Olive Garden

For a while, I thought John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut were America’s greatest living writers. One of the best classes I ever took in college was a Sociology of Kurt Vonnegut class. We read a bunch of sociology texts and a bunch of Vonnegut.  If you really wanted to understand mid- to late-twentieth-century American culture, you needed to read some Updike and Vonnegut. Sadly, Updike and Vonnegut are gone now. So, who is America’s greatest living writer, now? Marilyn Hagerty. She writes for the Grand Forks Herald, the local newspaper in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Her restaurant column, Eat Beat, is perhaps the greatest writing on the internet. Continue reading →