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" Book awards - in America, at least - are not like the Oscars. Awards are not cumulative, and in the case of something like the Pulitzers, the jurors often have another goal in mind: sales. They know that the Pulitzer stamp can sell a book. "

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" There is something a little vulgar about writing a novel that is too close to the present, too concerned with current events, too eager to critique technological advancements. "

Michelle Dean

Writing

Technological

Events

" Poems are ideally suited, in some ways, to social media because they pack so much meaning into so little language. "

" Bad criticism recites rote arguments. The shame of rote arguments isn't just that they're cliches, though they are, but that they tend to hide from us why a critic is actually thinking what they're thinking. "

" Would we even recognize an Oliver Stone production if it didn't kick up the usual fuss? "

Michelle Dean

Stone

Kick

" People spend their entire lives trying to construct something to grab onto: a family, a home, a business. Rarely does anyone seem to manage to get much ground under their feet. "

" When Paul Beatty's 'The Sellout' was first published in America in 2015, it was a small release. It got a rave review in the daily 'New York Times' and one in the weekly 'New York Times Book Review,' too, for good measure. But by and large, it was not a conversation-generating book. "

" Articulateness is not the only way that intelligence manifests itself. "

" A presidential candidate changing churches is hardly unusual. Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Rand Paul have all aligned themselves with different faiths throughout their lives. "

" The forward march of American literature is usually chronicled by way of its male novelists. There is little sense, in that version of the story, that women writers of those eras were doing much worth remembering. "

" Hillbilly stereotypes have always made it easier for middle-class whites to presume that racism is the exclusive province of 'that kind' of person. "

" Saying that you spend Christmas alone is, to most middle-class Americans, akin to confessing a terminal illness. "

" I tend to judge a piece of criticism by how smart I find the argument. This, I know,, is not how everyone does it. "

" I've come, even as a feminist, to dread the phrase 'female friendship,' because it tends to signal overdetermined relationships. "

" Vacation reading is not a new concept. Ever since the 19th century, when novels were considered relatively sinful indulgences, leisure and fiction-reading have been closely associated. "

" Great novels are maps of complication, leading nowhere in particular, taking stances only provisionally and obliquely, happy to be tangled and to lack as many answers as the people they seek to depict. "

" For a long time, it seemed as if podcasting was a male realm, but no longer. Sure, there are lots of men doing podcasts, but women are voicing a lot of the form's biggest hits. 'Serial,' the podcast that made podcasts a phenomenon, was narrated by a woman. "

" Telling a story about someone has enormous power. People forget a headline. They remember a story. "

" A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate. "

Michelle Dean

Critic

Attention

" For a long time now, movie characters have generally been articulate, even chatty. Call it the influence of Woody Allen, but we have become used to characters who are well able to explain themselves to others. "

" It is no secret, of course, that people have strong feelings about fat - feelings that seem only to have been inflamed by the sense, in western countries, that there is an obesity crisis afoot. Concerns about health have mutated into a kind of panic attending any mention of fat people at all. "

" Even the best novelists are rarely congratulated on the quality of their observations about contemporary life. "

" I like debate and argument, so I'm usually all right with disagreement, and I'm even all right if the critic doesn't come to a clear thumbs up or thumbs down. But I need the disagreement to have some kind of line I can follow on the map. I like following an interesting mind along it. "

" When a woman shouts, she isn't usually praised for it. She's condemned as aggressive and coarse. "

" Peak TV has resulted in beautiful shows that have nothing in particular to tell us about humanity. "

" There is an unfortunate side effect of being a person of few words: Sometimes people will assume you are less intelligent than you are. "

" Literary novelists who have a strong handle on plot are often characterized as good vacation reads because they manage to transport you elsewhere, away from the petty facts of ordinary life. "

" Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics. "

" Prestige podcasts, like prestige television shows, tend to have an audience that believes itself literate, well-informed, and reasonable. Listening to podcasts, in this model, is a form of virtue. "

" Beauty pageants in general are foreign and noxious to me: I can barely muster the energy to put on lip gloss and mascara. "

" Hollywood versions of watershed moments in American history are generally high-minded shlock. 'JFK,' 'The People vs. Larry Flynt,' even 'Lincoln': all of these boast excellent performances in scripts that are ultimately very conventional, even conservative. "