Susan Sarandon

Calvin and Hobbled

Here’s a little secret regarding opinion pieces: It’s all about “angle.” You look at something in the news, and you find an interesting angle for your readers. Case in point: the recent L.A. freeway fire that crippled the I-10 Downtown. As there’d been a homeless encampment under that stretch, the angle for conservatives was obvious: “Haw-haw-haw, L.A. homeless burned down the freeway! Blue city gets what it deserves.” It was an irresistible angle. The problem is, it wasn’t true. The fire started in a gated lumber and vehicle storage yard next to the freeway. We don’t know ...

The Straw Man Zone

If I could eradicate one sin from the world, I would free writers and journalists from our desire to make a heartfelt splash, and damn the facts. Exaggerated reporting in the ...

More People, More Nonsense

It's not often that a Salon writer produces a lit piece that doesn"€™t make me grunt with rage. Aside from their hysterical loathing for male writers who won"€™t check their ...

Science Fiction for the Fourth Generation

Here's a brilliant idea for an anthology: collect essays about the changing face of war and war technology, then alternate them with short stories and novel excerpts from the ...

Good Advice, Bad Examples

I can"€™t resist a writing style guide, especially one that promises to be lively. Steven Pinker made his name as a linguistic and cognitive scientist; his 2002 book The Blank ...

Ceasefire

The rigged game of publishing is no less rotten today than on any other, but it's unnatural to be contentious on Christmas. I"€™d rather talk truces. Most readers will have ...

Anomie en Masse

I love those sweet, fleeting moments of near-lucidity when the janitors at the mainstream pop-culture echo chamber almost manage to notice how annoying the echo is. Full ...

Learning Not to Love

Making fun of millennials is all kinds of fish-in-a-barrel fun. Their creepy, dehumanized fixation on their smartphones reminds me of lab rats, pushing the Tweet button to light ...

Pardon Me, Gents: Of Quintus Curtius

It's taken me a few weeks to work up the gall to write about the pseudonymous Quintus Curtius"€™ first book. Thirty Seven: Essays on Life, Wisdom, and Masculinity, released this ...

Philistines, Arise!

Have you heard that big, bad Amazon is destroying the book industry? To be more accurate, they"€™re plowing the major publishers under: ah, nobility in tears. I"€™m not a fan ...

Dystopia Lives!

The old "€œmen don"€™t read fiction"€ saw is making the rounds of the publishing industry again. It's more a self-fulfilling prophecy than a valid judgment against the ...

Get Off My Lawn and Go Read a Book

Being neither rocket-scientist material nor chipper by temperament, I have never been able to pile up the tower of steaming hubris it would take to convince myself that the world ...

Fake Detective

Lately I"€™ve been hearing more and more dribs and drabs of the depressing controversy over whether literature has any empire left over pop culture. Well, that depends on what ...

Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham’s Hot Air Music

Young Lena Dunham, the most talked-about writer of her generation, is finally about to publish something like a book. Oh, goody. Prior to Not That Kind of Girl, an ...


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