What a tasteless headline! I considered worse. For those without Atlantic subscriptions, Caitlin Flanagan’s review of Paul Ruditis’ book Rainbow Party (about, as Flanagan puts it, “the teenage oral-sex craze”) is also on the Powell’s Books website. The piece fascinated and irritated me. I’ll write more about that if I get a chance.

Since I last wrote about The Atlantic, by the way, my subscription kicked in, and I’m enjoying it tremendously. I’d let a few years lapse since I last read it regularly, and it strikes me now as essential, a slightly uneven but adventurous and vital roundup of new and serious thought. Overall, a harmonious complement to the NYer (yes, I know there are other magazines; I’m talking about these two specifically). I like the sidebars, for instance. What are people reading in other parts of the world? They tell you. That’s news I want, and here it is in a colorful graphic; that part of the magazine is like USA Today for the philosophically bookish.

Meanwhile, even this emphatic fan of Caitlin Flanagan isn’t so sure about her New Yorker essays.