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"Good and great causes don’t advance without resistance. First the thing is impossible, then improbable, then unsatisfactorily achieved, then quietly improved, until one day it is actual and uncontroversial. So it was with putting military weapons into the hands of openly homosexual soldiers, and so it shall be with taking military weapons out of the hands of crazy people. It starts off impossible and it ends up done."
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Ryan Lizza on how Washington changed Barack Obama; Hendrik Hertzberg on Rick Perry’s good idea; Adam Gopnik on the scandal of America’s teeming prisons; John Seabrook on Nolan Bushnell’s anti-aging video games; and more.
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The Dragon’s Egg: High fantasy for young adults
Books win their audiences for a reason. Most popular books wear their artlessness on their sleeve: Stephenie Meyer, the author of the “Twilight” series, is an awkward writer with little feeling for construction, but the intensity of emotion with which she imbues her characters is enviable. You never doubt her commitment to the material, which is half the battle won. So to say that Paolini is an unskilled narrator and a derivative mythmaker is more or less beside the point. What is it, then, that makes the books enter kids’ consciousness?
- Adam Gopnik on “The Lord of the Rings, “Twilight,” and popular young-adult fantasy books: http://nyr.kr/snuFvq
