Recently I spoke with Oscar Villalon, my former editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, now Publisher of McSweeney's. I wrote up the interview for The Rumpus some time later.
As publisher of McSweeney's, Oscar was one of the driving forces behind "San Francisco Panorama", the gigantic, beautiful newspaper experiment that came out earlier this week.
Our conversation happened before that or else I would have asked about it. Oscar summed it up pretty nicely in this radio interview, if you're curious.
Anyway, we talked mostly about reading, writing and books. Enjoy!
"You could easily argue, yes, they’re the most important thing going on in our culture, is fine literature. Is fine non-fiction, and fiction, and poetry, etc., and essays. Because of that, it does carry a disproportional weight. So, I find it disheartening when, for example, when we read a review by someone who’s very critical of a big shot author, and it’s a sound review, and the criticism I get back from our readers is, “Well, this person has never written anything important, so why should I listen to them?” Now, they didn’t bother—you read the review based on what’s presented. Who the person is, what their bona fides are, is meaningless. Who cares? If what they’re saying is true, it’s true. I don’t care if the guy’s a parking lot attendant or if he’s got a doctorate from Harvard, what’s the difference?"
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles edited and compiled by Jeff Martin. Essay by me on page 45.
