I read Phoebe's review of Tiny Furniture with some interest, and I finally-for-real think I have solved my Lena Dunham problem, because the description of the movie made it sound a lot like Kicking and Screaming, but for women. Dunham as the functional equivalent of Noah Baumbach seems about right: talented, certainly; avid chronicler of a certain demographic slice, but only that demographic slice*; occasionally over-cute or insufferable. Baumbach is someone whose work I have no particular interest in but no desire to interact with: he's not worth hating even if the praise directed his way is occasionally unmerited.
*Not, as an avid chronicler of another certain demographic slice would say, that there's anything wrong with that, but it does put a limit on the appeal of the work. The same goes for, oh, Saul Bellow, or J.D. Salinger, or David Foster Wallace: all things where it's possible to have good and serious taste and still not really be into.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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