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" 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. "

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" I don't care about the bare fact that anyone liked or didn't like a book or movie; they can only interest me in that bare fact by writing an intelligent review. "

Michelle Dean

Writing

Book

Care

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" The desire to abdicate, to give up - for me, that's primal. "

Michelle Dean

Primal

Desire

" 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. "

" The 'beach read' has become such a ubiquitous concept in contemporary literature that we assume it has always been around. In fact, the term only emerged in the 1990s, usually in book trade publications such as 'Booklist' and 'Publisher's Weekly.' "

" A certain kind of person in America loves to note that they're currently soldiering through the latest Pulitzer winner for history, in particular. It connotes a certain gravitas, a connectedness to the literary and intellectual scene that most upwardly mobile professionals in America still desire. "

" There has long been an argument in New York about what, exactly, the purpose of book awards ought to be. One model sees them as a celebration of the unquestioned best and brightest, a triumphal parade for marquee authors who have published in a given year. "

" 'Millennials' has become a kind of modern swearword, a slur directed at people in their early 20s. "

" I have deliberately arranged my life so that I see pictures of cute animals on the Internet every day. "

" Push the envelope too far as a female artist, and you may only earn an ocean of ink expressing concern for your delicate constitution, amounting to a caution against playing on traditionally male wavelengths. "

" Television was not cool among the young people of my era, the last years of the '90s and the early '00s. It was not just old people who'd castigate you for watching anything but public television. We young people scoffed at each other about it. "

" We are reminded repeatedly, often by older men, that western civilization has died on the altar of social media. "

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

" 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

" In an age where television is viewed as the best medium to 'tell stories,' narrative often stands in for substance on would-be prestige shows. "

" 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. "

" I still think, most of the time, when people called shows like 'The Sopranos' or 'Deadwood' 'art' that they were correct. "

Michelle Dean

Art

People

" Most people do not pay attention to the publisher's imprint on a given book. "

" The phenomenon of Instagram poets - who are also, to be fair, Tumblr poets and Pinterest poets - has been one of the more surprising side-effects of the selfie age. "

" Summer is always a tricky time to recommend new literary fiction. The big releases do not hit until fall. "

" The podcast revolution has taught us that women's voices aren't just pleasurable to listen to, they are essential. "

Michelle Dean

Listen

Women

" Television became defensible - and, frankly, worshipped - because the shows started to be so carefully structured, so attentive to language, and so visually interesting that they suddenly caught people's eye. "

" 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. "

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

" My parents and I - I'm an only child - are not particularly religious, but I was christened and raised in that vague and characteristically Canadian form of Protestantism known as the United Church. "

" Mary Roach's curiosity is notoriously infectious. "