A quick hit (or short take?) of my own, while I cook up a meatier post for later in the week.
I saw this profile of Dale Peck (via Bookninja) earlier today. I nominate this exchange for today’s Chutzpah Award:
Q: Do you feel like you’ve lived up to your reputation as literary crusader in your own work?
A: That’s one of those questions that’s impossible to answer without looking like a pompous ass. At the same time, it’s also a question I set myself up for with Hatchet Jobs, and, well, I am a pompous ass, at least when it comes to my own work. So the short answer is yes. I think my books are freakin’ awesome. I wouldn’t publish them if I didn’t think that.
Huzzah! Why can’t every interviewee answer questions like that, and not just Peck or Robert Downey, Jr.? (cf. the quote that concludes, “…That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.”)
I love a good literary foofaraw like the next guy. You may recall that Peck’s work in Hatchet Jobs caused a few — beware the slap-happy paw of Stanley Crouch, apparently — not to mention the infamy of the sentence, aka the best book review lede of his generation.