He hurled one tape out of the window. "It was the worst piece of garbage I'd ever heard," he [Springsteen] snarled of even the final version. "We walked out of that studio and I wanted to kill somebody." He tried to force Columbia to scrap it and record the songs live at the Bottom Line club instead. It took [producer and Rolling Stone journalist Jon] Landau to ease him back into reality. "Look, you're not supposed to like it," he said. "You think Chuck Berry sits around listening to Maybellene? And when he does hear it, don't you think that he wishes a few things could be changed? Now come on. It's time to put the record out."
Or as Sondheim said, You have to move on.
Always good to remember when you're making art. You don't have to like it, just be ready to do the next thing.
...
I'll probably be posting a bit less through November -- I'll be doing a couple of online things that, given the fact I'll also be doing the UK tour, may take up the majority of the blogging time.
I'll be on the Well, talking about Anansi Boys and stuff over at their inkwell.vue area --
http://engaged.well.com/engaged/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue -- and helping with the Anansi Boys reading group questions over at The Barnes and Noble University (they have a university? Who knew?) at http://university.barnesandnoble.com/ .
Writing an introduction to Will Eisner's The Spirit work, which is good to do, but harder than I thought. Proofreading the new edition of Good Omens and doing another draft on a TV thing I'm writing with Michael Marshall Smith and Steve Jones, and I'm about to write a short story that may actually turn out to be a part of The Graveyard Book. It definitely feels like I'm home.
...
Having looked at it, the new Little Nemo In Slumberland book (http://www.sundaypressbooks.com/index.htm) is every bit as gorgeous as inspiring and as necessary as I had hoped. Yes, it is very expensive, but it is also large enough that, with the addition of legs, it would make a fine table, and, were you reading it on a boat and you were shipwrecked, you could cling to it until you were washed up on some deserted island somewhere, assuming that the desert island was near enough that you got washed up before the pages got waterlogged. And then you'd have something to read on your desert island, or even to make a small house out of. Which makes it a real bargain.