I’ve decided that this may be the best way to incorporate footnote like things into my blog. Since it didn’t seems relevant to my overall point of trumpeting my newfound fame, I decided this exhange didn’t really merit inclusion in the blog entry proper but it was too awkward to go unremarked upon:
More than a few called Spaceman Blues apocalyptic, but Rain Taxi called it “a love song for New York City and for life.” Hats off you for writing something that got such varied reviews. Does this mean that your first novel was a love song to the apocalypse?
I have no idea what it means, other than that I seem to be doing my job. Many of my own favorite books and movies are those that sharply divide critical opinion — I have actually bought books and seen movies based on excoriating, negative reviews — and I’m delighted that the same thing has happened to my books, though that doesn’t mean that I think my books are anywhere near as good as the books that I love.
The interviewer, in the service of a somewhat witty question that it probably makes him feel fancy to ask, quotes me (well, the publication I was published in) calling Spaceman Blues a love song. It’s worth noting that the full title of Spaceman Blues is Spaceman Blues: A Love Song so I was hardly breaking new ground. The author is either confused by the question or can’t be bothered to respond to it and instead answers a slightly more boring question of his own imagining about negative reviews. Lest I be seen as churlish for mocking people who are only making me more famous and injecting me deeper into the literary conversation, I should point out that the interview as whole is pretty interesting, and that the interviewer sort of makes fun of himself for asking silly questions.
