From the February 24, 2011 issue
Stephen Francis
No doubt we haven’t seen the last of the novel or memoir of personal angst, for a long time now the preferred mode of writing; but as the troubles of the world worsen, these can come to seem self-indulgent. Is it a moment for the didactic side of novel-writing—its old roots, suppressed or concealed in happier times—to return with a tub-thumping, Victorian roar? Such a renaissance of purpose seems a positive development, an endorsement of the slyly pedagogic nature of the novel form, bringing with it readability, solidity, suspense, and relevance—novels that make you think, as people used to say when thinking was presumed to be an honorific, against the domination of “feeling” novels that make you weep.
More »The Mad Men Account
Daniel Mendelsohn
That a soap opera decked out in high-end clothes (and concepts) should have received so much acclaim and is taken so seriously reminds you that fads depend as much on the willingness of the public to believe as on the cleverness of the people who invent them; as with many fads that take the form of infatuations with certain moments in the past, the Mad Men craze tells us far more about today than it does about yesterday. But just what in the world of the show do we want to possess? The clothes and furniture? The wicked behavior? The unpunished crassness? To my mind, it’s something else entirely, something unexpected and, in a way, almost touching.
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