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from an interview in the A.V. Club portion of The Onion
Volume 43 Issue 34
August 23, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Onion, Inc.

I’m not a very intentional writer. I try to be as unintentional as possible. What I basically try to do is invite the zeitgeist in to tea. I haven’t been reading much contemporary fiction lately, but if you’re seeing characters operating on the outside of things that they can’t fully comprehend, then you’re seeing part of the zeitgeist, and I think you might also be seeing an emergent, new kind of realism, where the individuals that write books are willing to admit to themselves—and to some extent to the reader—that they don’t know what the hell is going on. I mean, if they’re trying to be really honest, and they’re not just trying to sell some conspiracy theory, they’re writing about characters who don’t know what the hell is going on, because... well, we don’t.

Star Tribune, 10 January 2021

Clarity? In response to my invitation to explore “obscurantism,” a reader in Eau Claire, Wis., Michael Lindsay, submitted this gem – with only nine syllables:

“Disambiguate obfuscation.”

Clear enough?

Star Tribune, 1 October 2023

Avoid jargon: “This is not my first rodeo, but that’s above my pay grade, so at the end of the day I’ll circle back so we can think outside the box, drill down to increase our bandwidth, gain traction and move the goal posts.”

What I’ve relied on, instead, is developing my ear for language by following the writer Pete Hamill’s advice for writers. One word: “Read.”

Star Tribune, 3 December 2023

Our goal as writers: clarity.

The best expression of that ideal I’ve ever heard came from the Roman rhetorician Marcus Quintilianus (35-100 A.D.):

“We should write, not so that it is possible to understand us, but so that it is impossible to misunderstand us.”

Star Tribune, 31 March 2024

I recently watched a TV interview with the composer, musician and singer Paul Simon by “CBS Late Night” host Stephen Colbert. Colbert asked Simon to describe his process of writing music and lyrics: Is he a perfectionist?

Simon pondered a bit before explaining that, in creating a song, he writes a part he decides is really good; another part that’s pretty good; and something else that’s just OK. Then, he says, he looks at the just-OK part, and he decides he hates it.

He punctuates his description with this gem: “The ear goes to the irritant.”

attributed in a letter to the Star Tribune, 13 January 2003

Los Angeles Times;
published in the Star Tribune March 9, 2011

Oliver Sacks, in his wonderful early book, “A Leg to Stand On,” discusses a neurological condition called somatoparaphrenia. Patients with this disorder experience “a denial of ownership” of their body parts. Sacks remembers being called to deal with a patient who had fallen out of bed. [...] The patient reported that he had found a strange leg in bed with him. He thought it was a cadaver’s leg that a nurse had put in his bed as a joke. But when he attempted to throw the horrible thing out of the bed, he somehow came after it — and now it was attached to him.

I’ve been thinking about somatoparaphrenia lately in relation to our nation’s ongoing war against the public sector.

They are us. You can’t just drill holes in their end of the boat and expect to stay afloat.

Look, I’ve been arbitrating labor cases for 20 years. I know something about waste, fraud, nepotism, featherbedding, laziness, corruption and stupidity. And what I know is you don’t have to go to the public sector to find them. [...] For every bloated public bureaucracy, there is an equally sclerotic corporate structure.

It is not government that is the problem, it is people in groups.

Star Tribune, 12 May 2004

written for the Washington Post

published in the Star Tribune, January 21, 2012

In fact, saying corporations are not persons is as irrelevant to constitutional analysis as saying that Tom Brady does not putt well in handicapping the NFL playoffs. The Constitution protects the rights of various groups and institutions – whether Planned Parenthood, Bob Jones University or the AFL-CIO – though they are not “natural persons.” Humans gather themselves in groups, for public and private ends, and sometimes it makes constitutional sense to protect the group as distinct from its constituent humans.

There are ways to address inordinate corporate power in politics that avoid razing the house to rid it of termites. Many ramifications of Citizens United can be addressed with more aggressive disclosure rules, limits on political involvement of companies receiving government contracts or mandates that shareholders approve political expenditures.

But as the denunciations of Citizens United peak this weekend, it’s useful to keep in mind that the biggest problem with corporate power was not created by the Supreme Court. The key flaw of American corporations is that they have become a vehicle for the voices and interests of an exceedingly small managerial and financial elite – the notorious 1 percent. That corporations speak is less a concern than for whom they speak and what they say. The cure for this is more democracy within businesses – more participation in corporate governance by workers, communities, shareholders and consumers.

If corporations were themselves more democratic, their participation in the nation’s political debate would be of little concern and might even be beneficial.

from the Chicago Tribune

published in the Star Tribune, July 14, 2013

Indeed, the Sumerians, who lived in what is now Iraq, used those innovations to lift human society to the level of a civilization for the first time, according to one school of thought. The Sumerians were one of the first peoples to realize they could preserve their thoughts by setting them down in writing. Their version of writing, known as cuneiform and inscribed on clay tablets, has enabled modern scholars to understand how the Sumerians felt about ethics, education, religion and beer.

in the Star Tribune 8 June 2009

Whenever you have trouble with all (group name here), it isn’t about (group name here), it’s about you. I’ve found this to be a useful self-diagnostic tool.

It applies when every boss at every job is a nightmare; when all other drivers are jerks; when all adherents to a belief are monsters, liars or fools. It applies even when there isn’t just one group, but instead any group will do [...]

in the Star Tribune 21 December 2009

Your “future dream wedding day” will be less than perfect because you, your groom, and life are less than perfect. The more you ask life to grace you with improbable things (such as, perfection in a catered event involving alcohol and family members), the more gleefully life giggles when it barfs on your dress.

I think I typed that a little too gleefully.

in the Star Tribune 29 October 2010

I am a staunch nonbeliever in bean-counting in relationships. For intimacy to develop and flourish, each partner has to give freely, without regard for fairness, and both have to receive gratefully, without tap-tapping their feet for more.

Such balance isn’t something you can just decide unilaterally to have; each of you has to establish your side of the equation, ungrudgingly, on faith, at a pace that feels right. Then, you watch for it being reciprocated to the point where it feels only natural to entrust yourselves to each other.