{"id":648,"date":"2010-06-22T23:59:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-23T03:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/22\/new-hampshire-public-radio-passage\/"},"modified":"2010-06-22T23:59:28","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T03:59:28","slug":"new-hampshire-public-radio-passage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/22\/new-hampshire-public-radio-passage\/","title":{"rendered":"My State-by-State Tour of Public Radio Continues!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"justin-cronin-passage.jpg\"You may recall that, earlier this month, I appeared on Minnesota Public Radio<\/a> to refute some nonsense Garrison Keillor was spouting about the imminent decline of publishing. Well, late last week I did a pre-recorded interview with New Hampshire<\/i> Public Radio, specifically the show “Word of Mouth<\/a>,” fielding questions about the history behind the acquisition of The Passage<\/i><\/a>, the new Justin Cronin novel upon which Ballantine has placed blockbuster hopes, and the magnitude of the marketing campaign to launch that novel into the world. That segment aired Monday<\/a>, with my comments used primarily as a setup for a more extensive interview with Cronin, during which he acquits himself quite nicely.<\/p>\n

I had barely gotten 100 pages into The Passage<\/i> when we did that interview last Friday, and over the weekend I was able to get another couple hundred in, but I’m still only at about the halfway point. So far, there’s a lot to like about the novel—compared to Mira Grant’s Feed<\/i><\/a>, another recent brick-sized first-volume-in-a-trilogy about what happens to American society after scientific experiments lead to a plague of bloodsucking fiends, The Passage<\/i> is by all means more elegant, and less overtly didactic (or, in some instances, less blatantly satirical). Then again, the plot of Feed<\/i> is more tightly compressed, and though both novels thrive on hiding some important information until absolutely necessary, so far The Passage<\/i> is requiring a greater suspension of disbelief. Further, one of the most significant stumbling blocks I’ve had in getting into The Passage<\/i> is an abrupt shift of narrative focus as a story that starts out echoing the best storytelling of Stephen King suddenly jumps into Walter F. Miller, Jr., territory. (And that’s not just me making stuff up: Cronin has acknowledged the influence<\/a> of A Canticle for Liebowitz<\/i> on his post-apocalyptic worldbuilding.) But that could just be on me; I made the effort to adjust to the new setting, and I’m eager to see where The Passage<\/i> goes from there.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if there are any other public radio programmers\/producers who are looking for somebody to talk about literature or publishing, heck, I’m available, and I wouldn’t mind hitting all 50 states by next<\/i> June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may recall that, earlier this month, I appeared on Minnesota Public Radio to refute some nonsense Garrison Keillor was spouting about the imminent decline of publishing. Well, late last week I did a pre-recorded interview with New Hampshire Public Radio, specifically the show “Word of Mouth,” fielding questions about the history behind the acquisition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}