Interview Roundup

The San Francisco Chronicle talks to Laurenn McCubbin, whose blog I visit from time to time--and whose illustrations for Rent Girl, a graphic novel collaboration with Michelle Tea, I'm looking forward to seeing soon.

A naked girl can't help but be sexy -- there is something inherently sexy about a girl wearing lingerie, in certain poses ... but I don't draw them to get men off. I've had a male friend say, 'Damn you, Laurenn, you've ruined girl-on-girl action for me!'... I don't know. I do want people to think about what they're looking at.

David Lodge tells Telegraph operator Julia Llewellyn how he got into Henry James' head while writing his latest novel, Author, Author, and the more personal struggles he's faced raising a son with Down's syndrome. Of the latter experience, he admits, "I don't think I could have coped with a child who was very, very seriously handicapped... Some people rise heroically to the challenge, but I'm afraid I would feel that artist's splinter of ice."

And David Mitchell, whose Cloud Atlas I'm going to read damn soon, gets into it with the WaPo Book World crew, declaring, "I can't claim that Don DeLillo's monumental Underworld is a model for Cloud Atlas, but reading him always encourages me (like drinking) to take literary risks."

Lance Iversen/Chronicle