If I had to guess what the indicator of where the new writer bar ends up, it will be wherever Joyce Carol Oates goes. Not because people like her or her tweets necessarily, but that she’s kind of like the black hole at the center of a galaxy, you don’t want to get too close (she’s the queen of the bizarre takes, not to mention her post with a rather disturbing picture of her feet), and yet everything kind of ineluctably ends up orbiting around her anyway.