The Invisible Counterpoint

If there's a hell for book reviewers (and I'm sure many authors hope there is), no doubt we will spend eternity there being jabbed by trident-wielding imps bearing certain adjectives emblazoned across their brick-red chests: "compelling," "lyrical," "nuanced" and so on. Even in this world, the conscientious critic is bedeviled by clichés; how many ways are there to say that a book is "beautifully written" or that the characters in it are "fully realized" instead of "two-dimensional"? These are the words that rise up in a reviewer's mind, like those clouds of gnats that ruin so many walks in the woods. No matter how hard you try to bat them away, they just keep coming back. [. . .] Within a couple of hours it seemed like every book reviewer in the country had been forwarded multiple links to Kerns' column. "It's getting worse," tweeted Ron Charles, fiction editor and critic for the Washington Post ...

A new right is being born, following the death of the older conservative movement. Fortunately for the left, the next American right is dominated by libertarians like Ron Paul and Paul Ryan, who worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand . (Michael Lind, “Bring it on Ayn Rand geeks,” Salon, 15 March 2010) The fire Ayn Rand is all about disowning, losing connection with, one's emotions, with guilt, as one becomes bulwarked in reason. Her words, pro-offered ways of thinking, are perfect for a time when we want some group of people to suffer -- it'll be groups like the homeless and "greedy" (hipsters on food stamps?) youth/students; watch for it -- to be responsible for all society's dependent ways, but removed from feeling any guilt, owing to an intact ability to in any way feel their pain. Rand will help (certain) people -- the guilty -- become less real to us, and enable the damage this state-of-mind permits, and I think a lot of progressives are actually up for the car...

While the fiery debates sparked by my first two articles in this series were irresistible, in a sort of car-accident way, there was a lot more heat than light in those discussions. Obviously we believe home schooling is a viable and valuable part of the educational puzzle, or we wouldn't be doing it. As a product of public schools myself, I can understand why some people see home schooling as a violation of the social contract, or as a reactionary, overprotective rejection of the public sphere. Ultimately, though, home schooling may be more important as a venue for some unconventional ideas about education than as a widespread social phenomenon or a panacea. (Andrew O’Hehir, “Why our kids won’t go to kindergarten,” 15 March 2010) We saw YOU, and we saw the plague It's your tone, Andrew. You get a sense in a lot of what you write that you are actually quite happy to sculpt your life so you seem increasingly detached from, not related to, the flailing, dumb rest of us. ...

But times have changed, and manhood is an even trickier proposition than it used to be; only Philip Roth still believes in the ol' saved-by-the-booty formula anymore. Younger writers know that won't wash, and as a result the literature of the masculine midlife crisis feels at once richer and riskier than ever before. Knowing, self-deprecating humor is the default approach these days. Take Sam Lipsyte's satire about a failed artist turned academic fundraiser, "The Ask," a novel so caustic you might want slip on a pair of safety gloves before turning its pages. Milo Burke, Lipsyte's narrator, is emasculated both at home and abroad, from the wife who withholds sex and casually cheats on him to the third-rate university that keeps him on only at the insistence of an old friend turned philanthropist intent on jerking his chain. [. . .] Which brings us to this week's choice, Thomas Kennedy's "In the Company of Angels," definitely not a satire. Th...