“You will be a billion times more interested than you were when the New Yorker published Wells Tower’s “Leopard” or Rivka Galchen’s “The Region of Unlikeness” or Karen Russell’s “Haunting Olivia.” You will be a billion times more interested than you were in whatever they ran in the last issue and whatever they’ll run in the next. In fact, you’ll be a billion times more interested if it’s awful than you’d be if he wrote a conventionally solid short story.”
a grammar: don’t act like you don’t *WANT* James Franco’s allegedly horrible short story
I don’t want to dictate taste. (I don’t think Nitsuh wants to dictate taste.) I don’t even want to dictate discussion. But I will never, ever stop saying that if ‘everyone’ is obsessed with celebrity culture and trash, then don’t be surprised when that’s all your conversant in. And after you close your YouTube, TMZ, Videogum, Awl, and tumblr tabs—don’t be surprised when there’s nothing left open, nothing you’re interested in.
