What happened was very sad. Mr. Lacey told the staff that he was disappointed and appalled that the front of the book was all commentary and that he wanted hard news.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's so much of, it could have been a very critical examination of what happened, and really the emotional lives of the people involved sort of carry the characters forward.
Lacey said if he wanted to read a daily or regular critiques of the Bush administration, he would read the New York Times, and that's not what he wanted in the Village Voice.
A dry stretch of commentary in the middle of an 'Anchorman' movie would have been a terrible thing.
Lacey had this huge chip on his shoulder. He walked into the room thinking that the people didn't welcome him and didn't like him. He gave the impression that he didn't understand the Voice and New York, and he didn't want to.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
That's the worst way you can hear about comedy material: from a third person's blog story that they wrote when they were upset.
They handled it very badly. It was disappointing and very humiliating. John York was very rude. He never consulted with me over what he said to the press.
The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.
The books are funny and sad, and that's what people respond to.