The Wall Street Journal talks to Rabbi’s Cat author Joann Sfar:
Are the books received differently in America?
In New York, particularly when I speak to non-Jewish audiences, I’ve been told “what a clever idea it was to make Jews live in an Arab country.” I realized that many Americans don’t know that not only did Jews live in the Arab world, but that they were already there in Roman times, long before Algeria became Islamic. I’m not religious, my wife isn’t Jewish and I haven’t given my children a religious education, but I have a lot of tenderness for my religion, and I like to talk about it.
The New York Daily News talks to Little Things author Jeffrey Brown:
“Little Things” strays away from your personal vignettes about relationships and shows a different side of you.
I think for the most part it’s the most well-rounded portrait of me. In the book you’re seeing many different sides of me. Whereas the previous books focused on particular aspects of relationships, so you’re getting a very narrow picture. In ["Little Things"] each story is focusing on a different idea or a different emotion. When you have them all together you’re seeing a bigger picture than you have seen before.
And The Kansas City Star talks to Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis:
“Talk to any litigation lawyer, and 99 out of 100 all have some ‘out’ plan,” Pastis said. “When I said I was leaving, my colleagues at the firm looked at me like a cellmate must look at someone about to go over the wall. It was, ‘You go, brother.’ No one ever questioned me.
“You know how you have to work 40 years of your life? Well, 50 the way things are going now,” he says. “I feel like I’ve stolen the last six years. The profession has its bad points, sure, but it’s like complaining about the lines at Disneyland. Why? Shut up. You’re still at Disneyland.”
