What does it mean when a critic begins a fiction review by writing about a different text? I think it reveals a lack of interest in the title at hand. Observe the following opening lines, all from today's New York Times Book Review.

1. A pretty good animated and modernized movie version of Dante's Inferno has been running on the Ovation cable network. It's based on the excellent comic book version (set in squalid Los Angeles, California) by Marcus Sanders, Doug Harvey and Sandow Birk.

I occasionally grazed a David Foster Wallace book, but I never finished one. The New York Times writes in a brief death notice today that Infinite Jest was "roughly, about addiction and how the need for pleasure and entertainment can interfere with human connection". I didn't know that, probably because I only got through the first 50 pages of the 1079-page book. As far as I could tell, the book was about footnotes.

Slavoj Zizek, a furry and fiery "rockstar philosopher" from Slovenia who calls himself a Communist and rages at the hypocrisy of wealthy American liberals, appeared in a raucous debate at the New York Public Library last night. Zizek's opposite partner was French activist and intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, who typically argues for idealistic solutions and pragmatic steps towards a more peaceful world.

David Gates on Philip Roth's new Indignation, on the cover of this weekend's New York Times Book Review:

How does Roth get away with this stuff? The cliffhanger, the obscure portent, the withholding of essential information? He doesn’t use these antiquated devices ironically.

Well, that's what I've been saying. He doesn't get away with it.

I love watching people read when I take the subway to work every morning. It gives me hope for the future.



You see a wide variety of reading materials on the R train. Many languages, many formats, cheap novels, literary novels, lots of bibles and other religious literature, history books, tabloid reports of the day's tidings. Everybody is engrossed.