By which I mean that all the crazy stories are not all that crazy, and the first-person accounts of various subway shenanigans are, well, kind of not that wild, and then you sort of question what the point is at all.

The funny thing is that for all the navel gazing and nostalgia erupting, there are one or two pieces that really get at what is actually interesting about the subway: David Ebershoff's "Lunch Time" is one of the very, very few pieces that go outside the rider/writer's mind to do original research — versus ruminate about "what it all means." The result is funny, if not completely satisfying: he corners some subway cleaners and learns about what it's actually like to clean the subway: in other words, not speculating about people, humanity or whatnot.

A word about 2006: it seems people around then found license to talk about themselves in an outsized, universal way. And for whatever reason, people (also, publishers) listened. This is crazy. There's nothing special about people when they're first to do it. If there's a slogan for today it should be "blog softly and don't perseverate about getting clicks." Then type whatever it is you want to say . . .