Monthly Archives: March 2017

Chad Harbach writes elegant prose in The Art of Fielding, and there are moments when his prose matches his insight and the writing becomes almost incandescent, the stuff of great literature. Unfortunately, the beautiful parts taken together sum up to a melodramatic whiny mess. Harbach writes so well, constructs such well-crafted sentences that it seems he can’t control the impulse to add unnecessary narrative. I often got the feeling that he inserted characters and descriptions … Continue reading →

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Occasionally, I read a book that makes me feel a lot dumber than I normally am. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert reminds me that I’m not smart enough to be a scientist. Probably I have lots of Neanderthal genes. Not that Neanderthals were dumb. On the contrary, there is evidence suggesting they were “sophisticated” enough to interbreed with the prevailing species homo sapiens. It might be worth noting, however, that even though Neanderthals had … Continue reading →

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