On the TEd radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is fresh air.
I'm Terry Gross.
Today we remember writer Paul Oster.
He died Tuesday of complications from lung cancer.
He was 77.
In his New York Times obituary, he was described as the patron saint of literary Brooklyn, one of the signature New York writers of his generation.
He's also been called the dean of postmodernists.
Writer Megan O'Rourke described Oster as remarkably good at getting at the texture of solitude, at telling stories about the lonely mind, evoking the almost supernatural corners of life.
His books include the New York trilogy Moon Palace, Leviathan and the Book of illusions.
He also wrote screenplays, including for two films starring Harvey Keitel, smoke and Lulu on the Bridge.
In his memoir, Winter Journal, he wrote about the history of his body, describing his scars, smoking habit, travels home, near death experiences and entering what he described as the winter of his life.
I spoke with Oster about that memoir when it was published in 2012.
We'll hear that interview a little later, along with an interview we recorded in 2004.
Let's start with our 1997 interview.
He'd just written a memoir called hand to mouth, about his early efforts as a writer and the odd jobs he did to make a living.