As usual, the combination of our friends Bella Stander and Galleycat inspires giggles for the wryness of the sentiment.
She'll Wait for McEwan to Come Out on DVD
Most everybody else may be all excited about how Powell's Books and Ian McEwan have reinvented book promotion with that short film about On Chesil Beach, but Bella Stander ain't impressed. After watching an online trailer for the film, she dubs it "icky-sticky treacly," and doesn't think much of McEwan's ability to read his own fiction out loud. She also quotes an author interviewed for the WaPo article about the film, who wonders aloud, "at what point... does it feel like an infomercial?" Me, I was feeling a little more generous after watching the trailer—I thought it looked like a low-budget documentary from the Ovation Channel. And while it might be an acceptable compromise for somebody like McEwan, who hates "the three-week stab around the United States and the 25 media escorts," I have my doubts about this being the mainstream future of book promotion.
(And what is it with all these foreign novelists looking for ways to get out of doing U.S. book tours? First Margaret Atwood invents a robot arm to sign her books, and now this. The way things are going, Julian Barnes is probably going to unveil hologram generators so he can do in-store appearances for his next book from his living room.)
(from www.galleycat.com)
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