A lot of contemporary culture seems to take the form of the opinion piece: you read the first paragraph—sometimes you just read the title—and you don't have to continue, because you know exactly what is going to be said. Everything is broken down into points of view, positions on a curve. If you're off the curve, or if you pay no attention to the curve, no one seems to know how to understand you, which is one reason that Lin has no interest in her own celebrity. She doesn't want to represent a point of view; she wants to make things.

—Louis Menand, "The Reluctant Memorialist." The New Yorker, July 8, 2002.