An Evening With George Saunders

This guy.

Yesterday, Northwestern University’s Contemporary Thought Speaker Series brought best-selling author George Saunders to campus to close out its three-speaker series on the value of a university education in the 21^st century.[1]

The Contemporary Thought Speaker Series—known by a very select few as the “intellectual equivalent of Dillo Day,” and by slightly more as “Nerdfest 2K13”—managed to bring out Northwestern’s cardigan-clad intelligentsia from the darkest depths of Unicorn Café to hear the rising literary rock star speak his mind on the moral responsibilities of an educated student. A full Harris Hall gazed intently at two spindly chairs positioned uncomfortably close together on the Harris Hall stage for the writer to bestow his intellectual heft upon us all.

Furor Scribendi: Zombies, Canadians, Rihanna, and Chet Haze (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Pretend to be Malcolm Gladwell)

Brother Jürgen Taintsdorf and Evander Jones trade e-mails regarding celebrity, sport, and all things culture.

Evander Jones:
Dear Brother Jürgen,

Took him long enough.

What follows is a pitiful attempt to be either the Bill Simmons to your Malcolm Gladwell or the other way around. If need be, however, I am willing to settle as the Ke$ha to your Flo Rida. Either way I’ll probably come off as a DoucheMcMuffin, even if I edit our email exchanges to make us both look far more witty than our faithful Sherman Ave readers could ever imagine. A tricky task, mind you, as I just kind of assume that all of our readers are beautiful women between the ages of 18 and 27 who harbor a fond appreciation for unreleased Smiths B-sides, The West Wing, and Morty Schapiro to go with their rabid readership of Sherman Ave.