Black Berets Unite: In Praise of Pretentiousness

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A partial list of things labeled pretentious in my home town: indie rock, foreign films, mobile phones, vegetarian diets, keeping one’s maiden name, carrying bottled water, wearing all black, drinking wine, reading The New York Times, dressing androgynously, taking self-portraits, drinking Starbucks, practicing yoga.
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Gluten-Free Proust

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Anything is tasty when you haven’t had dairy, gluten, refined sugar, corn, potatoes, processed foods, or alcohol for several weeks.
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Doing Laundry with Marcel Proust

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Marcel’s questions about Swann’s life and his love affairs are essential questions of childhood: what is love, what is sexual desire, what is society, what is class, what, in short, are these mysterious forces that are shaping life but which no one alludes to directly?
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Another Mask: On Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘In Other Words’

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I started Jhumpa Lahiri’s new memoir expecting to find a story about the joys and struggles of learning Italian as an adult, and as a writer. But Lahiri did not write the book I was expecting -- and which I think many other readers might be primed for. Instead, she has written an elegant, if somewhat oblique, memoir about creative crisis.
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The Proust Book Club: The View From Age 38

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Proust was 38 years old and in poor health when he started writing. He knew he did not have any time left to waste. He believed -- as it turned out, accurately -- that he was writing on deadline.
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The Proust Book Club: An Introduction

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And so, here I am, 10 years (!) later, trying again to finish one of the best novels I’ve ever read, possibly the best novel I’ve ever read. (I’ll know for sure when I finish.)
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A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen

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I read a galley of this book in February. When I first started reading it, I thought: This is the book I’ve been waiting for. And then I thought: I should review it. And then: No, I love it too much.
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How the Brain Forgets: On Penelope Farmer’s ‘Charlotte Sometimes’

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Rereading is one of the only forms of time travel available to us.
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The Unwritten Profile: On The End Of The Tour

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Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give to The End of the Tour, the new film about a five-day interview between the writer David Foster Wallace and Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky, is that I finally started reading Wallace again.
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The Mysterious Edges: On Jami Attenberg and ‘Saint Mazie’

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How do writers get better at telling stories? Attenberg has some theories. First: getting older. She wrote 'The Middlesteins' in her late-30s, with three books to her name and some perspective on the person who wrote them.
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Beyond Rent Hikes: On DW Gibson’s ‘The Edge Becomes The Center’

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Gibson understands that a conversation about gentrification can be an opening to talk about everything from the nuts and bolts of tenant law, to the habits of graffiti artists, to the legacy of Jane Jacobs, to the future of the DiBlasio administration, to the popularity of 'Project Runway,' to the basic human question of how to get along with other people.
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The Value of Writing Programs: On Why I Don’t Have an M.F.A.

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The question shouldn’t be whether or not getting an M.F.A. is a worthwhile for those privileged enough to agonize over the expenditure. Instead we should ask: how can we better support people who want to write?
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To Fall in Love with a Reader, Do This

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Several months ago, The New York Times published an article about a 36-question interview devised to make strangers fall in love. The questions presented here are designed with a more modest goal: to have an interesting conversation about books.
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Tough Love: On Mac McClelland’s ‘Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story’

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'Irritable Hearts' is a memory of recovery, a thoughtful and well-researched record of one woman’s experience with a subtle and often terrifying condition.
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Calendars, Timelines, and Collages: Mapping the Imaginary

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I got curious about the other visual aids that novelists create to manage their books, so I asked around and gathered a variety of notebook pages, diagrams, and timelines.
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A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen

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I’m aware that this post is exactly the kind of writing I tried all year to avoid: Here I am, piling onto another writer’s already excellent criticism and observations. Please relish my hypocrisies.
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Beyond Bookmarks: 10 Gifts For Readers

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For the past few years, The Millions has offered a holiday gift list for writers. This year we’d like to give readers their due, with a list of bookish treats. Because where would writers be without readers? Also, let’s face it: discriminating and avid readers can be as difficult to shop for as cranky writers.
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