I assume you've already Yelped with Cormac, but maybe some other people here haven't yet. http://yelpingwithcormac.tu…

I read both, but I'm on the other side of the "not believable" camp: sections of The Corrections are really literally unbelievable—like Chip's foreign adventures, e.g., which (aside from their occurring in some unnecessarily made-up nation) struck at least one reader as writer fantasy-fulfilment: Golly, if I weren't…

Well, I can be that guy, too. How is it, @avclub-1e84c47f0f1b5b5c836f71baa52a1464:disqus, that you liked The Corrections 1.0 but didn't like the decade-later expanded edition? Just that, after a decade, it shoulda been…more? Cuz, bro, I think I speak for a lot of people—readers and reviewers, both—when I say that The…

When I disagree with Franzen's essays, it's often because he just really doesn't seem to make an attempt to understand why the things that he hates might be of interest to other people who aren't Jon Franzen. In his last book of essays there was a particularly weird one where he stated flatly that he didn't get what…

Isn't that a standard publishing sort of move? I mean, I've gotten lots of such letters—some even less personal—back from literary magazines. I don't think they're just specifically picking on me.

I came across the book a few years ago when I was an ex-Bible-Camp-counsellor-recently-turned-atheist, and all the feely stuff at the time struck me as particularly unctious. Just cuz you feel that there's love don't make it so, pal, and it don't make Jesus less dead. This reaction may have been slightly mediated by…

Hey, best of luck to you, Cute Clevelander. I've heard worse ideas, that's certain.

I don't know about the rest of the people here, but I feel a little pervy even reading this thread. The rest of you married people, you should stop it, too. That's what Ashley Madison is for, I think.

I got the impression that DFW was giving Leyner the sorts of backhanded compliments that were in the end disses. He quotes Leyner at length and compares it to "high quality television"—a statement that, in the context of the essay, is damning praise.

Yes, I watched it; @LauraBow:disqus linked to it above. I liked it. It was funny.

Yes. Steve Martin, for one.

Thanks for the advice…I'll have to check that out.

I guess I was…being passive aggressive for comedic effect? Yeah, not so successful. We cool.

No love for Cronenberg or Egoyan, either? That's fucked up, man. That's fucked up.

Also: "It wasn’t a far reach for Herzog, although there’s a bullshitter I admire. Man, he’s the best. He’s the best." Sez it like it is, although, having only watched Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, I hate to admit that I like Maddin better now as an interview subject than as a director.

I haven't seen Can't Hardly Wait, but I remember seeing the ostensibly general audiences trailer for it in front of some damn thing in the 90s, when I was a little kid, and having my eyes bug.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be back with more math jokes after this Star Trek episode.

Have you watched his old Charlie Rose interviews? They're funny—at least, they were funny to me because I always assumed that Whit Stillman's characters were obvious satire, but, after hearing him talk, I'm not so sure. Mr. Stillman has the eyes of a very serious child, and I don't mean that as a diss.

Well said. When a character who's been established as a flawed narrator says something that, decontextualized, could be taken straight, I think its best to assume it's swervy.

No, I haven't read it, and I get why (in this context) I'm not allowed just to dismiss this sort of item on principle, but I have to admit that I see no reason at all to be the guy who praises something for its lack of subtextual ambition. Maybe other people have the time and the lack-of-other-stuff-to-read to take it…