PROMINENT WRITERS SAYING EXCESSIVELY KIND THINGS ABOUT ME

Amazingly, these are real quotes.

• Alice From Queens is the kind of writer we aspire to be but so often fail to become: learned, fearless, forensic, unblinkered, unbowed. She has no time for fools, but all the time for serious thought and perfect prose. She makes you want to read and think, and read and think again.

  Corey Robin, CUNY political scientist; author of The Reactionary Mind and The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

• It’s very rare, but every once in a while I still beat Alice to a take.

  Joe Weisenthal, Bloomberg financial columnist, pod host, and TV news anchor.

• Alice is brilliant, obsessive, annoying, and a very right response to a very wrong time.

  Lauren Oyler, novelist (Fake Accounts), and critic for London Review of Books, New Yorker, Harper’s, et al

• All the young girls love Alice. Testing out ideas in public should be daring, creative, and interesting—some dare call it fun. Alice is one such person, who has single-handedly brought some lively mischief back to an intellectual climate that’s been gloomily dour for years. She’s clever, she’s witty, she’s an honest broker; she takes her subjects seriously and her interlocutors—and herself—much less so. I never miss a tweet.

  Elizabeth Bruenig, Atlantic staff writer, former NY Times columnist, and Pulitzer finalist

• AFQ is a comic genius. I don’t know why she spends so much time owning people, but all geniuses have their eccentricities.

  Christian Lorentzen, critic for London Review of Books, Bookforum, Harper's

• Alice has quickly established herself as one of the most interesting, heterodox, unpredictable and thought-provoking voices on the internet, topped off with a scrupulous attention to fact patterns and evidence. She’s awesome.

  Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

• Alice’s ruthless logic makes her targets furious. But she's right. She's always right.

  Don Hughes, writer for Jacobin and Harper’s, co-host of the podcast You Can’t Win, and objectively the funniest man on Twitter (@getfiscal)

• I love Alice’s account for its intelligent provocations, its wit, its levity and gravity. I love the clarity of moral thinking that pitilessly ridicules the hollow ephemera of one social outrage after another. 

  Zia Haider Rahman, novelist, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial prize for In the Light of What We Know

• Alice has one of the most astute minds analyzing politics today. Despite her inexplicable support for Bernie Sanders, she grasps the subtleties of macroeconomic stabilization and finance, and their interactions with policy and the legislative process. Her imperviousness to sentiment can be chilling but it’s why she’s so often first to see through a Discourse mirage to underlying dynamics. Read her opinions today to know your opinions tomorrow.

  Karl Smith, Bloomberg macroeconomics columnist, former economics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, former VP of the Tax Foundation

• Alice is very smart.

  Scott Shapiro, Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale

• Alice is good at Econ.

  Nathan Tankus, economist, author of Notes on the Crises

• I’ve revised up the probability of Alice From Queens being a genius from 87% to 93%.

  Jason Furman, Professor of Economics at Harvard, and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

• From the moment she first pseudonymously appeared, Alice from Queens has been at war with every kind of windy pomposity and mindless cliché. And yet she has never failed to wage the struggle with grace, wit, and style. Anyone with an interest in good writing and clear thinking can either subscribe to her Substack or find themselves forever wracked by FOMORAQ: Fear Of Missing Out Regarding Alice from Queens. Choose wisely.

  Seth Ackerman, Executive Editor, Jacobin

• I think the question most people are asking is, How am I going to feature in your Substack?

  Liam Kofi Bright, Professor of Philosophy at London School of Economics

• Seems like you need to start a Substack.

  Ross Douthat, author & NY Times columnist

• It won’t be worse than your Twitter. 

  Dad

  AND IN DISSENT…

• The literary underground of pre-revolutionary France included pseudonymous social critics of great distinction and also trollish clowns obsessing over gossip. We can make up our minds about which category any one pseud is closer to.

  Jeet Heer, columnist for The Nation, and “Twitter essayist”

• There are vast swaths of the population that don’t think climate change, covid and police brutality are even real. You should read outside your lefty bubble.

  Jeet Heer, columnist for The Nation, and “Twitter essayist”

• This whole exchange is a reminder of how tedious it is to converse with someone who doesn't know anything and constantly reinterprets words beyond their meaning (i.e. Poundians = contemporary American professors). I will go back to ignoring.

  Jeet Heer, columnist for The Nation, and “Twitter essayist”

• "Many" = the gang of anonymous trolls who mysteriously pop up whenever anyone challenges your attempts to muddy the water. Very curious about those guys.

  Jeet Heer, columnist for The Nation, and “Twitter essayist”

• I bet you were in debate club.

  Jeet Heer, columnist for The Nation, and “Twitter essayist”