How much money does a writer need? In New York, a young writer can get by on $25,000, give or take $5,000, depending on thriftiness. A slightly older younger writer—a 30-year-old—will need another $10,000 to keep up appearances. But that's New York. There are parts of this country where a person can live on twelve or thirteen thousand a year—figures so small they can be written out. Of course it depends. Read More

America has a dark secret, one it's unwilling to face: Errol Morris's films are boring. His "interrotron" technique is supposed to be penetrating but it makes everybody look like they're on a job interview.

Maybe he's auditioning people to find out if they're worthy of being in one of his important works of non-fiction. But no one is worthy of the form he's devised—he wants to expose the banality of evil but insists banality prove its humanity, and vice versa. Read More