Dear Scott,

I realized as soon as I started school that I would never be able to read the New Yorker again. It’s not that they don’t print great stuff (including this from George Saunders, who is apparently the only person in the world other than me who didn’t think “Borat” was the most brilliant piece of cinematic satirical genius in the history of humanity) sometimes. Mostly, my problem with the NYer is that the entire magazine seems to be written, laid out, edited, printed, and shipped from a compound located several miles up its own ass. I can’t explain it any better than that. I think you know what I mean.

The point is, that review makes me angry for the same reason the rest of the magazine does. The most insulting part is not that SF-J makes a total douche of himself –

[Oh, and he does. Who gives a flying fuck what a guy who says things like “I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties” with a straight face thinks about rock and roll (or anything else)?]

– it’s that he gets people who like Pavement for the right reasons (people who heard them and thought Finally, music that celebrates my suburban bookworm lameness and makes me feel smart and loved and maybe just a little bit cooler than I felt yesterday and so on) to defend themselves by invoking the same ironic detachment that allows douches like him to thrive! Don’t fall for it, Scott (or anyone else) — your sincerity is in fact sincere.