@avclub-77a30f3aed77aef3d4ed12bf43df6964:disqus : You win this comment section.

Honestly, it's one of the worst things he wrote: I do not understand why it's been such a popular, and frequently recommended starting point for his work.  (Okay, I get that it's much shorter, so a possible gateway in that respect, but it's just not very good.)

"A screaming comes across the sky… Now everybody -"

Never a good idea.  Remember Vaucanson's mechanical duck?

A few years ago I'd have predicted there'd be at least one Bodine in The Bleeding Edge, but Inherent Vice was shockingly Bodine-less.  Now I no longer know what to believe.

Fun fact: this genre was essentially invented by the great Raymond Queneau in 1973, when he wrote a goofy short tale called "A Story as You Like It" (Un conte à votre façon).  Thing is, Queneau was trying to make a different point altogether, as the story reinforces your lack of agency instead of a brave new world of…

You know what Jay-Z's achilles heel is?  Love.  He doesn't get enough of it.

Pitchfork takes a lot of (deserved) grief for a lot of things, but their primer on NYC queer rap was one of the best things I read this year.

It worked for Whitman.

I actually find his weak singing voice to be weirdly charming, and a necessary humanizing factor in his work.  Let's face it: the guy's full of himself.  Then his voice cracks and he can't hit the right key, and it makes the vulnerability in his best songs come out more strongly.  There's not really a "good" way to…

My favorite Kanye line, in that vein, is from "Power": "I don't need your pussy, bitch, I'm on my own dick."  It's a boast that goes so far past ridiculous, it ends up in the sublime.  

I don't know if I'd say MBDTF is "shockingly devoid of misses", but I do think it's his best album, indulgently long clip of that Chris Rock routine aside.  And Jay-Z's verse on "Monster" is the most hilariously awful thing he ever did.

He's an easy figure to be polarized about: he was crowned "the Great American Novelist" by Time; he wrote an awful (and much-mocked) review dismissing most of William Gaddis' work; and he's publicly grumpy enough that #jonathanfranzenhates was a trending Twitter hashtag back in March.  So he'd be a lightning rod even…

Heh, I'm stealing that line about McCarthy, because yes.

Thanks.  You're definitely not alone - people have lavished the book with praise, and your hinting about the end might have something to do with it.  Having only gotten through the first sections, I'm just very confused… I haven't found it to be very good quality.  Still, it's there on my bookshelf.  Maybe I'll take…

Let us know if you finish it.  I tried twice, never got past the first hundred pages.

Yes, RuPaul's Drag Race is an objectively great show.

Yes, RuPaul's Drag Race is an objectively great show.

Consider this not the first PTA movie where characters break into song all of a sudden.

Consider this not the first PTA movie where characters break into song all of a sudden.