As somebody who doesn’t live in the USA and is therefore not drowning in a morass of racial neuroses, I don’t find anything remotely offensive about Rowling’s description of Native American magic.

This is a good, brave, and correct #take, Jia. Thank u for speaking truth to power.

Ashley Madison should get credit for passing the Turing Test.

When a devoted reader of your work tries to have civil dialogue with you it’s perhaps not best to say “if you don’t like it, don’t read it,” which is what “you are free not to read the blog posts” is saying. I’m under no illusions that I deserve a more thoughtful response, but goodness that’s rather negative.

I won’t argue whether or not it’s worthy of mention. But I can’t help but wonder whether the “problem” has been blown up a little. You even admitted many times throughout your analysis that many of these things are fine.

Oh Look - another Franzen post on Gawker Media - they always make sure to tell us that he’s a great writer but also a dick... name ONE great writer who wasn’t a dick?

Personally I think you are a good writer, and I have the patience to both read Purity and then read your analysis of the book once you’ve finished reading it. But 35 pages is a little hasty. Kind of like reading the headline then rushing to add an opinion to the comments section. Anxious as the Internet is to destroy…

Assuming they only picked the best 7 for the job and if the best 7 were in fact caucasian, I don’t see any issue. You want to make it an issue? That’s racism. This isn’t a Hollywood movie, they don’t have to pick someone just because of their race.