The jurors appear vaguely stranded and at loose ends, uprooted from their routines and livelihoods.

It's like when FEMA wasn't really that creative, and the water was rising and people were stranded, ... Once again, people are being stranded and businesses are starting to die.

Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways by allowing themselves, now and then, to get things wrong.

Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.

Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to add to it unless you have a damn good reason.

Good short-story collections, like good record albums, are almost always hit-and-miss affairs - successful if they include three or four great tracks, wildly successful if they have five. And that's as it should be.