andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-824 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I recently finished two enjoyable novels that I was pretty sure I’d like, given that they were both sequels of a sort. The main characters of both books were named Milo, a name that in literature appears only (to my knowledge) in The Phantom Tollbooth and Catch-22. The Milos in the new books I just read are much different than the two classic literary Milos. One, featured in the new thriller by Olen Steinhauer , is a cool, effective CIA killing machine (but of the good-guy variety, also he has some little character flaws to make him tolerable but he’s basically a superhero). The other is not any sort of killing machine, more of more of a Sam Lipsyte character. Which makes sense since he’s the star of The Ask, the follow-up to Lipsyte’s hilarious lovable-loser saga, Home Land. I have two questions about The Ask. 1. The driver of the plot is as follows. Milo has just been fired from his crappy job at a college in NYC. Milo has a rich friend who asks him to do a favor; in re
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1 I recently finished two enjoyable novels that I was pretty sure I’d like, given that they were both sequels of a sort. [sent-1, score-0.15]
2 The main characters of both books were named Milo, a name that in literature appears only (to my knowledge) in The Phantom Tollbooth and Catch-22. [sent-2, score-0.064]
3 The Milos in the new books I just read are much different than the two classic literary Milos. [sent-3, score-0.144]
4 One, featured in the new thriller by Olen Steinhauer , is a cool, effective CIA killing machine (but of the good-guy variety, also he has some little character flaws to make him tolerable but he’s basically a superhero). [sent-4, score-0.282]
5 The other is not any sort of killing machine, more of more of a Sam Lipsyte character. [sent-5, score-0.12]
6 Milo has just been fired from his crappy job at a college in NYC. [sent-10, score-0.067]
7 Milo has a rich friend who asks him to do a favor; in return the rich friend will donate a pile of money to the college where Milo works, allowing Milo to keep his job. [sent-11, score-0.533]
8 What I kept wondering was: why does Milo want that job so much? [sent-12, score-0.075]
9 Why not just cut out the middleman and have his friend pay him directly? [sent-14, score-0.201]
10 ” And that in turn reminded me of the classic Donald Westlake novel, about a downsized mid-level corporate executive who cold-bloodedly kills several people standing between him and a new job. [sent-20, score-0.152]
11 The Ax is about a man who does horrible things to get a good job. [sent-23, score-0.21]
12 The Ask is about a man who refuses to do horrible things to get a bad job. [sent-24, score-0.282]
13 What I’m wondering is: was this on purpose, was it partly on purpose, or had Lipsyte never actually heard of the Westlake novel when he inadvertently wrote its mirror image. [sent-25, score-0.237]
14 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is great and it deserved every week of its reign on the bestseller lists, but it’s all about the plot and the atmosphere. [sent-37, score-0.211]
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Introduction: I recently finished two enjoyable novels that I was pretty sure I’d like, given that they were both sequels of a sort. The main characters of both books were named Milo, a name that in literature appears only (to my knowledge) in The Phantom Tollbooth and Catch-22. The Milos in the new books I just read are much different than the two classic literary Milos. One, featured in the new thriller by Olen Steinhauer , is a cool, effective CIA killing machine (but of the good-guy variety, also he has some little character flaws to make him tolerable but he’s basically a superhero). The other is not any sort of killing machine, more of more of a Sam Lipsyte character. Which makes sense since he’s the star of The Ask, the follow-up to Lipsyte’s hilarious lovable-loser saga, Home Land. I have two questions about The Ask. 1. The driver of the plot is as follows. Milo has just been fired from his crappy job at a college in NYC. Milo has a rich friend who asks him to do a favor; in re
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