Well gang, depending on your take on me, this is either a worthwhile effort, or some kind of rock-bottom for lack of self-awareness, or something in between. I figured it was worth figuring out by trying. As regular readers know, I live a cash-poor but fulfillment-rich life. Right at the moment, the cash-poor part of […]

It’s a banal fact that human beings perceive a conflict between their desire to be individual and their desire to fit in comfortably within social groups. This tension is the source of the plots of, like, 75% of the young adult books ever written. Part of the expression of these conflicting desires can be seen […]

Will Wilkinson has a short and sweet and lovely appreciation of old-school blogging up on his reborn personal blog. I dig it a lot, and I entirely endorse his point about writing and the self. Blogging has always been described as being egalitarian or democratizing in an entirely bullshit way. Maybe in, like, 2000 blogging […]

I thought that this intervention into the sad, enraging Essay Anne Vanderbilt/Grantland saga was useful, in several ways. First, simply because Tom Scocca is a brilliant writer and a thoughtful guy. But second, because Scocca is the author of the smarm essay, and I think that interacts with this controversy in a useful way. Scocca […]

Well gang, I am home in Connecticut with my siblings and their spouses and kids. It’s nice to be home. I just wanted to wish you guys all the best and a merry whatever it is you are merry about, this time of year. Thanks for your readership, your feedback, and your support. It’s been […]

A lot of people really hate Armond White. No less than Roger Ebert declared him a troll. It’s hard not to suspect, at times, that he really is declaring opinions on movies just to piss off other people. I can’t go that far. I’ve known far too many fans of difficult or unappreciated art who […]

And it was Alex Balk! Doesn’t happen very often, you guys.

  I have always known that writing is a selfish activity. For me, it’s just a method to become more fully myself, and I take it as self-evident that you become yourself through the rejection of others. I know people will find that pretentious. But, again– it doesn’t matter what other people think; it’s for […]

So here’s a really good example of why Twitter is not for me. This is in response to a piece by Malcolm Gladwell on Tom Scocca’s smarm piece. Now, like all decent people, I have savaged Gladwell in the past, and I generally think that his work leaves people with a worse understanding of the […]

As an impossibly perfect coda to my recent argument about the impregnable social fortress of neoliberal brodudes, I leave you with this, a response to that wonderful George Scialabba interview I quoted from the other day.