Friday, May 12, 2006

2 cents

My vote for the most bass-ackwards opinion piece about l'affaire Kaavya (should you live in a gossip-free cave) is today's op-ed by Whitney Otto in the NY Times.

Her main point -- you can't be a writer and an overachiever. Real writers, like, drink and smoke and stuff and that's what makes them great. Also, she tries to make a weird put-down of/ paean-to chick-lit, which is pretty daring for the author of How to Make an American Quilt.

I want to prove her central thesis wrong, but I feel like I'd just be offering myself up as an example, making it very easy for naysayers to point out my own short-comings. Which, of course, raises the question: would I be more offended at being called a bad writer or a bad overachiever?

1 comment:

8yearoldsdude said...

wow, that was a disaster of an op-ed. and by a writer no less. but clearly the kind of writer who lacks the artifice to disguise her irritatingly boomerish obsession with a nominal counterculture and personal authenticity.