Author Archives: Matt Thomas

1. “My Car, My Sanctuary”

“That the American road system is a crowning achievement of Western civilization is too little appreciated.”

2. “From Cubicles, Cry for Quiet Pierces Office Buzz”

“The original rationale for the open-plan office, aside from saving space and money, was to foster communication among workers, the better to coax them to collaborate and innovate. But it turned out that too much communication sometimes had the opposite effect: a loss of privacy, plus the urgent desire to throttle one’s neighbor.”

3. “Idealistic Lawmen Taking Crime Very Personally”

“What in 1955 was a progressive plea for civic reform (laced, again, by some searing violence), had become by 1973, in the context of the Miranda decision and Nixon’s law-and-order politics, a wild-eyed fantasy about an incorruptible leader who finds it necessary to subvert the law in order to save it. Unconcerned with legal niceties like search warrants and evidence, Pusser, here portrayed as a former professional wrestler, conducts his campaign of civic reform by busting up the local clip joints (and quite a few patrons) with a giant stick carved from an oak tree.”

4. “Stop. Snap. Move. Repeat for, Oh, 10 or 20 Years.”

“For the first four years of the project, he worked completely alone, driven by what may have been a muse or ‘daemons,’ he’s unsure which; not even his closest friends and colleagues knew what he was up to.”

5. “Packing All the Heat a Movie Could Want”

“All these guns are real.”

6. “Where Garrison Keillor Gets ‘Carried Away’”

“If you hike 10 miles at night on the High Plains of North Dakota, it could change your life. And for the good.”

7. “Like the Video? I Wrote the Book”

“Not long ago I wrote an essay in which I facetiously foresaw Don DeLillo’s having to sell White Noise mugs and T-shirts on his Web site to make ends meet. I had forgotten that in the 21st century any absurd dystopian fantasy or black satire you can dream up invariably turns out to be already true. I was advised that I would need to increase my presence on social media.”

8. “Let’s Go Reading in the Car”

“Here’s my theory about the evolution of the book. First, God speaks the Commandments, then he writes them on a tablet (white fire on black fire, the sages say), and only later, and slowly, are they transcribed. So first comes the audiobook, then comes the e-book, and only as a last resort the barbarism of parchment and paper. With audiobooks we go back to the source.”

9. “The Voice”

“The best readers don’t put so much acting into the recording that it interferes with the connection between the author and the listener.”

10. “Manageable Discontents”

“Here are some reasons, I think, that Franzen’s essays do not match his fiction. While his prose is always cogent, he is not that consistently stylish a sentence writer. Essays put a different kind of pressure on the sentence, calling for more aphoristic compression and wit. His novels work best through patient accumulation of social detail and character development. By contrast, the I-character in his essays is not as strongly developed, nor as vivid. He is better able to convey moral irony by dramatizing a fictional conflict than by baldly stating his views.”

11. “Books With 140 Characters”

“Here’s how it works: Every month we pick a literary genre (in March, for instance, we chose science fiction and read Neuromancer, by William Gibson, the following month) and solicit nominations. After a few days my editor and I cull through these suggestions for a shortlist of six books, which we then put up for a vote. Readers campaign for their favorites (Great Expectations is ahead?” @GatsbyGoil writes. “Didn’t we all read that in middle or high school?”), and by the end of the month we declare a winner. Books are procured – more often than not, downloaded – and the discussion begins. Conversations are organized around chapters, so no single reader reveals that Pip and Estella never actually tie the – Oops! I’ve said too much already.”

12. “Richard Ford Is a Man Who Actually Listen”

“Living, it’s called living. You might call it wasting time, but I just call it living. Going bird hunting, reading books, watching the Red Sox, doing things with my wife that we wouldn’t have time to do if I was writing a book. There’s a whole lot to do once you can get out from under the yoke of working.”

13. “Making Choices in the Age of Information Overload”

“If we researched every single purchase, we wouldn’t have time to make any purchases. I have better things to do with my time.”

14. “How to Enjoy Going to the Movies Again”

“Moviegoing is, at its core, a social experience. The moment those lights dim and the film reel rolls, you’re no longer an individual sitting in an auditorium; you’re part of a mass of people who are connected through a shared event and the desire to be entertained and transported. In that moment, when you turn from a solitary viewer into an audience, you form a trusting and reciprocal relationship not only with the movie but also with those around you. Every person in the theater contributes to the experience. Usually, this means reverent silence. But I’d argue that there is no theater audience that contributes more to the experience of seeing a movie than one at a midnight show.”

1. “Two Smooth Operators on the Line”

“Here’s a vivid illustration of sexuality as performance.”

2. “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College”

“I’ll be paying this forever.”

3. “Writer’s Cramp: In the E-Reader Era, a Book a Year Is Slacking”

“You don’t ever want to get into a situation where your worth is being judged by the amount of your productivity.”

4. “Tiny Hand Over Hand”

“Climbing is pretty much the only thing that holds Ashima’s interest for long. Television, movies and computers are not a big part of her day, partly because the Waldorf school she attends has a philosophy that includes a general distaste for technology. She collects handmade Japanese stickers, which she keeps in a scrapbook, and her favorite subjects are gym and woodworking, where she learned to make a cutting board and a salad spoon and fork.”

5. “Sexuality and Other Female (Film) Troubles”

“I wanted to make a Merchant-Ivory movie with vibrators.”

6. “Chronicling the Pounds, Their Risks and Causes”

“Our DNA has programmed us to want more, and our economic and cultural systems have delivered more.”

7. “The Amygdala Made Me Do It”

“The choices we make in day-to-day life are prompted by impulses lodged deep within the nervous system. Not only are we not masters of our fate; we are captives of biological determinism. Once we enter the portals of the strange neuronal world known as the brain, we discover that – to put the matter plainly – we have no idea what we’re doing.”

8. “Capitalists and Other Psychopaths”

“To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.”

9. “The Human Disaster of Unemployment”

“A recent study found that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8%) would increase the suicide rate for males by 1.47%. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States.”

10. “The Digital Lost-Dog Poster”

“According to the American Humane Association, last year more than seven million dogs and cats went missing; only about 17 percent of lost dogs and 2 percent of lost cats ever find their way back from shelters to their original owners. More than 10 million pets are euthanized every year because their owners can’t be found. HomeAgain’s Web site has a ticker counting pet recoveries tracked to chip technology; as of late April, it clocked 1,016,843 such reunions.”

11. “Back to Basics, Real Basics”

“When his own creative juices are clotting up, he reaches over to his desk and picks up, of all things, an Acheulean hand ax.”

12. “Dieting for Dollars (or Maybe a Movie Ticket)”

“They decided to build a computer program to make shedding pounds as geekily fun as playing Xbox, but with an added incentive: the opportunity to win cash.”

13. “Meet Your Neighbors, if Only Online”

“There’s a common misreading that technology inevitably leads to the decline of the local community. I don’t believe that. Technology can be harnessed to facilitate local interactions.”

14. “When You Text Till You Drop”

“70 percent of those who report heavily using mobile devices experience ‘phantom vibration syndrome,’ which is what happens when your pocket buzzes and there’s no phone in your pocket.”

15. “Boggle the Mind”

“Science writers, like teachers, have an obligation to get the facts right. When enough details are wrong, readers may lose confidence in the big picture.”

16. “The Original Colonists”

“Humans and certain insects are the planet’s ‘eusocial’ species – the only species that form communities that contain multiple generations and where, as part of a division of labor, community members sometimes perform altruistic acts for the benefit of others.”

17. “The Writer in the Family”

“One morning at breakfast, when she was in the first or second grade, E. L. Doctorow’s daughter, Caroline, asked her father to write a note explaining her absence from school, due to a cold, the previous day. Doctorow began, ‘My daughter, Caroline….’ He stopped. ‘Of course she’s my daughter,’ he said to himself. ‘Who else would be writing a note for her?’ He began again. ‘Please excuse Caroline Doctorow….’ He stopped again. ‘Why do I have to beg and plead for her?’ he said. ‘She had a virus. She didn’t commit a crime!’ On he went, note after failed note, until a pile of crumpled pages lay at his feet. Finally, his wife, Helen, said, ‘I can’t take this anymore,’ penned a perfect note and sent Caroline off to school. Doctorow concluded: ‘Writing is very difficult, especially in the short form.’”

18. “Joe Weisenthal vs. the 24-Hour News Cycle”

“He was raised vegetarian and became a vegan in college, at one point eating nothing but brown rice for 10 days. Not long after he moved to New York, he adopted a ‘paleo’ diet, eating mostly meat and berries. Now he is obsessed with authentic Chinese food.”

19. “Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?”

“In another famous case, a 9-year-old boy named Jeffrey Bailey pushed a toddler into the deep end of a motel swimming pool in Florida. As the boy struggled and sank to the bottom, Bailey pulled up a chair to watch. Questioned by the police afterward, Bailey explained that he was curious to see someone drown. When he was taken into custody, he seemed untroubled by the prospect of jail but was pleased to be the center of attention.”

1. “He’s Not Done With Exploring the Universe”

“It’s not much of a spoiler to say that things don’t go well. In Greek mythology Prometheus, after all, was chained to a rock and had his liver eternally pecked out for the crime of stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans.”

2. “A Desert Town on the Way Up … to Space”

“Adherents believe that the next phase of space exploration will be led by nimble, ambitious entrepreneurs – a new generation of people like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who helped create the electronics industry in a garage – and that this is their moment to come together and make it happen.”

3. “Amid Brazil’s Rush to Develop, Workers Resist”

“No one burns anything if they’re satisfied.”

4. “From Misfit With Blog to Author With Deal”

“Her father was a taxidermist prone to keeping bobcats and wild turkeys as pets. Her neighbors regularly invited the family over to swim in a pool created by water from an open-air cistern that was used to clean pigs.”

5. “Whistling His Own Tune”

“Most players in sports believe they actually know something about officiating. And they don’t.”

6. “At California State, Protesters Start a Fast”

“California was once the model system, and now that seems to be breaking down at every level.”

7. “Rising Early, With a New Sentence in Mind”

“Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I’m inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don’t bug me, so it’s so easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re working harder than you really are. So I do everything possible to make myself remember this is a job I’m going to, and I have to produce every day. The tie and the jacket are part of that.”

8. “Jobs Few, Grads Flock to Unpaid Internships”

“A few years ago you hardly heard about college graduates taking unpaid internships. But now I’ve even heard of people taking unpaid internships after graduating from Ivy League schools.”

9. “The Jobless Young Find Their Voice”

“Where are the advocacy groups for jobless youth?”

10. “The Outsourced Life”

“The more anxious, isolated and time-deprived we are, the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services, we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors; we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us. And, the more we rely on the market, the more hooked we become on its promises: Do you need a tidier closet? A nicer family picture album? Elderly parents who are truly well cared for? Children who have an edge in school, on tests, in college and beyond? If we can afford the services involved, many if not most of us are prone to say, sure, why not?”

11. “Future TED Talks”

“Returning TED talker Sherry Turkle, an author and academic, says that giving lectures about how lonely the Internet is making people has made her and her audiences even lonelier.”

12. “Science and Truth: We’re All in It Together”

“By now, readers understand that the definitive ‘copy’ of any article is no longer the one on paper but the online copy, precisely because it’s the version that’s been read and mauled and annotated by readers. (If a book isn’t read until it’s written in – as I was always told – then maybe an article is not published until it’s been commented upon.) Writers know this already. The print edition of any article is little more than a trophy version, the equivalent of a diploma or certificate of merit – suitable for framing, not much else.”

13. “Black Women and Fat”

“Many black women are fat because we want to be.”

14. “In the Middle of a Food Fight”

“If they had a chance, they would eat us.”

15. “The Screen Can’t Hear When You Yell ‘Bravo’”

“Most of the audience doesn’t quite know what to do, caught between the intensity opera elicits and the sobering realization that, well, they are in a movie theater, perhaps thousands of miles from what they want to cheer and even farther from the relationship live performance engenders. For all the praise HD deserves, and it deserves a great deal, this disconnect is damning. What the audience in a movie theater experiences is not just the opposite of opera. It is the undoing of opera, an art form in which a present, active audience is fundamental.”

16. “Comic Guerrilla Tries Sticking With the Script”

“He operates from courage, and I operate from fear. But we’re both fanatical engineers of comedy. There are people in comedy that like to take a funny idea and wing it, and then you have the people that like to take out rulers and protractors and try to figure out everything.” He added that Mr. Baron Cohen’s comedy amounted to a kind of ‘cultural surgery.’”

17. “Scriptless in Seattle: A Filmmaker’s Map”

“‘I’m taking you to some of my favorite places in Seattle.’ Her guided tour on that March morning included a cafe, a bookstore and Scarecrow Video, where she returned a sack of DVDs by Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen that she had been using for research.”

18. “Cherishing Sun-Baked Cinema”

Sam Elliott was so damn good-looking in that sleazy, ’70s bathing-trunks-and-mustache way (predating ‘Baywatch’ and ‘Magnum, P.I.’) that he could pretty much charm the bra and panties off of anybody. But there was also something wildly sexy about Los Angeles, the city. Somehow I knew it held the key to my future, and Lifeguard was the sales pitch: sunsets and muscle cars and beach houses and lazy sex on unmade beds.”

19. “Sit Down, Cool Off and Fire Up a DVD”

“It was once fashionable to dismiss her work in Barbarella as evidence of her pre-radicalized frivolousness. Maybe people were too busy looking at what else was on display to notice her prodigious comic gifts were as well. In Barbarella she’s a sexy Buck Rogers, the all-American hero as lewd buttercup.”

20. “Adding a Little Flicker to Those Lights”

“They’re for making statements, not love.”

21. “Workouts, Times 2 (or 3)”

“Most are professionals with full-time jobs, yet they manage to spend some two hours a day – and upward of $500 a month – exercising.”

22. “Hello, Stranger”

“I think we are moving toward that shift where people prefer to engage with each other over the Internet.”

23. “In Iris Love’s Wide Circle of Friends”

“I trust people who like animals and who drink because it shows they have a soul.”

24. “Unleashing the Power”

“At his 1926 doctoral exam, the mathematician David Hilbert is said to have asked but one question: ‘Pray, who is the candidate’s tailor?’ He had never seen such beautiful evening clothes.”

25. “The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy”

“This could be the most hated book of the year.”

26. “How McDonald’s Came Back Bigger Than Ever”

“In 2011, the average free-standing McDonald’s restaurant in the United States generated nearly $2.6 million in sales, an increase of roughly 13 percent since 2008. Last year, sales nearly doubled the industry’s projected growth rate by growing 4.8 percent over the previous year.”

27. “Honey, I Got a Year’s Worth of Tuna Fish”

“For ‘couponers,’ as they call themselves, free product is the holy grail. Freebies are obtained by combining various promotions in ways that can seem laborious and arcane to the civilian shopper: waiting for items to go on sale and then using coupons to buy them; ‘stacking’ manufacturers’ coupons with store coupons; shopping during “double coupon” days; or receiving, post-purchase, a ‘catalina’ – a coupon from a company called Catalina Marketing that can be redeemed on a future transaction.”

28. “Color Me My Way”

“That story begins in Minnesota, where Neiman grew up tough and poor. Enough happens to him in the 1940s alone to fill a book: he spends a night in jail for brawling and ships off to basic training the next day. When G.I.’s land on Omaha Beach, the Army gives them condoms to protect their rifle muzzles; Neiman uses his to safeguard his cigars. He eventually goes AWOL in Belgium, paints murals for the Red Cross, bootlegs Cognac and loses a girlfriend to Marlene Dietrich.”

29. “Small Wonder”

“She only ate nuts.”

30. “In-Between Days”

“The first notable, strange thing about living in two places is that whenever you are ‘here,’ you carry within you a ‘there.’”