Erich Origen & Gan Golan

For Newsweek, Brian No interviewed Erich Origen and Gan Golan, authors of Goodnight Bush, a political parody of the children's classic Goodnight Moon.

Two exchanges from the interview:

NEWSWEEK: How did you guys come up with the idea for "Goodnight Bush"? What were you trying to accomplish with this book?

Erich Origen: Well we were just inspired by what a great job Bush was doing, and we wanted to capture his legacy and the glory of it. [Chuckle.] No, we felt that we were responding to a need to have a truth-and-reconciliation moment. The cultural response to Bush has either been to make fun of the absurdity or soberly assess the tragedy. Of course, it's both absurd and tragic, and we felt we needed something that captured both of those things.

Did you guys read "Goodnight Moon" when you were young?

Gan Golan: It wasn't something that was read to me as a child. I really came across it when I was older, reading it to other children. When we started working on it, we began to study it in great detail, and that's when we understood "Goodnight Moon" wasn't just a simple children's book. It was this incredibly complex, finely structured work of art and literature.

Read the complete interview.

Visit the Goodnight Bush website.

--Marshal Zeringue