So Slate's Meghan O'Rourke, Emily Bazelon, Dahlia Lithwick and some other vagina-havers now occupy a little cordoned-off area called "The XX Factor," where they are expected to crank out what the site touts as "Slate's no-boys-allowed political blog!" (Were they jealous of Salon's Catbox ladyblog?) But man, is the personal ever "political" up in that beyotch.
Every week, Intern Alexis tallies up the points earned by couples vainglorious enough (or Times-employed enough! Awww!) to have little biographical blurbs about themselves in the Styles section. This week, Slate literary editor, Paris Review poetry editor and lauded poet Meghan O'Rourke and New Yorker staffer James Surowieki totally won. How could they not? You can all stop dating now!
The parenthesis in 20th century poetry has a long and heralded past from Yeats and Browning to cummings and Bishop. But perhaps no one has mastered the use of the lunulae as well as Times reporter and UrbanEye e-letter scribe Melena Ryzik. Perusing her articles one is struck by the epigrammatic parenthetical asides that glitter like diamonds in the rough crazy of her prose.
Meghan O'Rourke is having a moment. Her first book of poems, recently published, snagged a coveted full-page review—a rave!—in the Times Book Review. She is the culture editor of Slate. She's in the midst of planning her wedding to New Yorker staff writer James Surowiecki. It's a happy time for Meghan. But while this successful 30ish lady has her share of admirers, she also has her share of critics. An anonymous emailer sums up his concerns like so:
A fun game for poetry nerds: read the first line or sentence of a favorite poet's first book, and imagine it as a summary of the writer's entire career... Meghan O'Rourke, the culture editor of Slate, offers a terse contribution to the first-sentence genre in this, her debut collection: "My poor eye."
So Laura Sessions Stepp's book Unhooked—the one that made Meghan O'Rourke fondly recall her promiscuous college daze, remember?—is getting critically date-raped. But today, the Times' Stephanie Rosenbloom sprang to her defense, giving Stepp the opportunity to respond to her critics with passive aggressive lines like "This is what I love about the bloggers. They haven't been out there interviewing young people for 10 years." Of course, Rosebloom and Stepp are natural allies: while Rosenbloom was busy letting us know there's a thing called an Evite, Stepp was introducing the world to the concept of the "wingman." We're sure that when the interview was over, there was a cathartic crying and ice cream sesh.
Reviewing Unhooked, Laura Sessions Stepp's new anti-hookup polemic for Slate, editor and poetess Meghan O'Rourke takes issue with the author's assertion that young women are being damaged by college one-night stands and should stick to baking. Fair enough! But was it really necessary for O'Rourke to bolster her argument by airing her own dirty college laundry?
