Meghan O'Rourke

'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.

Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.

But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on.

Technology is characterized by constant change, rapid innovation, creative destruction, and revolutionary products.

My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.