Monthly Archives: December 2013

badly quoted in the NY Times this morning

Here’s the note i sent to David Streitfeld who wrote the piece.

David,
Over the past thirty years i’ve gotten used to misquoting hatchet jobs by the press, but yours was one of the snarkiest quotes out of context i’ve encountered.
As you know from our discussion, I wasn’t complaining about being asked about the future of the book but against the lazy and thoughtless posing of the question where the asker hasn’t bothered to do any prep. I didn’t record our discussion but i’d be quite surprised if I didn’t mention to you that I have learned over the past many years to turn the question around to make an important point about historical context by asking if the questioner is interested in the future as in next year, five years from now, 20 years from now, a century or longer.
b.