I've seen dozens of examples of the lack of an Oxford comma making a sentence unclear, but I can't think of a single example in which the inclusion of one makes a sentence unclear. That logic solves most literary feuds, particularly whether to use quotation marks for dialogue

The best thing screenwriting teaches fiction writers is to think in scenes. Don't describe a story, it teaches them. Tell it

The Paper: Any show whose second episode ends with a review of an Elmore Leonard novel is a-okay with me. Plus, some nice word play with "Enervate," which means the opposite of what you think

I hate to nitpick the dumb things characters do--people make mistakes and act against their best interests all the time--but the idiocy of Alien: Earth's characters is so comprehensive it strains even the most lenient credulity

Zapp's Voodoo: They combined barbecue sauce and Sour Patch Kids and made a flavor that's legendary!

The three most important craft lessons for fiction writers--causality, psychic distance, and transitions--weren't ever mentioned in any class I took as a student. Forget being taught how to fly one: I spent six years in astronaut school and never even heard the word "spaceship"

A protestor outside the Disney lot today after the studio suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show. “Did you even watch ANDOR?” (📸: andrew hegele)

I feel sorry for younger generations, who'll never know how it feels to wander the aisles of a video store . . . searching in vain for Leonard Parts 1 through 5

Nothing makes me stop watching a TV show faster than three simple words: "One Week Earlier"

All these mediocre-looking remakes of taut, mid-budget thrillers make me miss taut, mid-budget thrillers. Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and now The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. The real tragedy? No remake of Malice

This tweet about a missing comma is missing a comma

How everyone sounds when they (over)praise One Battle: You see, in this seminal film, the dichotomy of shampoo and conditioner represents the Manichean struggle of good and evil in us all. Shampoo is bettah? Madison asks. But what if, we ask ourselves, condeetionah is bettah?

The titular allegory of A House of Dynamite is that a world full of nuclear bombs is like . . . a smaller location full of smaller bombs

It's pre-order time, folks! North Country will be in bookstores November 11, but the best way to support an author is to pre-order from any online retailer: bookshop.org/.../north-coun… Please like/share/repost - and let me know what you think about the book! Thanks. #northcountry

“I want to believe that there is always a trail, however faint, leading readers back to a book that, like a hiker lost in the wilderness, is on the brink of perishing.” Geoff Dyer introduces the new edition of The Lives of Saints from Books at NYRB. harpers.org/archive/2025/1…

RIP to Tom Stoppard, who wrote the only good line in the Star Wars prequels, a line that's especially relevant these days: "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."

My dad, when Jon Hamm showed up in the New Yorker doc: “Is that the Mad Man?!”

In the novella of Train Dreams, Grainier participates in an act of racial violence, whereas in the movie he tries, ineffectually, to stop it. So his great sin, the moral hinge of the entire movie, is that he . . . did the right thing except not hard enough?

Wake Up Dead Man needed 20% more Washington Irving, 40% more humor, and, in its title, one more vocative comma. Actually, forget the Irving and the humor. Gimme that comma!