bucephalus
The existence of Lotion dropped into my universe with a chance Google search last night. Turns out that Thomas Pynchon is one of their more outspoken fans (insofar as Pynchon can be outspoken about anything); he wrote the liner notes for their Nobody's Cool LP. Their touring credentials (Pavement, Throwing Muses, Mercury Rev) are also impeccable.
The New Yorker talks to Mr. Eggers about his forthcoming novel in a really irritatingly small font—someone should tell them about that. Based on the excerpt from the magazine's print version, I rather suspect that Eggers doesn't have the goods as a fiction writer—he's perpetuating the Heartbreaking Work formula of being young, flippant, and morally confused in the wake of tragedy, but as the tragedy is now a made-up tragedy the whole thing seems patently artifical and shallow. In a way, he might have shot himself in the foot by writing a memoir first; it allowed him to become this dual celebrity of Eggers the character/Eggers the author, but now when we read the adventures of a fictional Eggers stand-in it's hard not to see it as a pale reflection.
Do you want a giant Alexander the Great head carved into a Greek mountain? The Greeks are uneasy about it, and one can only imagine Macedonia's shit fit.
Re: Amina Lawal (the Nigerian woman whom the fundamentalist Shariah throwbacks are trying to stone), you can sign Amnesty International's letter of protest.
