It's not that there's anything inappropriate about the little flirtatious compliments hosts pay to the women — especially actresses — who appear on their shows. And Letterman certainly isn't the only one to talk up his guests' beauty — Stewart's been known to do it too. but it does give the impression that the female guests are there as eye candy, even if they just, say, directed a film or completed a serious role. That's why it's so refreshing when, in the clip above, Jon Stewart jumps in after her hyperarticulate monologue about the history of Rhode Island to say, with obvious admiration, "you're very smart."

Given everything I've written about Letterman in the last couple days, you're probably expecting me to applaud the asexuality of the whole exchange. But it actually made me blush a little, because while all the "you're beautiful" comments are standard boilerplate for a celebrity interview, telling someone she's smart in a way seemed like actual flirting — or least, the kind of flirting I actually respond to. Calling a woman pretty is, while sometimes welcome, pretty much a Standard All-Purpose Compliment, while calling her smart (and meaning it) shows you're actually paying attention. So while I don't think Stewart's really hitting on Vowell here, I did find the whole thing kind of hot.

But that's just me. In a larger sense, it is nice to see a female guest treated like an actual author rather than a sex object. Of course, Vowell's whole persona — her clothes, her bowl haircut, her constant assertions of her own nerdiness — downplays sexuality in favor of intellect, and I wonder if this is a conscious choice. While Billy Parker's recent Gothamist interview with Vowell veers once into the semi-suggestive ("Have you always clicked with jokey fellas?"), Parker largely sticks with serious questions like, "What's the youngest reader that you're aware that you've had?" and, "Was Roger Williams a slight man?" Singers with sexy images, or writers un/fortunate enough to be tarred with the "hot writer" brush often end up getting asked a lot more about their looks and relationships, and a lot less about their work.

Vowell has a pretty funny This American Life piece about dressing as a goth, in part as a response to people assuming she's sweet all the time. So she's clearly aware of the power of appearance and its influence on social interaction. Most likely her personal style is just what makes her comfortable and happy, but her conservative outfits and simple hair also give her a certain freedom — the freedom to talk about what she wants to talk about, without participating in a played-out sexual script. It's a freedom some actresses might well envy.

Sarah Vowell, Author [Gothamist]
Sarah Vowell [Daily Show]

I actually talk to myself because I have to — I had ruined my wrists with typing by the age of 21, and ever since then I've used voice-recognition for almost all my writing. That's why every now and then a weird homonym shows up in one of my posts, and why I had to warn my roommates that although I might be mumbling about abortion at eight in the morning, they shouldn't call the cops. Despite the warning, I think they still think I'm crazy.

But maybe they shouldn't. According to psychologist Randy Engle, interviewed in today's Times, most people actually talk to themselves. In the absence of mental illness, we usually do it in order to remember something, or to understand complicated text. Engle says,

[W]hen we are reading something that is quite complex, it helps to verbalize it aloud, because hearing it, and hearing the language, gives us another cue for remembering those exact words. Listening to our internal auditory memory has been found to be quite helpful to understand a particularly complex sentence.

Although I've become an accomplished self-talker, I almost never do this. Maybe it's because I hear a voice in my head while reading anyway, so I don't need to speak aloud. A quick googling reveals that this is relatively common, and that some readers even hear other people's voices. Still, plenty of people look at me funny when I say I have a voice in my head that reads to me. Just anecdotally, I've noticed that scientists and engineers are less likely to be aware of a head-voice, even if they read a lot. So maybe it's a right-brain thing?

I also hear a voice in my head when I write, which made the transition from typing for voice recognition pretty easy (except that the software kind of sucks — no matter how hard I try, I can never teach it any curse words, or the name Barack Obama). This seems even less common than the reading head-voice. Other writers I've talked to don't hear a voice, and one says he actually associates composition with the physical act of typing.

Actually, I think my most insane form of self-talk is actually the most common. Engle doesn't mention it, but I'm pretty sure everybody yells "shit!" or some comparable exclamation when they stub their toe or dropped a just-washed white shirt directly onto a dirty boot-print on the floor. But for some reason, I've taken to shouting out "fuck you!" in these situations. Who am I cursing? Myself? The universe? Some demon sent to cause me annoying accidents? Whoever it is, this curse-ee has received a lot of undeserved blame over the course of my clumsy life. Maybe I should start yelling out "sorry."

Thinking Out Loud [NYT]

Moore came on the scene in 1985 with the collection Self-Help, and readers familiar with her later collections, Like Life and Birds of America, and her novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? will recall her dark wit and often acerbic view of human relationships. According to Elle's Louisa Kamps, New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman has said that Moore deals with "female" topics but that no one would "dismiss her work as chick lit." Moore does often write from the point of view of women, but the assumption that women's lives are "female topics" (translation: private, soft, and not of interest to men) is one of the publishing industry's biggest canards. The idea that calling something "chick lit" is the same as dismissing it may be the other side of that coin. In fact, Moore's stories often make women's lives sound hard — kids get cancer, babies die, relationships are unsatisfying or just plain infuriating, and the idea that one finds oneself in others is generally disproved. The fact that these "topics" need apology, a not-chick-lit stamp of approval, just makes the problems of Moore's characters seem that much graver — life is tough, and people aren't necessarily taking them seriously.

Moore's new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, is set in a Midwestern university town much like Madison, where Moore lives and teaches, and Kamps spends a lot of time trying to figure out whether it is autobiographical. Moore doesn't seem very interested in this question — when asked if a particular Madison restaurant found its way into the novel, she says, "sure, I thought a little bit of this place." She's more interested in discussing how one writes and becomes a writer than in her own divorce or its impact on her fiction. At times she sounds like a terrifying teacher: she once told her students to "satirize the tics and tendencies" of the classmate seated next to them, which sounds like a pretty good recipe for shame, especially for the student satirized by Moore. But her teaching philosophy also displays a tough-mindedness that is as refreshing as it is unsettling. She says,

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father.' And you know what they say? 'I could never do that!'

She's commenting on the close relationship young people today often have with their parents, but this closeness can breathe an eagerness to please not only the parents themselves, but authority in general. Moore's writing sometimes conveys a nasty view of humanity, one that would surely sadden any mother or father, but the nastiest parts are often the most funny and true. Insofar as it encourages students to stop trying to make people happy, Moore's advice is great — readers, like all humans, don't necessarily know what they want, and trying to please isn't a very good way of actually doing so.

On the writing life, Moore says,

The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. [...] if you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'This is just who I am, and if I'm going to do.' There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it — you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.

The idea of the writer as ill-mannered hermit going against the grain of society can seem a little self-aggrandizing — after all, there are more "unsafe" forms of rebellion than writing. But Moore's vision of the writer seems more troll-under-the-bridge than Che Guevara. And if her anti-communal view of writing sounds a little lonely (really? Writers only get four friends?), it's also a good antidote to the idea that the purpose of fiction is to uplift readers. This idea seems to be particularly foremost in publishers' minds when they market books to women, and it does us a disservice, assuming that we have to like the characters, their lives, and also their reflection on our own lives if we're going to buy a book. But it's not so easy to predict what will bring us joy — what writers can do, as Moore suggests, is detach themselves from what they think will please, and free themselves up to be a little rude.

Elle [Official Site]

As Amy Chozick writes in the Wall Street Journal,

Behind the smooth-talking, chain-smoking, misogynist advertising executives on "Mad Men" is a group of women writers, a rarity in Hollywood television. Seven of the nine members of the writing team are women. Women directed five of the 13 episodes in the third season. The writers, led by the show's creator Matthew Weiner, are drawing on their experiences and perspectives to create the show's heady mix: a world where the men are in control and the women are more complex than they seem, or than the male characters realize.

One thing that's a fascinating echo - and refutation - of the show's plotline is the number of women who rose up through the ranks. Jennifer Getzinger started as a script supervisor and has become a director. Writer Kater Gordon was a babysitter for creator Matt Weiner's sons, impressed him with her acumen, and started as his assistant. One assumes there was less clawing - and far less degradation - than in Peggy Olson's rise from secretary to copywriter; but that these writers might particularly relish her ascent.

One particularly striking quote from the piece: "A lot of people think women can only do women shows," says one of the writers. It's ironic that a show shedding so much light on the prejudices of another era should come out of one of the most backward. 80% of Writers Guild members are male, and only 27% of TV writers are women. When women do write - Tina Fey, Nora Ephron, or a creator like Joss Whedon encourages female writers - it's considered newsworthy.

Yesterday I wrote on an Esquire article that called for "better chick flicks" that men could get into. Well, Mad Men is widely considered to be the best-written show on TV, a "men's show" whose secret is its women - onscreen and off. But there's an irony at work: these women are writing about characters working in a male ghetto - and being regarded not as members of the team but as aberrations - while living it. People think female writers are Sex and the City; I'm guessing this, paradoxically, is a more accurate portrait.

The Women Behind ‘Mad Men' [WSJ]
On Being a Female Writer in the TV Business [Huffington Post]
OK, So Teens Don't Tweet. But Pretend People LOVE Twitter! [AdAge]

Choire Sicha at The Awl speculates that (Salon's) "Rebecca Traister is going to be mean to her," presumably over the sexist subtext of the notion that women can't focus, but Orchid Thief author Orlean elaborates thus,

@georgiakral I don't think it's sexist — I think men/women have different styles of focus. Women r better multitaskers, for better & worse.

Aside from the silliness of seeing a New Yorker writer spell "are" like that, this statement is still a little essentialist for my taste. While some studies suggest that women may have some advantage in multitasking, we all know plenty of single-minded women and task-juggling men. And, obviously, both focus and multitasking can be learned. But farther upfeed, Orlean writes,

But 1. Society expects women to do it all. 2. We (I) feel guilty neglecting home stuff. Men I know are more ok with that.

And,

Society would look very harshly at a woman who missed kids' events, etc; men get a free pass on that stuff.

While men don't get quite as big a get-out-of-parenting-free pass as they used to (Michael Lewis has to change diapers now), it's still much more acceptable for a man to put his personal life on hold for work than for a woman to do the same. I've had a lot of conversations with other writers about this, and women almost always report feeling guilty for placing work above relationships — not just with kids, but also with friends, parents, significant others, etc. Anna H. says that when working on her book many years ago, she "had to TELL people that I would not be calling, emailing, socializing for 7 months, and, even though I was upfront about it, I still felt very guilty." Male writers I've talked to, in contrast, sometimes view social life as an imposition, and rejecting it as an almost moral act, a la Thoreau.

Neither of these outlooks is necessarily superior to the other — I tend to view personal relationships as essential to life, and maintaining them as a joy as well as an obligation, but I also understand how being a social entity can be constricting, and how it can be rewarding and even necessary to simply live in your own head for a while. However, it's certainly true that women are largely expected to have the former outlook, and the expectation makes not just writing, but any occupation that requires occasional periods of absorption, more difficult for us.

I can think of several successful female nonfiction writers who are married with kids — Anne Fadiman, for instance, and writer/musician Kristin Hersh, who Sicha points out is currently Twittering about watching squirrels. And not having kids — as Nina Shen Rostagi of Double X reminds us — is no perfect recipe for getting work done. Still, women in general and moms in particular get a lot more criticism for saying, "go away world, I'm working."

So is this a bad thing? Yes, in that it always sucks when men get a pass and women get flak for the same behavior. But it's also true that distractions can sometimes enrich one's work. Orlean writes,

@MDTeresa Yep, and if part of your brain is remembering to buy milk, you have that much less for your writing. It is a zero sum game.

I'm not sure it really is. Some of my best ideas have come from mental digression — and from my conversations and relationships with other people. Sometimes writers need intense, isolated focus to get the job done, but sometimes they need to broaden that focus to take in the world around them. Obviously it's true that time spent caring for kids, calling your parents, and buying milk cut into your writing time. But they may make your writing better in ways you can't predict. It would be nice for female writers to be able to shut themselves off from society from time to time, without guilt. And it would also be nice for everyone to embrace a variety of different processes for writing and for work in general, and not to privilege one single-minded and traditionally male-associated approach.

Susan Orlean Needs a Room of Her Own! Or a Wife! Or Bodyguard! [The Awl]
susanorlean [Twitter]
A Room of One's Own-and No Pesky Kids [Double X]

A single mom whose life was once "all work and graft and paying bills," Cole doesn't apologize for the commercial nature of her books. She's proud of both her boat and her "Malibu luxury caravan" — "it's one of the most expensive in the world, it's got a viewing tower and everything" — and she doesn't feel self-conscious for not writing more "literary" fiction. "The Booker prize money," she says, "wouldn't even keep me in cigarettes." She's neither bashful about her success nor regretful of a harder time — when a friend expressed pity over her difficult life, she fired back, "'Actually I felt like that about you at times."

On men, she says,

I can't live with anyone except my children, these days, do you know what I mean? Men get on my fucking nerves after a while, they drive me up the wall, if you'll excuse my French. I always say, 'I like a man, I just couldn't eat a whole one.' I think I'm too independent now, I've been on my own too long.

She's equally eloquent on her struggle to be taken seriously as a female crime writer:

You know what? I've always had critics right from day one. They go on about the violence but you know someone once said to me, if you was a man you'd have been the Irvine Welsh of the south-east. But I'm not. I'm a blonde. Worst of all I'm a blonde Essex girl. Do you know what I mean? And I don't just mean that there's still prejudice against Essex girls. I think there's prejudice against most women. I think there always will be and always has been.

I don't care what nobody says, you still have to do better. If you're in a job, it's a male-orientated world, and my job is very male-orientated. Statistically, women buy more books. But statistically men get paid more money. You tell me if you think there's something wrong with that?

Plenty of women have said all these things before — that a man is not a prerequisite for a happy life and can even be a hindrance, that women have to work twice as hard for the same respect as men, that money is useful and boats and cars are cool. But a woman who discusses her success without false modesty, her acquisitiveness without guilt, and her independence without reservation is still pretty shocking. And awesome.

'The Booker prize money wouldn't even keep me in cigarettes' [Guardian]

Well, most of the things Meyer reveals are about as exciting as non-blood-sucking vamps: She likes to drive, she likes Greek salad. She is a self-described "hermit" who doesn't even go to the movies: "We bought The Dark Knight when it came out, and I know we will watch it someday," she says.

Meyer is not even really that into vampires, which is maybe why Edward Cullen never bites anything and doesn't even seem to have fangs. She tells Vogue she's a Batman girl: "I like that he's not so clean-cut, that he has a dark side, that he's doing things that are not clearly legal or illegal."

But! Meyer does seem to know her limitations. She studied literature in college but avoided creative writing, out of fear of criticism. (Of Breaking Dawn, our own Anna North said, "Basically these mythical creatures live in a very safe, heteronormative world - and a boring one. If I had an eternity to read, I still might never pick up this book again.") And Meyer seems to know that her writing is not all it could be: "I'm not a professional yet," she says. "I'm still just an amateur." An amateur who has sold 28 million copies of her sparkly vampire story.

Dreamcatcher [Vogue.com]
Earlier: Breaking Dawn: What To Expect When You're Expecting... A Vampire
Twilight At Midnight: Smells Like Teen Spirit
7 Vampires Better Than Twilight's Edward Cullen

The Creepiest Craft Ever Crafted

His piece starts out a little annoying: "Mistresses," he says, "is conceived, structured and run by women. I am a man who largely does as he's told (which not only reflects the reality of the rest of my life, but that of most men I know)." This women-really-run-the-world stuff is pretty tired, and it's also a way for men to curry favor with women without supporting any changes to the status quo.

Warlow goes on to say that in dramas centered around women, "there's a particular soul and strength, toughness and vulnerability that wouldn't be afforded by the presence of men." This is a little gender-essentialist, but it's true that a heroine offers the writer different opportunities than a hero, especially if that heroine is situated in a society like ours, where gender is still such a fraught issue and being a woman can be uniquely dangerous. Warlow cites The Silence of the Lambs, and it's easy to see how Clarice's isolation in a nearly all-male world of criminal investigation made that film all the more powerful and chilling.

Warlow writes,

Most men I know, even the gay ones, are obsessed with women. I think that gives us a compelling qualification to write about them. I'm sure we indulge our own fantasies, preconceptions and hang-ups. I know I do. But isn't that what writing is about? The fact that we're not women may be what gives male dramatists' writing curiosity and passion. Our perspective might not always be as insightful as that of a female writer, but it's just as valid - and hopefully just as entertaining.

Not all men I know, even the straight ones, are "obsessed with women." But it is interesting to see our gender portrayed from the outside. The compelling thing about Madame Bovary (another example Warlow cites), isn't the accuracy of Flaubert's portrayal of a dissatisfied, self-absorbed, status-obsessed woman. It's Emma Bovary as a fictional character, a fake woman written by a man and thus unlike any woman you'd ever actually meet. A fictional woman created by a man is always going to be different from one created by a woman — or from women in the flesh — just as men written by women will never match up with flesh-and-blood males. But the cool thing about fiction is that it's different from reality, and hopefully more entertaining. So stick with it, Warlow — and don't let us women tell you what to do.

When a man writes a woman [Guardian]

Perhaps best known for his tetrology of Rabbit novels, the Pennsylvania-born Updike was famed for his distinctive, stylized portrayal of contemporary America and a body of work that included 25 novels, 12 story collections, children's books and a wide body of criticism. Updike was known for his mordant observation of suburban mores - particularly adultery - and his political outspokenness. For the latter part of his life, Updike lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts, fictionalized in the 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick. While he'll leave a gaping hole in the literary landscape, he'd probably appreciate our quoting his own words: "The great thing about the dead, they make space." [CNN, Academy of Achievement, New York Times]

Whereas once third grade was necessarily given over to the tedium of copying curls and loops, now it seems kids aren't learning cursive, and when they are, they won't use it. "It's a bit like going for a root canal for them," says one teacher. Apparently only 15% of students wrote their SAT essays in script, opting instead for block print. Most experts blame the "digital age" for this disinclination to write; while people have long known how to type, now there's apparently very little call for handwriting at all. "Unless you use it, you lose it," says another teacher.

What's odd about this is...once you learn cursive, isn't it easier and faster than printing? To say nothing of the purely sensuous pleasure of gliding a good pen, uninterrupted, across a page. And is the concept of "handwriting" — revealer of character, neuroses, criminal identity — a thing of the past? For generations of kids, handwriting conformed to the stringent dictates of the Palmer Method, a school of handwriting instruction that resulted in the distinctive, homogenous spidery penmanship we associate with the 19th and early 20th centuries. The abandonment of this method may have been regarded as a small triumph for individuality, but it's ironic that kids are now voluntarily opting for a more uniform sort of writing again.

Incidentally, I'm a sucker for bad penmanship. I've always loved the vulnerability of a little boy scrawl; apparently this, in itself, now dates me — and widens the holding pen for my "type" dramatically. That's a small casualty though; the decline of penmanship provokes in me a serious strain of old-womanish regret for lost arts, even as it's sort of awesome to actually be on the tail end of such a dying art! I didn't know we possessed any! Because writing was something that, unlike long division and kickball, was actually a "grown up" life skill, plus a small measure of artistry brought to even the most quotidian every day. My regret is not for something vague and societal and regimented; rather, it's the loss of a small satisfaction and a very real pleasure. Kids today don't know what they're missing...even if I'll apparently be crushing on all of them.

Cursive Writing A Dying Art [UPI]

Carol, the youngest of four children, says it was helping type mother Mary's novels that inspired her own career. "That's really what got me into [writing], because I'd talk to her about the characters and the plot...It was great for me to learn about how to write." As to the inherent tension of writing in the same genre, Carol says, "Oh, we wouldn't steal from each other. We actually fax each other pages as we're working on our separate books, just to get feedback." Adds Mary, "You need fresh eyes you can count on to say, 'That's fine. What are you worried about?'" [NPR]