I would like, for the sake of hipness, to be able to claim that I am reading some obscure French novelist of the inter-war period, in the original French. Unfortunately, the only thing I can read in the original French is no-smoking signs, and I hate most French novels written after 1890. Instead, I’m reaquainting myself with the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker, the patron saints of light verse. When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be Dorothy Parker, until I realised that no matter how hard I tried I was never going to be talented, Jewish, or short, and that dying alone only sounds romantic so long as you continue to believe yourself to be immortal.
Megan McArdle, writing as “Jane Galt”, Asymmetrical Information, 2004-12.
