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" Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing. "

Michelle Dean

Writing

Story

" Dan Brown and the 'Da Vinci Code' have been around well over a decade now, and to be perfectly honest, both he and it have become a joke. "

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

" The 'World Wide Web', as people quaintly called the Internet in 1996, was more or less made up of text. There was no YouTube. There was no Facebook. There was, however, Usenet, a loose and difficult-to-navigate assortment of message boards. "

" I read almost no romantic fiction, in part because I barely believe in romance in the age of Tinder. "

" The plot of 'Stranger Things' is so simple that even a brief description risks spoiling it. "

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

" Indeed, there has never been any sort of organised movement of people who take their cats into the outdoors. Of course, the navy often took them on ships, but there they performed a function, mousing for the officers. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Research can be a boon to a novelist - there are more things in heaven and Earth than can be dreamt of in a single writer's philosophy - or it can become a hindrance, a thick layer of algae that weighs down the storytelling. "

" Since the era of 'Sherlock Holmes,' private detectives had long been able to influence cases on their own. But the online detective, who had no sort of professional training or even long practice, is a purely modern phenomenon. The Internet changed everything by letting anyone become a self-appointed 'expert' on a case. "

" 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. "

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

" Trump has been fiercely mocked in the media since the 1980s. But Trump learned from someone to let all the mockery roll off his back, that the negative publicity was still publicity. "

" 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. "

" 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

" Among journalists, there is a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads.' This can result in some serious hustling - and some serious sloppiness - whenever a crime occurs. The public's longing to see and hear salacious details is, basically, endless. "

" Few reporters get to do what Kelly McEvers does in every episode of 'Embedded': go deep into a story and tease out what is really happening. "

Michelle Dean

Out

Happening

" After living in the United States for over 10 years, here is what I have learned about the Fourth of July: it is more of a barbecuing holiday than anything else. "

" 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

" 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. "

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

" Writing a novel about feminism can be a thankless task. "

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

" 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. "

" The Festival of Books is indeed a well-oiled machine, one which leaves most of the other literary festivals in America, including vaunted Brooklyn's, in the dust. "

" Many people, I've noticed by informally polling friends, are prone to distinguishing a beach read by genre. Some people thought all thrillers are beach reads; others thought all romances are. Some people thought only mass market paperbacks are eligible for beach read standards. "

" Mary Roach's curiosity is notoriously infectious. "