I was expecting to strongly dislike her because of her ego, her intellectual style, and some of the subject matter about which she writes. But I was pleasantly surprised.
I liked her style - she was funny, spunky, and kinda surly. Some of her most interesting thoughts were:
- The bitterness in our cultural discourse because of partisan politics.
- The "self-cannibalizing" of many young writers and artists, rather than self-examination. Many young writers [commercially published] are searching so desperately for a subject that they mine their personal experiences to death - boring!
- The need for people to read more and know more history
- While she is very opinionated, she seemed to me to be open to discuss and debate with a well-reasoned argument. I think our culture does need more people that are willing to take a position and reason it out, but be open to debate.
- Like many people that came of age in the 60s, she ain't over it and she hasn't updated with the culture outside of mainstream media where there is in fact a lot of cool shit happening
- Her argument that she's "in touch with the people" is that she listens to sports talk radio and knows that James Frey got dogged on Oprah. While that might make her more in touch with common folks than most academics, I still wouldn't say she speaks with the people's voice.
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