I just don't buy this Steeler's team as being a great team. I don't think anyone can argue that they are. The whole "If Ben wasn't hurt we'd have been 13-3" is just nonsense, because a) you don't know that and b) you can make that claim about any team, ever. If the Patriots hadn't had half their team get rocked by injuries this year, do you think the Steelers would have even made it to the Super Bowl? Or did you forget that they worked you, at home, again this season? Saying it would've been different if not for injuries is a claim any team can make.

As far as my composition skills go, all I can do is trust my Masters in English from Brown.

Well I haven't read this (is it even out yet?) but it sounds interesting. I'll definitely pick it up; I've had so much difficulty in the past few years discovering quality new American writers. (I'm pursuing my PhD in Comparative Lit with a focus on contemporary European novel, so a lot of reading time is devoted to that.)

I appreciate the swipes at James Frey and all the others. I think one of the important things that has gone unsaid in a lot of the discussion about Frey and his indiscretions is a discussion about this recent flurry of memoir fiction (or autobiographical fiction or whatever.) Because it seems like it's all any Americans want to write anymore. Even when I enjoy it, like in the case of Dave Eggers (who I know many people loathe), I feel a little squeamish about the genre. For one thing, I often suspect that my enjoyment is directly proportional to the degree that the events of the book-- or the emotional response of the protagonist of the book-- ellides with my own experience. In Egger's memoir, for example, I saw echoes of my own experience of being orphaned at a young age (significantly younger than Eggers, actually.) Those echoes really made the book resonate with me. But I always suspect that maybe thats a lesser connection than with a simply superb novel; shouldn't part of the reaction be universal?

Anyway, back to the subject at hand...

I know better than to question the references out of context. But I do wonder about the Proust and Gatsby references. I wonder what good can come of challenges of the sort the article author is suggesting. I'm not a defeatist enought to suggest that Nunez just can't write a novel as good as Proust-- but the bar is incredibly high, and I don't like inter-literary competition anyway. I don't think it serves writing to try and make it a competitive venture. (And Gatsby has been called out often enough.) Still, I'm impressed she has the guts to drop those names at all, and like I said, the context is everything.

The only thing that really concerns me is the notion that life is like a novel. To me, thats the huge problem with many many people: they've allowed storytelling to pervade their life to the extent that they expect narrative arc to their lives. I'm always depressed when people react to particularly intense or enjoyable experiences by saying "It was like a movie!" Because life isn't a movie, and it's not a book, and it doesn't have an arc or dramatic flow or artistic meaning. I think most people who look for that end up disappointed.

Still I'm eager to see how she pulls it off. Can't wait.

-Freddie deBoer

You remember a short lived cartoon called God, the Devil, and Bob?

It was this awful show on NBC that featured God and the Devil, and the way they were always trying to sway him to do right or to do wrong. It only lasted for a few episodes. So anyway, there was a big controversy, people were offended, the religious right wanted it taken off the air. And so as a civil libertarian first and foremost, I felt obligated to defend the makers of the show's right to be controversial, their right to say and show things that offended religious people. It's our way, I said. And of course it was and is the right of everyone to say whatever they want, no matter who it offends.

The problem is-- the show was terrible. It wasn't funny. It wasn't smart. It didn't have anything new or particularly innovative to say. And as a member of the ACLU and a defender of freedom of speech, I constantly find myself in the position of sticking up for expressions of speech that I can't stand. The obvious example is sticking up for Nazis or white supremacists. But that's different. I actively despise their rhetoric, so as unpleasant as it is to defend them, I've got enough emotional distance from them that I don't feel at all like I'm representing their beliefs. I defend them merely because their right to speech is of so much importance.

But these cartoons-- or that show, or that movie Dogma (which was just awful, if you ask me)-- the problem is, as you defend the right of their creators to make them, their is a temptation to see them as something they are not: in this case, particularly funny or thought provoking or intelligent. The cartoons are none of those things. I think they're boorish and tired and obvious. People want to champion liberal rights and they should. But to turn that into a forum on the actual content of the cartoons, to act as though the fact that they are controversial makes them of quality, is wrong.

There's a difference between being provocative and being merely provoking. Stand up and defend these cartoonists right to publish whatever they want, but don't pretend these cartoons are actually any good.

-Freddie deBoer

Have you actually read that book? Or even seen the movie? Why use a username that suggests close to the opposite of what you're arguing?