Vanity CareLimos parked outside Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn delayed an ambulance en route to nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital. Former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill cut down his use of the company’s corporate jets right before 17,000 people were laid off. Michael Chabon is proud to have been branded an anti-Semite by the Post. Ellen Barkin is writing a novel based on her marriage to Ron Perelman. Bonnie Fuller is branching into TV. Barbara and Lauren Bush sang karaoke. The famous hawks living at 927 Fifth Avenue will soon be in a kids’ book. Jay Leno confused two Mexican comedians. Joe Francis says his Girls Gone Wild videos don’t feature black girls because they ask for money, not because he’s racist.
in other news
Michael Chabon’s Got Swords, Thanks to SpareThe publishing blog Galleycat reports that the Times Magazine’s “Funny Pages” will feature a tale by Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Michael Chabon as its fifth serialized contribution. (Previous contributors were Elmore Leonard, Patricia Cornwell, Scott Turow, and Michael Connelly.) Galleycat gets the gist of the story from the announcement — it’s “an adventure yarn set in the tenth-century kingdom of Arran, which the Times press release helpfully notes was ‘in the Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian seas’” — and follows up with an e-mail to Chabon, asking about his inspirations for the project. “Well, the novel carries a dedication to Michael Moorcock,” Chabon replies, mentioning “his stories of Elric and other ironic sword-wielding heroes.” And, well, of course he does. For Chabon, isn’t it always about acknowledgements and, um, swords?
Michael Chabon Prepares Swashbuckler for NYT [Galleycat/MB]
Earlier: Michael Chabon, Defender of the Acknowledgement
cultural capital
Michael Chabon, Defender of the AcknowledgmentLast week, Times books reporter Julie Bosman took a swipe at Norman Mailer’s Aeneid-length acknowledgments. In today’s letter column, Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon presents a defense:
Here’s a crazy reason your article did not mention for including an acknowledgment at the end of your novel: to acknowledge. If there is some kind of old-fashioned virtue in concealing one’s debt to and gratitude for the hard work of others, it’s difficult for me to see where it lies.
But of course Chabon approves of the public airing of private gratitude. He’s married, after all, to novelist Ayelet Waldman, who famously published a certain delightful bit in a March 2005 “Modern Love” column. What did she have to say?
