An Intensively Researched, Finely-Crafted Educational Program Intended To Teach Children Values Like, Say, Curiosity

If necessity is the mother of invention, then what is boredom? The midwife? First and most important: my friends and I are making another zine, and we’re looking for submissions! The theme this time is “shenanigan(s)” — feel free to check out the last one for inspiration. For Bay Area folks, we will probably (?) have some kind of launch party? So Phil Christman had a great post about Helen DeWitt and Your Name Here (recall).[^paywall] The main point he makes[^gridneff] is that DeWitt is a paradox: she is thoroughly democratic, in the sense that she writes novels that treat the reader with respect, like the reader is just as intelligent as the novel, novels that say that it’s okay to be an idiosyncratic autodidact, that good taste can be learned. But she’s also a snob, a real snob, who genuinely seems to believe that her interests are obviously better and more interesting than the average person, who genuinely seems to be basically unable to function in a world that is less than…