Well, the one I’ve waited for at any rate. Tom Spurgeon talks to Doug Wolk:
SPURGEON: I know I’ve kidded you about this, but do you have any idea why you’ve authored the lightest-feeling hardcover in the history of my reading books? I have socks that weigh more than your book.
WOLK: I think those Fourth World Omnibus books might be lighter! My guess — and I could be totally wrong about this — is that when Da Capo was budgeting for a 110,000-or-so-word book, they didn’t take into account that there would be about 100 images (and I had stupidly resisted the idea of including images until fairly late in the process, when some friends convinced me that I was out of my mind). That bumped up the page count considerably, so maybe they went with a less expensive stock? I don’t know.
It goes uphill from there, seriously.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:08 am
That question and response was a highlight of my career; why am I not writing for Paris Review when I can bring the goods like that?