel is a talented and incisive interviewer, but her subjects -- published and internationally venerated authors -- are frequently tedious bores. She recently interviewed a writer I enjoy, someone whose prose has made me giggle (as he intended). Three-quarters of the way through her interview with the guy, I had to shut it off lest I lose the last of my love for his work. All this is to say, her interview with Barry is completely exceptional.