Extremely Close and Incredibly Precious
A Paxton-Pullman Vortex for the New Generation


Think about it--you’ve never seen Jonathan Safran Foer and Sufjan Stevens in the same room, have you? Have you? When one shows up somewhere, why does the other seem oddly absent? Did Sufjan really need to get his harmonium from the coat check, just as Safran showed up at the Literacy Benefit? And did Safran really have to email a haiku about Darfur to Kofi Annan, ten minutes before Sufjan played Southpaw?

Safran and Sufjan. Sufjan and Safran. Maybe you hadn’t thought to be suspicious about it, but maybe that’s just because you’ve never had reason to. UNTIL NOW.

And it’s not just their names either, those too-perfect, vaguely Ottoman-sounding names. They both live in Park Slope. They’re both cutesy as fuck. They’re both quiet, and fragile, and thoughtful, and attractive in a feminine way. They both have ideal bone structure. They both inspire a mind-blowing hatred in other young artists that threatens to have that bone structure rearranged.

They’ve both written an over-reaching masterpiece before their thirtieth birthday. They’ve taken on subjects and conceits that were probably too much, too soon, and yet they pulled it off well enough to erase any doubt about their genius. They give some meaning back to that word, genius, a word that’s been thrown around like rice for far too long. Their art is baroque and ambitious and modern and precious and yet curiously full. It resounds.

I kind of wish my name was Soren Supermann, and I wrote plays about Stalinist superheroes who still sleep with the nightlight on. The three of us would hang out by the pond at Prospect Park and skip stones, and have funny, earnest conversations with children and their au pairs.

But everyone knows that that’s impossible. I hate Stalinists, I can't stand conversations with children, and, as we've already established, they’re the same person.