over the cliff

Sorry Oliver, but Malex has won the ‘best blog entry ever’ contest.

An Exegesis of All That Is Irrelevant to Present Being…

Jon linked me to this interview with Neal Stephenson on Slashdot.

I’ve only actually read one part of it. The answer to question number 2, when he discusses the… reception of genre writers by literary critics. My favorite section:

I went to a writers’ conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we’d exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me “And where do you teach?” just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another “And which distro do you use?”

I was taken aback. “I don’t teach anywhere,” I said.

Her turn to be taken aback. “Then what do you do?”

“I’m…a writer,” I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.

“Yes, but what do you do?”

I couldn’t think of how to answer the question—I’d already answered it!

“You can’t make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?” she tried.

“From…being a writer,” I stammered

I could have sworn that I posted these already… but apparently not.

Most of you have already seen them… I’m really only putting them here so that I can find them later.

Catapult

Catapult 2

Ninja Wizards!