From that Longreads treasure trove of Playboy interviews, here's one with Steve Martin.

PLAYBOY: But you give out business cards instead of autographs.

MARTIN: It's a way to deal with it quickly and not to be rude. Most of the times that people ask for autographs, it's a way of proving that they saw you. I know this from when I asked for autographs. People always want to know, "What's he like? Did he say anything funny? Was he nice?" You have thirty seconds to be all those things. My card covers it all: It says that you found me nice, you found me funny and you found me charming and friendly.

Via Longreads

Sagatrope pointed to an interview Tom Scocca did with David Foster Wallace in February 1998. Excerpts of it were published in the Boston Phoenix then, but on a cruise (get it) for Thanksgiving, Scocca took the time to transcribe it. It's in 5 parts, and entirely worth reading.

Part 1

Part 2

I think Esquire, Esqiure did leave a couple of those in, and I remember my mom, you know, reading that and just, kind of, her eyes being very wide the next time she saw me. There was something about Brooke Shields looking like somebody you'd masturbate to a picture of but not have sex with, that was really one of those four-in-the-morning, 15-cup-of-coffee-really, if I'd been in my right mind, I wouldn't have put it in the final draft, but I did. And then Esquire, I remember, left it in. Being Esquire. You know, wanting to create as much unpleasantness as possible. So.

Part 3

Q: How do you handle being responsible for facts, writing nonfiction, after writing fiction? Coming to a genre where the things you say have to be on some level verifiably true?
DFW: That's a real good question. And the first one of these that I did, in order, the first one I did was the very first one, about playing tennis as a Midwesterner. Where I had some shit that I just, that was like impressionistic, and I didn't know, and I'd never dealt with a fact-checker before. And they're like, "We discovered there is no yacht and tennis club in Aurora, Illinois, what are we to do?" And I was like, oh, God.

So after that I just started to take better notes and be willing to back stuff up. The thing is, really—between you and me and the Boston Phoenix's understanding readers—you hire a fiction writer to do nonfiction, there's going to be the occasional bit of embellishment.

Not to mention the fact that, like, when people tell you stuff, very often it comes out real stilted. If you just write down exactly what they said. And so you sort of have to rewrite it so it sounds more out-loud, which I think means putting in some "likes" or taking out some punctuation that the person might originally have said. And I don't really make any apologies for that.

Part 4

The footnotes, the honest thing is, is the footnotes were an intentional, programmatic part of Infinite Jest, and they get to be kind of—you get sort of addicted to 'em. And for me, a lot of those pieces were written around the time that I was typing and working on Infinite Jest, and so it's just, it's a kind of loopy way of thinking, that it seems to me is in some ways mimetic.

Part 5

Q: There's one other thing that I wanted to ask you about, which was the relationship between footnotes and hypertext.

DFW: I've had people say that, and I would love them to think that there's some grand theory. I sometimes use a computer to type when I've got a lot of corrections to do, but I don't have a modem, I've never been on the Internet. There's a guy in my department who teaches hypertext, but I don't really know anything about it.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently got a Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, to answer a couple questions by email on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the comic strip ending. It's believed to be the only Watterson interview since 1989, as Watterson has turned into the J.D. Salinger of the comic world. I've now got a new goal. See below and click through for examples of the wit that made Calvin & Hobbes a favorite.

What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?

Well, it's not a subject that keeps me up at night. Readers will always decide if the work is meaningful and relevant to them, and I can live with whatever conclusion they come to. Again, my part in all this largely ended as the ink dried.
...

How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?

Immediately. I'm going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.

Via The Daily What

Photo by Flickr user n1njadrumJawbreaker, Jets to Brazil, Thorns of Life, and now forgetters. Blake Schwarzenbach, after not performing publicly for several years following the disbanding of Jets to Brazil, caused a stir when Thorns of Life debuted late last year. After only a handful of performances and a recording session rumored to be troubled, it was said Thorns of Life had reached the end, as well. This was confirmed a couple weeks ago when Schwarzenbach resurfaced playing in a new band, forgetters. They play Great Scott in Allston on October, 4, and I recently had the opportunity to speak with Schwarzenbach over the phone.

We discuss the plan for forgetters, English, the nonpossibility of a Jawbreaker reunion, books, healthcare, politics, and more. Instead of breaking the interview into sections it's all in one post below. Enjoy!

Why don't you start off by telling me a little bit about forgetters and what you guys are about and what you want to try to do.

We're a 3 piece band from Brooklyn and we're still kinda getting know to each other as a musical entity. But songs have been happening very quickly for this group so we don't have any huge plans to continue gestating. And we want to play a lot.

So you guys are done with the birth period and you're gonna get out there.

Yeah! I mean we're still writing a lot of songs. I've got a little backlog and there's also been some spontaneous creation, which I'm always looking for. So it's hard for us right now because we're getting a lot of show possibilities and at the same time, we're trying to catch up with learning songs, in order to play them. So it's a good problem, but it is, nonetheless, something we have to negotiate.

Are you guys going to put together a tour, or just keep to weekends?

We're starting out with weekends and we'll be recording a couple songs in October for a 7". I think the plan is to be incremental and modest in our aspirations. We're trying to live in real human time.

So a 7" in October?

That's the recording. It will take longer to come out, obviously.
Read the rest of this entry »

For your lazy day viewing pleasure. Malcolm Gladwell being interviewed by Charlie Rose (below) and I couldn't figure out how to embed the Bill Moyers video, but Michael Pollan being interviewed by Bill Moyers. Both very interesting and a good way to spend a couple hours.



Video to Moyers/Pollan is here.