The duff project

I’m going to do first-person here, because the whole third-person thing is weird. I’m a writer. I live in a town called Hurley, in Ulster County, in New York. I live here because it reminds me of my family’s cottage, in Ontario, Canada. I live on Hurley Mountain, which isn’t much of a mountain, but it’s fun to say that I live on a mountain.

I’ve written a handful of books, and for a lot of magazines, including Vanity Fair, WIRED, New York, and numerous others. I love what I do.

The point of this site - of The Duff Project, that is - is not that you might want to read something I wrote 20 years ago. (Although you might. I sometimes do.) Rather, I have assembled it in the spirit of what they used to call Commonplace Books, the written repository of one person’s thoughts. You gathered them in a Common Place, and if you looked hard enough, within them you might be able to find some Common Sense.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Aristotle; he was telling us about common sense a long time ago, and yet we have somehow forgotten what he said.

I WROTE THIS BOOK WITH MY Old friend christiane lemieux, who is a superstar designer and company founder, twice-over:

“Christiane has gathered opinions from some of the best thinkers, from whom we all could learn a lesson or two on dissolving the barriers between people and their passions.”

- Christy Turlington Burns, Founder of Every Mother Counts

So here’s my favorite story about this book, which isn’t really about this book. It’s about Bob Dylan, naturally, and also about Christy Turlington. And me.

Around 15 years ago, I went to see Dylan at Madison Square Garden. Walking into the theater with a friend, we realized that we were looking at Christy Turlington. “That’s great,” I said to my friend. “I love the fact that Christy Turlington is a Dylan fan.” About five or so years after that, I went to see Dylan at Madison Square Garden again. I was with someone else, and as we were walking past the spot where I’d seen Christy Turlington, I said to them, “You know, the last time I came to see Dylan play at MSG, I saw Cristy Turlington right here.” At that very moment, we realized that we were looking at Christy Turlington. In the exact same spot. Again.

I wasn’t stalking you, Christy. I’m just a big Bob fan, too. I’m sure you understand.

So Christy and I are connected — we’re all connected — even though we’ve never even met. And now here she is, writing a blurb for a book that I helped write and in which we mentioned Bob Dylan. There are no coincidences, my friends. It is all the same story. But you should buy this one anyway. If you don’t believe me, maybe you will believe Christy Turlington, who apparently thought it was pretty good.

WHEN YOU GET A GOOD REVIEW FROM ANDREW ROSS SORKIN, YOU MAKE HAY WITH IT:

“[A] richly reported indictment of the school as a leading reason that corporate America is disdained by much of the country....in example after example, Mr. McDonald sets out his thesis that money and influence have distorted both the school’s curriculum and the worldview espoused by its professors.”

- Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times

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