Interview Roundup: The Sequels

• Frederick Busch explains to Robert Birnbaum why he didn’t go back and reread Girls before starting the sequel, North: “I sort of knew enough of the former events. What I didn’t want to do was imitate myself. And it’s easy to do. I knew the structure. I knew there would be a one-word title. One-word chapter names. I knew that Jack wouldn’t have a last name and his dog wouldn’t have any name. And I knew that a crucial moment would come in a cornfield, just as it does in Girls. And I felt that was all I needed to know.”

• Scott McLemee talks to Barbara Ehrenreich about “treading the fine line between investigative journalism and participant-observer ethnography” in Bait and Switch, her sequel of sorts to Nickel and Dimed. Find out why she “often felt extremely soiled, compromised and generally yucky about the whole venture.”

• Those of you who love to hate Deborah Solomon (you know who you are) were probably chomping at the bit when she responded to Andre Codrescu‘s vision of New Orleans as a “glorious mess” of a tourist trap by asking, “Must you be so defeatist?” Personally, I was more entertained by her comment on Senator Mary Landrieu–“it’s nice to see women in positions of leadership”–since all Landrieu really did worth remembering during the crisis was get yelled at by Anderson Cooper. Unless you count her ineffectual threats to punch the president in the nose…
  

12 September 2005 | interviews |

Take It, This Cesspool (Part 2)

Blake Bailey’s escape from New Orleans must have struck a chord with Slate editors as well as readers, since they’ve now given him a weekly column. This time around, he tackles the daily grind of survival.

12 September 2005 | uncategorized |