“The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they too have struggled and sung the blues, is, like very best theories of human behavior, immune to falsification by mere evidence.”

American novelist, literary critic, and essayist

Walter Kirn is an American novelist, literary critic, and essayist. He is known for his fiction and criticism, and for writing the novel Up in the Air, which was later adapted into a film starring George Clooney. Kirn has written eight books in all, and his work spans novels, literary criticism, and essays. He is best known for Up in the Air, the book that brought him the widest recognition and reached an even larger audience through its film version.