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[...] DFW could write high-powered prose better than just about anyone but he well knew the value of mixing it with informal day-to-day English, and, though he was especially good at it, it's worth keeping in mind that he was hardly the first great English writer to do so. For every Milton who kept…

Damasio is arguing that one of the innate faculties of our brain is that we can envision a wide range of possible scenarios and then sort through them very quickly not by logic but through a kind of process of the emotions. [...]

Fiction that's not considered good unless it has interesting ideas in it. You can write a minimalist short story that's set in a trailer park or a Connecticut suburb that might be considered a literary masterpiece or well-regarded by literary types, but science fiction people wouldn't find it very …

[...] In any event, this library was burned out by the Romans when they were adding Egypt to their empire. Or maybe it wasn't. It's inherently difficult to get reliable information about an event that consisted of the destruction of all recorded information.

[...] The business is as close to being a pure meritocracy as anything ever gets in the real world, and it's only because these guys know they are good that they have the confidence to call themselves cable trash.