Reviewing the two new SNL backstage shows, James Poniewozik writes that NBC's president wanted Tina Fey to use "the news setting as a fig leaf for her own experience and encouraged her to write what she knew."
Aaron Sorkin's show also bears some autobiographical traces, says Poniewozik (love typing that name), and so he "is also writing what he knows."
Two pages later, Richard Lacayo opens his review of a new novel thusly: "Alice McDermott is one of those writers who take seriously the injunction to write about what you know."
McDermott should try to get a job at Time.
