Quotes by Michelle Dean - Page 2

Vacation reading is not a new concept. Ever since the 19th century, when novels were considered relatively sinful indulgences, leisure and fiction-reading have been closely associated.
Michelle Dean /
Vacation
Leisure
Associated
Closely
Sinful
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A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate.
Michelle Dean /
Documents
Evaluate
Close Attention
Critic
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Literary novelists who have a strong handle on plot are often characterized as good vacation reads because they manage to transport you elsewhere, away from the petty facts of ordinary life.
Michelle Dean /
Vacation
Elsewhere
Handle
Manage
Novelists
Ordinary
Ordinary Life
Petty
Plot
Transport
Characterized
Literary
Reads
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Prestige podcasts, like prestige television shows, tend to have an audience that believes itself literate, well-informed, and reasonable. Listening to podcasts, in this model, is a form of virtue.
Michelle Dean /
Prestige
Reasonable
Television Shows
Virtue
Believes
Literate
Well-Informed
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My parents and I - I'm an only child - are not particularly religious, but I was christened and raised in that vague and characteristically Canadian form of Protestantism known as the United Church.
Michelle Dean /
Church
Only Child
Raised
Particularly
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Great novels are maps of complication, leading nowhere in particular, taking stances only provisionally and obliquely, happy to be tangled and to lack as many answers as the people they seek to depict.
Michelle Dean /
Complication
Maps
Tangled
Nowhere
Great People Happy
Depict
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Bad criticism recites rote arguments. The shame of rote arguments isn't just that they're cliches, though they are, but that they tend to hide from us why a critic is actually thinking what they're thinking.
Michelle Dean /
Criticism
Shame
Cliches
Critic
Hide
Rote
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Television became defensible - and, frankly, worshipped - because the shows started to be so carefully structured, so attentive to language, and so visually interesting that they suddenly caught people's eye.
Michelle Dean /
Caught
Attentive
Carefully
Frankly
Structured
Worshipped
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Push the envelope too far as a female artist, and you may only earn an ocean of ink expressing concern for your delicate constitution, amounting to a caution against playing on traditionally male wavelengths.
Michelle Dean /
Ocean
Caution
Concern
Delicate
Female
Ink
Male
Earn
Envelope
Expressing
Push
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For a long time now, movie characters have generally been articulate, even chatty. Call it the influence of Woody Allen, but we have become used to characters who are well able to explain themselves to others.
Michelle Dean /
Woody
Time Long Long Time
Allen
Articulate
Explain
Woody Allen
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The children of the 1980s were the last before a lot of things changed. We were the last generation not to have cell phones, not to have video games, not to have parents who worried if we strayed from the yard.
Michelle Dean /
Phones
Worried
Cell
Cell Phones
Video Games
Yard
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The forward march of American literature is usually chronicled by way of its male novelists. There is little sense, in that version of the story, that women writers of those eras were doing much worth remembering.
Michelle Dean /
American Literature
Eras
March
Novelists
Version
Remembering
Women Writers
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We do learn a thing or two from art. It may not be the one-to-one instruction of a moral lesson or the rote learning of a grammatical rule or mathematical concept. But the habits of mind art cultivates are important.
Michelle Dean /
Instruction
Mathematical
Cultivate
Grammatical
Habits
Lesson
Rote
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Indeed, there has never been any sort of organised movement of people who take their cats into the outdoors. Of course, the navy often took them on ships, but there they performed a function, mousing for the officers.
Michelle Dean /
Function
Navy
Officers
Organised
Ships
People Never Who
Cats
Indeed
Outdoors
Performed
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Research can be a boon to a novelist - there are more things in heaven and Earth than can be dreamt of in a single writer's philosophy - or it can become a hindrance, a thick layer of algae that weighs down the storytelling.
Michelle Dean /
Boon
Heaven
Hindrance
Thick
Dreamt
Layer
Novelist
Weighs
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A lot of people produce podcasts in which they simply ramble on for hours about themselves and their lives. There is something very poignant about the volume of human desire to be heard out there in the Wild West of podcasts.
Michelle Dean /
Poignant
Volume
Wild West
Wild
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There is nothing wrong with wanting to publish - or read - books that have a wide potential audience. But it does generate a certain plodding sameness of tone and subject matter that plagues a lot of contemporary American fiction.
Michelle Dean /
Contemporary
Sameness
Subject Matter
Tone
Wide
Generate
Plodding
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Feminists are disappointed in each other a lot, a natural side effect of being involved in a movement, which naturally implies that progress toward the ultimate goal is the only measure of success and that setbacks are always disasters.
Michelle Dean /
Disappointed
Ultimate Goal
Disasters
Feminists
Implies
Measure
Setbacks
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Book awards - in America, at least - are not like the Oscars. Awards are not cumulative, and in the case of something like the Pulitzers, the jurors often have another goal in mind: sales. They know that the Pulitzer stamp can sell a book.
Michelle Dean /
Awards
Cumulative
Oscars
Pulitzer
Sales
Stamp
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Among journalists, there is a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads.' This can result in some serious hustling - and some serious sloppiness - whenever a crime occurs. The public's longing to see and hear salacious details is, basically, endless.
Michelle Dean /
Details
Endless
Longing
Hustling
Journalists
Leads
Occurs
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The 'World Wide Web', as people quaintly called the Internet in 1996, was more or less made up of text. There was no YouTube. There was no Facebook. There was, however, Usenet, a loose and difficult-to-navigate assortment of message boards.
Michelle Dean /
Boards
Wide
World Wide Web
Youtube
World Internet People
Loose
More Or Less
Text
Web
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Television was not cool among the young people of my era, the last years of the '90s and the early '00s. It was not just old people who'd castigate you for watching anything but public television. We young people scoffed at each other about it.
Michelle Dean /
Old People
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The 'beach read' has become such a ubiquitous concept in contemporary literature that we assume it has always been around. In fact, the term only emerged in the 1990s, usually in book trade publications such as 'Booklist' and 'Publisher's Weekly.'
Michelle Dean /
Beach
Contemporary
Assume
Emerged
Publications
Publisher
Ubiquitous
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There has long been an argument in New York about what, exactly, the purpose of book awards ought to be. One model sees them as a celebration of the unquestioned best and brightest, a triumphal parade for marquee authors who have published in a given year.
Michelle Dean /
Awards
Celebration
Marquee
Authors
Brightest
Parade
Published
Sees
Unquestioned
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For a long time, it seemed as if podcasting was a male realm, but no longer. Sure, there are lots of men doing podcasts, but women are voicing a lot of the form's biggest hits. 'Serial,' the podcast that made podcasts a phenomenon, was narrated by a woman.
Michelle Dean /
Form
Long Time
Phenomenon
Time Men Women
Sure
Male
Lots
Biggest
Woman
Time Women Men
Hits
Longer
Realm
Seemed
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Hollywood versions of watershed moments in American history are generally high-minded shlock. 'JFK,' 'The People vs. Larry Flynt,' even 'Lincoln': all of these boast excellent performances in scripts that are ultimately very conventional, even conservative.
Michelle Dean /
American History
Boast
Conventional
Larry
Scripts
Versions
History People American
Jfk
Lincoln
Watershed
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Podcast listening carries with it a faint aura of cultural snobbery, a notion that to cue up an episode is to do something highbrow and personally enriching, whether it's a history lecture broadcast from a university or an amateur talk show recorded in someone's garage.
Michelle Dean /
Enriching
Garage
Notion
Snobbery
University
Amateur
Aura
Broadcast
Carries
Cue
Cultural
Episode
Faint
Highbrow
Lecture
Personally
Talk Show
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Many people, I've noticed by informally polling friends, are prone to distinguishing a beach read by genre. Some people thought all thrillers are beach reads; others thought all romances are. Some people thought only mass market paperbacks are eligible for beach read standards.
Michelle Dean /
Beach
Mass
Polling
Standards
Thrillers
People Others Some People
Distinguishing
Eligible
Prone
Mass Market
Noticed
Reads
Romances
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When Paul Beatty's 'The Sellout' was first published in America in 2015, it was a small release. It got a rave review in the daily 'New York Times' and one in the weekly 'New York Times Book Review,' too, for good measure. But by and large, it was not a conversation-generating book.
Michelle Dean /
New York
Beatty
New York Times
Rave
Release
Daily
Large
Measure
Paul
Published
Review
Sellout
Weekly
York
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I like debate and argument, so I'm usually all right with disagreement, and I'm even all right if the critic doesn't come to a clear thumbs up or thumbs down. But I need the disagreement to have some kind of line I can follow on the map. I like following an interesting mind along it.
Michelle Dean /
Debate
Disagreement
Following
Thumbs
Critic
Map
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While 'Twilight''s popularity was undeniable among both the teenagers they were aimed at and middle-aged women who flocked to the series in droves, Meyer has drawn her share of criticism for her writing. Some feminist critics assailed what they saw as Bella's mooning over her vampire lover.
Michelle Dean /
Criticism
Middle Aged
Vampire
Lover
Drawn
Middle-Aged Women
Teenagers
Undeniable
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It is no secret, of course, that people have strong feelings about fat - feelings that seem only to have been inflamed by the sense, in western countries, that there is an obesity crisis afoot. Concerns about health have mutated into a kind of panic attending any mention of fat people at all.
Michelle Dean /
Health
Attending
Crisis
Obesity
Panic
Secret
Strong
Western
Fat
Concerns
Countries
Inflamed
Mention
No Secret
Seem
Western Countries
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A certain kind of person in America loves to note that they're currently soldiering through the latest Pulitzer winner for history, in particular. It connotes a certain gravitas, a connectedness to the literary and intellectual scene that most upwardly mobile professionals in America still desire.
Michelle Dean /
Currently
Literary
Latest
Note
Professionals
Pulitzer
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Since the era of 'Sherlock Holmes,' private detectives had long been able to influence cases on their own. But the online detective, who had no sort of professional training or even long practice, is a purely modern phenomenon. The Internet changed everything by letting anyone become a self-appointed 'expert' on a case.
Michelle Dean /
Cases
Holmes
Phenomenon
Detective
Expert
Letting
Purely
Sherlock
Sherlock Holmes
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Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.
Michelle Dean /
Academic
Amplification
Circumstances
Demand
Correction
Historians
Particular Way
Revisionist
Various Parts
Wring
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Michelle Dean Quotes - Page 2

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